Also a Mother: Asian Feminist Theology Promotes God Also as Mother Kay Bonikowsky
Imagine waiting to be born inside a small, warm, and dark home. A New Perspective You feel safe and protected, and every need is provided. You are Kwok Pui-lan defines Asian feminist theology, hereafter AFT, as aware of a faraway pulsing and gentle voice. Eventually, the walls a grassroots movement of theologically trained Asian Christian begin to squeeze in on you. At first, gently, then with greater force. women who are organized to discuss the Bible and faith in the You are ejected not so much out, but into a new home. You are Asian context. It is “also a political movement to transform the born. You experience the gentle voice hinted at inside the womb as church and society so that women’s freedom and dignity will be a person. You recognize her as Mother. In this way, Aída Besançon fully recognized.”7 AFT brings two important perspectives to Spencer describes being born and intimately recognizing your theological discussion by not only focusing on women, but also mother from the inside out. “The mother is experienced first as by its Asian context. AFT offers evangelicals a new perspective this all-encompassing presence in the womb.”1 Being close, or on the motherhood of God because it speaks from women’s immanent, is associated with mother. She asks, “For who could be perspective, its Asian context affirms the value of the family, and closer than a mother and an embryo?”2 its roots in Asian tradition hold opposing concepts in tension Evangelicals are known as “born again” Christians, evoking without negating one or the other. the imagery of re-visiting the intimacy of our mother’s womb. Why turn to AFT to engage the idea Nicodemus imagined this same idea of the motherhood of God? William when talking with Jesus in John 3. But Asian feminist theologians have A. Dyrness makes clear in his book, Jesus clarified for him that the second no qualms about a theology of Learning about Theology from the Third birth requires something different than World, that listening to other cultures the first: the person doing the birthing. the womb, which explores and stimulates theological conversation, We must be born of the Spirit. Our new celebrates our intimate relationship and with scriptural authority in Mother is the Spirit of God. Protestant with God as also Mother. place it should prompt reflection on reformer Count Nicholas Ludwig von how faith reflects cultural context.8 Zinzendorf understood being born again Although evangelicals trust that Scripture is “transcultural and in this way, primarily referring to the Spirit as Mother in the therefore the final authority in theology,” Dyrness explains last twenty years of his life.3 Zinzendorf did not have a feminist that evangelicals are often unaware of how culture shapes how agenda. He used this term because he believed it clearly and we hear and understand the Word.9 Have we allowed Western persuasively expressed the nature of God. Craig Atwood says culture to influence biblical interpretation? Dyrness cautions that that Zinzendorf “actively encouraged the Brüdergemeine [the this is often the case. Interpreters may tend toward familiar and Moravian church] to worship the Holy Spirit as the mother of existing theological positions and disregard a cultural context the church.”4 As Mother, not only does the Spirit birth new life, that brings a fresh perspective.10 Furthermore, interaction with she protects, guides, nourishes, comforts, and admonishes her theologians from other cultures more often takes on a posture of children. She teaches proper behavior. She asks for obedience. correction rather than of learning.11 Grace Ji-Sun Kim, a KoreanZinzendorf calls the Spirit the “Mother above all other mothers.”5 American theologian, agrees. She says, “Christianity has become Should we hesitate to name the Spirit who gave birth to us so westernized that anything non-Western sounds foreign or as Mother? Asian feminist theologians have no qualms about a untrue or even evil.”12 Koo Don Yun encourages us that “no theology of the womb, which explores and celebrates our intimate single view sees the totality of truth.”13 Truth is not divorced from relationship with God as also Mother.6 Evangelicals are known for the context of dialogue, conversation, and personal identity. So, devotion to the authority of Scripture, yet we have neglected the while all cultural views are not equally true, we should be aware feminine and motherly aspects of God written into the pages of of our own contextual bias and learn to engage with those unlike the OT and taught by Jesus. Even though evangelicals believe the us with the purpose of being mutually corrective. starting point of Christian teaching should be the Scriptures, we A Woman’s Experience can listen to Asian women’s experiences and reflections on God as Mother to deepen our relationship with the one who labored AFT emerged in the late 1970s with an emphasis on the and birthed us into his family. The goal of this article is to provide Asian woman’s experience as its normalizing factor, not the evangelicals with reasons for adding a maternal aspect to Trinitarian Western male mind.14 Western Christianity, influenced by the teaching, in order to bring balance to the male-only imagery in the Enlightenment, has historically forwarded the white male as the Father-Son relationship by gleaning insights from Asian feminist universal self,15 pushing the female experience to the margins theology, which promotes God as both Father and Mother. and casting women as the “other.” Marianne Katoppo, one of
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Priscilla Papers | 35/1 | Winter 2021 • 19
