IMPLICATIONS FOR REFUGEE WOMEN

Beverlee Bruce, Ph.D.

Beverlee Bruce chairs the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children and is aprogram director at the Social Science Research Council in New York, where she directs theSSRC-Mellon Minority Fellowship Program.

Introduction

The African American religious tradition from which I speak has a history whichreaches, in consciousness and memory, back to Africa; was expressed concretely (thoughsurreptitiously) during slavery; and was organized along denominational lines, beginningwith the African Methodist Episcopal Church, sixteen years into the nineteenth century.Although this tradition is primarily Christian and Protestant, American forms ofCatholicism and Islam have been influenced either by modes of worship or by theologicalinterpretation derived from African American history and culture.

A symbiotic relationship exists between the African American religious tradition, asembodied in the Black Church, and African American life and culture. It is difficult, ifnot impossible, to talk about the latter without reference to the former. For example,most African American leaders were socialized during their formative years in a blackcongregation of some type; and most African Americans in music had their initial trainingas a vocalist or instrumentalist in a church choir. Few of us have forgotten the recitals,pageants, Easter and Christmas presentations we performed before members of our churchcongregations, including extended families of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins,siblings, and proud parents who supported us in our efforts to master the oral tradition,the hallmark of African American culture. Bible stories and sermons preached from favoritetexts (the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount, the Twenty-Third Psalm) provided theframework for our belief in the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule, as did such hymns as"Amazing Grace," "Precious Lord," "I Love to Tell theStory," "Power, Power, Power, Wonder Working Power in the Blessed Name of theLord," "How I Got Over," and "In That Great Gittin' Up Morning."

At the same time, we learned from the social structure of the church that men werepowerful, and women were important but subordinate. Women wore white on communion Sunday,taught Sunday School in the primary grades, prepared and served breakfast before churchand dinner after, were the nurses in white at funerals, and (if slim, fashionable, andwell-spoken) read the announcements from the bulletin each Sunday. Women were evangelists,and some led the worship service and the testimonials before the service; women wereushers who showed parishioners to their seats, provided programs listing the order ofservice, gave out fans from a local funeral home when it got too hot, and passed thecollection plate along the rows before pouring the contents into large baskets held by menat the front of the church. There were always more women in the choir than men; sometimes,though not often, a woman played the piano and/or organ and served as Minister of Music.

Men, on the other hand, though less numerous, constituted the ministerial staff and satin high-backed chairs on the pulpit, in long robes, with Bibles in their laps; or theywere deacons or members of the board of trustees, and sat in the congregation in rowsreserved for those groups. In some churches, women augmented the music with tambourines;in those churches where the Holy Spirit was welcomed, it was the women who shouted and didthe Holy Dance, while a deacon or two might urge the preacher of the hour to "make itplain." In the church of my youth, men were called to the ministry, but women werenot. Women tithed, as did men; they launched bake sales and served on the Pastor's AidSociety to support the church financially. Women were the pillars of the church, but theirinterests were rarely served because they were always subordinated to those of men orchildren. As a youth participant I found the Black Church nurturing; but as ananthropologist concerned about women's issues, I find the Black Church in its patriarchyto be a structure of dominance and oppression in need of fundamental change.

Black Theologians

Howard Thurman in 1949 and Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1963 approached the significanceof the Black Experience in moral and religious terms, speaking with eloquence abouttranscendence through spirituality and love, about goodness driving out evil and loveconquering hate. Thurman's classic work, Jesus and the Disinherited, posits thatJesus is at one with "those who stand at a moment in history with their backs againstthe wall." For Thurman, the challenge is for the marginalized to confront andtranscend fear, deception, and hate by embracing love, through the agency of the HolySpirit. For King, it is to have the strength to love one's enemies. Both challenge theChristian Church to do more for those who are oppressed. Neither speaks specifically ofthe Black Church or of black women, men, or children; rather, their God talk is at thelevel of the Christian Church in relation to black congregants and their situation inAmerica.

