Struggle to Be the Sun Again

by Hyun Kyung Chung

Struggle to Be the Sun Introducing Asian Women's Theology [Paperback] ...

Genres: Theology, Religion, Spirituality, Feminism, Christianity, Nonfiction, Christian

160 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1990

About the author

Associate Professor Chung Hyun Kyung, graduated from Ewha Women’s University in Seoul with the B.A. (1979) and the M.A. (1981). She holds the M.Div. from the School of Theology at Claremont (1984), a diploma from the Women’s Theological Center in Boston (1984), and the Ph.D. from Union Theological Seminary (1989). She is a lay theologian of the Presbyterian Church of Korea, as well as once having become a temporary Buddhist novice nun. In 1999, she lived for a year in a Buddhist monastery in the Himalayas studying mediation. Now she is in the process of becoming a dharma teacher at the Kwan Eum Zen School in New York City. She first came to international attention in 1991, when she made a now famous speech– a feminist/Asian/ Third World interpretation of the Holy Spirit–at the World Council of Churches in Canberra, Australia. She defines herself as a “salimist” (Korean Eco-feminist) from the Korean word “salim,” which means “making things alive.”

Reviews

[Pablo Palet Araneda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing. Reading it opened my eyes. It deeply questioned patriarchal assumptions of many of my Christian concepts, only to open myself to a wider understanding of my personalrelation to God and my commitment for universal (and concrete) human liberation, also and mainly from male-dominated religions.

[samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

• 1. The Historical Context of Asian Women’s Theology
• Asian women’s -public visibility first occurred with the rise of the anti-colonial and nationalist movements in many Asian countries at the dawn of the twentieth century. Women fought alongside men to break the chain of imperialism and to recover the independence and self-determination of their countries.
• The present Asian women’s movement, which is growing rapidly, in many cases has its origin in women’s participation in the grassroots people’s movement for “‘survival rights.”’
• Historically, Asian Christian women’s theology arose with the help of three organizations which provide most of the material in this book: the Christian Conference of Asia (CCA), the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians (EATWOT) and the journal In God’s Image (IGI).
• CCA
 Post WWII had two tasks: macro level decolonization of the socio-political and religio-cultural institutions and micro level reconstruction of external/internal lives of individuals.
 CCA constructed to deal with these, to be relevant to people’s struggle for full humanity. (called EACC at first)
 First focus was indigenization: meaningful theology created out of cultural/religious heritages
 But emphases on contextualization and critical Asian principles emerge to include the totality of Asia’s reality.
 Women’s issues not a central issue until 70s when, pressured by Elizabeth Tapia, CCA forms a WOMENS DESK. Their task is consciousness-raising
• EATWOT
 Established by Asian, African, Lat Am theologians to develop theologies “from the underside of history,” and a unity among Third World.
 Women's liberation handled as a “big joke” for much of its first conferences
 Women-only national meetings held in 84/85, produce a WOMEN’S COMMISSION.
 Attention here paid to:
• 1. Various oppressions of women and women’s response a) in society b) in the church
• 2. Social analysis of their respective countries a) economic structure b) political situation c) socio-cultural and religious situations
• 3. Theological reflections a) Hermeneutical analysis of the Bible and other sources such as myths, folklore, legends, and indigenous religions b) God-talk and women; Christology and women; Mariology and women; Pneumatology and women; emerging forms of spirituality
• IN GODS IMAGE
 The only feminist theological journal in Asia that publishes women’s essays without national or denominational restrictions
 IGJ was started by Lee Sun Ai, a “theologically trained housewife who refused to be wasted.”
 Since formal theological education has been virtually denied to Asian women, the establishment of a feminist theological journal in the early 1980s was indeed an act of faith; theology in Asia had always been created by elite, Western-educated males.
 It became a theological sanctuary, a space without male censorship.
 The committee suggested concrete ways in which Asian women could participate in the development of the journal:
• —introduce yourself and others you share with in your context
• —tell us what you are doing and thinking, planning and hoping for
• —send us any expression of your thought, individual or collective, which can be reproduced in In God’s Image
• —tell us of others to whom we can send In God’s Image.*5
• 2. The Social Context of Asian Women’s Theology
• Asian women’s theology was born out of Asian women’s tears and sighs and CRIES and from their burning desire for liberation and wholeness. It is neither the logical consequence of academic debate of the university nor the pastoral conclusion of the institutional church.
• After many heartaches, Asian women are coming of age.
 DIscarding omnipotent Father God, the God of their colonizers and God of the dominant institutional church
 Discarding identity as daddy’s or brother’s girl
 Recovering full humanity and ripened womanity.
 Renaming their own God who gives birth to their dignity and nourishes and empowers them in their life struggle.
• Asian women have begun to ask hard questions. They first ask what God is doing in their lives and where God is working. Their first question leads them to another question: Who and what is God? The question about God’s action in their lives precedes the question about God’s being or essence. Out of these hard questions, Asian women are trying to carve a theology that is “very Third World, very Asian and very women.”
 VERY THIRD WORLD: Third World women are the poor among the poor. They are, however, creators and sustainers of humanity, embracing all the miseries of Third World-ness in their bodies.
 VERY ASIAN: embraces rich religious, cultural, linguistic heritages
 VERY WOMEN: what distinguishes Asian women’s struggle from the men of the continent is their women-ness. Asian women are oppressed economically, socially, politically, religiously, and culturally in specific ways just because they are women.
• Detractors say: Isn’t feminism a white women’s notion from the capitalist West and therefore quite irrelevant to Asian women’s reality?
 But Asian women nonetheless rightly contend that the liberative core of feminism cannot be automatically despised merely because of its geographical origin.
• Detractors say: Is not the Asian women’s liberation movement a middle-class women a movement that does not contribute to the poor women’s struggle?
 [Male theology hsa the same prob!] To these men Asian feminists respond by saying, “Only if you discard your political, social, and cultural ideas with your middle-class status, might we take your comments seriously.”
• Detractors say: Do not feminists divide Asian communities, which must be united for our national liberation?
