Feminism and the developmental agenda in Faith: A perspective from a gathering of Anglican Women in Africa

Women in Leadership

After accidentally losing data while penning a theological view on the feminist agenda in faith, for some time I found myself pushing back this task over and over again, a good month and a half went past. It was until I came across a very powerful gathering of African Women of faith, that I regained the courage to go back and put pen to paper again. This event was held in Nairobi Kenya on Tuesday the 29^th of April, the year of our Lord 2025, under the banner of “African Woman Leadership”. Not only did this event resuscitate my feminist theology and encourage me to go back to putting pen to paper, but it also kept me glued throughout the two to three-hour discussion panel as I felt greatly empowered as a young male theologian, especially in view of the fact that “six African Anglican women bishops were on the panel, the Right Reverend Filomena Tete Estevão, Emily Onyango, Elizabeth Awut, Vincentia Kgabe, Rose Okeno, and Dalcy Badeli Dlamini. Bishop Kgabe of Lesotho submitted that “the purpose of the event was to ignite meaningful conversations about Africa's contemporary leadership challenges and celebrate women's vital role in crafting sustainable solutions for the continent” (V. Kgabe 26 April 2025: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/12F2idyxbDo/), this included the launch of an exciting initiative called “the Center for Anglican Women’s Leadership and Research in Africa” (CAWLRA), proceedings can be viewed on “The Anglican Church of Kenya You-Tube channel: https://youtu.be/Ethedg2wiXw (Accessed 29 April 2025).

 

Anglican Women gathering in Kenya 29 April 2025: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=9524038327644954&set=pcb.9524046450977475 (Bishop V. Kgabe facebook page)

The Feminist Agenda in Black African Liberation Theologies

 TEEC makes a point that “our Christian context must be careful not to read its own concepts and ideas back into African Traditional Religion” (TEEC 2022a:43) or at least the African way of doing Christianity, this includes its own idea of God and his nature. We must first acknowledge the fact that ‘God existed before the Christian concept reached African shores’, lest we forget Mbiti’s famous submission that “Africans are notoriously religious” (J. S. Mbiti 1975). Therefore, I’m convinced that the scholarly and faith communities must agree that “feminist theology is a liberation theology, liberation theology is Black African theology”, and so any effort to advance these theologies in the absence of feminist theology would be in futility. Liberation theology wants to know who God is for us, best described in its nature as “contextual theology, concerned with the contextual situations of people, the relationship between the faith and the concrete situations of people’s lives”. Therefore, it is liberation theology’s primary nature to speak against the human bondages of one by another, socially, politically, economically, racially and otherwise. That is why the onus is on the church to advance all efforts to liberate women from the patriarchal shackles that continues to enslave them in society and the faith.

 

The case of the Feminist Theology

We ought to depart from the reality that ‘the Church has permanently diminished God by a one sided male concept of divinity, an unintended perpetuation of sexism’, Feminist theology would rather argue that “it is either God does not have a gender or she is a woman”, making it easier to present a much more socially balanced God in the ‘imago Dei’, "So God created mankind in his own image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27 NIV), indicating in no uncertain terms that “the image of God is reflected by men and women together and not by males alone”. We would rather present a God which every human is made in the image of or a gender free God, to this we also look to McFague’s proposals on plausible models of God, she submits that “to use language to name God in ways which can be understood and related to in this new context” (S. McFague 1987; TEEC 2022a:67), “a God who reveals Godself to God’s people who are made in the image of Godself”. For the contemporary Church and society Surburg submits that “Although Jesus Christ taught his followers to address God as “Father” in the Lord’s Prayer, during the last forty years, feminism has vigorously raised the charge that this term can no longer effectively serve Christians as the exclusive reference to the first person of the Trinity. Instead, it has maintained that feminine names and terms of reference also need to be used. In particular, “Mother” has become a frequent term used in place of or alongside “Father” (M. Surburg 2015: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324482470_God_our_Mother_Biblical_and_philosophical_considerations_in_feminist_God_language - Accessed 29 April 2025).

