Perspective I

Women's Struggle in the Christian and Secular Women's Movement
by Monica J. Melanchthon

Introduction:

In Asia, the patriarchal dictums within the church are far stronger than in the society and hence women within the Church experience many of the problems confronting women in the wider arena of society. The church is in fact far behind the State in granting privileges to women and use scriptural arguments to deny women their rightful place. Many churches today ordain women and allow women to be represented within the decision-making bodies of the church and yet the attitude of most men towards women is far from the ideal. There is still a great amount of suspicion and possibly fear that hinders the church from giving women their rightful place in church and society. But the struggle for equality of women and men within the church will not take root unless it is linked with the wider struggle for empowerment in society. Despite the fact, that the impetus to bring about equal participation of women within the church came from the Secular Women’s movement, the involvement of Christian women in the wider women’s movement is minimal.  Those Christian women, who are within the secular movement for change, are unfortunately not able to affect the Church in a significant way. The main reason is the role of religion in each of the movements. Religion does play a dominant role in the lives of women in our traditional cultures whether we are aware of it or not, and influences almost all aspects of our daily life. Hence, serious thought needs to be given to religion and women’s religiosity.
 

Reasons for the Gap between Church women and Secular women in the Movement

The gap between the secular women’s movement and the faith-based women’s organisations is far too wide. The reason for this is mainly the role religion play or does not play in the secular movement. The lack of sufficient focus on religious issues or ideals within the secular women’s movement has contributed to the hesitancy of faith-based women’s organisations to join them. The reasons for this may be as follows:

1. Religion and religious reform has not been a part of the discourse among secular women’s movements. Anyone, who is conversant with the situation in Asia, will realise how important it is to have tolerance, peace and amity among the various religious groups for the all round development and progress of society. Instead, we live in times when religion is politicised and used for the advantage of the dominant group. Most are of the opinion that religion is a hindrance when it comes to women’s emancipation. For religion has been used to justify and sanctify the subordinate positions of women and other minorities. Because religion has contributed to dissention and fragmentation among communities, secular women have shied away from affirming their religious identity and focus instead on the cause of women. A focus on the secular nature of the movement they hoped would save them from the destructive power of religion and make their work more effective.

2. Many women have themselves been victims of religious orthodoxy and have hence taken on a very antagonistic attitude to religion. And hence statements such as this are made: “it is we who have to stop believing in gods and start believing in ourselves, our inalienable rights to a decent life on this earth. Our rituals have to be taken over by actions, which lead to this. Our God has to be replaced by our love for humanity and our hatred for injustices.”[1] There are not too many examples where institutionalised religion has come to the aid of women suffering from social stigma and violence. Widows, divorced women, battered women and victims of domestic violence, single women, and the like have only found religion to be a deterring factor when it comes to affirmation of their identity. Religion as it is popularly understood and practiced has been detrimental to these women as sought acceptance and support with in the faith community.

3. Also, it is important to acknowledge that women have traditionally not been encouraged to contribute to religious ideological production, which has been under the tight control of men. Creative efforts by women have been sidelined or undermined hindering them from impacting the church and its practice. The question of women’s place in the faith community is a theological and ecclesiological question for it has to do with the very nature of the Community. Despite the feminist critique of mainstream theology and the increase in scholarship, feminist religious discourse is still not taken seriously in our communities. Clearly, in the academy there are a few feminists that are accepted (with a certain degree of cynicism it seems) as significant contributors to the theological debate of our time. But the word “feminist” still arouses suspicion and those whose God-talk is shaped by feminist analysis are not taken seriously.

Churchwomen on the other hand hesitate to participate in the secular women’s movement, precisely because:

(1) Religion and religiosity do not seem to be of concern to the secular women. For women in faith based organisations, religion plays a very important role. It is their faith or religion that provides them with the impetus to work for change and the emancipation of women.

(2) Many churchwomen believe that God or Jesus Christ could not be present in the struggles of secular women. They experience difficulty in trying to decide whether it is appropriate to participate in issues that are political or social. Secular women are political and are often quite vocal of their political leanings, despite not being affiliated to any particular political party. Women in the Church in Asia have by and large been conservative with regard to the relation of Church to State. Such a political stance has been theologically justified by the doctrine of the two kingdoms, improperly understood. Temporal authority has often been looked at as being profane and as being primarily one that is in opposition to the kingdom of God. As Garcia Bachmann says,

