The Red-Haired Saint: Is Mary Magdaline Key to the Easter Narratives?

During a recent year spent in Italy, as I walked the dusty Roman-charted roads, sat by splashing medieval fountains, and gazed at the altars of Renaissance and Baroque churches, I found myself, much to my surprise, falling in love with a saint named Mary Magdalene. I am not the first Protestant to be attracted to a Catholic saint, and it is not unusual for a man to choose from among the saints a female. But why did my Puritan genes lead me not to an immaculate Virgin, a visionary Catherine, or an ascetic Clara but to one who, according to Christian tradition, was a woman of easy virtue? My “affair” with Magdalene has lasted two years, and in studying her I have learned much about Western Christian society. I am no longer surprised at my choice.

Magdalene is, of course, not one person but many. She is 20 centuries of conscious and unconscious composition. She is Bible story, medieval myth, Renaissance legend and modern pop heroine.

She is in the biblical accounts one of several women who followed Jesus from Galilee to his appointment with fate in Jerusalem. None of them got to he a disciple or an apostle: but despite the apparent conventional sexism of the day, these female followers seem to have been welcomed by a Leader who enjoyed the company of women. As Rachel Conrad Wahlberg has pointed out, Jesus saw women, Magdalene among them, not just as bodies for procreation but as souls who could respond to God’s word.

She is the one out of whom Jesus cast seven devils. She sees Jesus crucified, follows his body to the tomb, returns with the first group on Easter morning, and later in the day is the first to speak with the Risen Christ, The Gospels say no more. By Easter Monday she has disappeared from the record.

Magdalene begins to develop mythically in the first few Christian centuries. In the Middle Ages her shadowy image takes on a distinct shape and color. In the Renaissance she becomes visually sharp. In our own day she moves prominently across the giant screen. She comes very early to be identified as a converted prostitute with long, flowing and usually red hair, who just before his last trip to Jerusalem anoints Jesus’ head (or feet) with an expensive ointment and to the end of her long life remains a somewhat disturbed penitent.

In our own day, inspired by centuries of moral fiction and visual mythos, novelists and rock composers have made her Jesus’ faithful Greek or Eurasian prostitute, anguished because he won’t love her and she doesn’t know how to love him; earthy, beautiful, the saintly hooker who spices the story of the Galilean on his way to Superstardom.

History or legend, fact or myth, Magdalene remains one of the most fascinating characters of Christian history. She tells us more about womanhood in European Christian civilization than any other single figure.

The Gospel writers probably did not intend to make Magdalene such a mystery that subsequent ages would be tempted to elaborate on her frail biography. They simply gave her and Jesus’ other female followers very little space, naming them only when they were too central to an event to be ignored. In her case one of the New Testament’s major figures remained of virtually unknown origin, character and destiny, so roughly sketched that she could easily be confused with other unnamed and unsketched women and grow into a myth far different, far richer in some ways, than her actual self. By making her less than she was, the Gospels inadvertently made her more.

The Gospels that mention her origins say simply that she was a Galilean woman (Mark 15:40-41), a follower of Jesus in the north who came down with him to Jerusalem (Matt. 27:55-56). As her surname suggests and as Luke indicates, she was from a town in Galilee called Magdala. Luke also says that she was one of several women Jesus cured of diseases -- among the others were Joanna (wife of Herod’s agent Chuza) and Susanna -- and that they followed him through Galilee and Judea, ministering to his needs out of their own resources (Luke 8: 2-3). Luke and Mark identify her disease as seven evil spirits, a term common at that time for mental illness, and Mark says that Jesus cast the spirits out.

All four Gospels agree that she was present -- unlike most of the male followers -- at the crucifixion. Mark says that Magdalene, Mary (the mother of James the Younger and Joseph), Salome and other women stood watching from a distance.” Matthew also indicates that Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of Zebedee’s Sons (James and John) watched from a distance. John says that Jesus’ mother and her sister stood with Mary the wife of Clopas and Mary of Magdala “near the cross.” Luke does not name the women who had followed Jesus from Galilee and who watched the crucifixion -- but then Luke mentions only Jesus’ mother among the women of the earliest church (Acts 1:14). He does, however, say that Mary of Magdala, Joanna, Mary the mother of Jesus, and others were the first to arrive at the empty tomb Sunday morning; logic would conclude that these were the same women who watched from a distance, followed the body to the tomb, went home to prepare spices and ointments for embalming, and brought them on Easter morning.

The Gospels also agree (except for John, who is silent on the matter) that Magdalene followed the body to its tomb and saw it sealed up. Mark says it was she and the other Mary, presumably the mother of James and Joseph. Luke does not name the women who followed the body, but they are the same women who came first to the tomb on Sunday morning: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and others. John makes no mention of women going to the tomb with the body, but Magdalene must have known where it had been taken, because she was the first to arrive there early Sunday.

III

All agree that Magdalene was present at the events on Easter morning. Matthew, Mark and John make her one of the central figures. Indeed, Matthew and John make her the key to the Easter narratives by saying she was the first to see the Risen Christ. Luke alone plays down her part. Jesus’ mother appears to have been a major source for his Gospel, and he probably knew her personally. Some have been cynical enough to suggest that he downplayed the role of the one woman who might have threatened the Virgin’s place of veneration in the new movement. But even Luke admits that Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and other women brought ointments to the tomb early Sunday morning; found the huge stone rolled away; went in and found the body missing; saw two men dressed in dazzling light, who told them Jesus had risen; and rushed back to tell the 11 disciples -- though it is only at the end that Luke parenthetically provides the women’s names.

Mark, on the other hand, says at the beginning of his account that it was Magdalene, Salome and Mary the mother of James who carried embalming spices to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away, went in, and saw a young man dressed in white, who told them Jesus had come back to life and that they were to tell the 11 he would meet them in Galilee; then they fled the tomb. In the first verses of the appendix to Mark’s story, Magdalene is identified as the first to see the Risen Christ and the first to tell the 11, who significantly. perhaps because of her sex, refused to believe her.

Matthew says that early Sunday morning Magdalene and the other Mary went to the tomb, felt an earthquake, and saw an angel come down, roll away the stone and sit on it. The guards fainted. He told the women not to be afraid because Jesus had come back to life and they were to go and tell the 11 to meet him in Galilee. As they ran away, Jesus appeared before them on the path and said, “Good morning.” They fell down and clasped his feet. He told them to go and tell his brothers to meet him in Galilee. Again they ran.

John says that early Sunday morning Mary Magdalene (alone, it would seem) came and found the stone rolled away and ran to tell Peter and John. Peter and John came to the tomb and believed (just what isn’t stated). Mary Magdalene returned crying, stooped and looked inside, and saw two angels in white robes sitting at the head and foot of the slab where the body had been. They asked her why she cried. She said someone had taken the body and she didn’t know where it was. When she turned back outside, Jesus was there. He asked her what she wanted; taking him for the gardener, she begged him to show her the body. He called her name, and then she knew him. He warned her not to touch him (Noli me tangere, as Titian would portray the scene) but to go and tell his brothers he was about to go to God.

All of which demonstrates just how significant Magdalene was to the events of crucifixion and resurrection and thus to the birth of Christianity. She was perhaps the single most important person in the new faith’s most crucial three days. Yet she is not mentioned again -- not in Acts, not in the various epistles, not in earliest martyrology -- and that is doubtless why in succeeding generations readers, hungry for a more detailed picture of this woman rumored from the first to have been something “special” to Jesus, have given her the characteristics and experiences of other Marys and unnamed biblical women.

