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The Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians

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The Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians Writing, Sharing, Doing: The Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians Author: Bridget Marie Monohan Persistent link: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/386 This work is posted on eScholarship@BC, Boston College University Libraries. Boston College Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, 2004 Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. 1 I. Introduction I pray that what I give may be one small seed of hope among the many seeds we are sewing in this gathering. Fr. Garth Michelson Sbongile’s Story Sbongile walked home Saturday afternoon after a regular church service. The Spirit moved her to worship in thanksgiving and hope. Sbongile did well through secondary school, but at twenty years old she is not in school and without a job. She would love to study marketing, but the nearest business school is fifty kilometers away, and she cannot af ford the daily transportation. Meanwhile she appeases her passion by helping to advertise small scale businesses owned by her family and friends. Occasionally people pay her for her work. Her dream is to one day do marketing abroad, but that requires a deg ree and experience. So Sbongile saves money with hopes that she will move to Johannesburg to find a job or start her own business. When she is not making fliers or designing signs, Sbongile is with her boyfriend. Her mom says that even if a woman has no j ob or education, if she has a man and eventually bears children she will be a respectable and useful member of the community. Sbongile questions that depending on a man will fulfill her potential as the person God has created her to be. Yet, she enjoys the company of her boyfriend, Mvu, short for Mvuselelo. He really is a good guy. He attends church fairly regularly with her and works as a Combi (taxi -van) boy collecting people’s pay and recruiting new riders. He plans on becoming a Combi driver and eventua lly owner. Mvu has no desire to move or settle beyond the Durban area. The couple dated six months before they consummated their relationship. Sbongile felt that was a testament to her character, as few girls can restrict their boyfriends for even that lon g. They were both virgins, and at first they were quite conscientious about using condoms. A year into their relationship Mvu became paranoid that Sbongile insisted on using a condom because she wanted to be able to sleep around with other people. He also feared that condoms would shrink his genitalia. After being outraged with his accusations of cheating and laughing at his fear of condoms, Sbongile consented to Mvu’s desires because she feared losing the affirmation that their relationship gave her. She s tays away from Mvu during those days when she has a high risk of infertilization. Over the past ten months, Sbongile has found that Mvu respects the times she says “no” less and less. Sometimes she wonders why she is in the relationship at all. Yet, to res pectfully break up with him Sbongile feels she would need to do something like move to Johannesburg which looks more appealing with the prospect of having to end her relationship with Mvu. All Sbongile can do now is to wait at home, thinking up pretend advertising slogans, for when her boyfriend will come over after dinner. Sbongile does not realize the full tragedy of her situation. The past year Mvu has been sleeping with a girl from Durban whom he met at the taxi rank. Mvu contracted HIV from her two mon ths after meeting her. Sbongile has been infected for the past eight. Within a year, Sbongile will contract AIDS. As she weakens and develops Tuberculosis, Sbongile will wonder if she has the HIV/AIDS virus, but her boyfriend will deny having slept with an yone else. Even though she suspects her own infection, she never gets tested because she fears ridicule and discrimination from her family and friends. However, recently Sbongile’s new pastor has encouraged church members to participate in HIV/AIDS counsel ing and training. Sbongile was never interested, skeptical of the whole issue herself. But now she decides to talk with a church member who has completed the program. Sbongile lives in a South African township were her and her friends’ mothers played prom inent roles in the resistance to apartheid. Yet she does not have freedom within her own relationship let alone the economic and political systems. If Sbongile confirms her AIDS status and lives for awhile after, maybe she could utilize her passion to prom ote HIV/AIDS education. Sbongile depends on her faith and her faith community for hope. Although sometimes she finds it curious that a line of men preach to a congregation of almost all women… 2 Sbongile’s story is the story of women across Africa. African women of faith respond to those stories. Women of faith in Africa represent and reflect the pain of any oppressed people whom are victims of hate, violence, or judgment: Iraqis, Afghanis, Zapatistas, Homosexuals, Tutsis, Jews, early Christians, African Am ericans, all the world’s women...Indeed, as African they are subject to the exploitation of the world’s reorganized colonial structures. As women they are the most vulnerable to poverty and illness and the least able to formally contribute to faith discussions because systems of patriarchy rob them of the power of choice and voice. The women of the Circle seek to have their voices heard and assert their discernment of God’s will. Members of the Circle assess their experience of culture, religion, biblical interpretation and social responsibility from a faith perspective. They tell of their pain and their triumph. They speak of their frustration in encounters with Western misinterpretation, negligence, and ignorance of the African female experience. While I claim no advancement in this regard – I write this in the hope that by listening to these women the women speak for themselves. Listening to the Circle is not a passive activity. They write in order to promote action and to participate in it. Theology f or them is meaningless unless it is lived. Often times they directly challenge the West to reform, renew, or create behavior that promotes the holistic living of the world community. Why do I, a result of white American middle class suburbia, pause to lis ten? I resonate with some of their pain over the lack of female leadership and images of God, the Divine Creator. I admire their insistence on speaking largely from and to their own experience as African women. My heart goes out to the struggles and suffer ing they live, and I desire to support them on their journey towards relief. I esteem their trust and confidence in their discernment and their embrace of freedom to speak with such authority! Studying African Women Theologians is comparative theology, whi ch, according to some, is the only way to do theology in our interconnected world. This comparative theology 3 affirms the value for dark skinned Madonnas, or a God who identifies with His people. Understanding the experience of the Circle women and their theology grounds me in my own experience and theology. As some believe, “Sometimes we have to leave home in order to find home.”1 The work of the Circle encourages me to examine my own life more closely, affirming what I find as my own valid experience, in i ts similarities and differences to that of the Circle women. I believe it can also encourage all women, all Christians, all Americans, and all people to examine their unique experiences for the deeper meanings they evoke. Stop and Listen. Stop and listen because the West has forced Africans to listen and obey the Western voice for so long. Stop and listen because the world is interdependent, and we cannot help but affect each other. Stop and listen not out of pity, but because they are your human family - and you care. Their voices have been silenced, but not destroyed. You will learn something about them, and perhaps yourself too. 1 For an even stronger decree: “whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.” Mark 8:35. 4 II. Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians A Circle expands forever It covers all who wish to hold hands And its siz e depends on each other It is a vision of solidarity It turns outwards to interact with the outside And inward for self critique A circle expands forever It is a vision of accountability It grows as the other is moved to grow A circle must have a centre Bu t a single dot does not make a Circle One tree does not make a forest A circle, a vision of cooperation, mutuality and care 2 Women in Africa have always played significant roles in the progress and development of religion and society whether or not they h ave received recognition. For example, in the 1950s, African women were primary leaders in large scale democratic movements seeking the liberation of their people from colonial powers. But, it was not until the 1980s that the contributions of African women began to be acknowledged around the world in an unprecedented way. In Copenhagen, 1980, the United Nations sponsored a world conference announcing the Decade for Women. Four years later the leading resistance organization to apartheid in South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC), declared 1984 The Year of the Women, “in recognition of the importance of the role of women in the fight for freedom.”3 In 1985, ANC president Oliver Tambo concurred, proclaiming that the 1980s were the “Decade for Women“ at a conference in Nairobi, Kenya.
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