"One of the results of focusing upon African American women's historic experience with surrogacy is that it raises significant questions about the way many Christians, including black women, have been taught to image redemption. More often than not the theology in mainline Christian churches, including black ones, teaches believers that sinful humankind has been redeemed because Jesus died on the cross in the place of humans, thereby taking human sin upon himself. In this sense Jesus represents the ultimate surrogate figure standing in the place of someone else: sinful humanity. Surrogacy, attached to this divine personage, thus takes on an aura of the sacred. It is therefore altogether fitting and proper for black women to ask whether the image of a surrogate God has salvific power for black women, or whether this image of redemption supports and reinforces the exploitation that has accompanied their experience with surrogacy. If black women accept this image of redemption, can they not also passively accept the exploitation surrogacy brings.
... For black women there is also the question of whether Jesus on the cross represents coerced surrogacy (willed by the Father), voluntary surrogacy (chosen by the Son), or both. At any rate, a major theological problem here is the place of the cross in any theology significantly informed by African American women's experience with surrogacy...
The practice [of historical theologians such as Origen, Anselm, and Abelard] was to use the language and sociopolitical thought of the time to render Christian principles [such as the atonement] understandable. This fits well the task of the black female theologian, which is to use the language and sociopolitical thought of black women's world to show them that their salvation does not depend upon any form of surrogacy made sacred by human understandings of God. This means using the language and thought of liberation to liberate redemption from the cross, and liberate the cross from the "sacred aura" put around it by existing patriarchal responses to the question of what Jesus' death represents.
... What this allows the black female theologian to show black women is that God did not intend the surrogacy roles they have been forced to perform...
... There is nothing of God in the blood of the cross. God does not intend black women's surrogacy experience. Neither can Christian faith affirm such an idea. Jesus did not come to be a surrogate. Jesus came for life, to show humans a perfect vision of ministerial relation that humans had forgotten long ago. As Christians, however, black women cannot forget the cross. But neither can they glorify it. To do so is to make their exploitation sacred. To do so is to glorify sin."
Delores S. Williams "Black Women's Surrogacy Experience and the Christian Notion of Redemption" Cross Examinations: Readings on the Meaning of the Cross Today (Augsburg Fortress, Minneapolis, MN: 2006) 19-32
Wow. That last bit is incredibly provocative. And I hated it the first time I read it. Then it started to do its good work on me. While I don't think Williams is strictly a Lutheran, this text does Law and Gospel to me.
Two essential things to keep in mind for everyone who does theology:
1.) Christian theology has historically been appropriated and weaponized against marginalized people. If his tomb was filled, Jesus Christ would be rolling in his grave. That people (even in high offices) within the Church have been harmful to others, and have used traditional doctrines in ways that really hurt people cannot be contested - it is a simple and lamentable fact.
2.) Mercifully, being at the right hand of the Father, Jesus instead chooses to send preachers and prophets within the Church to challenge it, and lead it out of sin. And there is always life to be found in Christian theology - in spite of (and perhaps to spite) the myriad ways it has been used to harm people. Faithful theologians do not simply parrot the lines that their predecessors loved, they bring Christ's life to people.
Delores Williams is a theologian who never fails to challenge me and give me life. I've wanted to write about her for some time. What I quote and speak of is only an aspect of her wider theological corpus. So I invite you to read much more. But I've been hesitant and perhaps still am hesitant to write about her for a few reasons. First - her words are a sword of the Lord to my ears - they condemn me and protect me at same time. Second, they reveal that my preferred language of the grace, solidarity, and love of God - the cross of Jesus Christ - can be harmful to people I want to help. And third - white dudes talking about womanist theologians can be patronizing - and I despise that and fear I might fall into that trap. But I want to do well by her words, and I want to honor her because she has helped me, and it's my not-so-well distributed blog so I can write about who I want.
Delores Williams is a Paul Tillich Professor Emerita of Theology and Culture at Union Seminary - and like Tillich, she refuses to witness to a Gospel of Jesus Christ that is bound to a culturally conditional experience. Even more, she is painfully aware of how sinister (or demonic, in the Tillichian sense) elements of culture can turn the most powerful and beautiful symbolic language which bears Gospel of Jesus Christ into bad news for the oppressed. The language we use can give death, not life. It can rob people of meaning, of their experience, and of the Truth, as opposed to giving, and illuminating the love and justice of God. Even the language I love most.
In this particular article - Williams witnesses to the experience of black women in the United States who have been sinfully pushed into roles of surrogacy - which could be the result of either violent coercion or social pressure. But when Jesus is put into a surrogate position (replacing humankind on the cross), there is the potential for misusing Jesus' name to justify human suffering, and divinizing oppression.
If, Williams puts forward, our suffering makes us "Christ-like", and if forgiving oppressors is "Christ-like," then can't the oppressors in some sick and twisted way turn themselves into the heroes of the story? Aren't they doing a favor to the broken and battered and abused - by making them models of "Christian" life?
And she's right. The ugly truth is I've heard those arguments before. I have heard men justify their own hatred and abuse, and their own right to not treat women as equals under God. I've heard men argue their own entitlement to forgiveness, and with forgiveness, their entitlement to never change or address their own shortcomings. The Christian use of the cross - originally intended as a subversion against Roman oppression and authoritarianism - can be fully reverted into a symbol of oppression again. When such a reversion occurs - traditional forms and language can do more harm than good. This doesn't mean we have to throw them away - but we have to be aware of our context, humble about our tradition, open to the experiences of others, and faithful in a God who loves the world.
This is Williams' skillful fight. When she "rejects" the cross - it's not really the Cross. Nor is it an attack on the incarnation. She objects to sin's power to warp the symbols of the Church. She challenges the Church's tendency to be satisfied with a status quo that does not reflect God's kingdom (or, to use a modern womanist parlance that I've seen gain favor - "God's kin-dom"). She uses the tradition, and her theological imagination, enraptured by the Holy Spirit, to envision new possibilities for proclamation to every age, for every nation. Because while God's life cannot be contained, it does choose to dwell among us. And this is Good News.
Read Delores Williams because sin has the power to warp even our most sacred symbols. Read Delores Williams because you know that the Holy Spirit won't stand for that - but continues to work for the liberation of the captives, and for life everlasting.
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