This session, sponsored in collaboration with the AAR/SBL Women’s Caucus, highlights the research of emerging scholars exploring the critical intersections of gender, religion, and violence. Engaging with the conference theme “Violence, Nonviolence, and the Margin,” the panelists offer perspectives on how women and women-identifying people confront and resist the multifaceted dimensions of violence justified by religious and societal norms. Through intersectional analyses that incorporate class, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, this session delves into the new ways in which religion, spirituality, and theological reflections empower responses to violence and envision nonviolent praxis. From the postcolonial contemplative practices of Filipinas and the healing altars of La Virgen de Guadalupe among survivors of intimate partner violence, to the incarnational theology as a foundation for non-violence and the reimagined ecclesial hospitality practices informed by feminist trauma theology, this session investigates the role of religion in both perpetuating and challenging structures of violence.
The Christian practice of contemplation can be a resource for Filipinas to resist violence caused by patriarchy, coloniality, and clericalism as overlapping forms of oppression pervading both society and the church in the Philippines. This practice is drawn from the reflections of Constance FitzGerald and Beverly Lanzetta on the writings of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross and how these spiritual works can offer women possibilities for flourishing today. These reflections are placed in conversation with the feminist theological works from the Philippines, which are concerned about gender dynamics and stereotypes detrimental to women’s well-being and offer a reimagining of theological anthropology. This dialogue proposes opening up spaces for contemplation to encounter God as Gracious Mystery who desires women’s flourishing, affirms women’s dignity, pays attention to their embodied nature, and offers a nuanced approach to suffering in the world that is caused by physical and epistemic violence.
This paper uses a feminist Latin American liberationist perspective to explore how Marian veneration and theology help Mexican women experience hope and resist feelings of religious isolation after intimate partner violence. Many women who speak up about domestic violence experience a shunning from their religious community, thus losing their major ties to her community and to God. After examining a few cultural factors that impact the Mexican experience of intimate partner violence, I will use the example of home altars to La Virgen de Guadalupe to show how women who have experienced violence still turn to Mary for religious hope and healing without needing the church, the congregation, or the pastor. Through private and popular worship of Mary, Mexican women have developed a practice of hope that can help them overcome violent and marginalizing contexts.
What response might Christianity offer to the problem of violence? The cross has often been upheld as a symbol of non-violence. Yet it has also been upheld as the symbol of those who promote colonization, patriarchy, and oppression. Little scholarship exists exploring the idea of non-violence’s foundation in the womb of a woman rather than the cross built by man. This paper will argue that in the incarnation, we see God’s embrace of and entering in to the universal vulnerability of humanity that makes violence insupportable under any circumstance. Christian calls to nonviolence, then, begin not at the cross, but within the womb of Mary, the mother of God.
Informed by feminist and trauma theologies and formed by contemplative spirituality, this paper offers an evolving innovative approach to explore and transform ecclesial hospitality such that it is attentive to the aftermath of violence in a faith community. The methodology adopted for this doctoral research is shaped by the particularities of my own context, shaped by my contemplative spiritual practices, and my commitment to nonviolence in a violent world. Through a series of difficult yet crucial contemplative dialogue circles, participants from the study community will critically reflect on the assumptions and beliefs underpinning current ecclesial practices before envisioning new approaches in the light of feminist trauma-sensitive scholarship embedding in trust, truth, justice and right relationships, for the flourishing of all.