She has been identified as the woman “caught in the very act” of adultery (John 8:3-11). Drawing on ancient traditions, William Blake (The Everlasting Gospel) and Nikos Kazantzakis (The Last Temptation of Christ) have made much of this match. But of course this woman was caught at her business (as was her male partner, though he apparently wasn’t accused) after Jesus had come to Jerusalem, and Magdalene was supposed to have been reformed by then, so other myths say. She has also been identified, perhaps more by modern novelists and screenwriters than by the ancients, as the woman at the well (John 4:4.29). But this woman was a Samaritan, not a Galilean like Magdalene; and nowhere is there any hint that Magdalene had had even one husband, let alone a whole series.

She has been identified (R. M. Grant says as early as the second century) as the woman who anointed Jesus’ head with a precious ointment. This happened in Bethany, at the table of one Simon the leper (Mark 14:3-9; Matt. 26: 7-13). Some of those present criticized her for the waste, but Jesus praised the act, and it was then that Judas decided to betray his master. Luke, placing the story in an earlier context, says that this “bad woman” washed Jesus’ feet with her tears, dried them with her hair, kissed them and anointed them with perfume; but it is probably the same story, for though it is said to have happened long before Judas’ betrayal and in a slightly different manner, it did happen in the home of a publican named Simon.

How did this event get to be associated with Magdalene? John may provide the answer. He says twice that Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus of Bethany poured perfume on Jesus’ feet and wiped them with her hair. This happened in her own home, not in the house of a man named Simon, but it was in Bethany, it was during a meal, and Judas did complain about the waste of perfume that could have been sold and the money given to the poor.

But there is not the slightest shred of hard evidence that she was Magdalene or that Magdalene was any of the Gospels’ other Marys or unnamed “bad” women. There is certainly no biblical basis for saying that she was a reformed prostitute or that she had long red hair, though the length of the hair probably derives from her confusion with Mary of Bethany. She did have the audacity to be no man’s wife or mother.

Magdalene disappeared from the official record Easter afternoon. Perhaps she returned to Galilee to live quietly, uneventfully, under the protection of one of those Christian communities not recorded in the New Testament. Perhaps she was martyred. Perhaps she was left out of the canon because she never again did anything memorable, perhaps because her “special” relationship with Jesus would have made her a target for attack by those who wished to discredit his work. No one really knows, just as no one knows how much credit she should get for the idea that Jesus rose from the dead. Pesky questions have persisted from the first century to the modern age, as in the theological criticism of writers like Ernest Renan. Did Magdalene find the empty tomb and bring back to the other women and then to the men a story of visions so vivid they made them their own? Could all the subsequent encounters with the Risen One have been inspired by her bereaved delirium? Was she the real founder of the Christian faith?

One thing is certain. She was not given full credit for whatever part she did play until very late in Christian history. For a thousand years she all but disappeared. She lived on in oral tradition; it was then that her image expanded and deepened; but in almost no surviving art and few theological commentaries does she even appear. Her name, her face, her place in the tradition were officially ignored.

This could at first have been because the early fathers, like Luke before them, saw her as a potential rival to the Virgin. The Virgin is not, even in Luke, a particularly prominent figure in the ministry or passion of Jesus. His first recorded words mildly rebuke her for not understanding that even as a 12-year-old he had to tend to his father’s business. Later, at the marriage at Cana, he is none too happy with her for bothering him about the wine. In the middle of his work she tries to get him to come home and forget his adoring crowds, and he refuses to recognize her as his mother. But Magdalene is always there -- in Galilee, in Jerusalem, at Golgotha, at the tomb on Easter morning: and had her part in the pageant been duly acknowledged, she might well have surpassed the Virgin in prestige and reverence.

But while fear of rivalry may help explain the early silence and neglect, it does not explain its long continuation. By the day of the theologian Origen (182-251) the Virgin could without fear of contradiction be called Mother of God, the New Eve, the New Adam’s Mother. By the fourth century festivals to her outnumbered those to all other saints combined. She had no rival: Magdalene and all other women were eclipsed.

Perhaps this was due to the early and medieval church’s “gnostic” fear of fleshly, sexual impurity and the hushed-up but never completely silenced tradition that Magdalene was Jesus’ wife or his lover. It could be that as the first Christians moved out with their message into the Greek world, the popular hellenistic idea that sexual abstinence was the most important sign of spiritual purity made it necessary to portray Jesus -- even as early as the Gospels -- as a virgin, or at least to ignore his marriage or love affairs. The Gospel of Philip reflects a tradition as 01(1 as the second century that Magdalene was in fact Jesus’ wife.

William Phipps, who has written extensively on the subject of Jesus’ sexuality, says Jesus could not have been accepted as a rabbi in the Jewish society of his day had he not been married, and that the marriage in Cana, where his mother as hostess called on him for help with the wine, was probably his own wedding feast. Phipps also believes it likely that Magdalene was the bride. Noli me tangere, or in Greek me mou baptou, he translates: “Do not keep on hugging me” -- a sign of their former intimacy.

In Jewish society, marriage and all its sexual obligations, if carried out according to the Law, would not have been associated with impurity. But in Greek society, with which the first disciples came in contact even before the Gospels were written, Jesus could not have had a wife or an intimate female friend without suspicions of impurity and sin. His partner, his female counterpart, had to be his mother, who herself came to be thought of more and more as a perpetual. virgin, conceived without sin.

Add all this to the gradual fusion of Magdalene and the various “loose” women of the Bible -- her ever-shadier reputation -- and the picture grows clear. By refusing to let her be his wife, or even his lover in his bereavement, the fathers let her become a camp follower, a whore for want of a purpose in the Nazarene band. She became an embarrassment to the first missionaries and a reproach to the kinds of pharisees who later came to control the church, to men who preferred not to remember Jesus’ preference for sinful people. Early and medieval church leadership, thoroughly masculine, preferred their female saints to be wives or mothers of holy men. Magdalene, stripped of her true role in the story of Jesus, was neither.

But maybe all this is going too far. Maybe her neglect was only a matter of the preferences of a particular cultic expression. Early Christian art seems to have preferred symbols: Noah’s boat as the church sailing through stormy political seas, the Good Shepherd and his lamb, the IKTHUS fish. Even New Testament characters were generally rendered abstractly. There was really no place for a personality like Magdalene’s. Later came the preference for nativities, the Madonna and Christchild and, later still, crucifixes unadorned by worshiping or swooning witnesses -- again no place for her. The resurrection, where she would have been unavoidable, where her influence and veneration would most certainly have grown, was seldom a subject of medieval art.

It was indeed only in the early Renaissance, in the liturgical drama which influenced the subject matter of the newly recovered art of painting -- where the resurrection did get attention -- that Magdalene was returned to prominence and became for the first time an officially popular figure. It was a long time coming. For several centuries the church fought classical drama because it was seen as a vehicle for the propagation of pagan philosophy, and it naturally resisted the use of drama to teach the faith. But of course the mass itself was a form of drama and became more so as years passed, especially in the time of Charlemagne, who loved liturgical splendor.

