What is Asian Feminist Liberation Theology?

Chung Hyun Kyung

Dr Chung Hyun Kyung is Professor at the Dept of Christian Studies,

EWHA Women's University, Seoul, Korea.

What is Theology? Traditionally people said theology was "God-talk". Theo comes from Theos which means God, and logy comes from Logos which means words. Theology, a combination of the two words, means God and words. However the way we combine these two words makes all the difference. Some people say theology means Word o/God. They talk about their reflection on faith and say it is God's talk. When people declare their theology as the Word of God, they give that authority to their theology.

In the beginning, Christianity was the poor people's religion, a marginalised religion. Jesus was born by Mary, a humble, young woman in Israel in a stable. Jesus grew up in Galilee which was like a ghetto or a slum, where many sick, poor, oppressed, outcast, marginalised and rebellious people lived. So Jesus was born and raised in a very humble setting. Yet we have this highest image of Jesus as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

The movie "The Last Temptation of Jesus' which was based on the book by Nikos Kazantzakis gives a critical reflection on Christianity and who Jesus was. I find the imagination of the writer very interesting. I was struck by the occupation of Jesus. In older times, the son would usually help in the family business. So Jesus was helping his father, Joseph, who was a carpenter. In Galilee, the most wanted piece of wood work was the cross. So what Jesus did everyday was to make the cross which was used by the Roman Empire for the torture and killing of political prisoners. So Jesus witnessed all these. One scene showed Jesus delivering the cross to the Roman soldiers in Golgotha. Not wanting to do the dirty job, the soldiers asked Jesus to tie and nail the man onto the cross. There was another scene where, while making the cross, he heard a voice. A spirit spoke to him saying, "Jesus, what are you doing? You are making all these crosses and contributing to the killing of your own people. Do you think what you are doing is right?" Following that Jesus suffered from an enormous headache. He was rolling on the floor, crying and hitting the wall. He was in extreme pain. Subsequently, he journeyed to the wilderness where he met with many different people and temptations and finally came to terms with his destiny. This was all part of the author's imaginative portrayal of how Jesus grew up in Galilee. One would think that after Jesus' death, many people would become Christians because Christianity was born in a humble setting. That did not happen. Ninety-nine percent of the Jews remained as Jews. The Jews believe that the Messiah is an all powerful king, not only a spiritual king but also a political king who brings peace or shalom into this world. This shalom is not just peace in one's heart but also political, economic, social, cultural and spiritual peace. So when Jesus was on the cross, people expected to the very last minute for the final coming of the kingdom of God. But as they waited, this poor man shouted, "God! Abba! Abba! Why have you forsaken me?" It was very sad and in the end he died. So many people felt that he tried very hard to be like a Messiah and that he failed. Many remained as Jews because Jesus did not fit the image of the Messiah they were waiting for. Even now the Jews are still waiting for the Messiah who can bring real shalom to this world. Only Christians say that Jesus is not dead, he is resurrected and he is the Lord. Christians then were a minority people and Christianity a persecuted religion.

Around 313 AD, Emperor Constantinus declared Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire. Christianity changed from being an oppressed minority religion to being the religion of the powerful. People with power started ruling Christianity and theology became the highest scholarship. They talked about theology as Word about God.

After Enlightenment, people started raising questions about this assumption. Is theology really the Word of God? Is it really direct revelation of God, or is it transmitted through human language, human ideas and human culture? They felt uncomfortable about the idea of theology as the Word of God. They thought that theology is Word about God. So the Word of God becomes the Word about God.

Many people in church claim to hear direct words of God. The danger of this and of treating the Bible and churches' traditions as the Word of God is that it puts people in a place of passivity, mere obedience and leaves no room for criticism. Theology, for me, is Word about God. We read with our honest memories, our critical consciousness, our situation, and reflect on God, the meaning of God, the presence of God, and the meaning of the words of the Bible in our situation. No one therefore has the final word on the truth.

Why do I and many of my sisters in Asia call our theology Asian Feminist Liberation Theology? In the introduction of my book. Struggle to be the Sun Again: Introduction to Asian Feminist Theology, I have three wishes, three hopes for my theology: to be very Asian, very third world and very woman.

What is Asian? Most countries in Asia received our Christianity through Western missionaries while we already had our scripture religions. Whereas Latin America and some African countries had non-scripture religions when they received missionary Christianity. They have spirit worship and for them God was everywhere. So they lived in close relationship with nature.

Before Christian mission, Latin America had a very advanced indigenous culture and religion. Their science, agriculture and astrology were of high quality. They did not experience a lot of war. Then the missionaries arrived some 500 years ago, with their Bible as well as gun powder, fire guns, swords, political leaders and priests. The first person who landed in Latin America was a Catholic priest, not a politician! So what happened next was genocidal evangelism. They forced the indigenous people to convert to Christianity at gun point believing these people were engaged in devil's worship. The missionaries were of the triumphalistic post-Constantinus Emperial Christianity and believed the Christian God was the only God while all others were idols. They literally killed all indigenous people who were against their evangelism. Only those converted survived.