 Asian feminists love their communities. Our men’s well-being is intrinsically related to our well-being. They are members of our family. We Asian women often say that we do not want any feminist revolution which does not include our men and children.
 Male liberation has NOT historically included women. So this work matters.
• Detractors say: If “Asian feminism” is to be in harmony with noble Asian culture, should it not be non-confrontational?
 Asian women, they say, should be the main carriers of traditional Asian culture, a culture mainly defined by the men in power. We should not be aggressive or militant “like Western women” because we Asian women have a noble culture which stretches back many thousands of years.
 There are two major reasons for this double standard. One is an emphasis On a misguided view of nationalism, and the other is an internalized “orientalism,” which is the product of colonialism.
• Detractors say: Feminism is an important liberation movement. However, we have more important movements to deal with in our respective communities such as class struggle, racial struggle, and anti-colonial struggle. Therefore, women should wait until these liberation struggles are complete.
 We women never seem to have “the right time” for liberation under patriarchal history! If now is not the right time for us, we will not have any right time in the future.
 Actually, when men incorporate women’s claim for liberation as an intrinsic part of the struggle for total liberation, they accelerate the liberation process.
• 3. Struggle to be The Sun Again: Asian Women’s Theological Reflections on Humanity
• From birth to death Asian women have to fight against “death-wishes” from male-dominated society.
• Asian women’s self-understanding grows out of brutal reality of being (as daughters) disappointing, being named, in turn, curses words, being killed by those who wanted a son, being more poorly fed, less educated and overworked. Being oppressed publicly and domestically. Bodies controlled and labors exploited.
• EPISTEMOLOGICAL STARTING POINT: “If you start to ask the meaning of pain and suffering, you begin to know God”
• THE QUESTION FOR ASIAN FEM THEOLOGY: What does it mean to be fully human. When bodies are beaten, torn, dismembered, finding God in the brokenness.
 To be Human is to Suffer and Resist
• Asian women must come to terms with their suffering in order to understand who they are as human beings.
• Asian women have become “no-body” under the body-killin structures of the powers of this world, such as foreign domination, state repression, militarism, racial strife, capitalism
• HAN: Korean women theologians, along with Korean male minjung” theologians, have articulated another mode of responding to the sinful situation of the oppressed. They call it han. Han is the most prevalent feeling among Korean people, who have been violated throughout their history by the surrounding powerful countries. Passive acceptance of han is “jung han.” Untangling of han is han-pu-ri (resisting han in gentle ways or militantly)
• Public self-love as resistance
 To be Human is to Be Created in God’s Image
• for Asian women good news from the Bible is not a free gift to accept without suspicion since the Bible carries so many oppressive messages for women.
• God is transformed to leave room in the image
o God is both Female and Male
o God as Community in relationship
o God as creator in Nature and History
o God as Life-Giving Spirit
o God as Mother and Woman
• Who is Jesus for Asian Women?
• Traditional Images received from missionaries still dominate, but Asian women find emergent meanings in them
 Jesus as Suffering Servant. This is better than triumphal King or authoritative high priest bc those support patriarchal religious consciousness. Yet making meaning out of suffering is dangerous business! The key is to love this Jesus not IN SPITE OF but BECAUSE OF who he is.
 Jesus as Lord. This, like suffering Jesus, has been used against Asian women (to justify political and economic domination). Yet they see liberative power of Lord of the poor and oppressed–his lordship is figured as the opposite of patriarchal lordship. Attaching Kyrios to him is like him using Abba–it’s a move of resistance of typical connotations
 Jesus as Immanuel: Asian women cherish incarnation, but his divinity/humanity isn’t Nicean. His humanness is NOT his maleness. And his divinity is something that calls asian women to go to the realm of the divine, to elevate self-consciousness
• New Emerging Images: Christological transformations!
 Jesus as Liberator, Revolutionary, Political Martyr
 Jesus as Mother, Woman, and SHAMAN
• He cries like a mother. Bleeds as women have (image here is menstruation–life-giving blood!)
 Jesus as Worker and Grain.
• Finding God, saving presence within daily lives of the poor. This factory worker sees her Christ in workers and their hard struggle for survival. She does not believe any longer in the image of a flamboyant Jesus who looks like one of the rich and famous people in her childhood.
• Who is Mary for Today’s Asian Women?
• If Jesus, a Jewish man, became a symbol of new humanity for Asian women, transcending historical, geographical, and gender boundaries, so Mary, a Jewish woman, also became another.symbol of new humanity for Asian women through her words and deeds.
• Jesus and Mary are two models of the fully liberated human being from whom Asian Christian women find their source of empowerment and inspiration
• Mary has not always been empowering–negative Mariologies were invented to justify subordination.
 Protestants eliminate her
 Catholics domesticate her
• Male-defined Mary has been a familiar alien for Asian women