Using the newly developed tropes of the tenth century, priests began to improvise brief dramatizations, each appropriate for the mass of the day, to be performed before the Introit, or later just before the Te Deum. Since a reenactment of the crucifixion was neither practical nor seemly and one of the nativity difficult and somewhat undramatic, the first such “play” and the only one for a century or more -- and the one that remained the most popular, even in the 14th century when there were many -- was the scene of the three Marys at the empty tomb. Later when the Easter mass featured all elaborate play about the resurrection, the most impressive scene, the one professional writers labored to perfect, was of Magdalene meeting Jesus in the garden. In this later cultic expression that so captivated Renaissance audiences, a new religious star was born.

VII

The Renaissance then was Magdalene’s era. In northern Europe, where the miracle play had its origin, she starred in such sacred theatrical productions as Dulot’s Maria Magdalena, his motet written for Rouen Cathedral, as well as the art of the day. In the south also she appeared both in drama and in painting and sculpture. There she appeared with long hair, usually red, sometimes carrying a jar of ointment (as in Viti), sometimes with the other Marys at the tomb and sometimes alone with the Risen Christ, in some works as a woman made beautiful by her rescue and salvation (as in Perugina, Dolci, Gaddi) and in others as a ravaged penitent (as in Donatello), but always now a central figure, at times complementing and at times in contrast to but often (as in the sculpture of Bologna) virtually overshadowing the more sedate Virgin.

It was her time, of course -- the day of the prostitute. This was how she was seen and admired. Town life was replacing the rural court; the bourgeoisie, the aristocracy; and the prostitute represented town life’s oldest capitalist profession. In the countryside, at the court, the “loose” woman did what she did for fun of it or for her keep. In the new capitalist towns she earned cash, and the more enterprising members of her group built up capital to invest in loftier and more profitable schemes, a trait commercial bankers and even hardheaded church financiers could appreciate. In Florence, where the greatest “Magdalena was carved, prostitutes were in plentiful supply to fascinate the leaders of society and mildly threaten ecclesiastical discipline, and a saint who was thought to have been a prostitute was bound to get attention from every group with money for the arts.

Magdalene got it, and from groups with the money to hire the best artists of the day. Fra Angelico, the sensual Florentine monk who used to crawl out his window to visit the girls, painted her watching joyfully as on Easter morning Jesus dances in ecstasy at his resurrection. But it was Donatello, the revolutionary artist whose David was the first freestanding nude since antiquity, who made her a supreme work of art.

Donatello did three figures of strikingly similar, exceptionally powerful character, a Magdalena and two John the Baptist figures, one just before and one just after her. The first John, done in 1452 in wood for Santa Maria dei Frari in Venice and influenced by the Byzantine style, makes John long and thin with wild hair that flows down to merge with clothing made of animal skins. The second John, done in bronze for the Siena Cathedral in 1457, has that same fusion of hair and skins plus a famous “mad” look about the eyes. Between them stands the Magdalena, done in wood in 1455 for the cathedral baptistry in Florence. Emaciated, mad, with long hair that merges with skins, ravaged by a life of dissipation and then long repentence, she is one of the most powerful works of Christian art, the perfect example of the grotesque made beautiful.

The red-haired saint. She is still as popular as she was in the Renaissance and for much the same reasons. Liberated artists today, those who deal in religious subject & still portray her as the prostitute, the loose woman near the Lord. But they seem to enjoy her sensuality more openly. She seldom repents anymore. Once a whore, always a whore, and so much the better.

VIII

The problem with this, and perhaps the problem with our supposedly liberated age, is that while Magdalene is no longer forced to repent her natural desires, she is still not permitted to be an equal-to-the-male human being. The medieval designation of woman as either virgin or whore stands, and Magdalene is still the latter. She is Playmate of the Christian Era.

Kazantzakis ushered in our part of the era, perhaps inadvertently, with his confused, confusing but vivid novel The Last Temptation of Christ. Kazantzakis’s Jesus, like his Saint Francis, is a tortured hero, emerging from an earthshaking experience with God convinced that sex is sinful -- the antitype of the novelist’s totally sensuous Zorba the Greek. Jesus and Magdalene are cousins, betrothed, but he receives a sign from God that he is divine and must remain celibate. He goes off to the desert; in her agony she searches in bed after bed for someone to take his place. Part of Jesus’ torment during the passion is that by doing God’s will he has ruined the life of the one he loves; his “last temptation” is to forsake the cross and make her his wife. She is too completely a slave to her female desires to save herself.

Kazantzakis despised, perhaps feared, the femininity of his Magdalene, as does the eloquent black Judas of Jesus Christ Superstar. Faithful to the biblical account of Judas’ disgust with Jesus’ acceptance of “impure” women, the rock opera opens with his song of outrage at the tolerance that gives the Nazarenes a bad name. But readers of Last Temptation and fans of Superstar are struck by how attractive Magdalene is despite her detractors, even when, as in Kazantzakis’s case, they are her creators. She is, despite all the protest, still beautiful, still modern man s favorite holy Playmate. She may not “know how to love him,” but she won’t stop trying. Why should she? She’s only a woman. She remains our secular but juvenile age’s favorite female saint because she strokes the male’s ego and feeds his sexual fantasy.

As this parody of what she really was, she inspires great art, but she also stands as an obstacle to female social equality by helping perpetuate a stereotype which, whether it is shamed or glorified, demeans womanhood. Yet in Magdalene I see a key to a new level of Christian sexual consciousness. All we need do is demonstrate honestly the true role this woman had in the story of redemption, the apparent fact that she was Jesus’ partner, wife or lover, his favorite disciple, a full member of a revolutionary community created by One who considered men and women equal. Just as Magdalene was the key to postresurrection consciousness, so could she now serve as the key to a new age of sexual liberation. All we in the church need do is at long last give her due credit for all she did and all she was.

Two or Three and God

Some years ago, when I was teaching at a theological seminary in South Africa, I had a very peculiar experience; as with the bear in James Thurber’s “bear that could take it or leave it alone,” the experience was somewhat more frightening to my colleagues than is my normal, somewhat cynical self. To put it briefly, I sat up one night and furiously scribbled a new, completely unrealized but very fascinating scheme for educating people for ministry -- one in which they turned to each other and God as primary sources, with books and the paraphernalia of scholastic method as tertiary kinds of helps. The part that frightened everybody was that I felt impelled, by the same authority that set me to work writing at 1 AM., to present the results to some of my staff brothers at an hour considered by even the high-church fathers of the Community of the Resurrection to be ungodly.

Let this personal reminiscence serve as a short introduction to the matter at hand: presenting something of the values I have found in a new theological education method. For in some rather remarkable ways, that experience has come true in the present. It might not be too far off the mark to say that what happened that night was a prophetic statement of what God intended for his servant after his removal from the scene where he had labored for a dozen or more years as a result of speaking out his piece of dissent before the South African government.

Or, it might simply be said that my activities and dissent did earn for me the status of undesirable alien in South Africa almost immediately afterward. And when I returned to Africa a year and a half later, it was to Botswana as a parish pastor. Then, in 1973, I became involved in setting up the first theological course leading to ordination in Botswana’s history. In the extension theological program I helped pioneer here, I have witnessed the remarkable fulfillment of the ideas and words given to me during those late-night hours so long ago.

As in other such training, extension theology involves setting up centers where the students come once a week to discuss with a tutor the work they have done and the study they have undertaken individually at home. Much has been said both for and against this kind of training as preparation for adequate parish ministry. I shall not enter into the arguments here, but instead suggest that anyone who has not experienced it should be very slow to deride it. Now to the reasons why I have become so in love with what I am doing, as a result of the method, rather than the content, of the educational process.

