Tamar and David, Women and the Church: The Place of Her in Christian Ecumenism
20 May 2011 Leave a Comment
in Church - Theologizing, Intra-Faith Tags: Church, Ecumenism, IEPC, ordination, Tamar, WCC, women
Thanks to the Massachusetts Council of Churches and the United Church of Christ’s Commission on Ecumenism I am able to attend the World Council of Churches’ International Ecumenical Peace Convocation. I will do the best I can to report on some of the happenings while here in Kingston, Jamaica.
The theme for the first day of the convocation was “Peace in the Community.” Various presenters spoke, from a Jewish woman and a Palestinian Christian woman who live in Israel to a presenter addressing Dalits in India. However, an issue that repeatedly arose throughout the day in my context was the general treatment of women.
At the beginning of the day in a biblical reflection group the passage of the rape of Tamar was examined (2 Samuel 13:1-22). It was interesting to note the relationships and exchange of discourse of Tamar and her brothers Amnon and Absalom. After her rape, she was told by her brother to keep quiet and even king David upon finding out the atrocity kept silent and exercised no justice.
Here we find a story of a woman wronged and then made to keep silent. This continues to occur all over the world in many different contexts. However, what interests me the most in this ecumenical context, is David’s role in this story. He, in a position of power and authority, decides to keep the matter quiet, not exposing the matter in attempt to maintain face and to apparently keep unity.In a position of authority one is often compelled to make such decisions- to do justice or let it slide for the sake of avoiding a schism. Of course we read in subsequent chapters that David’s decision to keep the matter quite was a grave mistake, and the cycle of familial violence perpetuated throughout his reign.
I propose that in this ecumenical context that the role of David in this narrative be read as the role of the Church. I am fortunate enough to belong to a tradition, an expression of Christianity, that upholds the gifts of women in every aspect, including ordination. However, for many denominations and Christian traditions the role of women is subordinated to the role of males. Is the penis the only conduit for the emission of the Holy Spirit? Did Jesus not come forth from the watery womb? Many people within these expressions of Christianity are questioning the validity of patriarchy. Jules Hart recently made a documentary, Pink Smoke Over the Vatican about the movement of women being ordained as priests in the Roman Catholic Church. Those that were ordained, were on June 3rd, 2008 issued an order of excommunication by the Roman Catholic Church. At the Peace Convocation, I had an opportunity to meet one such Roman Catholic priest. She was actually part of the film and is still presiding over masses and ministering in 3 locations in San Jose, California. In talking with her about Canon Law, she expressed Nelson Mandela’s notion that if a law is unjust it should be broken and that the Magisterium, or the teaching authority of the Catholic Church, needs to be taking into account sensus fidelium, or the sense of the faithful- how Catholics really feel on the issue.
Of course, I have only highlighted the Roman Catholic tradition, but many other expressions of Christianity are still exclusively patriarchal and participate unabashedly in the violent act of sexism. In yearning for the amplification of women’s voices all over the globe in their own contexts, yet denying them equal rights as a male to fulfill their call to ordination and enter into Church leadership, the Church is acting like David on the Tamar narrative: too concerned with face and power to act in the spirit of justice. As Christians, we should keep working ecumenically toward the amplification of women’s voices in all of our traditions. After all, as Elisabeth Schüssler-Fiorenza traces in her, Jesus: Miriam’s Child, Sophia’s Prophet: Critical Issues in Feminist Christology, Jesus is supremely connected with Sophia, and almost all within the academy can draw the connection of the Greek Sophia to the feminine portrayal of the divine in the Hebrew concept of Hokhmah. If the priestly father is a representation of the Father, and we affirm the feminine as also being in the divine, where then is the priestly mother representation of the Mother? Jesus’ first apostle could easily be the Syro-Phonecian woman found in John 4, and women were first to proclaim the resurrection. Mary was also known as the apostle to the apostles. Women’s voices need to be fully legitimized within our traditions- as they once were at the beginning (there’s also archeological evidence of this presented in the documentary). If not, then we are no different than David or even Absalom, telling our sisters, mothers, and daughters to be quiet. I believe resolving this issue could go a long way in constructing peace in our communities and in allowing us to deal with the theology of ecology, because we need our fathers and our mothers, especially in addressing Mother Nature. Not to mention how it could help the Roman Catholic Church with a surmounting problem of supplying enough priests for its parishes and also in furthering reparations between the Catholic and Protestant Churches. Be quiet no more.
-mlwiser
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