Liberation Theology And The Church in Africa
was very hurt and I was reacting to the person (whether that was the Church or God) who had hurt me; and their action in putting their arms around me could never make up for the pain caused, in fact, it seemed hypocritical especially since I was, in submitting to the "loving" arms, expected to submit also to those notions of femininity that had hurt me in the first place. My beating, beating, beating against them with fists was a normal reaction; there was no way they could atone for what they had done.
So my own liberation has been internal, spiritual, not physical, and it has had to do with the question of being a woman. I could not answer that in the church-I had to leave. Yet, feminism is a part of liberation theology, and a part of liberation theology in Africa, and though I cannot participate in it, I am glad to see the church trying to respond.
FEMINIST LIBERATION THEOLOGY IN AFRICA
According to church theologian/scholar John Parratt, feminist theology is the "second generation" of liberation theology. Feminist theology in Africa, he says, "has not been as strident as in some parts of the Western world, and it would probably be right to characterize it...as concerned with women's role in the wholeness of a single humanity rather than in feminism as a revolutionary countermovement" (51).
The most well-known and one of the earliest female theologians in Africa was Mercy Amba Oduyoye. In a speech to the World Council of Churches in 1999, she compared Africa's treatment at the world's hands like that of a woman. Africa is "humble" and "grateful"; if she attempts to assert equality, the world "frowns" and she is persecuted, both openly and covertly. "As women resent these stereotypes," she states, "so Africa must refuse this female typology" (Oduyoye.)
In her early work, she challenges the Church and, by extension, the world to see women's experience as "an integral part of what goes into the definition of being human" (Parratt, 51). Her later analogy of Africa as female to the world indicates that the world, too, needs to recognize Africa's experience as part of the definition of being human.
According to Steve Biko, the man who articulated Black Conciousness so many years ago in South Africa, Africans must accept their blackness and humanness and identity as children of God whether or not the rest of the world ever
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