The Language of Battered Women: A Rhetorical Analysis of Personal Theologies

Chapter Nine. “If God Were a Woman, It Would Be Wonderful!”: LOCAL THEOLOGY AND SOCIAL CHANGE

NINE “If God Were a Woman, It Would Be Wonderful!” LOCAL THEOLOGY AND SOCIAL CHANGE Imagination is a gift from God. —Priscilla The more I see where God has brought me from, I know he’s always been there. He’s been a father to me, a mother to me. —Corinne INTRODUCTION In the last chapter I suggested that the language of battered women often initially reflects aspects of redemptive/atonement and suffering God theodicies. The first model proposes that suffering should be endured for the sake of God or others. Thus, in their early conversations, battered women often accept suffering as part of God’s salvific plan. If the women’s approach reflects the second model, they recognize they suffer unjustly and that, when they suffer, God suffers. But shelter women talk with other survivors about suffering and the communal talk is healing. Adel succinctly put it: “For support, we’ve done it amongst ourselves. The women help each other.” They meet others with new ideas about society, violence, religion. Consequently, their language often shifts toward more socially oriented remedial/instructive and 185 33011_SP_WIN_CH09_185-216! 10/10/03, 11:40 AM 185 186 THE LANGUAGE OF BATTERED WOMEN liberation theodicies. In short, women sometimes cocreate new theological language. In this chapter I look at this dynamic from a broader perspective. I suggest that women develop “local theologies,” their own particular views concerning God, religion, and revelation. Local theologies—particularly ones that challenge the status quo by considering women’s problems and oppression from social, economic, and political perspectives, are initiated through dialogic activity. Sometimes a shift happens.1 To investigate, I first discuss local theology. I probe its features in the women’s language: cultural context, unsatisfactory theology, and new theological explorations. Second, I discuss nascent models of local theology in the talk of battered women: praxis and the ethnologic models. Third, I discuss complications. For example, in some women’s language, there is evidence of dual theological systems or no linguistic evidence of change. Fourth, I make further observations about dialogic changes in terms of some traditional theological categories: evil, sin, grace, salvation or redemption, and relations with God and others. Plainly stated: battered women rethink the problem of evil. LOCAL THEOLOGY: WHAT IS IT? Traditionally the term “local theology” has been applied in missionary contexts when missioners or practitioners recognize that aspects of the theology inherited from traditional mainline churches does not fit their cultural circumstances . New theology develops. Recently (since the1970s) theologians apply the term more widely. The process is labeled with different terms, including local theology, contextual theology, local contextual theology,2 inculturation or enculturation, homemade theology, and theology of the people. William Dyrness calls the process “vernacular theology,”3 the theology people commonly do as part of their everyday lives. It is “a symbolic complex of ideas, objects, events, and language that both express and define what we mean by Christianity” [italics mine]. Vernacular theology is “constructed , often intuitively, by Christians seeking to respond faithfully to the challenges their lives present to them.”4 I use the term “local theology” to define this process in the language of battered women. Theology is part of the knowledge, sometimes tacit, with which battered women confront violence and cope with their lives. The key to a community’s framework—its implicit theology—is found in its predominant ideas and practice. Thus, I look for evidence of local theology in the women’s language—strands of religious language that derive from the blending of the diverse languages of the shelter. In this context, local theology is an innovative composite that derives from the women’s personal and collective experience and it seeks to address their particular situation of gender oppression and domestic battery. To be sure, the evidence is not always direct or 33011_SP_WIN_CH09_185-216! 10/10/03, 11:40 AM 186 187 LOCAL THEOLOGY AND SOCIAL CHANGE concise. Local theology stands in “continuous interrelationship with all social factors and consequently is subject to the influence of conflicting interests.”5 Accordingly, it is not always clear and articulated knowledge; instead, it is often fragmentary. Yet, it involves “a web, or framework, of symbols in terms of which people make choices about what is important to them.”6 While the linguistic evidence is not always neat and simple, there are broad features. The situational context, including lived experience, is critical...