For many years, my primary way of identifying myself was as a Christian. Before daughter, student, woman, athlete, or American, I was Christian.
As I understood it, my relationship to God was supposed to be the priority in my life, above all other relationships, concerns, and interests, and therefore being a Christian was the center of my identity. Everything I learned and all of my experiences were to be filtered through my Christian lens so that whatever was in contradiction with it could be quickly rejected.
Although I still believe my relationship with “God” should be a first and foremost in my life, my understanding of how that is accomplished has changed dramatically. I no longer correlate Christianity and the Divine the way that I once did. In my young faith, they were one in the same – no distinction necessary. Over the years, good people and life experiences helped me change my perspective. I now understand Christianity to be the framework which nurtures my relationship to the Divine – to transcendent and mysterious things like what connects us to one another or what compels us to love. These things comprise my understanding and experience of “God.” Christianity and my unrelenting commitment to its doctrines which I had never given a second thought became an idol, distracting me from the Divine.
In the past year, I moved Christianity down a notch and moved ecofeminist to the top. I have identified as ecofeminist first, filtering everything through that lens and unashamedly rejecting that which does not make it – even if it came from my Christian tradition. This has been my attempt to reject that which causes harm or is not life-giving for each creature and for the earth.
But just when I’m feeling high and mighty in my righteous views about the world, free of prejudice or oversight of any people or creature in need, I come across ads like this one by Ethical Oil. This ad uses the oppression of women in Saudi Arabia to convince viewers to support the controversial KeystoneXL Pipeline. It implies that the oil will be inherently ethical because we won’t support oppressive treatment of women by getting oil from Saudia Arabia. Ethical Oil is focusing our attention on the suffering of women but completely dismisses the harm to the earth, creatures, and many people that will come with the Keystone pipeline. They are claiming a feminist lens in this ad, and as much as I am a supporter of women’s freedom and rights, they are doing it at great cost to the environment and those living around the potential piping.
And then I come across the work of PETA which is making great strides in animal justice but does so using the bodies of women. They have long been criticized for their objectification of women but their newest commitment to creating a XXX porn site to promote veganism has again captured the attention of feminists. PETA spokeswoman Lindsay Rajt recently stated in an interview with Huffington Post, “We live in a 24 hour news cycle world and we learn the racy things we do are sometimes the most effective way that we can reach particular individuals.” PETA sees no harm in encouraging the ongoing objectification of women in order to liberate animals.
Ads like these remind me to check myself. They remind me that I will never have the “right” view of the world and that I will always need other voices correcting my ideas and actions. Whether my primary identity is ecofeminist, Democrat, Christian, or any other identifying label, I can never have an entirely harm-free view of the world with which to filter all that I hear or learn. I have biases, like everyone, and no one ideology can free me or others completely. I remain committed to the ecofeminist perspective, concerned with all systems of domination and their interconnection, as a necessary perspective for healing in and of the world. However, just as I came to realize my Christian lens did not provide me with a harm-free view of the world (far from it) I recognize my ecofeminist lens will fail me and others too.
I’m not certain what the solution is for the messiness of seeking justice from a particular context, but I am sure it has something to do with listening along the way.
I appreciated this read—the reflective and self-critical tone of it. It resonates on a few levels with one of my recent experiences. I have heard repeatedly of late (in the church that I attend and elsewhere) that if anything other than Jesus (and Jesus alone) occupies the center of your life, you’re engaging in idolatry. This message is somewhat of a corollary to another frequent promulgation of the (especially Protestant) church: that the apex of worship is an individualistic experience of God in which the world fades away. It seems to me that’s why when I’m in a “communion” service, everyone who has received the elements has their eyes closed and heads bowed in order to shield themselves from the world around them (of course, that’s just my interpretation). But in this example “communion” (in which we all supposedly gather around a common table) has become the individual’s communion with God apart from the world. Descartes would be so proud.
But the earlier claim about christocentrism seems problematic to me. Leaving aside the admittedly problematic issues of a chalcedonian christology (aware that feminism has brought to light valid complaints in this arena), at the very least I should think that in churches that claim to be traditional (and by this claim they usually mean that Jesus is “fully God, fully [human]”) in their christology, affirming something along the lines of a hypostatic union, should be able to claim that if Jesus occupies the center, then so does the world. For (again, simply speaking from tradition here), if in Jesus the Son became “man” (and here is where I think tradition has misled us—in emphasizing that Jesus became man instead of human, or human instead of flesh, or flesh instead of matter, or simply emphasizing the cosmic kinship in the notion that Jesus “became”), then Jesus cannot occupy and “center” without the world (i.e., matter). It thus seems to me that a high christology necessitates a concern for ecology. To care for and love Jesus is to care for love the world with which Jesus was united.
I digress. My point was simply to demonstrate my resonance with your sense of issue with the false dichotomy of “choose God or world.” That aside, I believe that your point about the tensions of identity is well made in your two examples that highlight, on the one hand, women’s rights at the expense of ecological concern and, on the other hand, animal rights at the expense of reverence for human (and particularly womanly) dignity. Thanks for the thought.
RPM
Well said, Ryan McLaughlin! I wrote a paper once on the importance of the crucifixion in Christian soteriology, and my professor said, “You know, I think you’re fetishizing Christ a little here.” Christian liturgy can invoke Jesus to a point where it actually distracts from the work, the meaning, and the real “messiness” of his incarnation and resurrection, to use Ms. Kaiser’s term. Ironically, I think that’s when Christians run the risk of becoming truly idolatrous, as the author points out.