Let me begin with
a true story about men facing women as actors in interfaith dialogue. Once upon
a time, there was a woman theologian, a Buddhist and a feminist, who finished
her talk and the men listening, could be divided into two camps. There were the
grovelling men, who said that this was the best they ever heard and no one
could possibly say anything better. When
the feminist theologian heard this, she wiped the floor with them. And all the
grovelling men retreated in shock. “Why did she say like this? Didn’t we after
all go out of ourselves to provide space?”
Next to the
grovelling men were the cautious men, who said nothing at all, maybe nodded seemingly
kindly every now and then but whispered mostly between themselves and made
remarks in silence about the grovelling men, those who sycophantically had praised
the speaker but had been told off by that very person. They said to each other:
“You know what their problem is? Stupidity!” And they meant that in situations
like these, the best advice would be: Keep quiet! This too will pass.
Neither response
is satisfactory. The presence, participation and above all responsibility of
women in religion and hence in interreligious relations requires a response
that is more than niceties (“Isn’t it nice to listen to women for a change?”) or
sour acceptance (“well, it won’t go away, so we might as well tolerate them.”)
With women taking
their space, we are in for much more than we can imagine. That, which we have
today, is only a beginning. It goes beyond statistics and numbers. It is not
only a question of tolerance. I want to quote Al Jolson, who when people
learned about the sound film, said: “You ain’t heard nothing yet!” This phrase was the beginning of the end of the
silent cinema. With an authentic participation and responsibility of women in
religion and interreligious relations, I want to say the same: “You ain’t heard
nothing yet!”
It is my belief
that women could make a difference in and for religion itself and hence
interreligious relations. The male dominance in the world of religion needs to be
challenged for the sake of religion and religious life, both in deep need of
renewal or a different emphasis. Without falling into the trap of stereotyping,
I think that there is a greater tendency to authoritarianism in the male
running of religion. Structure, position, law and order, seem to echo male
worldviews. I think women come at it from a different perspective, which is related
more to a cyclical perception of life. Women give birth to new life and even if
not all women are able to give birth, we all come from the womb of women and
not from the womb of men. Being equipped to be a vessel for new life adds a
dimension to being a human being that is beyond words. Creativity becomes in a
very particular way a definition of woman. Providing opportunities for life
becomes in a very distinct way part of being woman. A woman’s life is cyclical.
The male
perception of time is linear. It begins at this point, continues there and ends
over there. The Christian theory of salvation history is to me a very male
perception of time. Salvation history is filled with moments of exclusion along
the way and in some ways in Christian history this has never ceased: the
exclusion of the Jews was followed by the mutual exclusion between Orthodox and
Catholics; then followed the exclusion of Protestants and then Protestants and Pentecostals
excluded each other, etc. With such a world-view it is not strange at all to have
a church history, where discrimination led to the exclusion of the other:
women, other races, other religions, sexual orientation, etc.
This should
however not lead us to thinking that women necessarily are better than men. It is not
uncommon to hear such stereotypes, women are closer to peace, relating better
etc. Women are not inherently more peaceful and it would be a bit simplistic to
enter into such facile linking. It is however important to encourage women to
express what it means being woman, seeking out the particular contribution of
woman, in society as well as in religion. There is a temptation or maybe it
seems like the only way out for women to imitate the modus operandi of men but
the way ahead should be to enable women to tease out among themselves that
which would be a genuinely female way of being an actor in their own right in everything,
religion and interreligious relations and dialogue included. We do not need
more of the same, i.e. male patterns, even if it is women espousing these
patterns, which may be a necessary phase in affirming oneself. We shouldn’t be
surprised, it is part of the road towards a new configuration in the world of religion,
where men and women each contribute, each have gifts to share and each have a
potential towards peace. The stereotyping needs to pass and I hope we will be
able to create that space for women to be women in religion and in
interreligious relations in a way that doesn’t need the denigration of the
other and that is open to discover the gifts that women will offer.
