Toward a Woman-Centered Theology of Resistance

Embracing Mother God
The image of God the father may bring more pain than comfort to women who have been abused by a man. That man may be her father, boyfriend, or husband. A woman-centered ethic leads women to embrace a different image of God that delights in revolutionary disobedience and spirited protest. (Brock and Parker 2001, 31) A woman who has embraced a new model of God can liberate herself. She comes to believe that her God wants her to cherish and safeguard her life. Christian women, who were brought up believing in the Big (Male) Three, may feel alienated from religion. It is no wonder that women and mothers who have lived their lives under the yoke of Christianity "feel a little crazy when their babies are baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." (1996 Heyward, 169)

How has that 2,000-year-old story survived with such a woman-less cast of characters? What about all those daughters of God? Women may stop going to a church where Sunday after Sunday they are reminded of their duty to submit to their husbands and stay silent. She may tire of being pushed outside the church hierarchy with no voice on policy-making.

Once the rising tide of misogynistic language and symbols constructed by men threaten to drown her, she may cut loose the mooring lines and opt to swim for her life. Naming herself a daughter of God may enable a battered woman to reclaim her place in God's creation ­ "Male and female God created them." (Genesis 1:27). To balance the powers that for centuries have benefitted affluent, heterosexual males in both secular and religious circles in the West, women need to conjure their imaginations and consider what difference relating to God as Mother would make for their lives.

Women who name ourselves daughters of God begin a long journey of reclaiming ourselves and resisting the pull to continue defining ourselves according to men's misunderstanding and misbeliefs about us. "Somehow we must get clear, get our hearts and heads uncluttered, break the bonds of the historically cultivated misogyny we have internalized so thoroughly that we are unable to know or love ourselves apart from men's definitions, opinions, and approval of who we are." (Heyward 1984, 169)

This effort to "decenter the patriarchal model and to provide an alternative to it" gives rise to some risks. McFague cautions against proposing a "new hierarchal dualism with a matriarchal model of God." (McFague 1996, 324-325) Instead, this worthy endeavor is best understood as an investigation of a "rich, and neglected, if not repressed relationship in our time, most specifically, the interdependence and mutuality of all life. The model of God as mother of the earth and all its creatures encourages a sensibility that could well support modern realities." (Ibid., 325)

Since women are not born as mothers but become mothers, any attempt to sentimentalize motherhood and a maternal God must not assume that women are biologically programmed to be loving, self-less mothers. The use of maternal language also can be oppressive to women and all humans in relation to God.

"It poses problems for women because it suggests that women who are not mothers are not true or fulfilled women; it gives power to the one role that has probably oppressed women more than any other over the centuries; it can appear to be pro-life or anti-abortion at a time when population problems loom large." (Ibid.)

As one of God's beloved daughters, a woman should beware of not falling into another trap where she believes that as a child, her parent (God) will always be there to intervene in her crises, and, therefore she does not need to accept responsibility for herself and the world. At the same time, the maternal metaphor for God is one model that speaks well in our time where all of God's creatures must beware of how precious and vulnerable our existence is, particularly in this ecological and nuclear-threatened age.

The Myth of Enki and Ninmah aptly illustrates this theme from the perspective of the ancient Sumerian religion that transcends history. The fable focuses on the relative importance of the mother and the father, the creator-goddess and creator-god in the creation of human lives. (Frymer-Kensky 1992, 16-18)

In the story, Ninmah boasts that she is the one who determines whether her offspring will have a good life. Enki counters with his own assertion that he can affect the newborn's destiny. Ninmah's first attempt at independent creation falls short. Enki then steps forward and attempts the same feat. His creation is of no use. The very uselessness of Enki's creation stands as acknowledgement of how indispensable Ninmah is to the creation of full-formed humans. "Ninmah's reaction conforms to the social belief that the ability to procreate is essential to a woman's self-esteem, and her appreciation of reproduction as 'woman's power' greatly increases her self-worth." (Ibid., 18)

I carefully considered the appropriateness of invoking this goddess/god myth and its naming of female/male relations and roles in procreation. Eleanor Haney and Tikva Frymer Kensky, both female scholars and theologians, help us to consider how and even whether a study of goddess traditions can fit into a discussion of women in biblical times and today. "We desperately need to recover these traditions and learn from them, as we should learn from womanist and other traditions. Immersion in such a woman-centered universe offers a concrete opportunity to experience our bodies, to experience a construction of reality that is female. It challenges us to affirm our bodies and to become more aware of just how gendered our understanding of the deity is." (Haney 1998, 50-51)Womencenter.html

"The Goddess is an alternative to aspects of monotheism that are now perceived as painful to women and dangerous to the earth. Once we realize that the goddesses of ancient pagan religion were not vestigial remnants of a romantic female past, that they had real functions within their religious systems, then we must ask what happens to those functions when the goddesses are no more?" (Frymer-Kensky 1992, viii)

Ancient stories such as this one stand as a message of hope for the future of women and men who must find a way to survive in a world that is becoming ever-more dangerous, corrupted, and polluted. When we peel the onion that is our world, we must seek a core that recognizes that the grace of God is available to all of God's creation ­ women and men alike. A once-battered woman's remarkable survival against all odds can help her to rediscover the "ordinary" in her life to the end of healing her trauma, even to be fed by the hand of God.

"A theology that sees God as the parent who feeds the young and by extension, the weak and the vulnerable, understands God as caring about the most basic needs of life in its struggle to continue." (McFague 1996, 327) Once fed, a battered woman can join her sense of loss and subsequent resurrection with those of other women in the world who envision a new future, free of violence.