By Trine Lynggard
Elina Vuola is a veteran of international feminist theology research; she has published in Spanish, English and Finnish. However, it is difficult to be a prophet in one’s own land. She is adjunct professor at the Helsinki University Faculty of Theology, but that is a title, not a position. After she received her doctoral degree ten years ago, she has never obtained a permanent post at her own faculty. For the last five years she has held a research post financed by the Academy of Finland at the Institute of Development Studies, but that funding ended in August this year. She has also always been closely affiliated with the Christina Institute for Women’s Studies at Helsinki University, where is also adjunct professor.
- The Faculty of Theology at Helsinki offers hardly anything within women’s studies. It is not my choice that I’ve never been permanently employed there. But it’s not only a negative thing. It’s meant that we scholars of gender and religion have been part of Finnish women’s studies from the very beginning. Feminist research in many other countries has not been so open to research on religion. In the USA, for example, feminist theology research is far more marginalised within feminist research than here, explains Elina Vuola, who has pursued much of her research career outside of Finland, in particular on the American continent. She has been a visiting scholar and lecturer at universities in the USA, Mexico, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. She wrote her dissertation in Nicaragua. It explores the relation between liberation theology and feminist theology – and the lack of dialogue between the two movements. Her dissertation attracted international attention after its publication in English in Finland in 1997; it was later published both in the USA and England, and in Spanish in Spain and Ecuador.
Elina Vuola’s approach mainly stems from the philosophy and ethics of religion. She analyses liberation theology as theory with the aid of Latin American feminist theology.
- I also critically analyse certain issues within feminist theology from the perspective of liberation theology. Studying sexual ethics from a poverty perspective should be an important theme for a dialogue between liberation theologians and feminist theologians, but nobody seems to be particularly interested in such a dialogue, she says.
Feminism – a secular project
Elina Vuola is also strongly involved in publishing and debate in Finland and internationally. In the past year, she has been visiting editor of no less than three scientific journals with a special issue on gender and religion: the Finnish Journal of Theology (1/2006), Temenos – Nordic Journal of Comparative Religion (1/2006) and the Journal of European Society for Women in Theological Research (1/2007).
In 2005 she was the main organiser of the large inter-disciplinary II Christina Conference on Gender, Religion and Theory at the University of Helsinki. In her opening speech, entitled Study of Religion and Feminist Theory: Dialogue or Silence?, she challenged the 200 participants from the whole world to discuss the relationship between feminist theory and the study of religion; a question she thinks is of more than merely theoretical interest.
- We are witnessing increasing fundamentalism within all the main religious traditions. This social fundamentalism creates new political alliances between, for example, the Vatican and some Muslim regimes, particularly against the rights of women. At the same time, there is a lack of ability among feminists to analyse this phenomenon, including a lack of ability to take seriously women’s own positive identities as Muslims and Catholics.
- We must be cautious in condemning religion as such as oppressive to women, without listening to the various voices from women all over the world, who strike a balance between their identities as women and their place in religious communities, Elina Vuola points out.
What do you think is the reason for this lack of interest in religion among feminists?
- Feminism as a political project has been closely associated with a broader political project which claims that secularisation is necessary and that it will happen in any case. Another explanation is, of course, that religions are so misogynistic, so hostile to women. So it’s not surprising that feminists do not feel positive about religious institutions. But if one has no insight in religion, one only regards religion as an institution, as for example the Vatican. It’s important that we as feminists also see religion as spirituality and people’s religion in their own terms as well as women’s own interpretations of religion.
Virgin Mary revival
That takes us to your research project in Cost Rica: practicing Catholic women’s own interpretations of their religion, focusing on their relation to the Virgin Mary. Why the Virgin Mary?
- While worship of the Virgin Mary is regarded as heretical within Protestantism, Virgin Mary worship is institutionalised within the Catholic Church and has strongly grown during the last 150 years. The best known places where the Virgin Mary is alleged to have appeared, such as in Lourdes in France, in Fatima in Portugal and not least in Mexico, where over 12 million people annually visit the basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, are visited every year by millions of pilgrims. The previous Pope John Paul II was known as a “Marian” Pope, which has contributed to a revival of the Virgin Mary worship in the last few years. For over 20 years, feminist theology has been interested in the Virgin Mary as the only woman in the ‘heavenly hierarchy’.