The standard method of theological education -- a method practiced in the public schools and on through the university -- is one of attending a certain number of classes, drafting some papers and, at the end of the term or course, writing the answers to some questions in order to indicate comprehension of the materials covered. Students are advised to read broadly in the subject and to reflect on their reading. But that task is largely one of individual initiative and individual attainment.

Over the past two decades it has been my privilege to participate in various educational experiences; the conclusion they have pointed to is that education, like physical growth itself, is the product of two dissimilar processes which are very like ingestion and digestion. The first requires experience -- in the form of words, actions, sights and sounds -- to be collected and funneled into an individual. The second process takes time -- time in which to sort out and reject and organize the information, to select and integrate what is significant and relate it to the previous integrations in one’s life. In some cases -- fairly frequently with regard to the study of theology -- this latter phase involves the removal or destruction of previously held ideas, and of integrations and orderings of those ideas as well.

What I have called the standard approach excels in the first process, providing fine lecturers and large libraries: a truly incredible input of new information. But it is quite weak in helping students to undertake the second process, that of integration, largely leaving its accomplishment up to each individual student. Extension theology, on the other hand, deals in bite-sized bits of information and excels at the second process. Its strength is in students’ sitting down with one another and digesting the information together, it, this way seeing where and how it fits, and why.

Where extension theology can exceed the standard approach in experience-gathering lies in the whole person approach; since students remain in their usual life context and work in their church during the week, the things that happen to them can be continually built upon in the study time and brought into the discussions. Each thing learned can be investigated jointly, tested for significance, and then discarded or molded into the individual’s ongoing life. Does the extension theological student thereby “learn” as much as a residential student? That question is really very difficult to answer, and any attempt to test for it would be open to bias in the testing. The extension student learns in a different way, in and through the context of his or her living.

Another major discovery about this method concerns motivation. Group study may seem tame to energetic, competitive persons, but it does generate a remarkable motivation. My African colleagues have reported instances in which an individual has, with the sympathetic and concerted concern of others in his group, come from a position of extreme weakness (and even a serious language problem) to full sharing and flowering. The motivation to belong fully to the group is extraordinary, and the results have surprised us all. Twice during the two years of our program’s operation, a group has come down to one person; in both cases that person has continued, developing a strong dependence relationship to his tutor very reminiscent of the feelings I once had about seminary professors.

Otherwise, after an initial period the tutor almost invariably becomes one of the group, and the group itself generates and carries out the responsibility to study and learn what the members find important to learn. Students express deep concern for absent members and give help to one another. In Botswana’s context, this procedure has enabled people who live in the same area but who come from different churches to find and value one another in the course of their study. The program has thus influenced interchurch relations in many local areas.

III

Finally, students make use of what they are learning as they work in their churches during the week. Ministerial training over a five-year period enables people to attain skills as they study, and to preach and teach even as they learn. An invaluable aid to retaining material (when we teach something, we remember it), this procedure is a means for making genuine contributions to church life from the start -- a fact that has made a deep impression on many people; our program has received about twice as many applicants for the third year as there were for the second. Learning to teach and preach grows out of the integration process for the subject matter studied. And it works.

Recently I got out that little pad on which I had scribbled so long ago. Today I can see in what I wrote things that eluded me at the time. Two or three motivated people, committed to each other and working in the presence of God, can bring the whole world into their weekly discussion, and comprehend it in part. As to who actually taught them, it was not I, nor did they teach each other. The instructor of the things of God is God. This, I believe, is theological education taking place in the presence of God.

The ‘Multiple Factor’ and Economic Development

World hunger has served to mobilize the resources of the American churches as few other issues have done. And everyone who, like me, has spent half a lifetime in the Third World can only say “Amen.” This campaign has, however, brought out one result that previous efforts have often missed; it has stressed what has been called the “multiplier factor.” That is, putting something in the belly of the starving masses is not enough, for we should at the same time be helping them to produce for themselves. We should be giving not only ripe corn, but seed corn; not only meat, but heifers. We seek a better kind of gift, that those who receive may themselves produce, that they may feed themselves. Some rudimentary technology and some fertilizer given along with the food will enable the gift to grow, to multiply and bring further blessings.

For the past five years I have lived and worked in a semidesert land, among a people plagued by periodic drought. The Batswana as a nation have tried valiantly to import helpers for this very purpose: so that they will be able to help themselves. Countless pilot projects have been started, many of them moderately successful for a time, some doomed from the outset because they were too ambitious and required too many people with too many skills that a poor nation just does not have. For more than a decade a progressive, dedicated government has highlighted rural development. Yet somehow the dreams fade one by one and the schemes slowly wither -- and more pilot projects proliferate.

I

What has gone wrong? Can it be remedied? Not long ago a church worker of a denomination very active in this country was interviewed on the radio. He was asked, more or less as a matter of course, what his church was doing for Botswana’s development. He stuttered a bit and then tried to make a case for “just being a church,” and the impression he left was that “being a church” must be something quite unconnected with economic development.

I would like to take up this man’s cause, wield a couple of cudgels on his behalf, and express my conviction as to how “just being a church” could provide the key to programs that work – that multiply and meet people’s needs more comprehensively than seeds, heifers and agricultural innovation alone.

To begin, this worker’s church is among other activities, taking part in the growing program of theological education in Botswana. This program reaches into rural communities as well as towns, and is available to laypersons as well as candidates for ordination. Now had this churchman replied confidently, “Well, my church participates in the Botswana Theological Training Program,” his interviewer would have blinked and immediately -- asked: “What does that have to do with development, self-sufficiency, economic growth?” In that case, the interview might have proceeded as follows.

Churchman: I’m glad you asked, that, because on the surface one might think such training was irrelevant. But when we study the wider picture, its significance becomes apparent.

Interviewer: What wider picture?

Churchman: Consider the help we have had in the past few years from experts in tropical and semidesert agriculture. When they leave, their projects fold up. Why?

Interviewer: I’m not a farmer.

Churchman: Neither am I, but ask yourself this: What does a farmer do when he has been shown a way to triple his crop? He goes out and does it, under the detailed supervision of the expert. Right?

Interviewer (puzzled): Yes.

Churchman: Six months later he has, for the first time in his life, a good crop, one that brings in cash in addition to providing for his family’s needs. He is delighted. First he pays back an installment on the loan he took for the equipment and fertilizer, but he still has some money left. So now he makes a payment on a car.

Interviewer: Is there anything wrong With that?

Churchman: Our farmer now has a new status. His relatives see him as a rich man. They send their kids to him to be educated. He is elected to the local development committee, and he spends time attending meetings. When the next planting season comes around, he gets in some local people to work his crop.

Interviewer: I still don’t see . . .

Churchman: The expert is still in the area. He pays a visit and finds that the farmer is not there and the local people doing the work haven’t the faintest notion of the detailed techniques that brought about that first bountiful crop. So he tries to teach them.

But they themselves aren’t likely to benefit from doing all those detailed hot jobs; scientifically spreading fertilizer and conscientiously watering. They are working for wages. So they skimp and the second crop is much smaller.

Now the farmer has a problem. He cannot both keep the car and pay the next installment on his indebtedness. So he keeps the car and makes excuses to the expert. The third year the expert leaves, and after that harvest the farmer goes under. Then his neighbors all say: “You see. God meant for an acre to yield only ten bushels.”

II

Interviewer: But what has all this got to do with the church?