It is reasonably
easy to explain away that women are more or less invisible in interreligious
relations. It would be enough to say that in the world of religion it is the
men who are popes, imams, rabbis, even if there are a few exceptions to this rule
in the ordination of women bishops or female rabbis. But on the whole, religious leaders are male.
The British scholar Ursula King
identified feminism as ‘the missing dimension in the dialogue of religions’. It
is enough to look at the group photos from interreligious religious leaders’
gatherings to begin to see the point.
Diana Eck, well known scholar and the initiator of the US Pluralism
Project, takes it beyond the group
photos and sees the absence as a reflection of the world of religion as such
saying: “Indeed, the voices of women have not been fully heard in
Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, or Judaism either. Our voices have been
suppressed in the texts and in the leadership of most of the world's
religious traditions, though it is clear that women have done much to
sustain the vibrancy and vigour of these very traditions. So, it is always
with a profound sense of dissonance that I view the formalities
of where the colourful male panoply of swamis, rabbis, bishops and
metropolitans, monks and ministers line up together for a photograph of
interfaith fellowship.”
It is good if we
can lift up the question of the visibility of women in interreligious dialogue
or in religion per se. Their absence is more than the question of injustice to
women. The absence of women is reducing religion to the detriment of itself. It
is not taking seriously the potential of religion and interreligious relations.
Something is missing in religion that is more than a question of equal
participation.
Let me tell you
another true story. It was in Hong Kong and at a Jewish-Asian Christian
dialogue. Sabbath was to be celebrated in the Jewish community centre. There
was no local rabbi. I asked one of the participants, a young woman rabbi from
the UK, to celebrate the Sabbath service. She drew the Torah scroll to her
bosom and danced up and down the synagogue with it. Many of us, Jews and Christians,
were mesmerised by what we saw. The holiest in the embrace of a young woman.
There was an intimacy that was tangible. There was a relationship between the
attributes of the Divine and a young woman that made us realise immense depths
of spirituality and religion. It made us understand the contribution of women
to religion and religious life: intimacy, embrace, sensuality.
What would happen
if women were more involved in interreligious relations and dialogue? I have
always been of the opinion that the cause of women as well as the cause of
interreligious dialogue has at least one thing in common: the need to for space
and integrity, for the right to define oneself and not be defined by others. Feminism and inter-religious dialogue have
mutually relevant insights to offer each other.
Religion and
society have kept or are still keeping women in a role that on the whole has been hurting for women in
terms of exclusion from public positions of responsibility in society and
status in religious life. Women have in many societies achieved equality with
men but are in many societies still considered inferior to men. Religion has
often supported a role of women in society, where man was considered the head
and had to rule and decide over women. Women find themselves in different ways
and on different levels faced with exclusion, prejudice, discrimination or
oppression. Women have therefore something to gain from being active for the
sake of women and men in religion and society. Thus interreligious relations
would be a tool, where women together could share experiences and cooperate for
another role in society, equal with men. Through interreligious dialogue, women
could share, listen to each other, and reach out to others in similar situations
of exclusion. They could enable each other; strengthen each other to gain self
confidence. Together they can empower each other.
Women know that there is still a way to go. If women were more involved
in interreligious relations and dialogue, they would, because of their own experiences
as women, be sensitive to situations, where society or religious institutions
marginalise religious minorities and other religions. They would know what it means
when religions are being stereotyped, whether as another word for terrorism, as
equal to polytheism or as an expression of rigid legalism, etc. Those involved
in interreligious dialogue know that we have a long way to go before we arrive
at societies, which are not in need of badmouthing other religious communities
or othering minority traditions present in society. ‘Being other’ is the experience of those of
minority faiths. There are similarities in the struggle for equality in gender
relations and respect in interreligious relations. A common agenda is not
anything contrived.
We also need a new way of reading and understanding religious plurality,
one in which we live together with each other and not in parallel societies, one
in which the minority-majority is not the only pattern for living in and with
plurality, one in which minorities may feel comfortable not because they are minorities
or protected by the majority (but actually only at the mercy of the majority)
but because they are co-citizens. We need a new theological understanding of plurality,
which does not set limits to God/the Divine/Ultimate Reality. It seems to me
that we in this endeavour will benefit richly from the efforts women are
putting down to acquire full responsibility in society and religious community.
