Inviting Ourselves to the Table’ – the Contributions of Feminist Ecclesiology and Feminist Theology
2.3. African Feminist Ecclesiology
2.3.5. Cultural Community – Inclusion or Exclusion?
66 as a pastor. This was the case of Pastor Mellia Makina, of whom Fiedler (2002:184) writes as follows:
Mellia was pastor of the church for two years, until 1990, when she married an evangelist (mlaliki), Makina. The “dethronement” of Mellia as pastor of the church is a testimony as to how referring to centralised structures of the church in Baptist churches can encourage oppression of women.
What the local church believed to be their own decision, as an autonomous body, the hierarchy of the Baptist Church overruled. This experience is duplicated in many denominations and it serves as an example of ‘power-over’ by hierarchical leadership structures that are often removed from the local situation and have the power to withhold funding, rather than ‘power-with’ local congregations, in order to empower and educate their people.
Molly Longwe’s (Fiedler 2002:195-196)story is another example of a pastor’s wife in the Baptist Church receiving support from the hierarchy as long as it is apparent that she is supporting her clergy-husband. As soon as Longwe’s theological studies became her own independent feminist theological quest, and she was no longer studying theology alongside her husband, the financial support from the Southern Baptist Mission Board stopped. Longwe is the first Malawian woman to teach at the Baptist Theological Seminary and this in itself was a very difficult issue for some pastors. They found it difficult to be lectured to by a ‘pastor’s wife’.
Alternative models for being church will, hopefully, open up new ways of ministry and eliminate some of the unfair expectations, which are often placed on ministers’ wives and give lay people equal opportunities for ministry and service in the community within which they live, work and worship. It is to the feature of this ‘community’ to which I now turn.
67 whole. The community must therefore make, create, or produce the individual;
for the individual depends on the corporate group….Whatever happens to the individual happens to the whole group, and whatever happens to the whole group happens to the individual. The individual can only say: “I am, because we are; and since we are therefore I am”. This is the cardinal point in the understanding of the African view of man [sic].49
Although Mibiti had not yet begun to grapple with exclusive language and the rightful place of women (and children) in both the African community and religion in 1990, he addressed the importance of the African cultural community. The Church, however, promotes hierarchy and patriarchal relationships, in which women are subservient and children have no status whatsoever. As alluded to in a previous section, this belief has been substantiated by androcentric texts in Scripture.
African feminist women theologians write about Black African rituals and ceremonies and this emphasises their commitment to community. Oduyoye (1992/2006:1- 24), in The Will to Arise – Women, Tradition and the Church in Africa, describes the rites of passage rituals and how these include the community. For Black African women to be church, they also need to be in community. Kenneth Mtata (2011:53) addresses Mbiti’s lack of sensitivity “to the plight of [the] African woman as the African man was presented as the one whose personhood had been robbed by colonialism”. Mbiti’s (Mtata 2011:53) brand of African theology was, therefore, “accused of perpetuating sexist constructions of personhood armed with the bible and African culture”. African women theologians challenge this position and two publications, edited by members of The Circle, specifically address this concern: Talitha cum! Theologies of African Women (edited by Njoroge and Dube) and The Will to Arise – Women, Tradition and the Church in Africa (edited by Oduyoye and Kanyoro). The personhood of women is as important as the personhood of men and African community is often held together, fostered and promoted by the women in that community. African women theologians wish to uphold African cultural community, whilst changing what is oppressive to women and children.
Oduyoye (2001:28) suggests that African women theologians are critical of “the Western Christian culture” as well as of “the African religio-culture” but she maintains that both are
49 This description is another way of defining ubuntu.
68
… experienced by women as a tool for domination, but there are aspects that can be liberative so they do not undertake a wholesale condemnation of either. They have to contend, however, with the fact that the Western Christian culture and patriarchal ideology have seeped in, to enhance the power of men or to endow men with power where they had none, while suppressing aspects of African culture that are favourable to women.
This impacts on both the traditional practice of African hospitality and on the life of African community because, as Oduyoye (2001:91-92) points out,
… all this is changing and the hospitality of yesterday is disappearing. People are no longer preoccupied with the safety of the stranger who knocks on the door. No longer are people keen to reserve the best drinking vessel for strangers. Hospitality can no longer be guaranteed to create friendships. All has changed, other cultures, other styles of life, modernity, the technology we acquire with brutality, especially in the urban areas, have undermined the goodwill that was the original of hospitality. They are compatible with traditional African hospitality. And yet the residue remains, namely the right to protection that visitors could expect. In the turmoil of Africa, refugees are received in the ‘modern’ camps for the masses, but the small groups that arrive meld into the local population, especially if they have the same language.
Homes are still open to refugees. Some are given land to build and even decide to stay on when the crisis that drove them out is overcome.
The traditional African cultural community is experiencing challenges, and the concept of community is changing because of the circumstances in many African countries. Many traditional African values are being questioned, especially regarding the rights of women and children, and sexism is no longer acceptable. An inclusive community means that people have equal rights and equal status and that one gender must not be responsible for serving the other. It means that children are accepted as human beings in their own right and that their needs are taken into account in the community. This, however, is valid in all communities, not only in the African context.
Watson and other Western feminist theologians have explored the concept of base ecclesial communities in order to foster the true essence of the Christian faith – ‘to love God and to love our neighbour as we love ourselves’.50 Rosemary Radford Ruether has lived in such a community51 as an experiment, and Watson (2002:53ff) discusses its merits in a chapter she entitled ‘Women-Church: Reclaiming Women’s Being Church in Feminine Communities of Worship and Justice’. One concern raised is the question of those who are
50 See the Bible: Matthew 22:37-39.
51 She described this experience in her address, delivered to the WOW Conference in Canada in July 2005.
69 outside the community because they would be deemed to be excluded from the community in question. This is a difficult issue to side step as any human community has both components; those who are part of it and those who are outside of it.
In African terms, however, the sense of community seems to be more fluid. Those who are present form the community and when others join, they too become part of the community. This was briefly discussed under the section of African hospitality. Although there is a distinct pride in African cultural identity, there is also a pride in extending hospitality and this makes African community warm and embracing.
At times, however, community in Africa has also become distinctly exclusive, as Oduyoye pointed out, and has been witnessed in the horrific genocide that took place in Rwanda and other countries in recent years. Ethnic identity in Africa is a topic that lends itself to further study but it falls outside of the immediate scope of this thesis.
Mary Tororeiy (2005:167) believes, with other African feminist theologians, that the Church is the place wherein people are called to become community, as
… a place where men and women have equal status, dignity and rights as images of the divine, with equal access to the magnanimous graces and gifts of the spirit. It is where each and everyone enrich the discipleship community of equals with different experiences, vocations and talents.
This vision of the Church does hold out the hope for a more holistic community in Africa as well as the hope for transformation of community in the wider world.
Some of the additional concerns are discussed in the next section, as these affect women in the specific context of African feminist theology and ecclesiology.