Confronting the cross
by Julie A. Wortman

As we prepared this issue on "women challenging violence," I found myself thinking back to a letter to the editor from Mary Eldridge of Milford, Mich., that we ran in the April 2000 Witness. She was responding to an issue on "Recovering from human evil." Eldridge said she was sorry that our treatment of the topic included nothing about the abuse of children, especially their sexual abuse.

"I’m trying to understand why good people fail to struggle with, talk about, cry over, preach about the abuse of children," she wrote. "I can think of no greater betrayal among human beings than a parent assaulting their own child. If it’s too much for most people to comprehend, imagine what it is for the child and the child grown to adulthood, who sees nothing around her – be it church, state, family or friends – that challenges the monster that nearly destoyed her (and at times still threatens to destroy). Silence was – and is –evil’s weapon of choice. I’m sorry The Witness contained more of that silence."

The evil of which Eldridge speaks is very much a part of the climate of violence the women in this issue are challenging. Her own personal experience of childhood sexual abuse, in fact, is at the heart of what has led feminist theologian Rebecca Ann Parker to question atonement theologies. The book she wrote with Rita Nakashima Brock, Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us (Beacon Press, 2001), provides disturbing insight into why otherwise good Christians, at least, keep silent when confronted with the stark reality of the violence and sexual abuse that all too often permeates the daily lives of the women and children who are our neighbors and family members (see Mary Hunt’s interview with Parker and Brock on page 12). Even Witness readers will likely find themselves disconcerted by these authors’ rethinking of the central focus of Christian worship and theology: the cross.

"You couldn’t look at Jesus on the cross and see there, as the old liturgy said, ‘one perfect sacrifice for the sins of the whole world,’" Parker recollects in Proverbs of Ashes. "You couldn’t see the face of love. You couldn’t see a model for an interior psychological process of dying and rising.You couldn’t see pain inflicted by God for the spiritual edification of believers. All these ways of seeing Jesus on the cross ended up sanctifying violence against women and children, valorizing suffering and pain, or denying loss. You couldn’t look on the man of sorrows and give thanks to God without ending up a partner in a thousand crimes."

The focus of our "Recovering from human evil" issue (12/99) was from the outset on the traumas of war. But Eldridge was right to question the limitation in light of the issue’s title. Maybe it is true that we all too regularly think of the world’s evil as solely external to our intimate lives, as beyond the walls of the sanctuary. We are scandalized by revelations that contradict this mind-set. It is one thing to imagine and urge social and political reform, another to contemplate and embrace the earth-shattering implications of personal and theological truth-telling, the kind of truth-telling that might require radical reformation.

The silence needs breaking. And that is precisely what the women of faith featured in this issue are committed to doing. To all the Mary Eldridge’s out there, we here at The Witness commit to doing our part. Keep the letters coming.

Julie A. Wortman is editor/publisher of The Witness. Our thanks to the Episcopal Church’s Executive Council Committee on the Status of Women for their help in planning this issue.