But I want to take it a step further. I think women of different faiths share
at least one common agenda. They are about to create space and integrity for
women in their religious community. But they are also looking into to what extent
they are only living the faith as dictated by the patriarchal system. What is
there in the religious traditions that has been hidden, since there was no
space for the feminine in religion and all that was on hand were the parameters
set by male ruling of the religious tradition? How can a book or tradition that
teaches the common divine origin of all humanity and the sacred nature of each
human being reflect a social order in which women are systematically
disadvantaged and subordinated? How should women (and men for that matter) deal
with this? Do we tell women to suppress their demand for equality and that they
just be happy to be subordinate? Or seeing that religion does not further the
equality of women and men, do we abandon religion and say that religion doesn’t
serve the cause of men and women as equals in society? An interreligious
dialogue among women should enable women to discuss these matters and embolden
them to create a space in their religious tradition, to question patriarchal orthodoxy
and to encourage them to take the risks involved in exploring other ways in
their religious traditions. This common exploration, although along different
paths, offers a possibility for new interfaith relations.
This is a
difficult area, fraught with misunderstandings, accusations of wanting to
destroy what has been inherited, what our faiths, fathers and mothers have
always believed in and followed. There will be scenarios painted, which would
make women believe that that which we have today is divine revelation and has
never been up for change and this is end of the story.
When “The da Vinci
Code” came out as a book and as a film, less successful than the book, people
of the church, of all churches, were incensed. Counter books were produced,
showing that all the claims in the novel were fabrications, bishops and pastors
mounted protests, one tried to defeat the book with irony, another with accusations,
a third made detailed examinations of what the novel described in order to
refute every page point after point. What made the novel print in so many
millions of copies? What was it that made Christians look upon this novel as a
threat to Christianity and the Church? There were too many protests, which at
least in me bring out the hermeneutics of suspicion and make me think of the
quotation from Hamlet: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” The novel apparently hit a raw nerve, which made
the protesters forget that this was a novel, only a novel, made for
entertainment and nothing more. So, why the uproar? Is it the significant role
of woman in the novel, which caused this commotion? I think that the role of
woman in the novel, not as a real protagonist but rather as an innuendo,
something feminine mysteriously present, hovering over the male divine order,
made people intrigued and church authorities incensed. The female was perceived
as a threat. There is in our time a longing for spirituality linked to what we
believe are feminine dimensions in our world. People have reservations about the
role of patriarchy; authoritarian pontificating is either questioned or simply
dismissed. We want other dimensions in our spirituality.
Without in any way
harmonising all religions, trying to make them into one, in order to streamline
what might be characteristic for women in their search for spirituality or reinterpretation
of religious traditions, some characteristics that bring women closer to each
other, could nevertheless be mentioned.
A spirituality or a rereading of religious traditions among women seems
to underline the cyclical, e.g. the monthly cycles as opposed to the linear. For
some the dimension of woman giving birth, the experience of motherhood, pushing
life out of herself, separating one life from the other, engaging in a
relationship with this new life as separate beings, no longer one but two, are
dimensions that are particular for a new reading of spirituality and religion. Body
and spirit are integrated. Women speak of a shared spirituality, which include
the use of symbolic rituals drawing on the senses of sight, smell, hearing and
touch, in addition to the written or spoken word.
This dimension cannot be separated from its antithesis, the taboos about
purity, which have been, and still are, used in many religions to exclude
women. Menstruation is in many religions for example still seen as a form of
pollution. Some women have transformed these experiences into positive
affirmation of bodily functions and recognised that physical experience can be
the vehicle of spiritual development.
