Wrong on the Bible!

Wokuri got it wrong on the Bible

Rev. Ambrose John Bwangatto

This writing is in response to an article that appeared in the New Vision of Tuesday, November 10, 2009, page 13, titled “The Bible can no longer be used to subjugate women” by Margaret Wokuri. In this article which started as a review of the recently published book of Dr. Miria Matembe, “Woman in the eyes of God: Reclaiming lost identity,” Margaret went on to suggest that the book carry a number of perspectives; but she deliberately chose to aim her venomous attack on the Holy Bible as “an instrument used for long to subjugate women by being reminded how they came from Adam’s rib and how God commanded them to be submissive to their husbands. She went on to applaud “some feminists who have chosen to blacklist the Bible as an instrument of male dominance, other feminists who have just re-written the Bible replacing He’s with She’s. She also castigated “especially religious leaders and other people who think they are ‘holier than thou’ who for long sided with the dominant biblical versions that seek to suppress women.”

Whereas I appreciate Margaret’s concern in the article for the plight of women marginalisation and subjugation, but according to internal evidence there are innumerable discrepancies which cannot be reconciled within the article and in the broader biblical hermeneutics. First, I find her approach very reductivistic in style. At the outset she states that the book of Dr. Matembe takes you to the world of perspectives, but she decides to reduce all of them in her attack on the Holy Bible. Secondly, whereas she portrays the Bible as an instrument of women subjugation and male dominance, but in listing women that society harshly condemned like Rahab, Tamar and Bathsheba, she also portrays the God of the Bible as liberating, healing, inclusive and non-judgmental. Thirdly, whereas, again, she labels the Bible as “an instrument” of subjugation, at the end of her article she invites the women “to take up the challenge and work directly with God as portrayed in the Bible to save our society.”

We have to recognize that according to the Christian teaching, the Bible is the word of God or we could even state that the bible is the written speech of God to mankind. The central message of the Bible is God’s self-communication as a saving God. When God appeared to Moses at Mountain Horeb He said to him that “I have seen the misery of my people…, I have heard their cry. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them” (Exodus 3:7-8). The Bible as a Holy Book has never been and will never be an instrument of subjugation, discrimination or ethnocentrism in itself. It is the word of God communicating a message of salvation for mankind and revealing a saving God. The Bible has been branded as discriminative, exclusive and even divisive because of the different methods applied to interpret it. Many flawed interpreters, preachers and scholars use the Bible for their own vested interests. Tools drawn from the critical theory and social constructionism as used in the social sciences with its attendant methods of critical discourse and text analysis have been applied to biblical interpretation and the effect has been to relegate to the periphery the message of salvation inherent in the Holy Bible and take on the presumptuous social dominant discourses and power dynamics apparently lying therein. That’s why the bible is labelled as an instrument promoting women violence, slavery, marginalisation, poverty and also perpetuating male dominance. Many scholars and activists have betrayed their intellectual responsibility by reducing the Bible to the level of a text book and apply the same tools used on other texts. The Bible communicates only the message of salvation and only reveals a saving God. This could sufficiently explain why countless people over the centuries have drawn from the bible a lot of inspiration, consolation, healing, and encouragement on their life’s journey. Let us hold with respect the Holy Books of the various religious traditions because they are a source of life for millions of believers throughout the world who draw meaning from them.

Catholics are a fair game!

Catholics are a fair game!

Fr. Ambrose J. Bwangatto

The British Foreign Office in its buoyant mood to prepare for the four-day visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the U.K, from September 16th to the 19th 2010, has made a number of proposals to make what they described as “an ideal visit.” As well as suggesting the launch of “Benedict” condoms, the memo circulated also proposed that the Pope should “open an abortion clinic,” “announce sacking of dodgy bishops”, sponsor a network of AIDS clinics, conduct a training course for bishops on child abuse allegations, ordain a female priest and bless a gay marriage. It also suggested getting the Pope and Her Majesty the Queen to sing a duet for charity and apologising for the Spanish Armada. Such gratuitous mockery has now created an acute diplomatic embarrassment for the British Government forcing it to make a grovelling apology to the Vatican (cfr. BBC News online). On a closer look at the so-called suggestions, it is a mockery of the teaching of the Catholic Church and her doctrines or a result of some of her unfortunate dark spots like paedophile priests. One retired British diplomat, commenting on the furore, has written that those who have been shocked by this document are suffering from a ‘sense of humour failure’, since this was merely the kind of in-joke that is made all the time among diplomats. But one cannot imagine that such suggestions whether as a joke or not can be made about Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists or other classes of people. Christians in general and Catholics in particular are a fair game. They could be ridiculed and made to look foolish, old fashioned and bizarre. This world view, of bullying of Christians, is widespread in fashionable circles among those who purport to be the most liberal, educated and enlightened minds. But the nagging question on the minds of Catholics is that: Why are the brightest and most liberal and highly educated minds are actually so closed and display a vicious illiberalism and gross absence of respect for other points of view? Why the most liberal minds are exhibiting the worst puerile signs of intolerance? It is baffling to notice that really some of the brightest minds have a parochial view of reality and cannot go beyond the confines of their cultural boundaries. Many people are attacked on a daily basis and some, even killed because of their religious beliefs in a world which we thought is growing more tolerant and safer for everybody to live.
But there are some hard facts which we need to contend with today. First, the world today is experiencing an irreversible and accelerated trend of migration, globalisation and multiculturalism where monocultures no longer exist. People are experiencing the joy of what it means to be a world citizen and the world has witnessed to the beauty of beliefs, cultures, values, practices, customs, norms and religions. All kinds of ethnocentrisms and intolerance have no place in the world nowadays. It does not make any sense to make a mockery of people’s religious beliefs and attitudes; and it does not yield anything positive apart from creating tensions, insecurity and chaos. Secondly, the society in which we live has changed in important ways, meaning that there is a need to interpret the world afresh, apply the values to new problems and generate fresh thinking and proposals for change. The United Nations estimates that currently 200 million people live outside their countries of origin, an increase of a quarter since 1990; and it is estimated that 5.5 million British citizens live outside the United Kingdom, rather more than the number of foreign nationals who live in the UK. This mobile global elite is prone to champion open borders; and are less interested by nationalism, instead arguing for new sorts of regional and global reordering. In such a scenario, any form of intolerance is a recipe for self-isolation, ethnocentrism and is undesirable in the community of nations which demands a certain level of civility and humane tolerance. It is surprising that societies which were once seen as an epitome of civility and culture are quickly sliding to debauchery in the name of freedom. The daily abuse of the Catholics and constant chatter against their beliefs indicates a new form of intolerance which is equivalent to the persecutions of the young Church in the first century of the Christian era. The Church is an innocent lamb which can be ridiculed and abused without any grave consequences. It is soft and easy prey to all kinds of debauchery. Attacks against the Church cannot be levelled against any other institution or class of people. It is easy to ridicule Christians without any grave consequences, neither economic sanctions nor diplomatic blockades. So, it is easy! But anyone attacking a weak and feeble person, that person too, is weak and feeble! Could it be that those attacking the church are weak human beings and feeble mortals who want to overcome their weakness and fallibility by attacking the church! May be so!