• Asian women’s feminist perspectives on Mary are redeeming the “silenced, denied, sanctified, safe, gentle, holy Mary” from “her marble and stone” prison through Asian women’s anger and revolutionary action.” Let us look at the liberated and liberator image of Mary which is being created out of Asian women’s womb of suffering
• Mary as Model for Full Womanhood and of the Fully Liberated Human Being
 Mary as Virgin: Self-Defining Woman
• Her virginity is not biological reality but relational reality. Virginity as “symbol for the autonomy of women,” not just a woman who abstains from sex but a woman who does not leave a DERIVED LIFE as daughter/wife/mother of men.
 Mary as Mother: Giver of Life to God and New Humanity
• Since Mary is a virgin who is not domesticated by the patriarchal order, she can give birth to God and new humanity. The new order of God, the new redeemed humanity, cannot be brought to the world through the old order of patriarchy.
• Starts with her saying YES
• Jesus was born through the body of this woman, “a liberated, mature woman, who had a mind and will of her own, capable of self determination and perseverance in her decisions.
• Jesus was also RAISED by her, nurtured and taught by a mother who embodied his people’s aspirations for liberation.
• Mary’s personal choice to be a mother of Jesus was also a political choice which was connected to the foundation of new community for freedom and wholeness. Her “individual” motherhood was extended to “social” motherhood through her suffering, hope, and revolutionary action.
 Mary as Sister: A Woman in Solidarity with Other Women and the Oppressed
• Visitation is huge here!
• Mary as Model for True Discipleship: Mary’s strength as a disciple lies in her receptive and unbeatable spirit, which enables her to be sensitive to the needs of God and the oppressed people and to refuse victimization in any circumstance. Her receptivity to the spirit of God “does not imply powerlessness nor is it simply a passive trait. Rather, it is a creative submission of a fully liberated human being, who, not being subject to any other human being or human laws, is free to serve God.”
 She is servant TO GOD, NOT PATRIARCHY
• Mary as Co-Redeemer for Human Salvation
 1. Some figure her as co-redemptrix by her role as a model for the liberation and salvation of humanity. Here she is prototype
 2. Others depict her as helper and mediator for the redemption of humanity. Here she actually does something for salvation (“Jesus needs his mother”)
• 6. Emerging Asian Women’s Spirituality
• What is emerging Asian women’s spirituality? Out of their daily struggle for full humanity, Asian women are giving birth to “a spirituality that is particularly women’s and specifically Asian.”?
• ASIAN WOMEN’S SPIRITUALITY (DEF):
 faith experience based on convictions and beliefs which motivate our thought processes and behavior patterns in our relationships to God and neighbor. Spirituality is the integral wholeness of a person concretizing his/her faith through their daily life experience. Asian women’s spirituality is the awakening of the Asian woman’s soul to her concrete historical reality—poverty, oppression and suffering. It is a response and commitment of a soul infused by the spirit, to the challenge for human dignity and freedom, and a new life of love.
• Unlike trad spirituality, this one is NOT ascetic. NOT removed from world
• HOW ITS FORMED
• 1. Impasse: Living Death
 Asian women’s spirituality begins with the reality of impasse. This impasse is caused by their experience of economic, political, cultural, and psychological oppression.
 Spirituality irrupts through this impasse
 In their impasses and private hells, Asian women cry out and struggle in order to find a gate which will lead them to the world of freedom and wholeness.
• 2. Choice for Life: Discovering True Self
 Inner liberation from internal and external slaveries. Taste of liberation comes from development of self-knowledge, self-acceptance, and self-esteem
• 3. Reach Out: Building a Community
 Women with “self-knowledge, self-acceptance and self-esteem” have strength to reach out to other people who live under impasse.
 Since women live their spirituality in their everyday lives, they can “feel for others and opt for the needy one. This is compassionate spirituality.
• Characteristics of Asien Women’s Spirituality
 1. Concrete and Total
 2. Creative and Flexible
 3. Prophetic and Historical
 4. Community Oriented
 5. Pro-Life
• (In a footnote: This term should not be identified with the anti-abortionist slogan in the United States. When Asian women talk about pro-life spirituality, they mean literally pro-life for all living beings, not the Western context of opposing women’s reproductive rights.
 6. Ecumenical, All Embracing
 7. Cosmic, Creation-Centered (Ecotheology)
• 7. The Contribution and the Future of Asian Women’s Theology
• The preceding chapters examined the historical context of emerging Asian women’s theology and its reflections on humanity, Jesus, Mary, and spirituality. This final chapter will summarize and identify the contribution of Asian women’s theologies based on women’s struggle for self-determination and for full humanity in Asia, and will also offer some comments about the future of Asian women’s theology.
• Four prevalent images, four new understandings, growing among Asian Christian women
 1. Theology as “Cry, Plea, Invocation” to God.
• It is the sound of han bursting.
• Not written with pen but inscribed on heart
 2. Theology as “God-Praxis”
• This theology is live-ing theology.
• GOD PRAXIS RATHER THAN GOD TALK. theology-in-action
 3. Theology as Embodied, Critical Reflection
• Avoids the “violence of abstraction”
 4. Theology as “Vision Quest”
• It is firmly based on concrete, historical reality but points to the mystery and vision that calls Asian women from the future and the depth of all that is.

