Monday, February 13, 2006
Theologian engages scriptures as feminist, Indian
Janina Gomes in the National Catholic Reporter on Sister Rekha Chennattu, the first Catholic woman in India to hold a doctorate in scripture.
It is a common experience to find that effort must multiply after something unravels, for example in Genesis Chapter 3.
The paradigms of her Western counterparts have not always been so enriching for women at the Indian grass roots.
Chennattu has a metaphor that goes beyond "breaking open the Word."
Though her passion was for the poor and the downtrodden in India, she felt that by realizing her dream of unraveling the Word of God for hundreds of students and sharing God’s mission, she would multiply her efforts several fold. ...
It is a common experience to find that effort must multiply after something unravels, for example in Genesis Chapter 3.
But Chennattu sometimes talk just like her Western counterparts.
Chennattu says she bases her teachings on grass-roots level experience and believes, "One needs to have creative and constructive dialogue among various groups -- biblical scholars, psychologists, sociologists and grass roots level people -- in order to arrive at meaningful paradigms that are mutually enriching."
The paradigms of her Western counterparts have not always been so enriching for women at the Indian grass roots.
They often shrink back from the rhetoric of feminism, she says, because some Indian women theologians have been tempted to imitate Western feminism, which is characterized by anger and animosity towards men and patriarchy.¶ 2/13/2006 10:30:00 PM
