4.2. Male-Dominant Liturgical and Biblical Language
4.2.2. Methodist Liturgies
105 Hymns like ‘Dear Lord and Father of mankind’88 are great hymns but women need to do ‘spiritual gymnastics’89 when singing them. It is deeply respectful to sing ‘Dear God, Creator of humankind’ and still retain the metre and the poetry. Some hymn-writers have written new verses for hymns with verses that are too difficult to make inclusive by editing.
One of the merits of making hymns inclusive of gender and of images for God is that it raises the awareness of the congregation that the hymns are exclusive. Another positive aspect is that many women then feel included and as though they belong. I say ‘many women’ since many women think it is petty to believe ‘mankind’ does not include women but many of them would work hard for a woman’s right to protection at home – another gender justice issue. Some women do not yet recognise linguistic gender injustice in the Church and they would be irritated if anyone changed the words of the hymns or the liturgies, to which we now turn.
106 This response by the congregation is both exclusive of women as well as excluding any feminine image of God in the Church. This is confirmed in all the prayers and the creeds in the Baptism liturgy, as they too, address God as ‘Father’. In a spiritual ritual where the mother usually plays a particularly vital role, she is not recognised by the Church.
Holy Communion – this Sacrament is the most celebrated ritual in the MCSA.
Some congregations celebrate Holy Communion every Sunday and others, at least once a month. This liturgy remembers and re-enacts the ritual of Jesus’ last meal, a Jewish Passover meal, with the disciples before the Crucifixion. It is also the most difficult liturgy to make inclusive – in its image of God – as the biblical story of the Crucifixion portrays Jesus as a man. Apart from that aspect, the liturgy refers to God as ‘Father’ and the closing prayers are as follows:
Let us pray,
We thank you, Lord,
that you have fed us in this sacrament, united us with Christ,
and given us a foretaste of the heavenly banquet prepared for all mankind. Amen
The blessing of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, remain with you always.
Amen
(The underlined emphasis is mine.)
Many people are attached to the words of the liturgy and if one changes ‘Lord’ to ‘God’
they feel offended. There is merit in making these liturgies inclusive because when the liturgy is inclusive it might be expected that the practices in the Church would also be inclusive. The following poem by Steve Taylor90 is an example of what we hope for in the Church:
We find ourselves today gathered in a circle equal
in a flow of love
We find in our centre a table circular
90 <http://www.emergentkiwi.org.nz/archive/this-table-remakes-us-a-creationary-communion-introduction/>
[Accessed 23 November 2011].
107 And a loaf of bread
round And a cup circular
This table has remade us changed the way we sit changed the way we relate as equals, in a flow of love
One of the additional prayers in the ‘Sunday Service’ (‘D’ on pB30) is an example of what to avoid:
Inspire and lead all who govern and hold authority in the nations of the world:
Establish justice and peace among all men.
(The underlined emphasis is mine.)
This prayer is addressing a social need but in their response, the congregation is ignoring more than half the population. It is necessary to put some effort into revising our hymns and liturgies and it would behove the DEWCOM91 to consider the presence of women and children in the Church.
The emergence of African feminist theological perspectives, which challenge the male-dominant tradition and perception of God in Africa, also calls people to read the Bible within the context of postcolonialism. Musa Dube (2004:115) asks the following question in chapter five of the book Grant Me Justice! – HIV/AIDS & Gender Readings of the Bible:
“How would such a story read from the multiple levels of postcolonial, feminist and HIV/AIDS perspectives?” In this chapter, she examines some of the critical questions with regard to a biblical narrative and the perspectives within which the story is read or retold.
Language and its cultural connotations influence the ways in which people perceive a story, a situation and the world as a whole. This supports the notion that careful deconstruction and recontextualisation are necessary when reading the Bible. The story of the healing of Jairus’ daughter92has become a key passage for African women theologians.
According to Dube’s (2004:115ff) reinterpretation of this story, African women are also being invited to respond to ‘Talitha Cum!’ (meaning ‘Little girl, get up!’). Dube (2004:118) draws a poignant analogy between the little girl and African women and refers
91 Doctrine, Ethics and Worship Committee.
92 See the Bible - Mark 5:21-43.
108 to the people who were amazed when the little girl “got up and began to walk about” (in verse 42 of the passage) – in both cases, after being healed of their ‘diseases’ and resurrected from their ‘death’. Liturgies in the Church could, therefore, be designed to include women and men and also children. Women are worthy of participating in the rituals as well as officiating at the altar. The MCSA’s liturgies could also be de-colonised in order to reflect an authentically Southern African tradition rather than perpetuating the tradition of its British heritage.
Feminist theologians, from various cultural and ethnic traditions, continue to promote the study and praxis of contextual theology. Oduyoye (2001:48 and 49) discusses
‘Theo-Logos’ as follows:
Theology, God-talk, is about God, the divine, the sacred. Hence, all that is, is related to this unique source of being. Derived from this is the strong focus on contextual studies. The study of African Religion, the sociopolitical, economic and cultural experiences are all relevant to the sacred. …
Affirming the Bible as a source for God-word brings women into the arena of biblical hermeneutics. In addition, African women have to ask: ‘Whose voice is the voice of the ancestors, the voice of tradition?’ and ‘Where is the voice for today coming from?’. … African women theologians seek a way to the word that God speaks through and about the practice of religion. …
The theology of the total depravity of humanity is not in African Religion and has not taken root among African women even though certain types of Christian theology insist on it. African women see God at work and they recognize humans who collaborate with this work.