Churchman: If you see what went wrong, you will know what the first step must be. The expert knew all about farming; it was not he who failed. Yet the project failed. It failed because our friend the farmer did not have deep within himself some important religious understandings of who he was and what he was doing. It failed because he was not part of a community which gave him crucial support as he launched out into a new way of life, which provided him with the counsel he needed at critical times.

Interviewer: I thought we were talking about development.

Churchman: We are. But what I am trying to show you is that to give a person a skill and a means of livelihood is only the first step toward successful development. If people are to profit and enable others to profit from that skill, they also need to have moral and theological convictions, to have a sense of responsibility and stewardship, to be part of a helping community so that making the adjustment to a new life can be meaningful. In a word, our farmer needs a vision, and that vision must be wide and constructive.

Interviewer: You say this has to do with theological education?

Churchman: Exactly. For the first time, those in rural areas can acquire the skills needed to understand the church in this deeper way I’ve been talking about. Our program makes this possible. Among those we train may be this very farmer, or his neighbor. Another may become his pastor. Because these people have gained this wider vision, they can help the farmer to make sense of his skill and integrate it into a new and different life style.

Interviewer: Well, thank you, Pastor X, for telling us some of the activities your organization is involved in. Next week we will be speaking to Mr. Y of the Small Business Encouragement Unit. Until then, good-bye.

III

At this point a note of reality ought to be injected. Chances are that the words “hunger” and “development” will never convey to very many people a connection with theological education or, for that matter, “being a church.” As an interested party in this discussion, I have approached numerous possible donors in Europe and America asking for contributions to our theological training program. Their candid reply has been: “We aren’t much interested in theology right now. We are putting our funds into development projects.”

But for what I have called the “multiplier factor,” some skills -- and even attitudes -- that have little to do with agricultural know how are absolutely crucial. And it seems to me that executives in church agencies ought to be among the first to recognize this fact. The man who declared that people do not live by bread alone also said that he could provide food and drink of a sort that would alleviate hunger and thirst forever. That is the “multiplier factor” which concerns me.

My thoughts along these lines were sparked by a visit from Neil Richards, who was taking part in a world hunger survey. He spoke of the work being done in villages of northern Ghana by a development team consisting of an agriculturist, a literacy expert, a nutritionist, a nurse and a minister. I confess that my first thought was: “I see why the others, but what is the padre’s role?”

Then I came across the phrase “multiplier factor” and began to sort things out. Finally, when a local government official rebuffed our program’s request for an educational site, on the grounds that we should know development has top priority in Botswana, I realized that I had to speak up.

It became clear that some effort must be made if the well-intentioned but hitherto largely futile, experiments in self-sufficiency were to be injected with the devotion and, yes, the sense of duty that seem to characterize a dedicated Christian. It is so easy to concentrate on either/or: either service to humanity or propagation of the faith, as though they were mutually exclusive. True development must surely be of the whole person in a whole community.

No Steps to Heaven

The scene is upper Manhattan, Broadway at Reinhold Niebuhr Place, Union Theological Seminary. Union’s president, Donald Shriver, walks jauntily down the steps to the bustling street and sits down in a wheelchair brought for the experiment, thus putting himself in the place of a student with a handicap. Gazing up from his wheelchair at that imposing entrance and those five insurmountable steps, he says, “OK, carry me in,” and two waiting students -- both of them at least a bit nervous -- carry him into the foyer. Inside, he wheels past a heavy elevator door and then, with the aid of the students, attempts to negotiate the maze that is a magnificent building constructed on the assumption that everyone using it would be not only a spiritual and intellectual giant but an able-bodied athlete as well!

Some 10 to 15 per cent of the American population is physically disabled -- and this often-overlooked minority is involved in a new kairos: handicapped people are coming out of the closet and into the mainstream. As they do so, society at large must cope with two kinds of barriers: attitudinal and architectural. Surprisingly, churches often seem to lag behind secular institutions in dealing with both of these factors. Architecturally, the churches of our land, defy the disabled worshiper to enter. For example, a recent survey in St. Louis indicated that fewer than 1 per cent of the city’s churches could be entered by persons in wheelchairs. Cost is frequently the factor cited by churches in not making their buildings accessible. In contrast, some months ago in Las Vegas I asked five persons in wheelchairs in five different casinos whether they had encountered any barriers to their entrance; the answer was always, “No, should there be?”

The Weight of Leviticus

Underlying the presence of physical barriers in churches and seminaries is a set of still-perpetuated attitudinal barriers -- primarily the following: (1) low expectations on the part of both pastors and laypeople of just what a disabled person can do; (2) a psychologically defined negation, usually unconscious, reflecting the Jamesian response of “fight or fly”; (3) simple lack of experience with handicapped persons, and consequent embarrassment; (4) biblically derived sanctions, expressing thousands of years of tradition. It is this latter factor which constitutes the most formidable obstacle to progress.

In the law and the prophets, from Genesis through Zechariah, various handicapping conditions are mentioned. The Hebrew term for “blemish” -- which seems originally to have meant a “black spot” -- denotes anything, abnormal or deviating from a given standard, whether physical, moral, or ritualistic” (Jewish Encyclopedia). The law requires that animals offered for sacrifice be without blemish. Warns the Levitical statement:

None of your descendants, from generation to generation, who has a defect, may draw near to offer his God’s food; for no one who has a defect may come near, no one who is blind, or lame, or has any perforations, or has a limb too long; no one who has a fractured foot, or a fractured hand, or is a hunchback, or has a cataract, or a defect of eye sight, or scurvy, or scabs, or crushed testicles -- no one of the descendants of Aaron the priest, who has a defect, may come near to offer the Lord’s sacrifices; since he has a defect, he may not come near to offer his God’s food. He may eat his God’s food, some of the most sacred as well as the sacred, only he must not approach the Veil, nor come near the altar, because he has a defect in him, lest he profane my sanctuary; for it is I, the Lord, who consecrate [Lev. 21:17-23, Goodspeed and Smith translation].

A special set of statutes governed the administering of the priestly blessing, as distinct from the qualifications for becoming a priest. Maimonides lists six blemishes that disqualify one from offering the blessing: defective articulation of speech; malfunction of face, hands or feet or unusual appearance of hands (such as discoloration); moral delinquency (such as idolatry or murder); physical immaturity (beard not fully grown); drunkenness; not having washed the hands.

According to Philo, perfection of the body was a symbol of the perfection of the soul. For Maimonides, comeliness underscored the honor and respect due the temple, since the multitude “does not appreciate a man for his true worth, but for the perfection of his limbs and the beauty of his garments.” However, it is clear that as far as physical blemishes were concerned, “the test was purely pragmatic; thus if the cohen [priest] was so well known that his blemish raised no curiosity, “the ban was removed” (Jewish Encyclopedia).

In the New Testament, the crucial reference to any kind of handicap is the Johannine story of the man blind from his birth:

As he passed along, he saw a man who had been blind from his birth. His disciples asked him, “Master, for whose sin was this man born blind? For his own, or for that of his parents?” Jesus answered, “It was neither for his own sin nor for that of his parents, but to let what God can do be illustrated in his case. We must carry on the work of Him who has sent me while the daylight lasts. Night is coming, when no one can do any work. As long as I am in the world, I am a light for the world.” As he said this, he spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva, and he put the clay on the man’s eyes, and said to him, “Go and wash them in the pool of Siloam” -- a name which means one who has been sent. And so he went and washed them, and went home able to see [John 9:1.7].

