A Just and True Love: Feminism at the Frontiers of Theological Ethics: Essays in Honor of Margaret Farley

Postcolonial Challenges and the Practice of Hospitality

109 Chapter Four Postcolonial Challenges and the Practice of Hospitality Letty M. Russell The Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians held its third Pan African Conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in August 2002 on “Sex, Stigmas and HIV/AIDS: African Women Theologians Challenging Religion, Culture and Social Practices.” There were 140 women theologians from 25 African nations present along with a few observers from partner groups.1 Among the observers was a delegation from the Yale Divinity School YDS Women’s Initiative: Gender, Faith, and Responses to HIV/AIDS in Africa. The delegation included Shannon Clarkson, Margaret Farley, Letty Russell, and Yolanda Smith. The Circle was inaugurated in 1989 and now has 500 members on the African continent and abroad who are committed to research, write, and publish on issues affecting African women and women of African descent. It is a space for women from Africa to do communal theology based on their religious, cultural, and social experiences and draws membership from diverse backgrounds, nationalities, cultures, and religions. It was no accident that Margaret Farley was part of the group attending the Circle meeting. She had been the one to respond to the call of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa by organizing a group of women theologians at Yale in cooperation with Core Values Initiative of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Yale Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA). When she participated in the White House Summit Conference for World AIDS Day in 2000, Margaret had pointed out the need for a critical look attheimpactofreligiousteachingsregardinghumansexuality,thestatus of women, and poverty.2 Nearly thirty million persons in Africa were living with HIV/AIDS by the end of 2001 with five million being newly infected in that year alone, according to the World Health Organization. This represented almost three fourths of all cases in the world. As the AIDS pandemic continued to burn its way across Africa, women were at increasing—and disproportionate—risk of infection and death.3 In 2002, Kofi A. Annan declared that 58% of those infected were women and “a combination of famine and AIDS is threatening the backbone of Africa—the women who keep African societies going and whose work makes up the economic foundation of rural communities.”4 The beliefs and practices of many religious institutions contribute to women’s risk of infection, and yet faith practices can often inspire and sustain women as they face illness, suffering, and loss. As a result of Farley’s speech she was invited to form a group from Yale to cooperate with USAID in following up the challenges that she had made at the summit conference. The YDS Initiative was created as just one small way of responding as theologians to the pandemic by forming partnerships with women theologians in Africa to examine the intersection of gender, faith, poverty, and AIDS. Its purpose was to support the African women who were using every effort to confront those cultural and religious traditions that have become death dealing to women and their families. Through this Initiative we seek to do our part by raising funds with USAID and other agencies in the U.S. to support the African women in a journey of compassionate respect, but also forming educational and publishing partnerships and developing a widening international network of women in solidarity in the struggle against AIDS, poverty, and gender oppression.5 In this work we are constantly struggling with our own colonial past and present, as well as our implication as those benefitting from U.S. imperialism. Together we face many postcolonial challenges and seek to find ways to develop a feminist 110 Letty M. Russell postcolonial practice of hospitality. What follows in this essay is an attempt to reflect on this process by discussing both the challenges and the possibilities of developing partnerships in which we practice hospitality and discover ways women can join together across many different barriers as postcolonial subjects. POSTCOLONIAL FEMINISM In 2001, I participated in a panel at the American Academy of Religion honoring Gustavo Gutiérrez on the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of his book, A Theology of Liberation.6 In his response to the panel Professor Gutierrez pointed out that theologies are always changing because they cannot be separated from historical process. Our new situation, he said, is that we are post everything; we love to be post, but we do not live in...