Here the voice of tradition and the voice of God are questioned. African women theologians recognise that both women and men are part of humanity and so the voice of the ancestors cannot only be a male voice. Oduyoye also challenges the aspects of Christian theology that deny the validity of African religion.
The old English and Western cultural tradition, which viewed the word ‘man’ to be inclusive of ‘woman’ too, is no longer acceptable because knowledge, experience and human reason have influenced theology, along with the natural and the physical sciences, as well as ethics and social justice. Recognising this as a valid point, Susan Rakoczy (2004:208) asks the question “What went wrong?” in her book In Her Name– Women Doing Theology. Rakoczy (2004) underlines the reality that the minimising of women’s experience is related to the language intentionally perpetuated by patriarchy. Whilst continuing the debate on excluding or including women, she begins to answer her own question as follows:
109 One insight is shown in the contrasting words for “church”. The first biblical
term was ekklesia, which means “assembly” and connotes the sense of a community gathered together in the name of the risen Christ, a discipleship of equals. But the preferred word began to be kyriakos, which means “belonging to the Lord” but also “belonging to the patriarch, the master” (Rakoczy 2004:208).
This argument supports the reason why the term ‘Lord’ for both Christ and God remains the most popular and most often used during worship – in liturgy and extemporaneous prayer in church as well as in people’s personal devotions and conversations about God.
Over and above the slights of exclusive language and perceived cultural and racial supremacy, the ‘Christian Creedal Statements’93 pose other threats to inclusive ecclesiological practices in the Church. These creeds94 emphasise the exclusive maleness of God in “his fatherhood” and affirm Jesus as “the son” of God, who came down from heaven “for us men, and for our salvation”. According to feminist ecclesiology, these creedal statements are problematic, as expounded upon in section 2.1.
The contemplative theologian, Richard Rohr (1999:133), says in his book Everything Belongs: “It is a mystery we are dipped into”. He does argue for the mystery of faith to be preserved but he also teaches that spirituality should not be obscured by creeds and dogma.
Rohr, himself a Roman Catholic priest urges his readers to open their minds to new possibilities and opportunities within the Church. It is a source of great pain for many Roman Catholics that the door to ordination remains shut for women.95
The lack of gender sensitive language, used in meetings and from the pulpit, in the MCSA is related to Rakoczy’s argument of intentional male-dominant language perpetuated by patriarchy. Local Methodist Societies are urged by Conference, through
‘The Statement on Women’,96 to engage in gender education, especially congregations that have not had women ministers serve there previously, but few leaders arrange for a gender workshop for their members or design and implement a gender policy for their church. I speak more specifically for my own District, where gender sensitivity is no longer a primary concern. This District’s previous Bishop was a woman, who introduced gender
93 Two important ones are the Nicene and the Apostle’s Creeds.
94 Quoted on the inside front cover and first page of the Methodist Hymn-Book.
95 See the online campaign for the ordination of women in the Roman Catholic Church – http://www.womenpriests.org/index.asp [Accessed 6 November 2011].
96 Excerpt from ‘The Statement on Women’: Laws and Discipline, p233. See 3.1.2
110 sensitivity, but as soon as she went out of office the emphasis on gender equality faded and balanced representivity received only the minimum attention.
Few ministers, throughout the Connexion, are committed to gender inclusive language and no clause has been added to the Laws and Discipline of the MCSA, to ensure that gender equality becomes mandatory in this church. Therefore, congregations cannot yet be held accountable for their sexist and exclusive ecclesiological practices as a clause to this effect does not exist. The only gender policy that the MCSA promotes is the one which ‘urges’ all sectors of the church to be mindful of balanced representation.97 Until a clause is formally enshrined in the Laws and Discipline of the MCSA, gender inclusive liturgical language will remain merely a hope and those who experience gender marginalisation will have no foundation on which to base their objections.
Even when transformation has occurred, it has often not been positive. Some congregations have embraced a more conservative and legalistic approach to theology and worship and have placed even further limits on women’s involvement in leadership in the MCSA. With this in mind, one of the most radical changes, which congregations seem to resist fiercely, is that of inclusive liturgies and hymns.98 The journey towards the language of inclusion is one of the most arduous in the feminist theological journey. Here I speak from a Western perspective, as the challenges in an African feminist theological journey might be different. Changing exclusive language when reading from the Bible or a liturgy is not received well by many members in the MCSA. When asking a congregation to sing
‘all’ instead of ‘men’ in a hymn, I am often met with cold resistance. The issue of gender education is raised once more. If there had been an efficient programme in place, since 1999, when the Conference recommended that inclusive language be introduced in liturgies, hymns and language used in the pulpit, then this might not be such a huge problem more than ten years after that recommendation. However, the gap between policy and practice is once again demonstrated.
In response to Oduyoye’s earlier comments about the Church being a community and fostering koinonia, Jaworski (1996:192) suggests
97 See the Methodist Yearbook (1999/2000:174).
98 The writer’s own experience bears witness to the reluctance of an inner city
congregation to embrace inclusive language hymns and liturgies, even though these were introduced sensitively and creatively.
111
… that when our way of being shifts, our sense of identity shifts, and we see ourselves as connected to one another and to the whole universe. In this state, we accept others as legitimate beings, no matter what their race, gender, or national origin may be.
African women theologians are calling the Church back to its roots, reminding the Church of its calling to be Christ in the world.
Another area in which a gap between policy and practice exists is in the area of attitudes and practise toward women in the ministry in the MCSA.
4.3. Unjust Practices toward Women in Ministry within the MCSA