Many Latin American countries are very poor but while visiting these countries, one can come across great Cathedrals, many of which were built on the very site of Indian temples. In order to destroy the local people's dignity and sense of God, the missionaries destroyed their biggest temple, and, on that very site, built a Catholic church. There is a magnificent Cathedral standing tall in the middle of a Latin American city and surrounded by shanty towns. What does this golden marble cathedral mean, while many people live in these shanty towns? The church does not care about the suffering of the people. And the people do not feel any connection with that church. Inside the church, there is a Spanish Jesus, an all white man Jesus. This Jesus is not the Jesus of Liberation but a passive victim Jesus. It is interesting to note that many Latin American countries that received Latin Christianity, put Jesus in a coffin, a dead man who looks so powerless. How could he give us hope? How could he liberate us? What is the consequence of this Christianity, this victim Jesus, and these pacified Latin American people?

Africa's situation was similar. South African people have an interesting account about the missionaries who came to their land. They said the missionaries asked them to pray so they closed their eyes and joined their hearts in prayers. But when they opened their eyes, the missionaries had their land and they had their Bibles.

While similar things happened to Asia, Christian mission here has mainly failed. Less than three percent of the total Asian population are Christians. Yet Asia is the biggest continent comprising more than fifty percent of the world population. Also, our traditional Asian religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Taoism and Confucianism, and cultures are highly institutionalized, organized and scriptural. To many Asians, there are not much room for Christianity. They already have many great religions in their culture and their orientation to life is different from that of the West. Therefore as an Asian theologian or Asian Christian, one has to decide what it means to be fully Asian and fully Christian.

Christian identity in Asia is mainly Western Christian identity. When missionaries came to Asia, their brand of Christianity was 'Christ against the culture'. If you become a Christian, you have to abandon your old religion, your old culture. I have all sorts of religious statues from different Asian religions in my office. My colleagues were suspicious of me and asked if I am a Christian. I said yes. I am a Christian but I am an Asian Christian. I do not want to be a Christian at the expense of denying my ancestors, their wisdom, struggles and revelation through their Gods. I only became a Christian if I accepted my Asian identity one hundred percent. Without it I cannot be whole. I will always be a schizophrenic, with a double identity. My continuous struggle as a theologian is how I can be fully Asian and fully Christian. I can hear from Jesus the word of God but I also hear the word of God from Buddha, Loazhi, Zhuanzhi, Shiva and Krishna, etc.. Do you have a Christianity that will include your Asian identity or one that will deny it?

Aloysius Pieris, a very highly regarded Sri Lankan theologian, once said that doing theology in Asia using only Christian symbols and idioms is the esoteric luxury of the Christian minority because 98% of the people of God in Asia are not Christian. Are you not going to respond to their suffering, their yearning for God and God's kingdom, their longing for fullness of life and their yearning for justice?

The Minjung theologians in Korea raised some good questions. Did Jesus and God come to Koreans only 100 years ago when missionaries came to Korea? Where was God and Jesus before the Western missionaries brought the Bible to Korea? Do you think our ancestors did not know God? That is a theological question that everyone of you have to struggle with. As for myself, I am not going to be an European or a North American or a Latin American or an African Christian. I will be a fully Asian Christian, embracing all the religions and cultural wisdom of my ancestors.

What is third world? I make my theology very third world. This is the liberation aspect of my theology. The term Liberation Theology came from theologians such as James Cone, a Black theologian and Gustavo Gutierrez of Latin America. Gutierrez said that European and North American theologians responded to the legacy of Enlightenment which is based on the worship of reason. They believed that domination by tradition and the authority of God and the church should be gotten rid of They believed that reason should be the central criteria for one's decision. Your knowing should not depend on authority or what the church or Bible said, but on what your reason told you. Therefore many scholars in Enlightenment raised harsh criticisms on church tradition and the Bible. Many theologians responded to the question of the relationship between faith and reason? How can one be enlightened, baptized by reasons and still believe? Here, Western European theological agenda is on the problem of non-believer. This is why in Europe and the United States of America, the liberal theology, death of God theology, secular theology and all kinds of theology came up because they responded to the problem of the non-believer. However, Gutierrez said, our theological question and agenda in the third world are different because our problem is that of dehumanization of people, of people becoming nobody due to injustices in the world. So our theology has to respond to the question of non-person. As a third world theologian, my commitment is to focus on these questions: Who are suffering the most in our time? Is it the poor woman in the factory? Is it the migrant worker? Who are the people who really carry the cross in our time?

