younger son], but will not remain in my anger. I will forgive and accept him.6
It is notable that none of the Flamingo Women (who were currently engaged in prostitution), identified with the younger son. The Flamingo women identified more with the older brother, which belies a monolithic characterisation of all women affected by prostitution with the younger son. The diversity represented between the responses of the EWAR and the Flamingo Women reflects the importance of listening to and respecting the various life experiences of each of these women that have brought them to the point of identifying with all of the characters in the Prodigal Son story. Assuming that all women affected by prostitution can be identified with the younger son character in this story supports the widely-held view (highlighted throughout the thesis) that women affected by prostitution are sinners, unclean, and therefore inadmissible into the community until their sin problem is addressed.
The Younger Son: Exposing a Deficient Understanding of Sin and Who the Kingdom Is For
The church leaders’ identification of these women solely with the younger son is problematic; this is especially the case because they apparently define his character by his disrespectful actions toward his father and his society. This identification places the women in a position of being defined by their perceived bad personal choices—in other words, to be defined, like the youngest son, as the quintessential sinner. This type of interpretation only serves to reinforce an Augustinian view of sin: that sin is primarily pride in the form of extreme self-love and secondarily sensuality.7
6
Transcript of the Prodigal Son II Flamingo Women, 4/9/2016, Addis Ababa, 2.
7 Sensuality, according to Richard Niebuhr, is linked to pride and inordinate self-love, and it manifests
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African Womanist theologian Esther Acolaste says that the typical prescribed antidote to the pride-as-sin model is self-sacrifice, but that this is found wanting in the African context where women are already engaged in a life of self-sacrifice.8 If prostitution is conceived of as a means of survival, as articulated by the women in Chapter Four, then what more can these women be asked to sacrifice in order to rid themselves of their ascribed sinful status? What means of grace can be applied? Acolaste argues that within the highly relational context of Africa sin is the refusal of the self to be a self,9 and that this understanding lends itself to a corporate and
communal response to sin, in contrast to the individualistic response prescribed by the sin-as-pride model.10 Acolaste proposes that the means of grace for sin, then, is for those living within the household of God [the church] to take practical steps towards those who are outside of the household in a way that ‘full humanity is accorded to all participants in the oikos of God.’11
The over-identification of women affected by prostitution with the younger son only serves to reinforce the sinner/unclean status that has been ascribed to these women by their surrounding community. This status perpetuates the women’s self-exclusionary worship practice of standing outside the gate of the church. The actions of the younger son in Luke 15 were deemed morally questionable and culturally inappropriate, attested to by the women who classify him as a ‘traitor’12
to his family. By identifying women affected by prostitution with the younger son—a person full of prideful self-love in the classical theological understanding of sin—the only means of grace available to these women is an individualistic attempt at self-sacrifice. The women choosing not to join those standing in the area designated for the ritually uncleanat the EOTC can be seen as a self-sacrificing act, but one that has not effectively addressed the ‘sin’ in their lives because their status within the worshipping community remains the same: they are excluded. The women believe that they are so dirty that they cannot even stand among those who are already unclean: they remove themselves from the worshipping
community by going one step further.
Sin and Grace: An African Evangelical Feminist Response to Niebuhr,’ in Talitha Cum! Theologies of African Women, eds. Nyambura J. Njoroge and Musa W. Dube (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2001), 125. 8 Ibid., 130. 9 Ibid., 132. 10 Ibid., 133. 11 Ibid., 136. 12
Evidently, dealing with their ‘sin problem’ individually has not enabled these women to re-enter their worshipping communities. This narrow understanding of sin by the evangelical church points to a classical Western theological conception of sin that places a high emphasis on individual righteousness and neglects the fact that
righteousness also includes being in right-relationship to others. Missiologist David Bosh notes that in the Gospel of Luke, the use of the word hamartolos (sinner) usually refers to the moral conduct of how one individual treats another.13 For example, in Luke 16, the rich man is called a sinner because he has no compassion for Lazarus. When the Prodigal Son says he has sinned against heaven and earth, he is not only referring to his conduct; more importantly, he is referring to the way in which he has treated his father.14
Karl Barth states that when the Kingdom of God is inaugurated, the Lord Jesus Christ comes and ‘abolishes the unrighteousness of people both in their relationship to him and also in their relationships to one another.’15 This accords with Acolaste’s view that the means of grace for the ‘sin’ of an African woman must involve the restoration of relationships within the community. In the absence of this restoration, woman affected by prostitution will continue to relegate themselves to the status of the worst of sinners, and therefore distance themselves from the worshipping community: ‘we do not go inside … we go and return from outside … we pray from outside the gate.’16
They do this because they have been relegated to a position in the community that suggests they are beyond the catchment area of the ritually unclean, one could even say the place for the ‘the worst of sinners.’ It is worth repeating a statement shared in Chapter Seven by one church leader:
Sometime they [people in the church] say, ‘no these [women] are not coming back because already this [one] is lost. They are lost. They are addicted to not only prostitution. They are already alcoholic; they are already [doing] drugs. They are chewing khat. So bringing back these people is just a waste of our time. Instead of spending much of your time on prostitution, why don’t you go and reach out to other good group people?’17
13
David Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991), 106.
