Women view scriptures
Good introduction for re - viewing the search for the feminine divine.
National Cathedral - Washington, DC www.cathedral.org/cathedral/video/kidd050413.shtmlSue Monk Kidd speaks before an audience of more than 800 at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. on the Black Madonna in The Secret Life of Bees.Windows Media PlayerTime: 1:09:04
Scriptures through women’s eyes.
For more than three thousand years there has been a movement ( intended, and at times, unintended) that produced a culture that almost completely excluded the role of women from recorded history. A collective belief was held that women's primary role in the human community was one of reproduction. While the male species regarded the female as evil and feared losing his control to the powers of women, nevertheless they had to acknowledge that women, as mothers of the species, played a vital role in human survival.
The earliest writings including the Hebrew and Christian scriptures depicted women as manipulative, deceitful, seductive, needy, ignored and unworthy of belief. Often they were glaringly missing from the stories altogether. With so little known about our foremothers, it causes one to wonder, what impact has this not knowing caused?
The stories used for centuries as references for the origins of our religious beliefs contain only one side or half of reality. We may validly ask, how then can the scriptures be regarded as a vehicle of God speaking to us? If the absence or diminishment of women is not corrected will we only have half of religious truth? Theological errors or omissions about women must be corrected so that women can be free and full human beings. New ways of understanding women's roles in the Old and New Testaments are needed, if the sacred writings are to continue to be regarded as a source of truth about human life.
Reading skills for a woman’s perspective
1.----New ways of interpreting the writings can be developed by asking
· Why are the texts taken for granted? Can they be read against the grain.
· How can the stories be read from a woman's mindset.
· Are the authors of scriptures predominately males, writing only from the male perspective, wishful thinking, prejudices, and fears?
· Are there biblical sexual politics of the recorded time being exposed?
2.--- Previously held beliefs interfere with hearing God’s voice and cloud the messages that would have been intended by a loving creator. Some steps for restoring the true and original message include….
· declaring texts of terror, wars, and abuse, as causes of scars in the human community and contrary to the will of a loving God.
· rejecting dualisms, and viewing man's domination as a humanly chosen perversion of the way it was supposed to be.
· asking what women authors would have reported in biblical situations.
3.---Scriptures must be liberated from the original male biases of the authors by asking....
· What cultural and religious issues in the writing /rewritings were used to distort the truth?
What biased overlays of past rewritings were used to defend biases toward men or against women?
Developing discernment skills.
Today women must read in the lines, between the lines, and beyond the lines. In so doing this they must....
1.---challenge any assumptions that have been presented as facts
2.--- define themselves and what is sacred.
3.---read the scriptures from the bottom up, not from the top down.
4.---recognize the deeper truths deep within the hearts of compliant biblical women characters.
5.---view the suppression of women’s (pagan) rites as the suppression of women’s rights
6---refuse to accept the blame for the loss of paradise or the cause of pain and evil.
7.---recognize that the matriarchal religions (some 25,000 years ago) were persecuted, adapted or exploited by patriarchal religions for their own purposes.
8.---show that sex was equated with sin by male dominated religions to justify the demonizing of women, and to control women through the institution of marriage.
9.---revise the creation stories. “In the beginning stories barely mention the billions of years of divine artistic interplay with the cosmic elements to bring about this closely interdependent and magnificent planet. (Women were not an after-thought in the great scheme of things.)
10.--- creatively rewrite the texts to express the new consciousness of this age
11.---use language that depicts a genderless God.
12.---create new images of God that expand beyond a parent-child relationship.
13…focus attention on the feminist beliefs and actions of Jesus.
14…reread the gospels of Jesus to discover the earliest understandings of His followers regarding the equality in christian community.
15…study the active participation of women as disciples of Jesus.
16…share and reflect deeply on interactions of Jesus with the women in His ministry.
17…meditate on the dependence of the Holy Spirit upon Mary for bringing Jesus into the human story.
18…compare the presence and outspokenness of the women in scriptures with the absence and timidity of the men….eg. the garden of Eden and the Easter story.
19---read as the adults of God.
Using a Theology of Suspicion
A woman’s birthright is her mystic nature. Her mystic self asks….
1.---what was the woman’s reality in each story?
2.---why is the woman’s role omitted or her role marginalized?
3.---what do these gaps and omissions reveal about the culture and practices of the times in which the writings were created?
4.---what stereotypes were applied to women characters as though they were inborn and unchanging?