When the formerly blind man testified to Jesus’ miracle, the Pharisees, who had excluded him from the synagogue, exclaimed, “You were born in utter sin, and are you trying to teach us?” Learning of this, Jesus sought out the blind man, saying, “I have come into this world to judge men, that those who cannot see may see, and that those who can see may become blind.” To some Pharisees who responded by asking, “Are we blind too?” Jesus answered, “If you were blind, you would be guilty of no sin, but as it is you say, ‘We can see,’ so your sin continues” (v. 41).

Throughout the New Testament, Jesus’ response to disability is to heal the condition, to consider the handicap irrelevant for others (as in the Johannine story), or to seek justice for the disabled.

In its statements on ordination or priesthood and ministry, the New Testament does not require the qualifications explicitly demanded in the law and the prophets. It is possible, however, that such practices were followed. Even the Hellenists, who made up so large a part of early Christian congregations, came from a background that required the absence of blemishes in religious leaders.

The requirement that priests and sacrifices should be without blemish was common to all the ancient civilizations, and there is evidence for this from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Khatti, Greece and Rome. Egyptian documents state that candidates for the priesthood were examined for blemishes and that the sacrifices had to be perfect without any blemish. The Hittites also regarded the presence of ceremonial ritual of those blemished as an affront to the Gods [Encyclopedia Judaica]

The Contemporary Church

In the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches there are clear statements of doctrine opposing ministry by persons with physical disabilities (and what is de jure in these two churches is de facto in Protestantism). The Catholic canon law doctrine expressing this understanding is called admiratio populi -- referring to discomfort among members of the congregation in response -to a public figure whose outward appearance could be distracting. In Protestant as well as Catholic circles, a clergyperson is understood to be the “one for others.” This “outfront” role, enacted “before the congregation,” is of course very public: administering the sacraments, preaching the word, and being of service to other human beings within and without the congregation. In the Catholic Church, the requirements and disqualifications for ministry and priesthood are seen in the context of the sacrament of ordination.

While not canonical, the practice in Protestantism is pervasively negative. Reports Robert Rankin, vice-president of the Danforth Foundation: “I cannot remember a single minister with physical disabilities in my California Conference of the Methodist Church; and with admittedly limited knowledge of clergy in the Missouri Conference, UCC, I cannot recall seeing anyone with physical disabilities.” Dr. Rankin then adds: “My congregation, First Congregational Church of Webster Groves, Missouri, has installed an elevator which has made it possible for persons in wheelchairs and those of us using crutches to attend church.” One minister writes that when he became disabled while serving a congregation, there was “less acceptance for my handicap, so I resigned.” Another sees in two ways the consequences of his becoming disabled during his parish service: “There was a complete surrounding of me with love and care, even including financial help for medical expenses.” However, he adds that “I have not faced seeking another pastorate, but I feel that probably only a small struggling church would ever take a chance on calling me.” Still another, stricken with polio after ordination, remarks that he “survived without the affection of those who chose not to include me within their circle of acceptance.” And a fourth comments that professional church leadership “was hesitant to recommend me for another parish, and encouraged me to prepare myself for institutional ministry.”

During the 20 years I served as director of the United Church of Christ’s Council for Ministry, my responsibilities included heading the CCC placement system; inevitably I was involved with a number of “problem cases” -- ministers with physical disabilities. One pastor’s file folder was at least two or three inches thick, containing many job refusals because he was crippled by polio. One pulpit committee chairperson wrote: “Of course this man ought to have a church of his own, but not ours.” There were dozens of such cases.

Not all reactions are negative. One person wrote me that “Baptist placement channels did not know what to do with me, but the denomination was prepared to create a job for me and I accepted the position offered directly to me.” Another: “I get very tired and am often depressed, but I have received a great deal of support from many sources. I cannot think of a single negative incident,” A third: “The Jesuits have accepted me in seminary despite my deafness. In the beginning there was fear -- but that was resolved by speaking to the person who had the fear.” Still another: “In seminary, there was encouragement from persons closest to me, humor, and theological conviction adequate to deal with the problems internal and external.” And finally: “The members of First Lutheran Church were wonderfully supportive and kind: eight years of service, sighted, were followed by 15 more years, blind, during which 300 parishioners drove for [the pastor] on calls -- a great experience for us all.”

Fostering Change

Societal attitudes can change. And if a major segment of society would respond more positively to physical disability, then the canon law of admiratio populi would also change. Such a development would be quite consistent with the pragmatic approach in the Pentateuch statements which allow for continued activity by the priest if the congregation has become used to the blemish he manifests.

This more accepting attitude constitutes one of the two primary resources for change within the church. A second -- and more important -- lies in the theological dimension: the messianic feast vision of Jesus and the “strength in weakness” statements of Paul are cornerstones for the conviction that within the very nature of the church itself, weakness is present in order that God may be glorified.

The parable of the Great Banquet in Luke 14 recounts the excuses given by those invited: One of them says that he has to go look at his newly bought piece of land; another says that he has to examine his five yoke of oxen. Angered, the host exclaims: “Hurry out into the streets and squares of the city, and bring the poor, the maimed, the blind, and the lame in here” (Goodspeed and Smith, v. 21). The householder’s peroration at the end of the chapter and the introductory conversation of Jesus and the Pharisees prior to Jesus’ description of the Great Banquet are interrelated: “For I tell you that none of those men who were invited shall have any of my dinner!” (v. 24). Among the statements prior to the description of the banquet: “For everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled, but the man who humbles himself will be exalted” (v. 11). Finally: “Do not invite your friends or your rich neighbors or your relatives, for then they will invite you in return and you will be repaid. But when you give an entertainment, invite people who are poor, maimed, lame or blind. Then you will be blessed, because they cannot repay yau; for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the upright” (vv. 12-14). The Kingdom of God is not complete without the poor and the maimed. And each member of the Kingdom is not complete, nor has hope of salvation, save that the lame and the blind are included.

Many American denominations, with sensitivity and with considerable expenditure of money, have led in the creation of institutional care for handicapped and retarded persons. Since the late 19th century, many have also been concerned with the deinstitutionalization process (see my Century article “Mainstreaming the Alienated: The Church Responds to a New Minority,” March 23, 1977). Pertinent national-level statements have been made by the United Presbyterian Church, the United Church of Christ and the Southern Baptist Convention. For example, a Presbyterian resolution states “that all planning for new church building and for major renovation to existing church buildings shall take into consideration the needs of the handicapped members of our society, in order that all may enter into our fellowship.” Appended to the resolution are a dozen pages of information on site development, ramps, entrances, doors, stairs and rest rooms, The UCC -- on Independence Day 1977 -- called on “each local congregation to take affirmative action assuring the full integration of persons with handicaps into membership of the Christian fellowship at all levels.” It also urged the church to employ such persons, encouraged individuals with handicaps to become part of the ongoing life of the church, and specifically called attention “to removal of environmental and architectural barriers.” The National Council of Churches has taken a similar stand through its governing board.

Can the churches continue both to support institutional care and to “mainstream”? In more than a few cases, churches are firmly demonstrating that they can do both. The World Council of Churches itself has called for such two-pronged action. A consultation convened by the WCC in cooperation with the Innere Mission of East Germany’s evangelical churches issued this statement: “We affirm the continuing need for institutions in which the most severely disabled experience help, protection and care, even while at the same time we call for the integration of the disabled and the able-bodied within the local congregation.”