- In Latin America, Catholicism is integrated into folk culture in a totally different manner than in Europe. The Catholic Church is the only institution that has survived since the conquest of the continent. Within Latin American feminist research, particularly in sociology, there is generally quite a negative attitude to religion, especially towards the figure of the Virgin Mary. Feminist researchers think the Virgin, in her submissiveness, is an impossible model for women. I also think that the official Catholic doctrine on the Virgin Mary is quite misogynist. One of the Catholic dogmas is that she is an eternal virgin, that is, both before and after birth. That is quite a sadistic view, says Elina Vuola.
But the women she talks to do not seem to care what the Church teaches about the Virgin.
- They identify themselves with her for other reasons, and that I find interesting to explore. I’ve conducted a first set of interviews with believing Catholic women and am actually only at the outset of my research project. But so far I can say that their relation to the Virgin Mary is a true relation. Perhaps this is surprising. It’s important for them that she is a woman like they are, she understands both men and women better than the male Jesus. She is a mother; she understands women particularly well. I also discern a dual function in their relation to Mary – she is human on the one hand, but on the other not just anybody; she is a divine figure and more than most, one who can help women. This is a tension I’ve heard in all interviews.
Critical of Marianismo
Elina Vuola is sceptical of the use of Marianismo as a concept developed within feminist theory in Latin America. In it, the Virgin Mary is the actual basis of the repression of women. A consequence of this analysis is that the liberation of women requires a change of attitude towards the Virgin Mary and the values that she represents. The concept if often used as the opposite of the Latin American concept of machismo.
- The concept of Marianismo is continually used in feminist analyses without a specification of what image of Mary it is based on, whether it is that of the Church, of art or the women. Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico is, for example, a nationalist cultural symbol, while other Virgin figures have other symbolic values. Is it really just so simple that the Virgin Mary in herself constitutes ‘a serious threat’ to the health of women? The figure of the Virgin Mary is obviously very important for many women. In that case it’s problematic that feminists say that women are oppressed because of the Virgin. It stands in conflict with what my informants are saying, that is, that for them She is a source of comfort and strength, a positive figure.
Have you expressed your criticism of Marianismo to Latin American feminists who use this concept?
- I have discussed it in a network of feminist Latin American researchers from various disciplines. It caused a heated debate; they think that the concept of Marianismo is useful; they don’t accept my way of looking at it. While feminist theologians understand what I’m saying.
Virginity not possible!
Don’t you think there is a paradox in that religion is so strong among women in Latin America although many women die of illegal abortions because the Catholic Church forbids contraceptives and abortion? The norms of the Catholic Church concerning reproduction can be outright life-threatening for women?
- The sexual-ethical programme of the Catholic Church is not based on women’s experiences of their bodiliness. Many women don’t believe in what the Church says in this area, they are intelligent people. Even in Latin America Catholic women use contraceptives, they divorce and they undergo abortions, and so on. Even those with less education realise that the Church is ruled by unmarried men with no connections to the lives of women. They are good at relativising this, at understanding it on a private level. I asked one of the older women: how do you understand the virginity of Mary? She had told me that she had eight children and loved the Virgin Mary; she also gave me a small picture of the Virgin. I have to quote her answer in Spanish: Usted med dice que es madre tambien verdad, y tiene dos hijas, asi que Usted sabe que no puede ser! Todas las mujeres saben que no puede ser! You told me that you are also a mother, right, and that you have two daughters, so you know that it’s not possible! All women know that it’s not possible!
- The dogma on virginity has been created by the conservative leaders of the Church. Ordinary women, who love the Virgin Mary, find this ridiculous. It’s important to show that the opinion of ordinary people is also Catholicism. It’s the responsibility of feminist theologians to write theology from the perspective of women. This also means bringing out what ordinary women think, what religion means to them.
- At least we have to listen, even if we don’t understand and agree with everything, Elina Vuola adds, and admits that she, too, cannot identify with everything.
- The believing women have some internalised images of women – as for example my mother also had, that woman is above all mother, and when you become a mother, you have a given role in the family. These attitudes are criticised from a feminist approach as being essentialist and biologistic. The same criticism is aimed at Muslim feminists who adhere to the egalitarian doctrines of the Koran, that woman is equal to man, but has different roles that are God-given. As researchers we don’t need to agree, but we ought to focus on what such attitudes actually say about their identity.”
Political conflict
“How do you explain that the reproductive rights of women for many years have been an issue for political conflict at the highest international level, the latest being the UN Commission on the Status of Women?
