Women Reading the Bible in the Global South
As promised last week, here’s my report on a talk by Philip Jenkins, author of .
For this particular talk, Jenkins chose to focus on women’s experience of biblical literacy in Africa, Asia, and Latin America (though his anecdotes were primarily about African Christians). A good choice, considering his audience, many of whom no doubt assumed that conservative/orthodox Christian interpretation of Scripture inevitably leads to oppression of women. It ain’t necessarily so.
Jenkins pointed out how, in the U.S., we tend to assume that “liberation theology” (emphasis on God’s care for the oppressed, the righting of social injustices, etc.) belongs to the liberal left, while “deliverance theology” (emphasis on the miraculous, healings, deliverance from evil spirits, etc.) is associated with the far right. For many Global South Christians, however, “liberation” and “deliverance” are not separate phenomena. For example, take Zimbabwean Titus Pressler, who says, “Charismatic renewal, conflict with demons, and the liberation of women are other fruits bearing directly on the churches’ mission in Zimbabwe.” You wouldn’t expect to hear that sentence coming from many U.S. Christians, would you?
Women in many (though not all) Global South churches preach, teach, and prophesy. How do Global South Christians reconcile this apparently permissive view of Pauline passages regarding women’s behavior in church with their more conservative interpretations of scripture passages regarding homosexuality? Jenkins didn’t address this question explicitly. He did, however, discuss the importance of stories about Jesus’ treatment of women (particularly the Samaritan “outsider” woman at the well and the woman with the flow of blood) and of the fact that women were the first to announce the good news about Jesus’ resurrection.
I don’t think that Jenkins meant that Global South Christians set up a Jesus-Paul dichotomy and choose Jesus over Paul, but he didn’t really explain why these passages are interpreted differently. For me, since Paul was writing to specific congregations about specific problems within them, context plays a big role: though his overall principles still apply, certain details may have been intended for a certain situation. But I’m not sure if that’s a particularly American way of reading.
Anyway, Jenkins spent much of his talk discussing “neoliteracy,” a concept describing the stage when texts are newly introduced within primarily oral cultures. New readers still bring their oral/aural background (including both a respect for authority and a suspicion of the written word) to the Bible, and so the authority of texts is confirmed by visions, dreams, and other forms of experience. There’s an emphasis on God’s continuing revelation—in ways that refer back to the Bible.
One of the most interesting moments of Jenkins’ talk occurred in the question-and-answer session, when someone in the audience asked if African Christians were theologically conservative because they had been converted by theologically conservative whites. No, answered Jenkins, in fact many white missionaries couldn’t deal with the more charismatic tendencies of Africans who began reading the Bible (and taking it seriously, including its statements about spiritual warfare). But the more indigenous churches did deal with the spiritual realm.
In fact, said Jenkins, launching into a brief tangent, did you know that today is the greatest age of witch-hunting in history?
I could see the looks of “Ah ha!” dawn on certain faces around the room. “Ah ha! We knew there had to be a catch somewhere. They may be relatively enlightened toward women, but they hunt witches! Yup. Always happens with conservative Christians.”
And, Jenkins continued, Global South Christianity is one of the main forces combating witch-hunting.
Certain faces fell.
Unlike the previous generations of white missionaries, leading Global South Christians acknowledge that witchcraft exists. But they believe that Jesus has already conquered the forces of darkness, and so you don’t need to go around burning witches. Makes sense to me.
I suspect that Jenkins is more theologically liberal than the subjects of his talk and his book, but he is extraordinarily fair. He doesn’t take pot-shots at anyone, conservative or liberal. And he significantly complicates our assumptions about different “camps” of Christians, both in the U.S. and around the world. For that, I’m very grateful.
1 comment December 13th, 2006