By contrast, James Cone's writings have addressed the question of a Black theology ofliberation, and he has called for support of Black feminist theology, arguing that neitherwhite feminists nor black male theologians have addressed the issues of concern to blackwomen theologians (nor can they).

Womanist Theologians

As might be expected, African American female theologians address the issue ofpatriarchy in the Black Church and have agreed, for the most part, to call themselves womanistrather than feminist (womanist denotes a black feminist). According to itsproponents, womanist theology is an emergent theology in its own right, but it isinclusive and open to other traditions. Its aim is to listen to the voices of the womenwho preceded us, and then to be inspired by their example. For example, in 1836, JarenaLee asked to be ordained by the founding bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church,Richard Allen, but was refused; and one Elizabeth, who was without a surname, reported in1863 of being prohibited by black men from preaching. Yet both Jarena Lee and Elizabethdefied the strictures of their times and went on to preach the gospel, acknowledging thecall to the ministry by God. In addressing patriarchy in the Black Church, womanisttheologians are prepared "to challenge the values of domination and structures ofoppression in the church and society where they seek to do the work of God's Reign."

Hall in Tirol cheap hotelsFeminist Theologians From the Third World

Third World feminist theologians in Africa, Asia, and Latin America have taken on thedual tasks of a "critique of and struggle against all forms of oppression resultingfrom patriarchy and the reform, reconstruction, and reinterpretation of Christiantradition . . . in the light of women's experience, and with a critical attitude towardthe socially and historically constructed notion of gender." For example, in themissionary zeal to stamp out polygamy in Africa, men with more than one wife were requiredto choose one for a monogynous relationship; the others were abandoned to singlemotherhood without a corresponding social structure for their protection and support. As aresult, women found themselves homeless and with no means for taking care of theirchildren. Clearly, the early missionaries had no concern about consequences. In otherinstances, depending on circumstances, feminists are calling for transformations inHinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism and the Apache religious tradition.

A Theology Addressing Experiences of Refugee Women

Given my experience in visiting refugee situations around the world, I had hoped tofind the refugee experience included in feminist or womanist theology, to address the evilperpetrated against women during war and its aftermath. During a war, women are expectedto endure the inevitability of being sinned against; afterwards, they are expected toaccept the structures of a male-dominated way of life.

In outlining the parameters of womanist theology, Delores Williams, one of its mostarticulate proponents, recounts the Biblical story of Hagar, an African slave from Egyptwho is in service to Abraham and Sarah. As a result of rape, she gives birth to a son andis subsequently turned out of the house with him, becoming displaced. Elsewhere, Williamsrecounts that women in the patriarchal black church account for 80 percent of itsmembership; refugee women and children constitute 80 percent of the world's refugeepopulation. And, like Hagar, the women are subject to sexual violence, marginalization,and displacement.

Given that both Third World feminist theology and womanist theology are "concernedwith the liberation of women from oppression," the tradition of suffering endured byrefugee women would certainly qualify their experiences for inclusion. Let me give threeexamples.

In June 1996 I visited a camp for displaced persons just outside Freetown, SierraLeone. There were thirty women in the room, each wearing a head tie and wraparound skirt.They are rural women; only one has been to school and is literate in English. Threeprofessional Sierra Leonean women are translating Krio into English. My delegation knowsthat many child soldiers have been kidnapped from their villages, to fight either for theguerrillas or for the military. We ask the mothers about their concern for the childsoldiers. One answers for the rest: "We need two things, forgiveness and treatment.Forgiveness because in most cases the children were taken away against their will;treatment because we need help in bringing these boys back to their families andcommunities." The mothers are willing to let bygones be bygones; there is no hint ofvindictiveness or revenge in her voice. Clearly, these women need help in restoringnormalcy to their shattered lives. They cannot do it alone, nor should they.

