Stoltzfus 1

Courtney N. Stoltzfus
May 16, 2018
A Reformed Pedagogy to Female Empowerment
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The abjection of women is predicated on the agonistic gender economy. She is captive to

the desires, expectations, and needs of the hegemonic ideology, and she is miffed. An adroit

specimen, sanctioned with divine faculties and talent, is deprived of autonomy. She is oppressed

by a concerted scheme of privilege: sexism. The oppression of women by men, in a society that

is overwhelmingly patriarchal, produces an advantage or privilege through the devaluation of her

essence. The domineering culture dictates her inputs and outputs. She can neither willingly

exercise her abilities nor can she actualize the objectives of which they merit.

Thusly, women are dehumanized, a utilitarian object. She is, however, not demoralized.

Aggrieved, women have collectivized to affirm one another of their intrinsic value. The

recognition of this “value” is to encourage her to muster the courage necessary to dispute her

status as an object. She is to channel her energies for a “higher purpose” than her utility in the

patriarchal society.

In this endeavor to affirm female dignity, women hanker for empowerment. Recently

emancipated from the mental subjugation imposed on her by men, she yearns to understand her

purpose and how her faculties are to be administered. Measures of empowerment will

presumably mediate her conception of her value so she can operationalize it accordingly, but

these measures are mundane; their conceptualization is influenced by contemporary

manifestations of gendered oppression. Contemporary female empowerment is inspired by

monolithic absolutism predicated on fickle social fabrication. The redemption of the Cross is

timeless and constant, thusly the sole edifying Truth demonstrative of women’s goodness and

inviolable worth in the midst of a myriad of gender distortions and destructive forces. The Cross

both atones for the sins founding patriarchy, having originated in Eden, and provides exemplary
 Stoltzfus 3

measures of empowerment to contest this gendered privilege. It addresses the beginning and the

end. To understand the follies of contemporary female empowerment, then, one must understand

the genealogical interplay of empowerment and sexism.

The Fall

Women have borne the brunt of Man’s contempt since the Fall. As recorded in Genesis

3, Adam’s second sentence, subsequent to having eaten the forbidden fruit, is in condemnation of

Eve. The Father inquires about how Adam is cognizant of his nudity and he retorts, “The

woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”1 Sin is ever

present.

Preceding the Fall, the sexes operated in harmony, filling the earth and subduing it.

Adam and Eve’s unique faculties operated interdependently. The interaction of these two

distinguished personalities reflected the plurality of God. His masterpiece complete, God

declares their egalitarian dynamic “very good”.

Come the advent of sin, the male automatically oriented himself into the position of

superiority. He depreciates the woman, who quite frankly was practicing equity--giving Adam

the same opportunity to, “be like God, knowing good and evil”, as she was to be granted. He,

instead of assuming responsibility for his own actions, degrades Eve, imposing all blame on her,

dragging her to the feet of God so she can be dealt with accordingly, so that he can watch in

impunity. He attempts to set himself apart from the deed. His accusatory charge is “otherness”

manifested.

1
​NIV Study Bible.​ Zondervan, 1985.
 Stoltzfus 4

The existence of the other is never a matter of indifference.2 Come the first bite of the

forbidden fruit, as its juice trickled down his chin, his being was inseminated with conflict. Eve,

being different from him physiologically or as morally “inferior”, was designated an “other”. In

conjunction with this subordination, Eve was ashamed. In love, she shared the experience she

was to have, which would have otherwise made her presumably superior to Adam. Despised by

Adam and having caused his and her separation from God, she felt unbearable guilt and remorse.

Consequently, she subjected herself to the arduous effort of redemption, hoping to make

reparations with Adam. She became passive, accepting various treatment as an exchange for her

ultimate failure. She served fervently, desperate to make right. Attempting to satisfy her will to

be forgiven, she essentially surrendered herself to the “other”.

Ostensibly, this self-giving was not met with reciprocity, but rather with exploitation.