Another dimension that seems to appeal to both women and men in our time,
prompted by interreligious encounters, is the affirmation of difference not as
a problem to overcome but as something to affirm as richness. People of
different faiths express their faith concepts differently. It is not a problem
that we cannot put them into one concept. It is a richness in faith, religious tradition
or spirituality. We know that language alone is inadequate to interpret the mystical
experience in any faith context. There is, it seems to me, a greater freedom
among individuals, e.g. women beginning to explore new ways of expressing their
spiritual experience in ways that sometimes cross faith boundaries, and are
beginning to exert a wider influence on faith communities.
There is a process of re-interpretation by feminist theologians
addressing the fact that the great world faiths scriptures have been revealed
to men or written by men, in male dominated cultures. There is a re-reading of the
scriptures with the eyes of feminist analysis. There is a movement among Muslim
women to study the texts of the Qur’an and the Hadith in order to
rediscover a vision for humanity, both male and female, at the time of the
prophet Mohammed. Interfaith encounter can be part of such a liberating
process.
But women as actors in interfaith dialogue
must also make sense of their engagement in peace and social justice issues. Some remarkable exchanges have
taken place between women who may have been on opposite sides of conflict
situations in various parts of the world, e.g. Israel and the Palestinian
Authority. But it is a fact that we may
not as easily see women as actors in the interfaith socio-political realm,
although women, of course -- as victims of war,
citizens, and nurturers of values that are transmitted from generation to
generation -- are obviously deeply engaged in peace and religion. So where are
they?
Security and peace
have continued to be male bastions and yet the world community has several
times unequivocally called for more women in peace processes.
Invisibility has a
cost. It means that heroines are rarely recognised and celebrated. There are
fewer role models to inspire young leaders. And support and funding rarely go
to invisible efforts.
Documentation of
the work that women do is sorely needed. A fuller picture that takes note of
work done outside the bargaining room will enrich our understanding of what
peace means and give it a better chance to last and grow.
Some women say
that when women meet by themselves, the atmosphere is more likely to produce
results, and they are loath to give it up. Be that as it may, it will take some
persistent work to alter the habits and also the rules that have men still
dominating peace and religious tables, and to instil appreciation for the
qualities like inclusiveness, reconciliation and healing that we want to believe
emerge when women are present in significant numbers.
This is not the
moment for detailed prescriptions for women as actors in interfaith dialogue.
Suffices it to say that women as actors should be attentive to the needs of
their common society, to look upon themselves as resources for another perspective
how to understand the causes of the ills of our societies. I would as a way of
exemplifying and as a way of conclusion mention my own attempt to launch a
process whereby people in Europe, of different faiths or no faith, from
different corners of Europe, male, female, young adults, begin talking with
each other about the need to draft a social and spiritual contract for a pluralist
Europe. This is a project that specifically needs the contribution of women.
At the heart of the idea of a
Social Contract is that we see ourselves as subjects in conceiving and
articulating the way we best could live with each other. The aim is to
determine whether people of Europe can enter into a Social Contract with each
other. It seems to me that women would be particularly able to participate in
such a process. Their goal has been and continues to be a way, where one is not
reduced to an object but where one would claim the role of being a subject of
one’s own history. It seems to me that women would be a resource in trying to
shoulder the responsibility of being an actor of and subject for cohesion in
Europe today.
The issue is however not only a Social contract but a Social and
Spiritual Contract. By spiritual we try to make sense of the fact that
religion, religious and cultural traditions are not absent in Europe today,
although maybe not present as religion used to be in a more homogenous Europe.
By spiritual we want to retain that sustainable values, indispensable in a
social contract, have their origins in history and human experience, in
cultural and religious traditions and in situations of transmittance and
education. It seems to me that women more than men are in their own contexts
involved in being the educators of a new generation. It is with women that the sustainable
values are being transmitted from one generation to the other. Women would therefore
be important stakeholders in discussing and crafting a social and spiritual
contract for a pluralist Europe.
The interfaith community needs women to shoulder their role in
creatively exploring ways for a society of men and women, where both in tandem
contribute to the change needed.
Hans Ucko
Rev. Dr
President of Religions
for Peace Europe
hansucko@gmail.com