 

The hypocrisy from within - Her place in the Church

 Feminist spirituality would have been crucial in the developmental agenda of the church, but it finds itself speaking rather to the hypocrisy of the church in that ‘it speaks out loud against societal issues that affects women, GBV, inequality, women empowerment or lack thereof, etc, however, from within it maintains a highly patriarchal spirituality, among others its failure to generally recognise God as a woman, failure to recognise the voice of a woman and promoting the oppressive view of “non-admission of women to priestly ordination” in the catholic church, all examples of its failure to take a feminist liturgical and worship position.

 

The Exodus narrative in the Old Testament paints to us a perfect picture of what liberation theology is about. However, for an African woman, her freedom from the shackles of patriarchy and sexism perpetuated by the church and society, is a liberating narrative of the contemporary, therefore, we must come to the conclusion that “gatherings and movements such as the Anglican Women in Leadership breakfast held in Kenya and addressed by its women bishops, are an exploration of liberation theology and the feminist agenda as one of the branches of black African theology”. Our God is a God who breaks into human history to free the oppressed, calling us to unmask the images of a sexist and patriarchal God, whom in faith history ‘is the very colonial and apartheid image that was used to oppress, dominate, marginalise and kill people, especially women on the African continent. Ours is to search and promote the ‘living face of God’, a God that is not exploitative, hateful, manipulative or sexist, but rather ‘a God of equality, humble service, joyous solidarity and life in abundance for all God’s children’, including women. Instead of the contemporary South Africa and African God who is portrayed as a Sexist (male) God who does not see the value of women in the leadership of the Church or society, a God who only understands the position of women as being in the church kitchen, Sunday school class or church choir, a God of false promises where pastors are getting richer while their congregants become poorer, young women become their sexual objects and God a mockery of false miracles.

  

The Church’s Feminist Agenda

In the days since his death, the recently departed Roman Catholic Church Leader Pope Francis has been hailed as a reformer, outsider, influencer and modernizer, among other reforms the world has seen, Christopher Lamb submits that “the Argentine pontiff listened, breaking some important glass ceilings in the Vatican when it came to appointing female leaders to senior positions” (C. Lamb 26 April 2025: https://rb.gy/35gkw9), even though he maintained the Catholic traditional ban on women's ordination to the priesthood, it would appear that some strides were made to empower women. However, the world will observe with great interest to see whether the next leader of the world’s biggest Christian denomination will continue to advance Francis’ feminist agenda or regress back to the patriarchal doctrine. In our effort to address the historical challenges of a woman in faith, we are called to recognise the fact that ‘women have lived out their faith in the context of marginalisation, exclusion, abuse and lack of control in the Church and society’, and the Roman Catholic Church remains the epitome of this doctrinal disaster.

 

The imperative Developmental Agenda

Cornelia Ferreira describes feminism as being spiritual and secular, the latter being concerned about equality and the treatment of women in society, the former is about what goes on inside the church (Ferreira C 2021: Catholic Culture.org), but the two cannot be separated as what goes on in the Church is a reflection of the very society that we come from, if the Church does very little to empower women then that is a direct reflection of our society. And so, as the Vatican City’s Sistine Chapel is sealed and the Vatican gears up for papal conclave, the world awaits the white smoke to tell us that "habemus papam" – we have a pope! And whether he will emancipate God’s female creation from the bondages of patriarchy, both in the church and society.

 

Many biblical narratives suggest that Jesus's teachings and actions were aligned with many feminist principles, he ministered alongside women, defended women against patriarchal and sexist positions of his time, and so he calls upon the contemporary world, both in the faith and secular, to advance the feminist agenda for the benefit of the kingdom of God and the global developmental agenda.

 

Kgosiemang Phejane

Writing in my personal capacity as an advocate for change