Adam, opted to subjugate Eve so to contain the “pestilent agent” and quite possibly because he

saw some potential to be gleaned; this subordination and Eve’s guilt-induced servitude

pedestaled Adam, engendering his entitlement. Adam, as a prosecutor, continued to rise by

debasing and inferiorizing his victim3. This evaluation of the sexes prescribes subsequent

attributes by which are standardized to stereotype the functions of either sex: gender. The

dominion is plainly pragmatic--establishing predictable divisions of labor, a designated

allocation of scarce goods, assigned responsibility for children, as well as common values and

their systemic administration4--therefore, contributing to its stability and power. As the

dominant group, men inevitably have the greatest influence in determining the culture’s

2
“Racism.” ​Racism,​ by Albert Memmi, University of Minnesota Press, 2000, p. 138.
3
​“Racism.” ​Racism,​ by Albert Memmi, University of Minnesota Press, 2000, p. 79.
4
“‘Night to His Day’: The Social Construction of Gender.” ​Race, Class, and Gender in the United States​,
by Judith Lorber, Worth Publishers, 2016, pp. 38–44.
 Stoltzfus 5

outlook--its philosophy, morality, social theory, and even its science.5 Patriarchy evidently

distorts the gender economy to facilitate man’s gain of what is valued at the time.

Patriarchy Idolized

The seductive agent of predictable privilege perpetuates the patriarchal ideologies

governing gender, hence normalizing it. This social organization, marked by the perceived

supremacy of men, is a perduring idolatry. Patterns of gender hierarchy—male over

female—falsely claim dichotomy and one’s allegiance, substituting a belief in a God who is

life-affirming and beneficent to all human beings.6 While of the very image of God, women,

inferiorized, are labeled as defective and substandard. Men, as the dominant group, define

acceptable roles for the subordinate women, typically auxiliary roles, providing services he does

not want to perform himself. Functions the dominators prefer to perform, the activities most

highly valued in any particular culture, are closed to women. This very evaluation and relegation

of functions is normalized and sin manifest.

This original sin is a radical and universal distortion that infects the whole human

condition. Women often experience themselves as imprisoned in gender roles that undermine the

possibility of flourishing in life vocations. This imprisonment takes the form of both

psychological and social bondage. As subordinates, women are perceived and regarded as

impotent, unable to perform the preferred roles. Patriarchal culture legitimizes the discourse of

inequality by means of other premises, premises that are inevitably false. Women’s incapacities

are ascribed to innate defects or deficiencies of mind or body, therefore immutable and

5
“Domination and Subordination.” ​Race, Class, and Gender in the United States,​ by Jean Baker Miller,
10th ed., Worth Publishers, 2016, pp. 91–97.
6
Mcdougall, Joy Ann. “Rising with Mary: Re-Visioning a Feminist Theology of the Cross and
Resurrection.” ​Theology Today​, vol. 69, no. 2, 2012, pp. 166–176., doi:10.1177/0040573612446857.
 Stoltzfus 6

impossible of change or development. Deemed inferior, she is regarded “naturally” passive,

submissive, docile, and secondary.

Inevitably, patriarchy is the model for normal human relationships. It then becomes

normal to treat women destructively and to derogate them, to obscure the truth of inequality, by

creating false explanations, and to oppose accusations toward equality. Clearly, patriarchy is

more than an unjust social structure from which one needs institutional remedy; its pestilence

penetrates the deep structures of women’s psyches, their language-worlds, and very patterns of

thought.7 She herself has found it difficult to believe in her own ability. The dominant discourse

of sexism is a continuous corrupting force that manipulates personal identity formation,

captivating her mind, siphoning her emotional energies, and impeding the pursuit of her calling.

The augmented gender constructions and social structures collude to block women’s clear

vision of her own grace-filled identity. Patriarchy represents a profound distortion and idolatrous

refusal of God’s beneficent will for all; it is domination and contradiction of His resolve for His

creation--a fall away from the a telos of goodness and flourishing. She then experiences

profound abjection in her lack of self-development, the loss of edifying relations, and in the lack

of realistic hope for flourishing, an abjection that demands an outcry against God: How can you

have turned me over to such a cruel fate?8

Enlightenment

Her outcry is a diagnosis of the present time, bemoaning the social structure postulated as

organic. It is the very product of the genealogy of her disadvantage; the fruition of a complex

7
​ Mcdougall, Joy Ann. “Rising with Mary: Re-Visioning a Feminist Theology of the Cross and
Resurrection.” ​Theology Today​, vol. 69, no. 2, 2012, pp. 166–176., doi:10.1177/0040573612446857.
8
Volf, Miroslav. ​Exclusion and Embrace: a Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and
Reconciliation​. Abingdon Press, 2008.
 Stoltzfus 7

and shifting network of relations between power, knowledge, and the body which produce

cont​em​porary specific forms of subjectivity. She is a product of discourse and knowledge-power

relations. Her resultant being, the condition prescribed to her, is unsatisfactory and her cry of

dereliction signals she is conscious of a greater calling. She is aware of an alternative,

nongendered dynamic, one that is more life-affirming, more consonant to the ordinance of God.

