Distributed by Metropolitan Community Churches
Theological Resources & Comments
on Multi-Faith
Dialogue
MCC's Asian Pacific
Islander Month - May 2002
Jezebel's reputation as depraved and unfaithful to Yahweh
deserves reconsideration. The account of Jezebel was written as part of the
Deuteronomist History in the ninth century BC. The Deuteronomist historian is
primarily concerned with creating uniformity and fidelity to Yahweh. During this
period, the Israelites were settling into the Promised Land and establishing a
monarchy. The monarchy separated into the Northern and Southern Kingdoms after
the reign of Solomon. This division endangered the unity of God's chosen people.
The Deuteronomist points to "adulterous" idolatrous worship as the cause of
divisiveness.
Jezebel, the princess of Tyre, may have been a priestess
of Asherah, a Canaanite fertility goddess that was a consort of Baal. As was
custom for women of her stature in that time, Jezebel's marriage to Ahab was
most likely for political purposes between Tyre and the Northern Kingdom of
Israel. Jezebel journeyed to be with her husband with the role to unite.
However, she is no apostate. Rather, she remains loyal to her faith of origin
and both maintains her culture and acculturates to Israel. Through her living
both as an insider to the covenant of Yahweh and a preserver of her heritage,
Jezebel is a unity maker through affirming diversity. In contrast, the
Deuteronomist historian that defames idolatrous worship must create a conflict
in order to create unity through uniformity. Ultimately, Jezebel is make into
dog food, an unfortunate fate that many horses endure, and is remembered in
traditional Christian exegesis as a depraved and unfaithful
woman.
Jezebel's adulterous "crime" was her worship of Baal. Jezebel
devotion to Baal provided her association with fertility and sexuality (see 1
Kings 21). The account of her death has significant sexual implications. In 2
Kings 9:22, Jezebel met her death at the hands of Jehu. Jehu massacred the royal
family. Upon hearing about this, Jezebel "painted her eyes and adorned her
hair." Eye makeup is traditionally linked to sexual licentiousness. After
decorating herself, she exhorted Jehu's transgressions out from her window.
Angered Jehu ordered her death, and fulfilling Elijah's prophecy, Jezebel was
eaten by dogs. Jezebel's difference was slandered with sexual connotations.
Difference is often sexualized when the dominant group lacks the ability to
affirm and celebrate multiplicity. For example, such failure to affirm and
celebrate difference surfaces in how dominant Christianity's problematic
handling of sexuality in general is often projected onto Queers as "the
problem." For Jezebel, in a dynamic interplay, the fear of sexuality pairs with
the fear of her "other" faith tradition.
Like Jezebel, many queer Asian
Pacific Islanders live with a continuum of promise and pain. On the painful
hand, queer APIs are alienated from both the dominant G/L/B/T/I community and
their Asian culture of origin. In addition, the Asian cultures, like all other
ethnic groups, grapple with homophobia. As people of color, Asian Pacific
Islanders struggle with a dynamic of inclusion and exclusion as a result of the
desire to create a unified Asian identity in the face of racism. Similarly, in
most cultures, the dominant G/L/B/T/I community promotes an inclusion and
exclusion dynamic. For example, the pressure to conform to queerness is evident
in the pressure to "come out" both privately and publicly and ascribe to certain
physical appearances. Of course, for many, these norms of "queerness" are
authentic and/or not binding, but the pressures to fit in abounds within the
G/L/B/T/I community at large.
On the promise hand, queer APIs have
presented and present contributions to the fabric of the worldwide queer
community. Queer APIs have a unique opportunity to view the queer community as a
multi-layered minority within being a minority. Potentially, this perspective
accelerates keen discernment of the status of our world and community,
creativity, and compassion. Potentially, the worldview that manifests from
living on a promise and pain continuum enables seeing the world and our
community as a complex web of relationships. This web calls for each of us to
make wrong relationships right, and draw into mutual and constructive connection
all the pieces of humanity to make the holy vision of radical and wild
inclusivity realized. Concretely, queer API activists with their particularized
multilayered worldviews have contributed greatly to the G/L/B/T/I Movement.
Queer APIs continue to bring their cultural and theological contributions to our
movement and our MCC denomination.
Theologically, API Christians are in a
keen position for mature, reflective, and constructive multi-faith dialogue. In
Asia only 1-3% of the populace is Christian. Asia is considered the birthplace
of the major world religions of Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Shintoism.