Luther’s concept of the two kingdoms has been used to justify violence, injustice, totalitarian regimes etc., because it taught that the church should not interfere in politics. God’s work was seen as opposite to his people’s work. God’s salvation in personal terms was regarded as the only possible work, making void any human effort towards justice, love and peace.[2]

(3). We can see the reluctance of the Church to take gender seriously mirrored in the distressing gender imbalance at decision-making levels. In practical terms, this gender imbalance translates into unequal access to economic resources and information. Women are once again rendered politically, not just socially unequal. Power remains squarely in the hands of men. Sometimes there is no attempt even at token accommodation, let alone allowing women actual participation. Women’s political voices have been successfully marginalised and ignored in the bureaucracy of the Church and society. Men have colonised the language of political, social and theological debate. In some Churches, men are called to tell women’s side of the story. This colonisation of the political, economic and theological arena partly explains why there has been a corresponding deafness in the Churches to the concerns of women. The lack of a high profile women’s movement means that the Church can get away with this discrimination indefinitely. It also means that the women within the Church do not feel sufficiently equipped to participate in the wider movement for emancipation of women. It is essential that the women’s movement within the Church be strengthened and made far more visible and effective than it currently is.

The Contribution of Faith to the women’s movement:

The real challenge for women in the wake of emergent global culture is the fragmentation of women and the increasing individualisation of religion. Religion is seldom the common voice inviting all, but as a system tends to be diminished and relegated to the margins. But considering the role that religion plays in the lives of people, particularly in Asia, it is essential that religious resources also be mobilised to counteract the ill effects of sexism and gender violence. Approaching the problem of gender discrimination and analysing it with the tools of social analysis will help us understand the problem but will offer no grounds for hope or the articulation of goals. Analysis alone does not produce hope. Only a religious experience or religion would give grounds for hope and envisioning the goal of overcoming a system that is oppressive and painful. Only a movement that is rooted in religion or faith will have the required stamina, energy and motivation to keep going despite pitfalls and setbacks in the fight for women. Faith enables and equips the movement to see the goal even before it is realised, it provides hope, a hope that something good will come. In times of peace hope gives way to thanks and expects further good. In times of grief and distress, hope still directed towards God, longs for deliverance[3]. This hope is not a lulling opiate but a radical hope that is a critical and creative power for the transformation of the world in its personal, social and cosmic dimensions. It is hope that is rooted in a faith that will not allow you to die in the wilderness.

Religious reflection is not the exclusive prerogative of the clergy or the seminary faculty. All of us make choices and act in certain ways because of the way we think theologically. In other words, our actions are guided by our understandings of God, Humanity, the community and so on. To think theologically is to appropriate the resources of our faith in reflecting on real-life dilemmas and situations. Realising that some people think their way into new ways of acting, while possibly more act their way into new ways of thinking, it remains essential that theology develop in response to empirical or actual situations and this is possible only through involvement in the wider struggle for women’s emancipation.

Traditionally it is religion, which mediates the link between personal life and wider political concern. Religion spells out a way of life as well as a world-view. It is true that religious affiliation has contributed to the distortion of economic and political issues. The result has therefore been socially and politically reactionary. But where efforts have been made to utilise an enlightened and moderate approach, secular approach, and appeals have been made to overcome caste, communalism, and oppression of women it has not resulted in the transformation of personal life and social relations, since it was devoid of religious reform.  What do we mean by religious reform?

I really like Dietrich’s definition of religious reform. She defines religious reform “as such a reform which enables individuals and groups to participate in secular, political processes which are struggling for equality of all citizens and against economic, political and cultural exploitation, without being forced to abandon the faith dimension of their religious identity.”[4] It is the possibility of identifying and emphasising the humanitarian content within the religion, the humanist content, which any individual irrespective of religion can relate and adhere to. This latter dimension is an indispensable part of creating a rich secular culture. Christian involvement for the cause of women calls for engagement for the promotion of religious harmony. This feminist concern and perspective, in its turn, will also add a new dimension to inter-religious understanding and dialogue.

Considering the very important role religion plays in determining the status and roles of women in society, efforts to reform religion are as essential as social reform. In fact, I would place a greater emphasis on the former since the former does have impact on women in the social sphere. Closer cooperation and joint efforts would result in being advantageous to both movements and benefit the wider struggle for emancipation and liberation of women. Hence, among other things, far more needs to be done in forging closer cooperation among women within the church and women in the secular women’s movement.