5.---why was it often important for male writers to silence the women of biblical stories ?
6.---why do certain writings cause discomfort to the woman reader?
7.---is the story derogatory to my soul?
8.---does the story depict a credible intentional Creator?
9.---what must be resisted and opposed in order that the story support the woman’s soul?
10.-- does the story tell more about flaws in the male’s spiritual nature (limitations, threats, biases)?
11.---what political events at the time of the story prompted the marginal or reduced characterization of the women in the story?
12.---why did it become necessary to develop laws that controlled women?
13.---what women powers already in existence were the males trying to usurp?
14.---when the face value of a story stirs up mistrust and disbelief women need to further explore the reasons.
Strategies for discerning God's will, versus the authors’ intent.
1.---find hints that there were women like us in the past. When we find them, use them as role models and mentors.
2.--- use scriptures to answer the questions of contemporary women.
3.---retell the stories in the first person feminine to...
· show how it would be different from the originally recorded version.
· depict man's humorously exaggerated efforts to control God and nature, in a format that it deserves.
· reveal how women in some of the stories demonstrated their independence, when they engaged in deceit or manipulation of events.
· demonstrate that weaknesses of women characters were actually examples of women’s intuitive and deeper sense of the divine.
· deconstruct mandates of patriarchy so that men and women can work side by side (Adam's rib) as originally intended.
4.--- allow women’s voices to rise out of their silenced centuries and empty spaces and finally speak their truth.
We are the unintended and unimagined audience of authors, who were writing and editing religious beliefs from thousands of years ago. Those writers could never have imagined our times or the circumstances of women today. By critically reflecting on the past, the scriptures could become viable vehicles for communicating ideas that would inspire us to improve both the present and the future. However, it will require women to read with cautious and open minds and hearts, sometimes outside and against the writings of scripture.
Feminist Theology requires…
1.---a holy discontent,
2.---divine imagination
3.--- new visions for humanity
4.---daring to change the status quo
5.---voicing truth to power
6.---demanding equal time for proclaiming women’s stories in liturgical celebrations. (revision of liturgical calendar)
7.---correcting sexist language in religious rituals.
Agenda for Reflecting Women
We must become counter-scriptural readers. Women must no longer merely accept the role of obedient readers. We must challenge the politics of the past and question the present function of each story. We must resist the hold of scriptures over western culture, when it is used politically. Women must explore the archeological findings and other ancient sources for their parallel and contrasting stories. We must assume a subversive stance toward any of the texts that are clearly patriarchal and/or destructive in nature. Women must reimagine different scenarios that could have led to different futures, histories, and even to a different understanding of God.
Once women allow the Bible to reflect women’s reality (past or present) it will add to the truth rather than detract from it. By making the scriptures relevant, meaningful, and contemporary the Bible stories can be used to explore our urgent questions, enrich our values, explain the shortcomings of our times, and help to create a culture where all are equal sharers of God’s creations. Perhaps we can even save the planet threatened by addictions to power and wealth.
We must boldly use the scripures to convey the good news of the coming age, in much the same way that the early Christians used the Old Testament writers did. By bringing new images of a genderless divine creator to this age, we will open the way for a realistic equality that respects the capabilities of both sexes, and honors the intrinsic value and purpose of all creatures. This is necessary if we are to identify ourselves as civilized species. Until then, one might rightly question the human claim of being images of God at all.
Biblical stories, when they can resonate with a woman’s inner realities, will inspire her to be faithful to herself. A God, who is identified as “I am”, manifests a being with intuitive and imminent natures that a woman can embrace. Such a synonymous relationship with our source being invites us to enter a place of great Unknowing. In that place, without answers, but only with deep and mysterious questions we can dream of a new way of life. A future with inclusiveness and infinite possibilities.
Women's theological tools will function in our spiritual development like the telescope and the microscope does in our scientific world. With these tools we will delve deeper and farther into the scriptures, When women internalize their newer “in sights” from the texts, they will outgrow years of imposed interpretations. With the new light shed upon scriptures their scope and meaning within our lives will be enlarged.