Christianity's scant following draws into necessity multi-faith dialogue. In
other words, because so few Asians and consequently first generation Asian
Americans are Christian, API/As are already imbued with the worldviews and
theologies of many religious traditions. Therefore, API Christians hold rich
resources from their multiple consciousness, faith dialogues, and worldview
acculturation process.
For example, my first generation grandmother,
Chan Sien Kim, known as Barbara at her Chinese Baptist Church, was a dedicated
follower of Jesus Christ. She donned a gold cross around her neck daily for over
thirty years. In her heart, my grandmother held that Jesus Christ was her
personal Lord and Savior. And, in her living room she displayed a jade Buddha, a
porcelain representation of Confucius and Kwan Yin, the Chinese Goddess of
Mercy. These were not only decorative items for aesthetic comfort but also,
expressions of her heritage and her identity journey to becoming an
authentically faithful Chinese American Christian. In short, her personal
relationship with Jesus was forever informed by her childhood devotion to the
Buddha. She understood the parallels between Jesus and Buddha's role as a
teacher and a healer. Her connection to God was foremost and her theology was
best authenticated and articulated through her faith journey through the promise
pain continuum. Through the pain of her immigration experiences and consequent
cultural compromises, with her authentic devotion to her spiritual life, she
actualized the promise of creative faith expression.
Hong Kong Chinese
Feminist Christian theologian Kwok Pui Lan acknowledges the contentious
issues that surround of multi-faith dialogue. Kwok writes that multi-faith
dialogue must entail a willingness to look at one's own tradition from many
perspectives, with maturity to look at similarities and differences, and the
humility to learn from all partners in conversation. A multi-faith dialogue that
is attuned to God's vision of peace and justice and is radical inclusive does
not normalize, or value one tradition over another. Rather, multi-faith dialogue
sensitizes each person of faith to the many perspectives of the Biblical world,
the history of Christianity, the multiple lenses of Queers, and to the ways in
which the Spirit calls our attention to issues and concerns in today's world.
Kwok Pui Lan also introduces dialogical imagination in
cross-cultural and theological exchanges to bridge the complexities that many
contexts and multiple consciousness of Asian and Asian Americans.
The
term "dialogical imagination" describes the process of creative hermeneutics in
Asia. It attempts to convey the complexities, the multidimensional linkages, and
the different levels of meaning. Dialogical imagination attempts to bridge the
gaps of time and space, to create new horizons, and to connect the disparate
elements of our lives into a meaningful whole.
Dialogical imagination
can also bring forth the fruitful continuities within the many contexts and
multiple consciousness of G/L/B/T/Is that provide springboards for creativity.
By interpreting or adjusting one's worldview to incorporate how multiple
relationships construct who each of us are, who we are, and how we see God, true
unity can be built on the affirmation and valuing of multiplicity. Instead of
promoting unity based on sameness, unity can proliferate from making the
multiple ways of being and being God's people in right interrelationship. Kwok
writes of obliterating hierarchies of truth and affirming the beauty of many
truths in order to invite meaningful wholeness and incite new truths.
We
must liberate ourselves from a hierarchical model of truth, which leads to the
coercion of others into sameness, oneness, homogeneity, and which excludes
multiplicity and plurality.
Jezebel, like Queer APIs, holds the capacity
to perceive the multidimensional linkages that inform faith and inform how unity
can be achieved in mutuality building and creative ways. Unlike the
Deuteronomist historian, Jezebel affirms diversity as a means to unite. In MCC's
Year of the Horse making bold steps that move us forward in faith beckon. In our
war wrought world where the weaponry includes religious rhetoric, our world
cries in need of mature multi-faith dialogue and relationship making based on a
willingness to look at one's own tradition from many perspectives, with maturity
to look at similarities and differences, and the humility to learn from all
partners in conversation. Queer people rereading the scripture passages
concerning Jezebel's sexualization and horses' war and conquest connotations
through the lenses of our multiple experiences within the continuum of pain,
promises that our calling to engage in "Holy War" is not for purposes of
domination. But rather, we might wage a truly Holy War by receiving God's
promise that we will be liberated from our spiritual bondage and self-loathing
through the celebration of diversity. Part of co-creating this promise into
actualization entails that Queer API/As are empowered to acknowledge and embrace
the cultural and religious backgrounds of our ancestors and make the commitment
that we are the founding ancestors for the future. It is my prayer that as North
America globalizes economically and technologically, and as MCC increasingly
"goes global" with our denomination, we employ dialogical imagination to make
connections in right interrelationship and create a new truth of peaceable and
justice-love-making global connection.
Copyright Universal
Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, 2002.
Permission granted to
reproduce for local ministry use only.
(END)
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