A Call to women in the Church to be involved in the wider women’s movement:

Whether we are liberal or conservative or somewhere in between, asking ourselves some basic questions may reveal how we think or act theologically, for example. Do our thoughts about God hinder or help us in loving other persons? Does the way we read the Bible obscure or open our vision of God’s truth? Do the traditions and teaching of our church freeze us in the past or free us for the future? Does our Christian faith contradict or correspond to what we experience in life? Does our theology limit or liberate us in the way we respond to people and the kind of world in which we live? Do our beliefs create barriers or draw us closer to other children of God? Realising that some people think their way into new ways of acting, while possibly more act their way into new ways of thinking, it remains essential that theology develop in response to empirical or actual situations.

God in fact rules over both the secular and the spiritual world. It is said, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God” (Romans 13:1). This means that God is in charge of both human conscience and human action.

The Kingdom of God, contrary to what many Christians think, does not signify something that is purely spiritual or outside this world. It is the totality of this material world, spiritual and human that is now introduced into God’s order.[5]

This of course calls for the recognition of the fact that God’s rule is here transforming the consciences of individuals for the establishment of the reign of God through Word and Sacrament and preparing them for the service of the World to counteract forces of evil and to bring about justice, peace and order. God uses individuals, men and women, as God’s instruments for change in both of the realms. The praxis of those who belong to the Reign of God is the evidence of being saved by Jesus Christ and being in relationship with the liberating Christ and instruments of liberation in the world.

Human beings do not live in isolation from the social, economic and political realities of their time. “It is therefore wrong for them to accept existing conditions as given and unchangeable. While struggling for the establishment of God’s Kingdom on earth, it must also stand uncompromisingly against every kind of injustice and tyranny.”[6] Christian Women in Asia have for long sought assuage and meaning through works of charity and kindness in response to suffering caused by dehumanising socio-economic and political conditions that are prevalent in the world. But they are expected to proclaim the will of God for all human relationships in the world. In other words, they are to stand against tyranny and injustice.  “Saving their souls” or working towards a change in the faith stance of women, educating them and responding to their economic needs through charity, development and welfare programs has never been an issue. But when it comes to the holistic liberation of women[7], women of the official church and majority of its membership is full of ambiguities.[8] It is time that we overcame our fears and allows our faith in the liberating God who identifies with the weak and the oppressed to strengthen us in order to follow on until the goal of women’s freedom and liberation has been reached. 

Perspective II

Ecumenical Student Ministry in the Asia Pacific Region: Its Challenges and Mission
by Sharon Rose Joy Ruiz-Duremdes

To reflect on the situation of the University students is to make a pronouncement on the educational system of most universities.  I was taught by SCMers and the militant student activists that the academe is but a reflection of the socio-economic and political terrain of the larger society.  In most semi-feudal and semi-colonial countries like the Philippines, the school, the church and media constitute the State instrumentality for promoting its ideology.  For instance, the Philippines decided to remain as a neo-colony of the United States, being its supplier of natural and human resources.  To serve this political framework, the Philippine educational system is patterned after that of the United States.  Nursing students are taught skills that will make them effective care givers at the New York General Hospital.  Medical students learn how to operate medical equipment found in North America, instruments that are totally absent in rural Philippines.  It is safe to say that, for the most part, Filipino doctors are incompetent in a countryside setting.  Or since Japan wishes to project its military superiority in the region, history textbooks conveniently blot out Japan's war crimes - an issue that the National Christian Council of Japan has mounted a campaign against.

My reflection today contains two major sections: First - My Lamentations About the Academe.  Second - Some Notes on Churches and SCM Partnership Towards an Ecumenical Student Ministry.


A. My Lamentations About the Academe

Progressive teachers and students in the Philippines claim that education is elitist, commercialised, and colonial.  Today, education is no longer a right.  It has become a privilege and only the privileged are able to be educated.  Sure, there are scholarships but these are available only through hard-nosed competition.  With the privatisation of State Universities, a college degree is almost beyond the reach of ordinary students.  Statistics has it that, in the Philippines, of the 100 pupils entering Elementary, less than 10 will be able to finish University.  When I was teaching at Central Philippine University many years ago, I had to counsel a student who was traumatised by her experience during the week of finals.  At CPU, as in most schools, students are allowed to take the final exam only if they have paid all outstanding accounts.  This student came from a peasant family and the farmers had an extremely bad harvest that year due to the El Niño phenomenon.  As could be expected, her parents had nothing to send her.  This student was graduating and it was imperative for her to take that final exam.  To make the long story short, she had to lose her virginity in exchange for a measly Peso 3,000.00 to pay for her tuition fees so that she could take the exam.  In talking with her, I discovered that hers was not an isolated case.