She then exercises what Foucault regards as a ​critical ontology of the present​.9

Contesting the legitimacy of the regime of truth governing her function, she rebels

against the ​government of individualization.​ 10 She continues to question what seems to be

natural and inevitable of her own identity, interrogating the ​contemporary limits of the necessary

as it pertains to patriarchy. She accrues an enlightenment, thusly releasing herself from

self-incurred tutelage or an inability to make use o f her reason, demanding active agency.

Independently directing her rationale, she mentally de-normalizes the traditional

acceptance of subjugation. She progressively derives an individual constitution of identity,

affirming a lifestyle alternative to her current one in subordination. Concomitant with the

negation of natural inferiority, dialectics presuppose a latent freedom, signifying an equality with

the “superior” man. No longer burdened by her propensity for self-degradation, a progeny of

uncontested patriarchy, there is a predilection for an agency equivalent to that of man. While she

is disenfranchised, she is cognizant of her faculties’ potential efficacy and thus modalities of her

9
Cohen, Claire. “Problematization â​​ A Critical Ontology of the Present.” ​Male Rape Is a Feminist Issue,​
2014, pp. 10–36., doi:10.1057/9781137035103_2.
10
Seppa, Anita. “Foucault, Enlightenment and the Aesthetics of the Self.” ​Aesthetic Functionalism,​
Contemporary Aesthetics, www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article.php?articleID=244.
 Stoltzfus 8

assertiveness are founded on her advocacy for sex equality.11 Establishing herself as an equal,

she rehumanizes herself, thusly fostering empowerment.

Pedagogies to Empowerment

Her empowerment is predicated on unequal dynamics governed by power relations. Her

equality is then contingent on the neutralization of the power discourse between her and men.

Thusly, Women are keen to aggrandize their womanly status, thusly instigating a seismic shift in

the systemic conditions of power: the ways in which given social systems confer differentials of

dispositional power on them, therefore structuring their possibilities for action. Such conditions

dictate how she conceptualizes her empowerment: her efficacy. Varying feminist critiques of the

inequality discourse--phenomenology, radical feminism, socialist feminism, and intersectional

feminism--present different conceptualizations of masculine-domination and commitments to

empowerment.

I. Phenomenology

The locus classicus of feminist phenomenological method to theorizing male domination

is Simone de Beauvior’s ​The Second Sex12.​ She asserts the social, cultural, historical, and

economic conditions that define women’s existence. Her basic diagnosis of women’s

subordination relies on the distinction between being for-itself--self-conscious subjectivity that is

capable of freedom and transcendence--and being in-itself--the un-self-conscious things that are

incapable of freedom and mired in immanence.13 Where men are assumed the status of

11
Riger, Stephanie. “What's Wrong with Empowerment.” ​American Journal of Community Psychology,​
vol. 21, no. 3, 1993, pp. 279–292.
12
Allen, Amy. “Feminist Perspectives on Power.” ​Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,​ Stanford
University, 19 Oct. 2005, plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminist-power/.
13
​Beauvoir, Simone de, 1974. ​The Second Sex,​ New York: Vintage Books.
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transcendent subject, women have been relegated to the status of the immanent Other.

Consequently, “She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference

to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential.”

Simone exhorts women to resist submitting to the status of the Other. She suggests

women are culpable for the very integrity of the Other as they submit to it so to avoid the

repercussions concomitant to an ​authentic existence​--that which deviates from the patriarchal

ideal.14

Iris Young’s phenomenological analysis of the discourse of male autonomy over the

female’s lived body is speculative of women’s bodily movement and orientation in the world.

Young argues feminine bodily comportment, movement, and spatial orientation exhibit the

tension between transcendence and immanence. She then encourages women to utilize the

spatial potential of their bodies: atypical as they make a concerted effort to not take up a

significant amount of space, approaching physical activity tentatively and uncertainty.15

II. Radical Feminist Critique

Radical feminists tend to understand power in terms of dyadic relations of dominance and

subordination, often understood an analogy with the relationship between master and slave.16

The reification of domination is simply gender difference. Catharine MacKinnon repudiates the

engendered differences as they are socially constructed and shaped by relations of power.17 She

