Before writing up the biblical meditations delivered at the Tenth ICWF Quadrennial Assembly, I need to explain the differences I find between an oral presentation and a written text, and the perspective from which I approach the Bible.
This material was developed to be presented at an assembly of almost four thousand women. To commit this material to a written form is both an act of faith and an act of hope on my part. I believe that though this written version will not have the same impact as its oral presentation, still it will be a useful resource for personal as well as group reflection. I hope that knowing this is a transcription of oral presentations will help the reader to fill in the gaps I purposefully crafted in these Bible studies as devices needed when people hear instead of reading something. Three things are important to understand in this regard.
First, I developed these Bible studies knowing that they did not need to stand alone. Not only did I know that Clarice Friedline would provide powerful dramatizations of the four biblical women before each of my talks, but I also knew that I could count on dynamic and insightful presentations by the keynote speakers. I also knew that I would be presenting these studies within a liturgical framework, for each plenary gathering at the assembly was designed to be a ritual having as its goal the enabling of understanding, commitment, and celebration.
Second, though in many ways when one writes for publication one has to take into consideration the reader, an oral presentation cannot be conceptualized apart from the listener. When I "write" an oral presentation, I am aware that I will sense whether the audience is understanding and following what I am saying. I know I will have the opportunity to explain further, to give another example if need be. Furthermore, oral presentations are crafted in a somewhat colloquial language, and what is said is not distinguishable from how it is said. In other words, meaning is conveyed not only by the words but also by the tone of voice and the body language of the speaker as well as the mood of the audience as a whole.
Third, when one writes something one knows that it will take on a life of its own. Oral presentations, on the other hand, are crafted keeping in mind that they are attached to the speaker and the moment of delivery. These Bible studies were designed to be interpreted by me as the speaker for Disciples of Christ women who are concerned with living their faith. Turning them into written text freezes the words, the thoughts, and the insights as well as separating the text not only from the author but also from the audience for which it was intended. Oral presentations and written texts are indeed two different forms of communication and are, therefore, created differently.
So turning oral presentations into written texts is always a risky business. What was intended to be heard is now to be read, what was conceived as part of a much larger whole is presented here in isolated fashion. In this written version only what is said will count, even if how it was said was part of what was meant. And yet I believe the written form of these Bible studies are a good resource for the readers.1
In order for the reader to understand better the Bible meditations presented here, it is important for me to explain how I approach the Bible-what is my perspective, the lens through which I read the Bible. Key to my perspective is the fact that I am a mujerista—a Latina woman who struggles for my liberation and the liberation of all Latina women.3 It is precisely this struggle for liberation, Latina women's struggle for survival, that constitutes the lens through which I read and interpret the Bible. To understand my and other mujeristas' interpretation of the Bible, one needs to know that we believe our proyecto histórico (historical project), our preferred future, is an intrinsic part of the unfolding of the kin-dom of God.4
The criterion that guides Latinas' usage of the Bible is need. We use the Bible when we need it, for what we need it, in the manner we need it. In reality though some today might denounce this, the fact is that all who approach the Bible do so from their own perspective, as a response to some need they have and that they think the Bible can help them with.
For Latinas, those in the Bible who struggled for liberation, for survival, including Jesus, are one of the few "reality checks" that Latinas have. Society questions our reality, how we understand it and deal with it. Society alienates Latinas and marginalizes us because our cultural values and understandings are different. We are not willing to participate in society on the terms of the dominant culture because those terms are oppressive for us as well as for other marginalized groups. Anyone, including biblical persons, who has gone through situations similar to ours serves as an encouragement to us to believe in ourselves and our communities. All such persons and examples help us know that we are not imagining things; that though we are often rendered invisible by those who have power, we do not cease to exist.
The sense that the people of various Bible stories can understand us because they have also had to struggle for survival is important to Latinas. These stories become ours when we use them because we need them. To make them helpful in a given situation, we might change different elements of the story itself, or add elements from another pericope to the one being discussed.5 For example, a Latina speaker at a national conference decided to use a Bible story to explain that we women needed to insist on our rights. To do so she mixed elements of the story of "The Woman with the Flow of Blood" (Luke 8:43-48) with the story of "The Uppity Woman" (Mark 7:24-30).
The woman in the Bible needed help. She realized Jesus could help her and nothing was going to stop her. It was not very nice, as a matter of fact, it was terrible of Jesus to tell her that she could not eat from the bread that was on the table. She could only have crumbs. If it had been me, I would have answered him that I have every right to eat from the bread on the table. We do not want just crumbs. No! Well, she insisted on her right, she took it without Jesus giving it to her. Jesus knew that power had gone out of him; and she had taken power in her own hands because she and her daughter were in great need.6
It is not that for Latinas the integrity of the biblical text is not important; it is that the need to survive, the need for liberation, takes precedence.
When we recognize how we are linked to people of the Bible we consider important, we extend our community to include those of ages past. We know our struggle for liberation is an ancient one; the Bible stories we use put us in touch with other ancient histories of struggle; they help us realize that as a community of struggle we have existed for many, many centuries. These biblical stories put us in contact with the communities of our forebears and teach us that though we must struggle with all our might against oppression, we must not grow weary.7 By making us part of a much wider community of struggle biblical stories help us hold on to the belief that within the limited possibilities we have as marginalized people, se hace lo que se puede, one does what is possible. It helps us continue to understand that though we may not be able to solve problems or to remedy the terrible situation in which we live, we can make a positive contribution. Partial solutions are transformative elements because the struggle to bring them about provides inspiration and can indeed provide the favorable conditions others need to be able to struggle for liberation.8
It is precisely this sense of the word of God that helps us struggle for survival, for liberation, that must be the critical lens through which mujerista theologians look at the Bible. How do we interpret and appropriate the Bible so that it becomes an effective tool in the struggle for liberation? We start by asserting that the interpretation, appropriation, and use of the Bible for Latina women have to enable and enhance our moral agency, our ability to be self-defining women. It cannot be pietistic and individualistic, concerned only with a private sense of salvation and used only for the consolation of the individual. This is why mujeristas reject fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible. Such usage has to be denounced whenever it oppresses Latinas or supports and promotes understandings and structures that oppress us.