The colonial aspect of education shows up not only in the content of education but also in its export-oriented perspective.  Most of my former students are at a drilling site in Riyadh or at an engineering project in Brunei or in a geriatrics’ home in Canada or in a Videoke bar in Osaka.  You know as well as I do why they are there.

In a country where 75% of the population live below the poverty line, what can we expect of the youth of the land?

I lament the fact that education in most schools is repressive.  I am aware of some schools in my country where even the Student Christian Movement is not recognised by the administration as a legitimate student organisation.  Moreover, I see repressive education reflected in which departments have the largest enrolments.  These are departments whose courses are technical, exact, and neutral.  Learners are not encouraged to take courses that make them think, analyse, critique and reconstruct.  In a subtle way, students are forced to gloss over the truth - to the way things are and to hold in abeyance, nay, stifle the urge to unearth uncomfortable and painful truths.  Has it ever occurred to you that the learners' natural inclination to inquire and to seek is actually repressed by education?  Has it ever occurred to you that learners' natural disposition for creating and seeing things afresh is, actually, obliterated by education?  I fear that this pattern will raise generations of, what I call, "bonsai intellectuals" who are not analytical.  Unable to critique situations, they will, no doubt, allow the ruling class to ride roughshod over them.

I am deeply concerned that the educational system in most universities is domesticating.  Where do many graduates end up?  Aren't they turned into any more than domestic helpers in places where the work environment is no different from a household? Take a look at the situation of domestic helpers: (1) the master assumes that he knows everything and the helper knows nothing; (2) the master talks and the helper listens meekly; (3) the master disciplines and the helper is disciplined; (4) the master chooses and enforces his choice and the helper complies obediently and passively; (5) the master chooses the activity and routine for the helper and the helper is expected to adapt to it.  That finds easy translation in the schools.  The classroom teachers' task, as defined by the educational system, is to "fill" the students with a perception of reality that has become motionless, static, lifeless and petrified.  A reality that is disconnected from that which has engendered the learners and given them significance.

I am disturbed that the university setting creates an unreal world for the students.  The classroom projects a seemingly artificial environment that eventually alienates the learners from their class origins and themselves.  For the professors, the "publish-or-perish" policy impels them to grind out just any kind of reading material.  Never mind if it does not make sense to people at the base.  The more esoteric, the better.  Research is a matter of physical survival instead of an aid for social reversal.  For the students, the university resurrects the law of the jungle: survival of the fittest.  The push to be competitive strengthens the "crab mentality" which gives license to people to excel at the expense of others.  In most cases, the academic community institutionalises rugged individualism at the expense of community and solidarity.

Globalisation does not make matters any easier for University students.  It is true that information technology opens more opportunities for faster communication and wider access to new knowledge.  The world is flashed right on one's computer screen.  But has the University helped its students acquire handles to sift through the maze of information, considering that selective attention needs to be guided by some modicum of appropriateness?

There is some unity that the effect of globalisation on people is one of indifference and fundamentalism.  There is a tendency to be inward looking and simplistically literal, to emphasise personal or individual salvation and to reduce faith to almost a personality cult.  In a situation of complexities and uncertainty, people are wont to turn to a faith-perspective that calms and soothes and provides black and white answers.  This kind of perspective only compounds the unthinking culture of the University.  Moreover, globalisation highlights capitalism's "get rich quick" philosophy which is under girded by the prosperity gospel.  In a condition of poverty and deprivation, the promise of appliances, opportunities to climb the social ladder, wealth are most attractive.

What I have said thus far smacks of one who has nothing but repugnance for the academic community.  Maybe I do detest the University.  I had to un-learn all I had accumulated from school when I moved out into the real world.  Facetiously, the only blessing I received from the University was my husband.  On second thought, this bleak negative view of the University is its saving grace.  It creates favourable conditions for transformation.  To the extent that students are frustrated over the way things are, to that same extent will they search for alternatives.  And I believe this is one of the reasons for our being at this Consultation.  The restlessness that our students and teachers feel about the academic community pushes them into organised actions that will embody that which they believe is the solution.


B. Churches and SCM: Partners Toward An Ecumenical Student Ministry

From that subjective assessment of the academic community, I turn my gaze to partnership in the ecumenical student ministry.  I refuse to name alternative ways.  I am most uncomfortable with mandates.  Allow me to merely pose initial thoughts which I hope will be given some thought at this Consultation.