Resolutions are one thing -- and are important as statement or commitment. But implementation at the local level still tends to be sporadic. “Massive resistance continues to exist in churches across the land, although the bright spots of response now number many more within this half decade,” reports the Healing Community, a church- and synagogue-oriented organization set up to facilitate integration of various alienated persons and groups into the mainstream of society. This group, whose major goal is to help provide tools, concepts and practical suggestions for creating caring congregations, is also working toward models of ministry with handicapped persons and creating access to professional theological education for them. The Healing Community also serves as a resource center for religious bodies and is encouraging international extension of its concepts.

Federal and State Laws

Legal requirements for accessibility to institutions which receive federal funds are listed in Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973; it states that “no otherwise qualified handicapped individual . . . shall, solely by reason of his handicap, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.” This means that any institutions, including churches, which maintain programs that receive HEW funds must respond to the following regulations:

• All new facilities must be barrier-free.

• Programs or activities in existing facilities must be made accessible to handicapped people within 60 days, and structural changes, if necessary, must be made within three years.

• Qualified handicapped persons may not, on the basis of handicap, be denied admission or employment even if facilities have not been made barrier-free.

• Colleges and universities must make reasonable modifications in academic requirements, where necessary, to ensure full educational opportunity for handicapped students.

• Educational institutions must provide auxiliary aids, such as readers in school libraries or interpreters for the deaf.

Let me emphasize a statement by former HEW Secretary Joseph Califano:

Section 504 and these regulations constitute a striking recognition of the civil rights of America’s handicapped citizens, just as Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and their companion regulations, are critical elements in the structure of law protecting the civil rights of racial minorities and women. In Section 504, the Congress enacted a charter of equality to help end the shameful national neglect of handicapped individuals and to translate many of their legitimate needs into legal rights.

The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision interpreting the Rehabilitation Act may suggest an “out” for organizations resisting special alterations for the handicapped (see the August i-8 Christian Century, p. 752). Nonetheless, the court’s decision was so narrow (applying to a nursing program at Southeastern Community College, Whiteville, North Carolina, which denied admission to a hearing-impaired student) that it almost certainly will not hinder the ultimate recognition of this newly emerged minority -- though now there may have to be extensive litigation before the courts once again decide in favor of the handicapped.

For most churches, the federal requirements are not applicable (though they certainly apply morally). At the state level, regulations may or may not make accessibility mandatory. Such states as Massachusetts, Michigan and New York require accessibility to “public buildings” -- not only those built with public funds, but those presumably open to the public. Thus, any church open to the public -- and what one isn’t? -- may come under state regulations for accessibility. (It should be noted that compliance requires program availability -- not that every room in every building be accessible.)

A general plan for a church to follow might well include these steps:

•Investigate the applicability of federal and state laws and local building codes to the existing physical barriers.

•Look into possible funding sources for barrier removal.

•Install Braille or raised lettering on elevator panels and on doors of offices and rest rooms.

•Begin planning for making the main entrance or at least a major entrance accessible through the construction of ramps and possible door modifications; obtaining cost estimates and design advice from a qualified consultant.

•Apply nonskid tape or runners on stair treads.

•Have the telephone company install a public telephone placed at a lower height for use by people in wheelchairs; order the telephone with special features for the blind and the deaf.

• Construct curb cuts in sidewalks at entrance points (the city must do this).

Then, for longer-term action:

•Modify at least one rest room -- installing grab-bars, enlarging stalls, etc. (If only one rest room can be modified, make it a unisex one.)

•Install permanent ramps -- with a gradient of one foot in 12 -- or mechanical lifts.

• Modify certain doors for easier opening.

• Alter drinking fountains.

It is time to respond affirmatively. Several major denominations have led the way in adopting statements voicing church concern for persons with handicaps. We within the churches must act on those statements, opening our doors -- in every way.

Around the turn of the century, anthropologists realized that they could tell a great deal about a culture by studying its use of language. An anthropologist from, say, one of Saturn’s inhabited moons, on landing in America and managing to untangle our phonemes and morphemes, would soon discover that a word so prevalent as “men” gives rise to conflicting assumptions about who is being discussed. If the anthropologist identifies herself with the group under consideration when the word “men” is used, she soon finds that men’s wives come in for discussion -- that her sex is being talked “about” as the “other” rather than being included among those addressed directly. She learns she can’t be wholly certain of when she is part of this group called “men” and when she is excluded.

And so her identification with “men” becomes tenuous. If she grows deeply enough into the culture to lose touch with her objective studies, her uncertainty is subconscious. On one level of consciousness, she accepts the fact that she is an unexpected intruder peeking into what was said or written by and for males. If her training eventually pulls her back into her professional role so that she is able to study her reactions, she may notice that she has been led to picture the story of humankind as being played out solely by males: inventing language, passing it on to the next generation of sons, inventing pottery for use as containers, fashioning needles in order to make better clothing. She has taken on the invisibility that has been assigned to her.

But this anthropologist, we must suppose, is unusually strong and, after all, has not been immersed in this culture all her life. Returning resolutely to her own independent purposes, she persists in the English-speaking world, fighting not only assumptions about herself as an intruder from Saturn’s system but also fighting to be seen for her general, rather than her sexual, characteristics (the latter might even become somewhat distorted in the battle). She now knows that the words which unquestionably include her are those which mark her sex as her most noticeable attribute. Those words which, she is told, stand for general, all-around identification -- and within whose meanings she initially included herself -- slip and slide, as she tries to grasp them, between the general and the male.

The only way to comprehend the strange assumptions underlying such language usage is by realizing, as speakers and writers seem to do, that a woman is actually considered the human-not-quite-human (in Dorothy Sayers’s words). The anthropologist learns through repeated experience that the category “fellow man” can be pulled out from under her and be interpreted instead as “fellows males.” She knows the fragile, intermittent nature of her inclusion in that category and becomes afraid that, if she were genuinely of the culture, she might seek the safety of withdrawal. But coming from another planet, she shields herself in armor for the fray.

I

Language both reflects reality and shapes our ideas of reality. Linguists frequently acknowledge that the standard language reflects the usage and outlook of the group in power. That group has, of course, been male, and the male’s view of the female as a being whose sexual nature is more marked than her human nature is everywhere in the language. (Connotations of words that entered the language parallel in meaning tend to illustrate this point: “master” and “mistress,” “courtier” and “courtesan, even “sir” and “madam” when the latter is used as a noun.) The way this “male” aspect of the language influences our ideas of reality is therefore bound to be destructive, not only to the female self-concept but also to the ease with which men are able to relate to women outside the sexual or dependent role. The roles both sexes may play with confidence are thus restricted.

Males have clearly dominated the written language, which is the form of language that universalizes a standard. With the highest levels of education traditionally denied to women, the written language has therefore become a major tool of men’s continued power. But that language has never been an accurate reflection even of public social reality. Of interest is the fact that in many European countries the key figure during the period of nation-forming, and the period of conscious respect for the vernacular, was a woman: Elizabeth of England, Joan of Arc of France, Isabella of Spain, Catherine of Russia. It was Catherine who, through language, opened Russia to the West by personally translating many foreign books into Russian for the first time, by allowing secular literature, and by stimulating the first literature in the Russian language.