[K Kriesel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is very much an introduction. At times I thought it was too generalized, referring to how all Asian women think for example. And yet this book was still too radical for the seminary I attended - I'm mad even this most basic intro isn't more common among Christian academia in the US

[James Hamrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chung Hyun Kyung offers a brief and accessible introduction to Asian women's theology as it stood in 1990. For her, the task of Asian women's theology is to create a theology from the ground up that emerges from the lived experiences of Asian women who have suffered at the intersecting oppressions of colonialism, patriarchy, and classism. This theology should result in the liberation and full humanity not only of Asian women, but all people.

She begins with chapters on the historical and social contexts of Asian women's theology, then devotes chapters to anthropology, Jesus, Mary, and spirituality. She closes with a chapter that looks to the future of Asian women's theology and that explores theological method. She makes generous use of quotations from Asian women writers, including poetry, giving the book a very multi-voiced feel.
I personally found the chapter on Mary and the final chapter on theological method particularly engrossing. As someone who primarily comes out of Protestant traditions, I haven't reflected much on Mary let alone mariology from a feminist perspective, so this opened some new doors for me. The closing chapter offers some great challenges and models for what theology is and how it can be done.

Just a few of the many things that caught my attention:
-The openness to syncretism. While syncretism is usually a dirty word among Christian theologians, the author believes that Asian women's theology ought to embrace it, being willing to draw on liberating traditions not only from the Bible and Christian theology but from indigenous traditions. She uses the phrase "survival-liberation centered syncretism."
-The call to make storytelling the first step in the theological process, to root theology in lived experience, for Asian women to trust their "guts", and for Asian women theologians to see themselves as "the text."
-The author recognizes that most published Asian women theologians are middle class women writing in languages of colonizers, and that they cannot speak for poor Asian women. I think there are some good things that all of us who hold varying forms of privilege can learn from her discussions of creating solidarity with poor Asian women. Drawing on Elizabeth Tapia she uses the image of "echo" -- that middle class Asian women theologians can echo the voices of the poor:

"Tapia wants her theology to become an echo for poor Filipino women by lifting their concerns when appropriate. Tapia wants the silenced voices of poor Filipino women to be heard by her becoming an echo of their cries. By echoing their cries, Tapia is participating in the struggle of Filipino women. Echoes do not change the original sounds; echoes resound the original sounds. In this sense such echoes are the most honest and powerful testimony to the poor woman's voice of truth when the 'culture of silence' suppresses women's truth-telling with various political, economic, and social devices which destroy any coherent sound from women. This image of echo will be the vital image for the educated, middle-class women doing theology in solidarity with poor women in Asia until that time when the echo changes into a symphony in which every woman, regardless of background, with the fullness of her humanity, is able to make her own sound of truth heard" (103).

The author also uses the language of "accountability." Middle class women theologians don't create theologies for the poor, but are called to create theologies that are accountable to them. For me that's part of why it is important for those of us who hold various forms of privilege to read books like "Struggle to be the Sun Again" -- it's one of the ways that we can be accountable to our oppressed siblings and neighbours in the struggle for justice.

A worthwhile read for anyone interested in third-world, liberation, and feminist theologies -- or anyone with just a general interest in theology. I think it's accessible for those who don't have formal theological training. You might also check out the journal "in God's image," which the author draws on quite a bit: http://www.awrc4ct.org/igi/

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

AN INTRODUCTION TO ASIAN WOMEN'S THEOLOGY

At the time this book was published in 1990, Chung Hyun Kyung (who has a doctorate from Union Theological Seminary) taught systematic theology at Ewha Women's University, in Seoul, Korea.

She wrote in the Preface, "This book is about emerging Asian women's liberation theology. I intend to present the context and specific contributions of emerging Asian women's theology out of their struggle for survival and liberation."

She begins by observing, "Doing theology is a personal and a political activity. As a Korean woman, I do theology in my search of what it means to be fully human in my struggle for wholeness and in my people's concrete historical fight for freedom... My theological questioning neither falls from the sky nor is derived primarily from the academy. Rather, it comes from my anger and hope as a Third World woman who refuses to be victimized by any kind of colonialism. My theology is also inspired by my burning desire for self-determination, and it originates from a liberation-oriented, Third World interpretation of people's history." (Pg. 1)

She regrets that, although she now has decided that she "would not waste my life solving the theological puzzles of the people who were the cause of our suffering," she spent most of her theological education "reacting against white European and North American theologies," and "hardly found the time and energy to construct my own theology." (Pg. 3)

She suggests that Asian women's yearning for, and rediscovery of, a Godhead "which contains both male and female qualities," is the same yearning for ful humanity "in which both males and females are fully represented as equal partners." (Pg. 48) Nevertheless, she points out that many Asian women feel closer to Mary as a model for full humanity than to Jesus, "for the obvious reason that Mary is a woman." (Pg. 75)

This is an excellent contribution to the gradually-emerging field of Asian women's theology, and very much worth reading.