Why very woman? I want to make my theology very woman, very feminist. Western theology has been basically male theology. The Bible, too, is mostly written by men. In the ancient Jewish tradition from which the Bible came, the Torah was only taught to men. Many people and liberation theologians, especially some South African theologians, are also challenging the class basis of the Bible. They feel that the Bible was written by educated and rich people since the poor then were illiterate. So the Bible carries an elitist as well as patriarchal view in it. The Bible consists of sixty-six books in the Old and New Testaments. However, in the very beginning, there were not only these sixty-six books. These sixty-six books were selected by numerous church councils through a process of canonization. There were so many different books, gospels and letters from the apostles including women apostles. But the canon was exclusively chosen by men in the church councils.

In the gospel according to Mary and Thomas, I came across very interesting accounts of events and I realized why they were not chosen to be in the Bible. For instance, there was one account about Mary and Peter. Mary was proud of herself because she alone had just received a special revelation from Jesus. Peter was very angry and questioned why Mary was so special to receive such a revelation from Jesus. John, the beloved disciple of Jesus said to Peter, "Peter, do not be upset. We all know that Jesus loves Mary more than anyone of us." But Peter still complained because it seemed that the head apostleship was ordained to Mary and not to him. Peter said finally, "Jesus, how can you give that responsibility to Mary. Mary is a woman." Jesus' answer was interesting: "Do not worry. I will give this responsibility to Mary but before that I will make her a man. So it is not something you have to worry about." When I read this, I felt that there must have been some steep competition and struggle between Mary's and Peter's communities. I think Peter's community won this political struggle and it was the same community who were in the canonization process. They eliminated every trace of Mary's leadership.

An overdose of uncritical reading of the Bible is hazardous to one's health, especially if one is pregnant with creative ideas. So, if you do not read the Bible critically beyond these patriarchal biases, you are just using the Bible as an ideological weapon against women. Do you know what is the rationale for not ordaining women in the Presbyterian Church in Korea? Firstly, they said that according to the Bible, women were to be quiet in church so how could they be ministers. Secondly, they said that women menstruate and so pollute the holy altar every once a month. The Bible is a patriarchal book, written, chosen, transmitted and interpreted by men so we need to see how we can look at the Bible differently and from women's consciousness and perspective. This critical consciousness ought to be applied to church tradition as well. For instance, the so-called great theologian, Turtullian, said that women were the devil's gateway and if you were careful with women, you would avoid the devil and temptations. Another theologian, Augustine, said the theological question of whether women had a soul. These so-called greatest theologians of their time, could not think beyond that. So we have to re-read Christianity from women's experience and for the liberation of women.

Also, the Christianity we received is heavily influenced by Greek Hellenistic philosophy which is based on dualism. Their philosophies are composed of two elements such as spirit and body, idea and matter, reason and emotion, etc.. They made a ladder of being and said that spirit, idea and reason are good things and matter, earth, emotion are lower things. They saw men as closer to spirit, reason, culture and ideas while women were closer to matter, earth, emotion and sexuality. We can see the close connection between the oppression of nature and earth and that of women. This is why nowadays, the most advanced form of feminism is eco-feminism. Feminists have discovered that what people have done to the earth and to women are closely related. The metaphors and symbols they use for earth such as virgin forest, rape of the earth, how the earth becomes a hunting ground, and those for women are very similar. That is why ecological movement and feminist movement come together and make up a common ground to fight together against their common oppression. The Aristotelian philosophy portrays the ladder of being, the patriarchal pyramid, in a descending order of God, angels, spirit, free men, slave men, free women, slave women, children, animals, vegetables and materials. This is the Western philosophy which also forms the basis of Western theology. Feminism is against this ladder of being and against this dualistic view of the world. Feminism believes that the world is whole. Feminism, especially eco-feminism gives the most radical critique of our civilization. The motto of feminism is that the personal is political. What is happening in your bedroom is as important as what is happening in Kwang Ju, in Tiananmen Square and in Manila when you demonstrate against dictators. You simply cannot rape or impose yourself on your wife if she does not want to have sex with you and still go out to become a freedom fighter outside of your home. The most private individual thing is also political. There is no separation. This is why feminism is so radical. You simply cannot be a feminist with feminist ideas in public and live like a patriarch in your household. Therefore, I think every man and woman who wants to seek the importance of what it means to be human in our time has to study eco-feminism.

So Asian Feminist Liberation Theology means all these things. This is a critical understanding of theology as a critical reflection about God not word o/God. It is very Asian, inclusive of all our Asian heritage and not compromising our Asian identity. It is very liberational, dealing with not only theology of non-believer but also mainly of the problem of non-person. It is very feminist, starting from women's experience and rejecting the idea of patriarchy, the pyramid model of being and dualism.