Letty M. Russell
Quote collection assembled by Jone Johnson Lewis |
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Women not only seek identity in history but begin to seek out their sisters so
that, in community, they can build a strong feminist culture which supports the
ideas and actions of those who do not think persons are inferior because of
their sex. Here the emphasis is on vertical support from the past and from women
of the past, as well as horizontal support from sisters close by, and in every
part of the globe.
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I've written a lot about being alienated from the church. If I can't find room
to breathe here, what kind of community can I create? I do that not by leaving
the traditional congregation but by recognizing that I'm part of many different
congregations. By being part of a Woman Church one is strengthened to stay in
the traditional church and work for change.
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I myself do not think the Bible is sexist to
the core, because the core is a message of radical freedom and human
transformation.
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Women in patriarchal culture are surrounded by messages that negate or
trivialize their existence. Their bodily sexual presence is regarded as a
dangerous threat to male purity and, at the same time, as a justification for
constant verbal and physical abuse. They experience their bodies as constantly
vulnerable to assault and are told, at the same time, that they deserve such
assault because they "cause" it by their sexual presence. Similarly, women find
their own viewpoints and judgments of events trivialized, and this
trivialization is justified on the grounds that women are inherently stupid,
uninformed, lacking in authority, and incapable of forming significant
understandings. Thus they are alienated from their own minds, from being able to
trust their own perceptions. These judgments upon the woman's body and mind are,
in turn, used to justify women's exclusion from cultural opportunities and
leadership. Women are asked to accept this, too, as normal, natural, divinely
sanctioned.
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Patriarchy cannot be toppled except when the women who form the bottom of the
patriarchal pyramid, triply oppressed women, become liberated. All women's
oppression and liberation is bound up with that of the colonized and
economically most exploited women.
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The critique of sexism implies a fundamental principle of judgment. This
critical principle of feminist theology is the affirmation of and promotion of
the full humanity of women. Whatever denies, diminishes, or distorts the full
humanity of women is, therefore, to be appraised as not redemptive.
Theologically speaking, this means that whatever diminishes or denies the full
humanity of women must be presumed not to reflect the divine or authentic
relation to the divine, or to reflect the authentic nature of things, or to be
the message or work of an authentic redeemer or a community of redemption.
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Frequently, women with strong religious backgrounds have the most difficulty in
accepting that the violence against them is wrong. They believe what they have
been taught, that resistance to this injustice is unbiblical and unchristian.
Christian women are supposed to be meek, and claiming rights for oneself is
committing the sin of pride. But as soon as battered women who hold rigidly
traditional religious beliefs begin to develop an ideological suspicion that
this violence against them is wrong, they react against it.
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In workshops for persons who work with abused women, I have found that most
social workers, therapists, and shelter personnel view religious beliefs as
uniformly reinforcing passivity and tend to view religion, both traditional
Christianity and Judaism, as an obstacle to a woman's successful handling of
abuse.
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• Each quotation
page in this collection and the entire collection are © Jone Johnson Lewis
1997-2004. This is an informal collection -- if you need citations for the
original source, I don't have those available unless they're listed with the
quotes.
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