14
​ eauvoir, Simone de, 1974. ​The Second Sex,​ New York: Vintage Books.
B
15
​Young, Iris Marion, 1990b. ​Throwing Like a Girl And Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy and So​cial
Theory​, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
16
​ Allen, Amy. “Feminist Perspectives on Power.” ​Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy​, Stanford
University, 19 Oct. 2005, plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminist-power/.
17
​MacKinnon, Catharine, 1989. ​Toward a Feminist Theory of the State,​ Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
 Stoltzfus 10

asserts, “difference is the velvet glove on the iron fist of domination. The problem is not that

differences are not valued; the problem is they are defined by power”.18 Presumably,

heterosexual intercourse is then a paradigm of male domination; “the social relation between the

sexes is organized so that men may dominate and women must submit and this relation is

sexual--in fact, is sex”.19

Marilyn Frye likewise offers an analysis of power presupposing a dyadic model of

domination. Analogous to a parasite, men must have undisputed access to women; it is the

patriarchal imperative.20 Unconditional access, according to Frye, is total power whereas total

powerlessness is being unconditionally accessible. “The creation and manipulation of power is

constituted of the manipulation and control of access.”

In subordination, women typically are denied the right to define the terms of their

situation or orientation in the public sphere. The dyadic model suggests women can begin to

assert control over their own self-definition by controlling access to the very roles prescribed to

them. This feminist separatist approach is a means to establish agency. It is a way of denying

access to women’s bodies, emotional support, domestic labor, and so forth, representing a

profound challenge to male power. Frye’s remark, “if you are doing something that is so strictly

forbidden by the patriarchs, you must be doing something right”, is to disrupt Pateman’s

18
​MacKinnon, Catharine, 1987. ​Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law​, Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
19
​ ​MacKinnon, Catharine, 1987. ​Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law​, Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
20
Frye, Marilyn. “Some Reflections on Separatism and Power.” ​Feminist Reprise​, Feminist Reprise,
feminist-reprise.org/library/resistance-strategy-and-struggle/some-reflections-on-separatism-and-power/.
 Stoltzfus 11

postulated ​Sexual Contract.​ 21 Upsetting the domineering normalcy of sexual access, then,

subverts the patriarchal system, allowing women greater agency.

III. Social Feminist Critique

Extrapolating the Marxist theory of class domination and subordination, socialist

feminists posit an enhanced understanding of class exploitation. Domination results from the

capitalist appropriation of the surplus value produced by the working class, but female inferiority

is augmented by the microcosmic capitalist, patriarchal system autonomous of her anatomy and

labor in the home. Iris ​Young’s Dual Systems Theory​ posits women’s oppression arises from

these two distinct, domineering systems: the system of the mode of production and class

relations produces the class oppression and work alienation; the system of male domination,

patriarchy, produces specific gender oppression of women.22

To supplement the analysis, Young offers a more systemic analysis, respective of

comprehensive socialist feminism, identifying five faces of oppression: economic exploitation,

socio-economic marginalization, lack of power or autonomy over her work, cultural imperialism,

and systemic violence.23 Young’s comprehensive approach demonstrates the discrepant

prescription of exploitatory measures.

Given the vitality of the female anatomy in culture, Nancy Hartsock advocates for a more

holistic conception of “market model”24. Resultant of Marx’s conception of ideology, Hartsock

21
​1993. “Beyond the Master/Subject Model: Reflections on Carole Pateman’s Sexual Contract”. ​Social
Text,​ 37: 173–181.
22
​Young, Iris Marion, 1990a. ​Justice and the Politics of Difference​, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
23
​Young, Iris Marion,​ 1992. “Five Faces of Oppression” in ​Rethinking Power​, Thomas Wartenberg (ed.),
Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
24
​Hartsock, Nancy, 1996. “Community/Sexuality/Gender: Rethinking Power,” in ​Revisioning the
Political: Feminist Reconstructions of Traditional Concepts in Western Political Theory,​ Nancy J.
Hirschmann and Christine Di Stefano (eds.), Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
 Stoltzfus 12

maintains the prevailing ideas and theories of a time period are founded on the material,

economic relations of that society, and the power concurrent as well. As power is relevant to the

socially dominant, the ruling class and men, Hartsock advocates for a reconceptualization of

power from a specifically feminist standpoint, one predicated on her expertise in reproduction.

IV: Intersectional Critique

The intersection of race and gender has an expansive and complex genealogy. Kathryn

Gines acknowledges the ​vitality that racism and sexism are combatted, “not only as separate

categories, impacting identity and oppression, but also as systems of oppression that collude and

mutually reinforce one another, presenting unique problems for black women who experience

both, simultaneously and differently than white women or black men.”25 A single-axis

framework of advocacy treats race and gender as mutually exclusive categories of experience.