In August 1995, I was in Mozambique to witness the conclusion of the largestrepatriation in Africa: two and a half million people had returned from six neighboringcountries after thirty years of war. In several remote villages, I notice long lines ofwomen waiting to grind corn. The grinding machines, owned by men, are large, cumbersome,very noisy and often in need of repair. I ask one of the relief workers how long the waitis; sometimes three days, he tells me. And then he tells me a story I am sorry to hear: awoman from a neighboring village came to grind her corn. It took three days before it washer turn. When she returned home, she found her three children had suffocated and died.She then committed suicide. Women need appropriate technology and labor-saving devices toassist them in their many tasks; there has to be a better way.

I had the occasion to evaluate a UNIFEM-funded program entitled African Women in Crisis(AFWIC), designed to assist the development efforts of women who are refugees orinternally displaced, or who have recently returned to their countries of origin. InKenya, I interviewed a woman from Burundi who had served as a consultant to an AFWIC peacemission in Bujumbura. This is an except from what she had to say:

"In hindsight, a lot could have been done to avert the war which began in 1993,but we tended to ignore the signs, the handwriting on the wall. If we had just paidattention! We did not recognize or acknowledge the first signs -- for example, theescalation of violence, which we took to be either normal or an isolated incident. Weshould have paid attention to poverty, land tenure issues, environmental degradation,democracy, human rights, civic education, and respect for others.

"Women's awareness about things gone awry could have allowed us to act in time.Women in town have lessons in humility to learn from rural women, who are closer to theissues than we are. But they tend to defer to us, the educated, the literate, thecity-dwellers, because they think we know better than they; but we don't. We need toempower rural women.

"Another issue is that women have tried to be like men, rather than value ourgifts as women. We know what keeps us apart, but we must find the commonalities of oursuffering and its source in order to learn from our mistakes. We need to dig into the pastto look at our history as a way of determining commonalities of our values to build on forthe future: shared experience, insights, and wisdom.

"In closing, I have to say that the tension between groups of Africans within thenation-state is more than ethnicity. In Rwanda and Burundi, Tutsi and Hutu lived for morethan four thousand years; why the problems now? The problems are the result of culturalimposition leading to the Westernization of urban elites, which in turn has led tocollective resistance by those marginalized by the situation. They lack positiveidentification and a sense of belonging to the self, family, group, community, and nation.They are have-nots with nothing to lose."

Clearly, the insights provided by this interviewee are not limited to Burundi orRwanda. Wherever there is conflict, there are those with vision who need support. Whereare those who would provide opportunities for rural women to have their voices heard, tobe assured that their insights are welcomed and will be acted upon? Where are those whowould assure women that their intuition is sound, that their sensitivity to circumstancesgone awry will be taken into account? Where are those who will affirm the uniqueness ofwomen and not expect that they must behave like men to succeed? While 1997 was declaredthe Ecumenical Year of Churches in Solidarity with Uprooted People, a parallel commitmentneeds to be the prevention of uprootedness.

Conclusion

The African American religious tradition developed in the context of slavery, the civilrights movement, and the contemporary period. Today, women of color across the globe arechallenging structures of dominance and oppression in the patriarchy of the world'sreligions. As a result, "[p]oor and oppressed women in the Third World, women ofcolor in America, indigenous people all over the world" are responding positively.Using the African American experience as a point of departure, we see its challenge to theChristian Church in the position taken by black theologians in their articulation of atheology of black liberation.

Absent the voices of black women, and the result is womanist theology. Wherever voicesare silenced, space has to be made for their inclusion. And so it is with refugee andinternally displaced women. Since one third of the world's refugees are in Africa, andsince womanist theology is Afrocentric in its conception as well as inclusive of othertraditions, an embrace of the circumstances endured by African women in crisis is anappropriate response. In the same way, then, that feminist theology in the Third World hasbecome more complex since black feminist consciousness emerged in black women's struggleagainst the sexism of black men and the racism of white women, we hope that otherreligious traditions in Africa, Asia, and Latin America will accept the challenge torespond to displaced populations of women as well. We welcome global responses to globalissues.