Grown up women know that they have every right/rite, to search for and claim, life giving truths about themselves, and about all of creation. Burning with new enthusiasm they will use their voices to bring about a new Pentecost. They have already been encouraged by Jesus' assurance that, “the truth will set you free". But first women must dare to ask, “What is truth?” just as Jesus did.
posted by Her Heart's Desire @ 5:27 PM 0 comments links to this post
National Cathedral - Washington, DC www.cathedral.org/cathedral/video/kidd050413.shtmlSue Monk Kidd speaks before an audience of more than 800 at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. on the Black Madonna in The Secret Life of Bees.Windows Media PlayerTime: 1:09:04
Scriptures through women’s eyes.
For more than three thousand years there has been a movement ( intended, and at times, unintended) that produced a culture that almost completely excluded the role of women from recorded history. A collective belief was held that women's primary role in the human community was one of reproduction. While the male species regarded the female as evil and feared losing his control to the powers of women, nevertheless they had to acknowledge that women, as mothers of the species, played a vital role in human survival.
The earliest writings including the Hebrew and Christian scriptures depicted women as manipulative, deceitful, seductive, needy, ignored and unworthy of belief. Often they were glaringly missing from the stories altogether. With so little known about our foremothers, it causes one to wonder, what impact has this not knowing caused?
The stories used for centuries as references for the origins of our religious beliefs contain only one side or half of reality. We may validly ask, how then can the scriptures be regarded as a vehicle of God speaking to us? If the absence or diminishment of women is not corrected will we only have half of religious truth? Theological errors or omissions about women must be corrected so that women can be free and full human beings. New ways of understanding women's roles in the Old and New Testaments are needed, if the sacred writings are to continue to be regarded as a source of truth about human life.
Reading skills for a woman’s perspective
1.----New ways of interpreting the writings can be developed by asking
· Why are the texts taken for granted? Can they be read against the grain.
· How can the stories be read from a woman's mindset.
· Are the authors of scriptures predominately males, writing only from the male perspective, wishful thinking, prejudices, and fears?
· Are there biblical sexual politics of the recorded time being exposed?
2.--- Previously held beliefs interfere with hearing God’s voice and cloud the messages that would have been intended by a loving creator. Some steps for restoring the true and original message include….
· declaring texts of terror, wars, and abuse, as causes of scars in the human community and contrary to the will of a loving God.
· rejecting dualisms, and viewing man's domination as a humanly chosen perversion of the way it was supposed to be.
· asking what women authors would have reported in biblical situations.
3.---Scriptures must be liberated from the original male biases of the authors by asking....
· What cultural and religious issues in the writing /rewritings were used to distort the truth?
What biased overlays of past rewritings were used to defend biases toward men or against women?
Developing discernment skills.
Today women must read in the lines, between the lines, and beyond the lines. In so doing this they must....
1.---challenge any assumptions that have been presented as facts
2.--- define themselves and what is sacred.
3.---read the scriptures from the bottom up, not from the top down.
4.---recognize the deeper truths deep within the hearts of compliant biblical women characters.
5.---view the suppression of women’s (pagan) rites as the suppression of women’s rights
6---refuse to accept the blame for the loss of paradise or the cause of pain and evil.
7.---recognize that the matriarchal religions (some 25,000 years ago) were persecuted, adapted or exploited by patriarchal religions for their own purposes.
8.---show that sex was equated with sin by male dominated religions to justify the demonizing of women, and to control women through the institution of marriage.
9.---revise the creation stories. “In the beginning stories barely mention the billions of years of divine artistic interplay with the cosmic elements to bring about this closely interdependent and magnificent planet. (Women were not an after-thought in the great scheme of things.)
10.--- creatively rewrite the texts to express the new consciousness of this age
11.---use language that depicts a genderless God.
12.---create new images of God that expand beyond a parent-child relationship.
13…focus attention on the feminist beliefs and actions of Jesus.
14…reread the gospels of Jesus to discover the earliest understandings of His followers regarding the equality in christian community.
15…study the active participation of women as disciples of Jesus.
16…share and reflect deeply on interactions of Jesus with the women in His ministry.
17…meditate on the dependence of the Holy Spirit upon Mary for bringing Jesus into the human story.
18…compare the presence and outspokenness of the women in scriptures with the absence and timidity of the men….eg. the garden of Eden and the Easter story.
19---read as the adults of God.
Using a Theology of Suspicion
A woman’s birthright is her mystic nature. Her mystic self asks….
1.---what was the woman’s reality in each story?
2.---why is the woman’s role omitted or her role marginalized?
3.---what do these gaps and omissions reveal about the culture and practices of the times in which the writings were created?
4.---what stereotypes were applied to women characters as though they were inborn and unchanging?