As mujeristas we are concerned with the way the Bible is interpreted and used to reject or ignore an understanding of structural sin, the social implications of personal salvation, and the intrinsic relationship between struggle for survival, liberation, and salvation-between struggling for justice in this world and salvation and life everlasting. The Bible should help us to understand the oppression we suffer because of injustices in our world; the Bible should call us as a community of faith to struggle for justice so as to participate in the unfolding of the kin-dom of God.
For mujerista theology the enablement and enhancement of moral agency go hand-in-hand with a process of conscientization, an ongoing process of critical reflection on action that leads to a radical awareness of oppressive structures and their interconnectedness.9 In this critical process the Bible should be used to learn how to learn-to involve the people in an "unending process of acquiring new pieces of information that multiply the previous store of information."10 The Bible is a rich resource of "new information": stories of valiant women, of struggles against unbelievable odds, of communities of resistance, of women who found ways to survive in the midst of the worst oppression. This "new information" helps to reveal clearly problems that may have existed for a long time but ones we have failed to recognize. This usage of the Bible does not apply what the Bible says directly to our situations. But the Bible is seen as an important element in the formation of the moral character of Hispanic Women. The Bible can play an important role as Hispanic Women reflect on who we are as Christians and what are our attitudes, dispositions, goals, values, norms, and decisions.11 But in the end it is the struggle to survive, the struggle for liberation, and not the Bible that is the source of moral values for Latinas, precisely because there cannot be-and even fundamentalists do not make-a direct application of the Bible to our everyday lives.
In the written presentation I have preserved off-the-cuff remarks, informal comments, colloquial expressions, and most of the opening remarks of each day when I tried to establish contact and continuity with the very large audience. I hope the reader who was not at the Quadrennial Assembly may sense the friendliness of the audience and my feeling that they were following me and ready always to hear more and be challenged further.
1For a very complete treatment of the differences between orality and literacy see two books by Walter J. Ong, SJ: Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London: Methuen, 1982); The Presence of the Word (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970).
2For a much more complete explanation of a mujerista's perspective of Scriptures see Ada María Isasi-Díaz, "La Palabra de Dios en Nosotras—The Word of God in Us," in Searching the Scriptures, edited by Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1993), 86-97.
3The concept of liberation has been much maligned. Liberation refers to the "for freedom Christ has set us free" of Galatians 5:1. Liberation is a process that has three different, interconnected aspects or levels: freedom from oppression at the social level, freedom from psychological oppression by struggling for self-fulfillment within the context of one's community, and freedom from sin. Liberation takes place within history; the history of salvation does not happen apart from day-to-day life. The unfolding of the kin-dom of God takes place in history through liberation. But liberation and the kin-dom of God are not one and the same thing. "Without the liberating events of history, the kingdom [sic] does not grow, but the process of liberation only destroys the roots of oppression and of the exploitation of one human being by another; this is not the same thing as the corning of the kingdom which is first and foremost a gift. It can even be said that historical, political, liberating actions mean the growth of the kingdom and are saving events; they are not, however, the coming of the kingdom, they do not represent complete salvation. They are historical embodiments of the kingdom and by that very fact also pointers toward the fullness of the kingdom; there precisely is the difference" (Gustavo Gutiérrez, The Truth Shall Make You Free: Confrontations [Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1990], 16.) For a further explanation of the relationship between liberation and salvation see Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation. (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1988), 83-105. See Ada María Isasi-Díaz and Yolanda Tarango, Hispanic Women: Prophetic Voice in the Church (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992). See also Ada María Isasi-Díaz, En La Lucha: Elaborating a Hispanic Women's Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992).
4We use kin-dom instead of kingdom because the latter is obviously a sexist word that presumes that God is male; and we do not use reign, because it is elitist. Kin-dom makes it clear that when the fullness of God becomes a reality, we will all be sisters and brothers—kin to each other.
5Though reader-response theories have helped us understand and explain how we relate to the text, they do not do so fully. In reader-response theories the text is central or, at least, the person is always seen in relation to the text. In our appropriation of biblical stories the text disappears as an element per se leaving only some of its elements present but always mediated through the need and usage of Hispanic Women. For an overview of reader-response theories see Jane P. Tompkins, ed., Reader-Response Criticism, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.
6Quoted in Isasi-Díaz, "La Palabra de Dios," 88. Since whenever I give this kind of example non-Hispanics seem to take for granted that I am talking about a Latina with little formal education, let me say that the speaker to whom I refer here has a Ph.D. in literature. The mixing of elements from two different stories was not because she did not have knowledge of the Bible.
7My mother's understanding that the struggle is to live, la vida es la lucha, expresses this sense of ongoing resistance as a good and effective strategy in our struggle.
8For an excellent exposition on this subject see Sharon Welch, A Feminist Ethic of Risk (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 74-81.
9For a fuller discussion of conscientization see Isasi-Díaz and Tarango, Hispanic Women, 94-110. For a different view that does not necessarily contradict this one see Justo Gonzales, Manana: Christian Theology from a Hispanic Perspective (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990), 75-87.
10Juan Luis Segundo, The Liberation of Theology (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1982), 121.
11Charles Curran, Catholic Moral Theology in Dialogue (Notre Dame: Fides Publishers, Inc., 1972), 70.