"LENT AND WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH"

“LENT AND WOMEN’S HISTORY”

            The Season of Lent begins this week with Ash Wednesday.  Lent is a time in the church calendar that allows and even invites us to consider our captivity to the powers that lynched Black Jesus on the Cross.  The church has often emphasized that worshippers should give up something for Lent, so that we may know the suffering of humanity and of Black Jesus.  My Protestant heritage has downplayed this “giving up,” and I prefer to focus on my many captivities in this time.   As the man told Black Jesus in Luke 8 when he was asked to give his name, I join him in answering “My name is Legion,” meaning that my demonic possessions are many – so many and so powerful that I have given up my identity to them.  It is this captivity that we are all asked to consider in Lent.

            The Season of Lent usually intersects with Black History Month, and that intersection is a fruitful one for reflection in Lent in the American context. As has often been said, white supremacy is our original American sin, and we would do well to always keep that before us, no matter the liturgical season.  Yet this year, because Easter comes so late (April 21), Lent intersects with Women’s History Month, which exposes an even deeper and wider captivity:  patriarchy and the ideology of male supremacy.  These two forces – white supremacy and male supremacy – often intersect, and Catherine Meeks and I will explore this in in our forthcoming book “Passionate Justice:  Ida Wells as Witness for Our Time,” to be published this fall.   No matter one’s racial classification, however, patriarchy cuts across all of them and runs deeply through them.

            So, in this season of Lent, I’m going to focus on my captivity to male supremacy, and I’m hoping that all of us will do so.  Such a focus will ask us to first celebrate the personhood and witness of women in our lives – particular women in our histories, and women in general in the life of humanity.  That’s what Women’s History Month is about.  Take some time this month to celebrate the women who have literally and figuratively given you life.  Take some time this month to celebrate those women whom you have never met, who have been witnesses for justice and equity for all of us, but especially for women. 

            Second, on the Lent part of the cycle, let us remember our captivity to patriarchy, which seeks to prevent all of us from celebrating the humanity and the equality and the witness of women.  This captivity permeates all of us, telling males that we are superior to women, and telling women that they are inferior to men.  It only takes a nanosecond for me to note how deeply captured I am by patriarchy.  And, in a world that is saturated with seeing women as bodies only, as property of men, these reminders of patiarchy are everywhere in my life.  In this intersection of Women’s History Month and Lent, I want to wrestle with my captivity to patriarchy and to continue to seek some liberation from it.  Women’s History Month helps me in this journey by lifting up women who have worked and struggled and screamed and fought and witnessed for the human dignity of women, and at the same time, offered a glimpse of liberation to us men who remain captive to male supremacy.

            So, I want to start with those women in my life who have given me a glimpse of the world that Black Jesus desires: a world where women are judged by the content of their character and not by the content of their bodies.  My mother Mary Stroupe was the primary witness, along with my great-great aunt Bernice Higgins (whom I called “Gran”) with whom we lived.  In those days, they would have said “no” to my characterization of them as feminists, but they were strong, independent women who refused in the end to be defined by men.  I was blessed to be raised by these women, with no men in the house.  There are many stories that I could share (and will someday), but the main value that they gave me was this:  compassion and community are at the heart of life.  In an affluent, American world so determined by money and males and the lying idea of independence, this was truly a great gift.

            Five other women in my life leap out at me:  My partner Caroline Leach has changed my life dramatically and deepened my commitment to equity for all, especially for women.  She and our daughter Susan Stroupe have helped me see the need to steadily resist the Forced Gestation and Forced Birth Movement (sometimes known as the anti-abortion movement).  I refuse to call it pro-life, because it does not care about life – when the baby is born, the FGFBM is ready to cut off all support for the baby.   No, the FGFBM has only one focus:  control of women’s bodies.

            Three other women are relatively new to my life, but they have influenced me so deeply:  daughter-in-law Erin Graham and granddaughters Emma and Zoe Stroupe.  I look forward to learning even more from them in the years that I have left.  And, of course, though he is not a woman, our son David, has been so important in receiving these values and growing them in his own way.  I am grateful to these seven women who have deepened me and helped me to begin to find some liberation from male supremacy.  There are many other women, of course, who have helped me to see the humanity of women and my continuing captivity.  In this season of Lent, so I am aware of my deep captivity, and I will be focusing on the intersection of the celebration of women and the ongoing struggle for liberation for all of us from the ideology of male supremacy.  I hope that you’ll join me in this journey in this season.