1. If the academic milieu were as I described earlier, we would need a dismantling-supplanting ministry.  It would be a ministry that consistently poses a critique of the educational system:  content and process.  As it opposes the repressive, elitist, commercialised, colonial, domesticating aspects of education, so must it lift up the liberating and liberative dimension of the system, if any, vigorously pushing for its perpetuation.  Most churches and Councils of Churches specialise in Ecumenical Education and Nurture.  These have, through the years, articulated a philosophy of ecumenical learning and contextual theologising.  University students who are active church members may very well be the channels through which this philosophy of education is made to permeate the schools.  This, then, makes the students "prophets in residence".

2. It is significant, for me, that we are underscoring the fact that our student ministry is ECUMENICAL.  I wish to suggest that ecumenism is, in the first instance, about relationships.  The whole inhabited earth is always seen as an arena of relationships-a venue of community.  Ecumenical student ministry, therefore, should be a cradle for nurturing relationships.  In an impersonal, alienating University in a dog-eats-dog setting, if the churches and SCMs are unable to provide this community, we have lost our purpose for being.  Furthermore, ecumenism is a praxis of solidarity with those who are suffering at the margins.  In our countries, the youth suffer at the margins.  The praxis of solidarity propels us to immerse ourselves in the lives of those whom we are in solidarity with-accompanying them on the road toward a more meaningful existence.  And who could very well accompany the University students but students themselves?  On many campuses, student ministry is FOR students.   Churches deploy their professional youth workers or "full timers" to do student ministry.  This has worked in some settings but it still is an intervention of some sort.  I would like to see active church youth who are themselves students and SCMers who are themselves students walking alongside their peers, struggling WITH them and pursuing their common vision.  It is so much easier for a student to enter another student's life.  To this end, I see the churches and SCM providing youth and students with tools for organising their fellow youth.

3. An ecumenical ministry is, for me, an integral part of the struggle for the liberation of the oppressed.   To be involved in this ministry is to give meaning to the struggle for humanisation, the overcoming of alienation, the affirmation of women and men as persons-values that seem lacking in a University setting.  This ministry is to assure the fearful and subdued (in our context, the University students) that they no longer need to extend trembling hands in an act of solicitous mendicancy and subservience.  It is to encourage all striving that these hands be extended less and less in supplication so that more and more they become hands which work and working, transform the world (Paolo Freire).

4. On a more practical note, the ecumenical character of student ministry must avoid pitting the more fundamentalist Christian student groups (IVCF, Campus Crusade for Christ, etc.) against the more progressive ones like the SCM.  Says a report of the National Consultation on Campus Ministry in the Philippines in 1999: "Campus ministries are still quite scared to be identified with SCM because of the latter's militant and active stand on student and social issues."  I am not calling for the watering down of perspectives in the interest of accommodation.  Student ministry programmes of churches and the Student Christian Movement will do well to clarify what their particular roles and contributions are towards the organising of students.  Awareness of their individual roles in student organising teaches them appropriate demeanour and conduct vis-à-vis other students.  It often pains me to see SCMers carrying themselves around with a distinct air of arrogance because they are "progressive", "radical", "liberated", and “activists".  For one, these labels mean nothing and are not very helpful at all in rallying students around a cause that they should really be common to all.

5. Ecumenical student ministry should not concern itself with student affairs alone.  The academic community also includes the teaching staff.  It might be well for the churches to encourage their church members who work in the academic community (professors especially) to organise themselves or join nationalist teachers' organisations to the end that they, too, may work for reforms within the University and be partners of the students.  In the Philippines, ecumenical student groups and SCM find allies in the Association of Concerned Teachers (ACT) and the Confederation of Teachers for National Democracy (CONTEND).

Concluding Remarks

I am a product of the elitist, commercialised, and colonial educational system: 16 years in the Philippines; 3 years in the United States.  All that brainwashing churned out a person who was conservative, fearful of novel ideas, unaware of objective reality, arrogantly feudal, very pro-Western.  In the early 80's while I was pre-occupied with teaching University students to speak impeccable English, my students forced me to see the world as it really was, to be more sensitive to the concrete realities around me, to make a connection between theory and practice.  My students led me through a painful process of conscientisation that stripped me of all the academic garbage that I spent so much money and time in collecting.  I changed gears in 1985 and travelled the road toward integral redemption (people's liberation) together with my students and the oppressed classes of Philippine society.  As I look back on that "conversion experience", all I can say is: I am grateful to God that the students then fearlessly challenged me to step out into "ever new frontiers and emerging unexplored areas of life."  My hope is that, as in the eighties, our campuses will once more reverberate with the youth and students' passion for freedom, peace, and justice.