Subsequently, the framework implicitly privileges the perspective of the most privileged

members of the oppressed groups sex- or class-privileged over the minority race. The

intersectional critique then recognizes the greater subjectivity experienced by double-minorities,

affirming their greater contest for equality, mediating their empowerment.

Subversions to Empowerment

These contemporary models of female empowerment are founded on absolutist claims

around an androcentric culture from which women are excluded, but endeavor to conform to so

to neutralize the inequality. This conformity demonstrates the innate envy within women.

Zygmunt Bauman presents the very demise of such methods, “The most seminal impact of envy

25
​Gines, Kathryn, 2014. “Race Women, Race Men and Early Expressions of Proto-Intersectionality,
1930s-1930s,” in Goswami, O’Donovan and Yount (eds.), ​Why Race and Gender Still Matter: An
Intersectional Approach,​ New York: Routledge.
 Stoltzfus 13

consists….in transforming ‘the ideas of the dominant’ into the ‘dominant ideas.’ Once the link

between the privileged position and certain values has been socially constructed, the

disprivileged are prompted to seek redress for their humiliation through demanding such values

for themselves--and thereby further enhancing those values’ seductive power.”26 Thusly, the

aforementioned measures to empowerment perpetuate the very system of sex-inequality women

endeavor to dismantle. Such is not solely because of the general esteem subsequently granted to

the dominant, but because the envious woman is not considering the very authority defining the

gender she is conforming to.

The fixation on gendered is not quite as efficacious as a focus on the relational dynamic

between men and women. The very essence of women is not natural, but a cultural construct

whose primary agents are men. Gender categories, are defined relationally--one is a woman by

virtue of one’s position in a system of social relations.27 Therefore, one’s gender is an extrinsic

property, and it is not necessary that one has a gender, or that gender as a system exists at all.

Sally Haslanger posits such dispulsion would rectify the concerted hierarchal domination and

structural oppression as, “gender is, by definition, hierarchical: Those who function socially as

men have power over those who function socially as women.” Luce Irigaray expounds on this,

claiming female identity originates in men.28 Id est, even such a seemingly stale biological given

as a women’s body is defined and shaped by the expectations of men and the values of an

androcentric culture.

26
​ Volf, Miroslav. ​Exclusion and Embrace: a Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and
Reconciliation​. Abingdon Press, 2008.
27
​Haslanger, Sally, 2012. ​Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique​, New York: Oxford
University Press.
28
Donovan, Sarah K. “Luce Irigaray (1932?—).” ​Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy,​
www.iep.utm.edu/irigaray/.
 Stoltzfus 14

The feminist’s fixation on gendered properties, when endeavoring to empower,

undermines her very aim. True, in a sense, gender identity is preset; the interaction between

engendered persons are historically sedimented and transmitted over generations, embodied in

economic, political, and cultural practices. However, one still grows in to her gender identity

and as cultures and subcultures change, so does her understanding of her gender and its

embodiments in social practices.

To conceive a sustainable empowerment, one must negate the meanings of gender,

conferred by the very complex of social relations of domination and structural oppression, and

give rise to a kind of gender difference not predicted on gender dominance.

“Gender can be fruitfully understood as a higher order genus that includes not only the
hierarchical social positions of man and woman, but potentially other non-hierarchical social
positions defined in part by reference to reproductive function. I believe gender as we know it
takes hierarchical forms as men and women; but the theoretical move of treating men and
women as only two kinds of gender provides for thinking about other (actual) gender, and the
political possibility of constructing non-hierarchical genders.”29

Therefore, rejecting social fabrications of dualism and encouraging a universality of cohesive

possibilities or faculties, not confined by gender or dominant-subordinate relations. This then

promotes a common wholeness.

The Exemplar

The matter of concern posed is that such model of universality is lacking, particularly as

it pertains to gender’s genealogy. Entities are understood to possess tied particularities of

privilege and dominance in perpetuum, perpetuating inequality. The Cross nullifies this

mentality, not by revoking the power one social entity was granted (the Jews), but by bringing

29
​Haslanger, Sally, 2012. ​Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique​, New York: Oxford
University Press.
 Stoltzfus 15

power to the marginalized. Christ unites different “bodies”, of different ethnos, gender, and

class, not simply in virtue of the singleness of his person or his vision, but all through suffering.