5.---why was it often important for male writers to silence the women of biblical stories ?
6.---why do certain writings cause discomfort to the woman reader?
7.---is the story derogatory to my soul?
8.---does the story depict a credible intentional Creator?
9.---what must be resisted and opposed in order that the story support the woman’s soul?
10.-- does the story tell more about flaws in the male’s spiritual nature (limitations, threats, biases)?
11.---what political events at the time of the story prompted the marginal or reduced characterization of the women in the story?
12.---why did it become necessary to develop laws that controlled women?
13.---what women powers already in existence were the males trying to usurp?
14.---when the face value of a story stirs up mistrust and disbelief women need to further explore the reasons.
Strategies for discerning God's will, versus the authors’ intent.
1.---find hints that there were women like us in the past. When we find them, use them as role models and mentors.
2.--- use scriptures to answer the questions of contemporary women.
3.---retell the stories in the first person feminine to...
· show how it would be different from the originally recorded version.
· depict man's humorously exaggerated efforts to control God and nature, in a format that it deserves.
· reveal how women in some of the stories demonstrated their independence, when they engaged in deceit or manipulation of events.
· demonstrate that weaknesses of women characters were actually examples of women’s intuitive and deeper sense of the divine.
· deconstruct mandates of patriarchy so that men and women can work side by side (Adam's rib) as originally intended.
4.--- allow women’s voices to rise out of their silenced centuries and empty spaces and finally speak their truth.
We are the unintended and unimagined audience of authors, who were writing and editing religious beliefs from thousands of years ago. Those writers could never have imagined our times or the circumstances of women today. By critically reflecting on the past, the scriptures could become viable vehicles for communicating ideas that would inspire us to improve both the present and the future. However, it will require women to read with cautious and open minds and hearts, sometimes outside and against the writings of scripture.
Feminist Theology requires…
1.---a holy discontent,
2.---divine imagination
3.--- new visions for humanity
4.---daring to change the status quo
5.---voicing truth to power
6.---demanding equal time for proclaiming women’s stories in liturgical celebrations. (revision of liturgical calendar)
7.---correcting sexist language in religious rituals.
Agenda for Reflecting Women
We must become counter-scriptural readers. Women must no longer merely accept the role of obedient readers. We must challenge the politics of the past and question the present function of each story. We must resist the hold of scriptures over western culture, when it is used politically. Women must explore the archeological findings and other ancient sources for their parallel and contrasting stories. We must assume a subversive stance toward any of the texts that are clearly patriarchal and/or destructive in nature. Women must reimagine different scenarios that could have led to different futures, histories, and even to a different understanding of God.
Once women allow the Bible to reflect women’s reality (past or present) it will add to the truth rather than detract from it. By making the scriptures relevant, meaningful, and contemporary the Bible stories can be used to explore our urgent questions, enrich our values, explain the shortcomings of our times, and help to create a culture where all are equal sharers of God’s creations. Perhaps we can even save the planet threatened by addictions to power and wealth.
We must boldly use the scripures to convey the good news of the coming age, in much the same way that the early Christians used the Old Testament writers did. By bringing new images of a genderless divine creator to this age, we will open the way for a realistic equality that respects the capabilities of both sexes, and honors the intrinsic value and purpose of all creatures. This is necessary if we are to identify ourselves as civilized species. Until then, one might rightly question the human claim of being images of God at all.
Biblical stories, when they can resonate with a woman’s inner realities, will inspire her to be faithful to herself. A God, who is identified as “I am”, manifests a being with intuitive and imminent natures that a woman can embrace. Such a synonymous relationship with our source being invites us to enter a place of great Unknowing. In that place, without answers, but only with deep and mysterious questions we can dream of a new way of life. A future with inclusiveness and infinite possibilities.
Women's theological tools will function in our spiritual development like the telescope and the microscope does in our scientific world. With these tools we will delve deeper and farther into the scriptures, When women internalize their newer “in sights” from the texts, they will outgrow years of imposed interpretations. With the new light shed upon scriptures their scope and meaning within our lives will be enlarged.
Grown up women know that they have every right/rite, to search for and claim, life giving truths about themselves, and about all of creation. Burning with new enthusiasm they will use their voices to bring about a new Pentecost. They have already been encouraged by Jesus' assurance that, “the truth will set you free". But first women must dare to ask, “What is truth?” just as Jesus did.
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