- The Catholic Church has lost much of its legitimacy and political power pertaining to sexual ethics and family policy in the European Catholic countries, as, for example, in Italy. The Vatican has there fore concentrated on putting political pressure on the countries in Latin America as a region not yet lost to secularism. At the same time, the Vatican is compensating for its lost influence on individuals by intensifying its political activity on the international scene, in the UN and other international organisations. Recent religious fundamentalist reactions are also a reaction against the growth of feminism, which is accused of wanting to eliminate the family. This is a question of power; to oppress women is about power. Hatred of women and the body has long traditions in the monotheistic religions of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. As Foucault says, controlling sexuality is to control people’s lives. This doesn’t only concern women, but also homosexuals who are oppressed and discriminated within the religious institutions.
Poor women affected
Let’s talk about the theme of your dissertation. What do liberation theologians think of the feminist criticism of the attitudes of the Catholic Church on the family, reproduction, sexuality and women’s rights?
- Many liberation theologians oppose celibacy and the ban against female priests, but the problem is that they don’t say this in public. Their stance displays a double set of morals. As individuals they also sympathise with the situation of women and women’s rights. If liberation theologians want to defend the rights of the poor, if they want to be true to themselves, they shouldn’t only talk about class, but also about gender. It is poor women who die as the result of a lack of reproductive rights. Middle and upper class women have the money and opportunities to carry out safe abortions or go through a safe pregnancy and a safe delivery. Four million women in Latin America undergo abortion every year; most of these are illegal and carried out under unsafe and life-threatening circumstances. Abortion is one of the main causes of death among 15–39-year-old women in Latin America. 30 per cent of maternal deaths in Nicaragua happen among young girls under 19 years of age. I could go on like this!
- I’m often asked the question why I, from Finland, study and write about this, but I’m in a position where I have nothing to lose, so I can say what I want without anybody punishing me. This is particularly difficult for Catholic theologians, men or women who work in Catholic institutions. They might be expelled from their institution, like the nun Ivone Gebara from Brazil, one of the few who has said anything in public about abortion not always being a sin. She got into big problems.
- Those who speak openly are Catholic feminists who are not associated with the Church as an institution: lay-people.
Unwritten history
What do you think are the greatest challenges within feminist theology and the study of religion?”
- We must remember that historically women have not had the opportunity to study their religion, the Holy Scriptures, and to develop ethics. The religious principles have been written and rewritten through the centuries, in a time and a context which has totally excluded women. There have only been one or two generations of feminist research in theology. A sexual ethics, dealing with the family, reproduction, childbirth and sexuality based on women’s experiences has not yet been written within the Christian Church. The same is true within other religions: women have not had a chance to put forward their interpretations. Now we can do this with authority, since we have been educated. This is a right we have, but also a responsibility. And we can see that women who get an education within theology often become feminists in the process!
- Another challenge is to show that research on gender and religion is no longer just about a feminist criticism of religion as a monolithical, patriarchal construction that uncritically applies substitute feminist symbols. Both men and women negotiate their religious traditions in various ways and at various levels. We should also regard feminist theory from the perspective of religion and the feminist study of religion from a broader perspective. A critical dialogue between the two is one of the big issues for theologians, anthropologists and philosophers of religion.
- We must also realise that our societies are not as secularised as we might think. Take, for instance, the debate on homosexual marriage here in secularised Finland. Suddenly our interpretation of our Lutheran or Christian religion is central for ethical and social questions such as homosexuality. This makes us realise that we’re not so secularised after all. It would have been interesting to do the same here in Finland that I do in Costa Rica, analyse ordinary people’s attitude to religion.
Selected Publications by ELINA VOULA on the Themes of the Interview
Limits of Liberation. Feminist Theology and the Ethics of Poverty and Reproduction. (Dissertation). Sheffield Academic Press
and Continuum, Sheffield, U.K., and New York 2002
“Seriously Harmful for Your Health? Religion, Feminism and Sexuality in Latin America”. Article in Liberation Theology and
Sexuality: New Radicalism from Latin America. Ed. Marcella Althaus-Reid. Ashgate, London, 2006. “Option for the Poor and the
Exclusion of Women – The Challenges of Postmodernism and Feminism to Liberation Theology”. Article in Opting for the Margins.
Postmodernity and Liberation in Christian Theology. Ed. Joerg Rieger. Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2003.
”Remaking Universals? Transnational Feminism(s) Challenging Fundamentalist Ecumenism”. Theory, Culture and Society, vol. 19,
Number 1-2, February- April 2002.
