Kin-dom Familia: A Collective Eschatology
Last Wednesday, the Womanist/Mujerista/Post-Colonial Feminist group stepped into the future, through the eyes of Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz and Mercy Amba Oduyoye. More specifically, we explored these two women’s eschatological views, and their personal understandings of the destinies of humankind.
As a group, we were more drawn to Oduyoye’s text (probably because it was a bit shorter and felt intellectually manageable for us new theology scholars). Her eschatology is rooted in the hope that there will not only be resurrection of souls, but resurrection of the body, both physical and communal. As a group, we talked about why Oduyoye would perhaps care so much about the resurrection of the body, and not just a disembodied soul, rescued by God for eternity. Even though our discussion is on the subject of eschatology, a topic considered to be future oriented, African women’s theology has always been rooted in the “here and now”; if it does not find a resting place with the present situations of African women, it is of little use to Mercy Amba Oduyoye, and the African Womanist theologians she writes for.
Instead of a search for the hierarchical king reigning over the kingdom of God, Odyoye sees a household of God that is clear and present in the here and now, as much as it will be in the future. She says that “Women’s hope for the resurrection of the body is also a hope that Christianity will finally come to terms with the fact that we humans are embodied in different forms, but both sexes constitute gifts of God, and that women do not have to become men to be human” (111). This desire, I think, offers a different perspective on the wide lens view of Revelation 7:9 (“After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands,” NRSV).
When read together, those two statements are somewhat revolutionary, still — especially when, as our group discussed a bit, that statement about women not having to become men to be human and have access to the household of God is applied to other categories of what it can mean to be human, be them sexuality, nationality, ethnicity, race, culture, or even religion. What past readings in our group have shed light on include the immediate and long lasting effects of one point of view being dominated over other, equally valid and valuable, points of view.
The household of God — the body — cannot be simply a “Father” or “Mother,” head or hands, it must include the whole family and entirety of being to be whole. That is what Isasi-Diaz led our group to. The part we were most drawn to was her explanation of her eschatology of the “family of God” as Latinx familia (180)– a concept that goes beyond the heteronormative White American Protestant concept of mother-father-2.5 kids –white picket fence-dog/cat. Familia is everyone — aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, second and third cousins, etc… If they are not all accounted for, the whole family is not present.
To see the disparity between these definitions, you have to go no further than Dictionary.com’s page on “family,” which defines family first as “a basic social unit consisting of parents and their children,considered as a group, whether dwelling together or not,” and only fourth as “any group of persons closely related by blood, as parents, children,uncles, aunts, and cousins.” While not perhaps fundamentally wrong, the definition in this English dictionary shows weakness of an incomplete definition and its theological application. The question seems to be where the line must be drawn to see who is in or out, and that seems to be the wrong question. While it may not be acknowledged by individual viewpoints, Christian theology a much more inclusive scene, due to the many individual and varied points of view which form it, including from the eyes and voices of women. “Women’s theology goes to the Bible not only to locate the scenes of oppression, but to show that they are sinful and against the will of God” (Oduyoye, 119).
Isasi-Diaz and Oduyoye hold different perspectives on the Kin-dom of God (an alternative to the hierarchical, patriarchal Kingdom), but I think that both would cite their differences of origin and destination as necessary for a more complete family when the time comes. It is a blessing, truly, to be scholastically mentored by women who have gone before, and we, Womanist/Mujerista/Post-Colonial Feminist representatives in training, will not shirk our responsibility to be present and involved members of the household in the most authentic way we know how.
All Night: Womanist, Mujerista, and Post-Colonial Theology
Sarah Brown, Brittany Deininger, Rachel Hemperly, Jordan Stables, Josh Swift