14 Ibid.
15 Karl Barth, The Christian Life: Church Dogmatics Volume IV, Part 4, trans. Geoffrey W.
Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1981), 237.
16 Transcript of Anointing Woman Session Flamingo Women, 1/10/2015, Addis Ababa, 4.
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As this makes clear, women affected by prostitution are viewed as too lost and therefore unreachable by the church. The identification of women affected by
prostitution with the character of the younger son—and the concomitant belief that they are too lost to be brought back into the fold—points to deficient theological
comprehension in the following areas: 1) the criteria for what constitutes sinfulness, and 2) who the Kingdom of God is for. It also highlights that most churchgoers in the EOTC and evangelical church make sense of prostitution primarily as a sin rather than as a means of survival, as their only recourse to ‘making a way ’when there is no foreseeable way, as the women described it.18
The first deficiency, a narrow understanding of sin, limits the evangelical church to offering an individualistic means of grace that is focused on the women fixing their perceived sin problem. This falls short of the ethical demands of Jesus who objected to drawing boundary lines within Israel that treated some Israelites as beyond the grace of God and allowed for the religious elite to narrowly define sin.19 A restricted perception of sin fails to take into consideration the unrighteous way that the community treats women affected by prostitution, and the community’s own failure to confess this sin impedes the development of a communal and life-affirming response to prostitution.
The second deficiency is a reminder to look at the portrait of the Kingdom of God that Luke paints in his Gospel, which depicts Jesus’ universal mission to everyone, especially the marginalised.20 The Kingdom of God was inaugurated for sinners of all stripes. Women feature highly in Luke’s narrative, which includes stories of women who were presumed to be sinful, such as the woman who anointed Jesus (Luke 7:36- 50), a character that the women in this research project resonated with significantly. Biblical scholar Richard Burridge notes that this story ‘illustrates how Luke’s concern for women is part of his wide interest in sinners and outsiders.’21
Women affected by prostitution are standing outside of the gate of the church, stamped as sinners by society, waiting to experience the universal mission that has come to everyone.
18 Dolores S. Williams, ‘Hagar in African American Biblical Appropriation,’ in Hagar, Sarah, and
Their Children: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perspectives, eds. Phyllis Trible and Letter Russell (Louisville: Westminster John Know Press, 2006), 177.
19
Richard A. Burridge, Imitating Jesus: An Inclusive Approach to New Testament Ethics (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 64.
20 Ibid., 250. 21 Ibid., 266.
Few Leaders Like Jesus, Many Older Brothers
The data also seems to indicate that there is a correlating between the women’s observation that there are few leaders like Jesus and identification with the older brother.
In Chapter Six, the women appropriated the story of the crippled woman who was healed on the Sabbath (Luke 13:10-17) to their experiences with religious leaders. As they reflected on some of the contextual Bible study sessions that featured Jesus healing, forgiving, not judging, and welcoming those that were considered sinners, the women indicated that they had encountered few religious leaders who emulated the character and actions of Jesus Christ. Rather, they shared their experiences of hypocrisy (a priest found in the Flamingo community soliciting a woman) and of one of their children being denied the sacrament of baptism. The women clarified that there were both good and bad leaders within their context, and that they know leaders are human and therefore weak; however, they also speculated that the reason some leaders were not following the example of Jesus is that they do not believe in His teaching.
During a contextual Bible study session on the Prodigal Son, the women were asked the following:
Translator: How does the church look at you, how does it receive you, like
the father or like the older son?
Woman: If we happen to go, they ask ‘why are we here?’22
This woman answered with a rhetorical question suggesting that she is met with a lack of hospitality and welcome. It would seem that this woman felt she needed to justify herself to the congregation for attempting to attend church. Another woman responded:
In the church when they talk of prostitution, they do not really think of us but condemn our act and judge. Their sermon is full of condemnation and judgement. They never ask how they can help us, but only judge us. Sometimes we are there listening to their sermon while they pass judgement on us.23
Instead of being met with words of life and acceptance, this woman was brought face-to-face with condemnation and judgement from the pulpit. Her comment that those in the church do not really think about them conveys her perception that no one takes into consideration the reasons why a woman has engaged in prostitution. This
22 Transcript of Prodigal Son Session EWAR Women, 7/4/2016, Addis Ababa, 7. 23 Ibid.
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experience is by no means conclusive or absolute for all women affected by prostitution in Addis Ababa; however, it does serve to substantiate why these women think there are few church leaders who are exemplars of Jesus.
Several other women remarked: