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Editorial:
Minority Report
Anna Rankin
Comment:
Racism in Ulster: Up-front and Ugly
Ken Newell
From
the Director: Naming Our Sin
David W Porter
Faith
in Ulster: Facing Up to Diversity
Stephen Skuce
Faith
and Practice
Walter Lewis
Interview
with Rose Ozo: Where the Heart Is
Anna Rankin
Craigavon:
Religious Liberty in the Shadow of Drumcree
Small Steps
Tim Foley
Embracing the Stranger
Richard Kerr
Review:
On Eagle's Wing
Ethel White
Review:
Conflict, Controversy and Co-operation
John W Morrow
Review:
The Subversive Manifesto
John Kyle
Review:
L is for Lifestyle
Claire Martin
Review:
It Will Not Be Taken Away From Her
Cary Gibson
Review:
Prophetic Untimeliness: A Challenge to the Idol of Relevance
Paul Rankin
Review:
Two Little Boys
John Gillespie
Review:
Son
David Smith
REVIEW:
It Will Not Be Taken Away From Her
by Fran Porter
reviewed by Cary Gibson
FRAN PORTER’S Changing Women, Changing Worlds (Black Staff Press, 2002) focussed on the issues facing evangelical women. It Will Not Be Taken Away From Her broadens her focus to women’s experiences across all of Northern Ireland’s church traditions.
Beginning with the question, “Why do women stay [in church]?” this is a succinct and provocative exploration of the central challenges that feminism brings to Christianity and the impact of gender issues on women’s faith experience.
Porter weaves an impressive synthesis from a range of feminist commentators, which will be insightful for those who are familiar with this territory and a comprehensive introduction for those who are not.
Porter rightly reminds us that feminist critique is not the cause of gender conflict but instead feminism exposes the conflict by naming it. Yet feminism continues to be received with deep suspicion by many. It is troubling how evidently vital feminist critique remains: it has neither been accepted as part of mainstream Christian discourse or practice, nor indeed is it merely a clichéd preserve of the liberal fringe. The experiences revealed by Porter’s interviewees are in turn moving and disturbing, acting as powerful complement to her thesis.
Porter’s is not a comparative analysis, but by exploring women’s experiences across church traditions, she exposes that, while different church structures offer varying practical challenges, subordination and exclusion of women persists in all.
She calls for a reform of the assumed gender norms fundamental to all traditions, and central themes include: the God-man-woman hierarchy pervasive in our theological worldview; exclusive male language in Christian “God-talk”; the dichotomies of male/female, spiritual/physical, public/private, and self/other; how women’s Christian identity is shaped; women’s subordinated positions and roles within church structures, and in a society marked by conflict.
The resulting picture is a web of oppressions where church (and society) loses out on Christian women’s contribution, and women (and men) typically fail to have holistic faith experiences.
If women make up the majority of church membership and church continues to play such a significant role in Northern Irish society, then this cannot be viewed as a fringe issue. Porter’s work strikes at the heart of our praxis, exposing what is no less than collective heresy and idolatry. As we deny ourselves the opportunity to be living witnesses to the gospel’s radical alternative, not only do church numbers continue to decline but our contribution to society becomes increasingly weakened.
Church should be the place where the established dichotomies are subverted and where to be “made in the image of God” should be realised by recognising each of us as ‘fully human’ rather than as gender stereotypes.
What Porter makes clear is the need for transformation in our theological interpretation of gender, and consequently in our language, structures, and the roles women can take in faith communities.
I am left thinking we face serious challenges if we are to find liberation from the complexity of problems Porter explores. How do we encourage widespread meaningful and transformative dialogue between women of multiple traditions, between church as congregation and leadership, between those remaining within the church and those without, (or indeed the many on its fringes), and that does not set women up against one another, while discouraging a male/female dichotomy?
This book does not offer much comfort but it is certainly not without hope. I look forward to Fran Porter’s continued contributions on this issue and only hope that churches respond with the engaged commitment that it rightly deserves.
CARY GIBSON is a contributing member of both zero28 and the Ikon community. Her MPhil (Peace Studies) focussed in large part on the relationship between feminism and Christian praxis.
IT WILL NOT BE
TAKEN FROM HER,
A feminist engagement with women’s Christian experience.
Fran Porter
Published by DLT, 2004.
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