[Brad Dell · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is good and kind of stays there. The scholarly/dissertation tone diluted what I believe to have been more deserving of passion and persuasion. Hyun Kyung presented her story in the introduction but she then transitions to a “them” tone rather than “we.”

Though I had to restrain my instinct to skip sections I thought to be unbiblical (affirmation of my beliefs was not the point of reading), I’m glad I stuck it through to better understand where others are coming from in their interpretations of Christ, the Church, and Mary. I need this perspective, living in Hawaii and being friends with many first- and second-gen Asian immigrants, so I’m grateful for the sharing.

Altogether, a valuable read with plenty of highlighted gems that diversified my perspective, but not a read I’d call engaging.

[Stephanie Ridiculous · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an incredibly valuable & and insightful book for anyone looking to de-center whiteness and american nationalism in their walk with Christ. While there are some strong conclusions I don't agree with from Chung, her ability to lay out the historical plight of Asian women and how that has impacted their relationship to the Church and Jesus and Scripture is well worth your time. The consistent acknowledgement of the harm done by western missionaries is also well worth the time, so that we can better consider how to live out the Great Commandment in a way that is genuinely uplifting, liberating, and freeing instead of merely changing the tune of oppression in the cultures of we interact with.

This is a book I will come back to for a long time as I continue to contemplate the questions raised & how they reflect the assumptions/status quo's I participate in.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This foundational text in Asian feminist theology provides invaluable insight for developing a Christian – and interreligious – response to the struggles of women in many parts of the world. Chung addresses issues of patriarchal oppression, marginalization, economic disempowerment, Mariology, and the place of the Christian church in non-Christian Asia. One of the highlights of this book is the fifth chapter where her Mariological interpretation addresses ethics, politics, spirituality, and the religious significance of Mary. Chung provides a strong theological counterargument to the patriarchal interpretation of Mary that is used to encourage submissiveness and passivity. Most importantly, this text emphasizes Mary as a source of solidarity, strength, and compassion for marginalized Asian women.

[Crystal John · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic book for feminist theologians from Asia "It is an artful presentation of many voices..." as stated by Beverly Harrison and I fully agree with that. I do resonate so much with what the author states - "Only when we Asian women start to consider our everyday, concrete life experiences as the most important source for building the religious meaning structures for ourselves shall we be free from all imposed religious authority."
I've read this book so many times as my major term paper at LSTC ( Chicago ) was based on this and few other texts :)

[Mollie · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exert: "When Western Christians brought Jesus to Asia, many also brought opium and guns. They taught Asians the love of Jesus while giving the slow death of opium or the fast death of a bullet. When the soldiers of the United States of America raped Vietnamese women and children and killed many Vietnamese people with Agent Orange, guns, and bombs in the name of democracy, the people of the U.S. still sang, "God bless America."

[ben adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the chapter on Mary is worth the price of the book, I found this completely underwhelming despite great expectations. This is clearly a converted dissertation to a book. Despite James Cone saying that it is written "with much passion", I found it to be utterly dispassionate. The author is an Asian woman, but she uses third person pronouns the entire book to describe "Asian women". This results in the book feeling more like an objective, detached newspaper article than a book passionately arguing for the necessity of Asian women's the*logy. Many of the ideas she reports are interesting, great ideas. Unfortunately, she reports them rather than convinces the reader to engage them and be changed by them. Ironically, what is supposed to be a book that is readable by laypeople becomes so boring as to seem long despite being slightly over 100 pages. I would only recommend this to people who really want to know about Asian women's the*logy, and even then, I might suggest other books first.

[Chloe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really eye-opening book about Christianity for Asian women, struggles specific to Asian women, and the limits to Christianity as a white, patriarchal religion.