Unified and one by his blood, ​“​There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is

there male and female.”30 This oneness of God requires God’s universality; God’s universality

entails human equality; human equality implies equal access by all to the blessings of the one

God.31

The universalism, communicated in Galatians, conveys the egalitarianism of the baptism

in the Spirit. Daniel Boyarin explicates on the unimaginable, “In the process of baptism in the

spirit, the marks of ethnos, gender, and class are erased in the ascension to a univocity and

universality of human essence which is beyond and outside the [ascriptions to] the body.”32

It is profoundly significant all worldly categories are erased as all are unified, making one

body of God’s children free from partiality. The Spirit, however, does not erase bodily inscribed

differences, but instead allows access into the body of Christ to the people with such difference

on the same terms. Therefore, it erases a stable and socially constructed correlation between

differences and social roles as it imparts The gifts of the Spirit irrespective of such differences.

As a testament, against the cultural expectation that women be silent and submit to men, in

Pauline communities they speak and lead because the Spirit gives them gifts to speak and lead.

The Spirit evidently creates equality by disregarding differences when baptizing people into the

30
“Galatians 3:28.” ​Bible Gateway,​ www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Galatians%2B3%3A28.
31
​ Volf, Miroslav. ​Exclusion and Embrace: a Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and
Reconciliation.​ Abingdon Press, 2008.
32
“A Radical Jew.” ​Myth, Meaning, and Memory on Roman Sarcophagi​,
publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft7w10086w&chunk.id=ch1&toc.id=&brand=ucpress%3
F.
 Stoltzfus 16

body of Christ or imparting spiritual gifts. Differentiating the body matters, but not for access to

salvation and agency in the community.33

In Christ, sexism is disabled. It is no more the shame of Eve, but the salvation in Jesus

Christ that shines over the woman in Christ; and hence no inferiority. There is no second class

citizenship in the kingdom of God as He does not show favoritism. The gendered properties

defined by the dominant-subordinate discourse are expelled. As James 2:9 states, “But if you

show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.”34

Therefore, any claim of superiority for the males, any sexism, ultimately the entire patriarchal

structure, is non biblical and there is a need for a paradigm shift in the gender dialogue.

This dialogue is the very product of women’s empowerment. Again, however, she is not

to found her empowerment on the fickle social fabrications by which she is subject to, but the

very power dynamic inspiring these ascriptions. In pursuit of establishing herself as an equal

power, she must see beyond the gender distortions, she must fix her eyes to the Truth of the

Cross. She must resist, conforming to the pattern of this world--perpetuating androcentric

dominance theories of empowerment--, but be transformed by the renewing of her mind. Then

she will be able to test and truly see the egalitarian and universalism of God’s blessings.

The equality of the Cross enlightens her to define herself beyond the myriad of gender

distortion and destructive forces. She understands herself to be a recipient of an “inexhaustible

and faithful love in the midst of the deepest deception and disappointments of human life”.35 She

33
​ Volf, Miroslav. ​Exclusion and Embrace: a Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and
Reconciliation.​ Abingdon Press, 2008.
34
“James 2:9.” ​Bible Gateway,​
www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James%2B2%3A9&version=ESV.
35
​Mcdougall, Joy Ann. “Rising with Mary: Re-Visioning a Feminist Theology of the Cross and
Resurrection.” ​Theology Today,​ vol. 69, no. 2, 2012, pp. 166–176., doi:10.1177/0040573612446857.
 Stoltzfus 17

is then obligated to release themselves of the well-worn and quite comfortable expectations of

herself and others, those which corrupt her identities, ossifying her gendered distortions. Thusly,

her past is transformed, her present reconfigured, and her future prolific for all. Her encounter

with the risen One [at the cross], is a deeply empowering vision. Rebecca Chopp posits, as the

egalitarianism of the Cross disrupts all partiality,

“[women gain] the power to speak: to speak a Word on behalf of life, a word of protest against
the squandering of women’s gifts, a word of affirmation for challenges met, and a word of
visionary hope that counters the familiar faces of gender oppression.”36

She is then empowered to contest the power dynamics, those which ascribe gendered properties

that subordinate her, and define herself according to the redemptive properties of the Cross, not

according to her discourse with the dominant. This accentuates her goodness and inviolable

worth in the midst of a myriad of gender distortions and destructive forces.

Johnson, Elizabeth A. ​The Strength of Her Witness: Jesus Christ in the Global Voices of Women.​ Orbis
36

Books, 2016.