Among writers, the first Western lyricist, and the greatest in Greek was Sappho. In France Madame de Lafayette wrote the first French novel almost a century before any similar English work. Of the six finest 19th century English novelists, many would agree on four women: Jane Austen, George Eliot and the two Brontës (along with Dickens and Thackeray). A woman was America’s first poet, the Puritan Anne Bradstreet. Phyllis Wheatley was the first black poet writing in English. Beyond the West, the written Japanese language, according to a Japanese scholar at Princeton, was created by women in the Middle Ages. Having been denied the male education in Chinese, they wrote down their own speech in syllabic units and went on to become the first novelists; included among their works is the acknowledged masterpiece of Japanese literature, The Tales of Genji.

My point in all this is that women have never been so unusual in nonsexual roles as the English language would have us believe. This female invisibility, which is built into the way our language has been used, dictates that every woman who plays an independent role be seen each time as a new exception. And so we force each person and each generation to confront, as if for the first recorded instance, and with fresh amazement and apprehension each time, the same perplexity: “Is this strange, creative, aggressive creature truly a woman?” Our language has given us no words with which to include her naturally. When each individual woman must refight the same battle -- that she is always the exception -- males can utilize as a powerful tool in their retention of power the language’s insistence that she is by her very nature an exception. Armor does not fit all women.

Male-marked words, which slip back and forth between designating only males and designating all human beings; have never given an adequate reflection of social reality. Our vision has been refracted through male lenses. But even granted the truth of unquestioned male dominance, it is impossible to maintain any longer that the invisibility of females, as indicated by our generic terms, reflects present social conditions. Language cannot forever imply that all women who are socially visible are fighting solitary battles, are continuous exceptions. The change is overdue.

Changes are coming. Those already sufficiently conscious of the sexual imbalance in language make the effort to use “a person,” “an individual,” “one,” “persons,” “people,” “humankind” (a word given deep poetic resonance in our century through T. S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets”). The Commission on Language for the National Council of Teachers of English has asked that these sex-blind forms be used in all writing. The American Heritage Dictionary now has a policy of employing substitutes for male-marked words. The Washington Post has guidelines stating that women are not to be identified by such designations as “divorcee,” “blond,” “housewife,” “grandmother” in cases where the corresponding male terms would not be applicable. Even the Oxford English Dictionary lends support; “man,” as a generic term, is designated a literary or proverbial usage rather than a colloquial one, in light of the increased use of the unambiguous terms “body,” “person,” “one,” “folk” and “people.”

I say a change is coming (the linguist Otto Jespersen seemed to think that in the 1920s as well people were saying “humanity” and “human being” more and more) -- and then I watch television or read the newspaper. In both of these media I encountered, during the nation’s 200th anniversary, consistent references to “our forefathers.” There is no way to include women in that term, and “forebears” is a good English word. The conclusion has to be that we are speaking only of the leaders who were visible enough to sit in council, to deliberate, and to leave their names in history. We are not taking into consideration the heroism demonstrated and hardship suffered in supporting roles played by both men and women. If women had any part in the birth of this nation, their names are not remembered; they are denied all claim to be among the generation honored as “forefathers.”

This example seems to indicate quite well that the primary issue is not one of straining the language. Words to include us all are already available. Ridiculing coinages like “chairperson” is a side issue, serving to distract us from dealing with whether we have the will or the intention to include both sexes in what ought to be general. A need for change in words themselves is the exception, but the need for change in choice of words is universal. It means choosing “forebears” and not “forefathers,” “grandchildren” and not “grandsons.”

II

Nouns are relatively easy to deal with, however; it is the pronoun which might be expected to cause the greatest difficulty. If there is still resistance to granting that a psychological offense is sufficient cause for modifying the use of language, then recall that lawyers have long been conscious of the slippery nature of the English male pronoun. One such lawyer, C. C. Converse, in 1884 proposed the introduction of a new pronoun, “thon,” formed by combining ‘that” and ‘one” Use of this form made sufficient headway to warrant its inclusion in Webster’s International Dictionary, second edition, where, apparently, it has quietly died.

Lawyers may indeed run into trouble. The OED, still our most comprehensive authority on words, does not allow for the possibility of interpreting “he,” “his” or “him” as including both sexes. The only non-masculine, or non- masculine personified, usage mentioned at all is the obsolete neuter. Under “hew” one has to read into the third column of the fine print -- arriving at definition II, 4 -- before finding the following: “The or that man, or person of the male sex, hence indefinitely any man, any one, one, a person” That is as close as the OED comes to justifying the claim that “he” is a generic English pronoun.

The evidence, then, of what is meant -- or of what is most immediately interpreted -- when “he” is used is so psychologically overwhelming that a prodigious amount of optimism would be required to argue that the English language, as it stands, possesses as a generic singular pronoun the word “he.” Our anthropologist from afar easily surmised that her image was not represented in the normative terms “man,” “he,” “his” and “him.”

The pronoun is a function word, part of what is generally considered to be a closed system. It is not completely so, however. Ann Bodine, writing in Language in Society (August 1975), goes so far as to say: “Because of the social significance of personal reference, personal pronouns are particularly susceptible to modifications in response to social and ideological change.” She cites the recent and rapid acceptance of new usage in regard to the two second-person personal pronouns of various European languages. Social conditions no longer encourage a special marker to rank the one addressed as inferior or equal. The uncountable variety of pronouns that have slowly evolved from a common root in Indo-European languages gives clear indication that everything about a language is subject to change.

Old English, like the others of its language family, originally had grammatical gender -- masculine, feminine and neuter forms -- for nouns and pronouns. But as the distinguishing endings were dropped, the language moved toward natural gender, or identification by quasisexual attributes. When the masculine and feminine forms of “he” lost their distinctive pronunciation, the demonstrative feminine “sie” (so the OED speculates) was brought in from Old Norse to distinguish the specifically feminine. “They,” “their” and “them” were also demonstratives originally, and the virtual disappearance of “thee” and “thou” is relatively recent. Changes in pronoun usage, then, have been a distinctive and continuing feature of the evolving language.

Jespersen, in the 1920s, called the pronominal system in English “decidedly deficient” because of its lack of a singular generic. The majority of the world’s languages do not have the gender system; in them pronouns are not gender-marked. English fell just between the grammatical-gender languages and the genderless ones, clinging to a rather confusing half-hearted natural gender. (Is a car an “it” or a “she”?) Of the English personal pronouns, all but the third singular (I, you, we, they) are gender-free; this is without doubt a helpful simplification. Our forebears might have been well advised to ignore the Old Norse “sie” and to let the Old English third singular become as genderless as the other pronouns.

III

Can a need for an unambiguous generic, however, be so deep if a language hasn’t provided for it? The question could lead to stimulating speculation, but English, it seems, does not lack an answer. We learn as children and, as though instinctively, continue to use in our speech a natural generic form: the word “they.” And in that sense “they” is fully provided with its proper definition in the OED, not even stigmatized as colloquial: “often used in reference to a singular noun made universal by ‘every,’ ‘any,’ ‘no,’ etc., or applicable to one of either sex (=‘he or she’).”

Again, no forcing of the language is necessary. Abundant examples from good literature are available, from the time when “they” became fixed in our language up through the modern era. “God send everyone their hearts desire,” Shakespeare writes. The form is not unusual in today’s press: “If someone wants to go to college, here’s what they should know,” runs a line in a full-page New York Times advertisement.

Even today, “he” for “any person” comes into everyday speech only after it has been learned in school. Ann Bodine documents that, in the late 18th century, “they” became identified incorrectly as a plural pronoun only, in direct opposition to its consistent use with both singular and plural antecedents. Two earlier grammarians had attempted to bend ‘the language in order to enforce the use of “he” because, they said, “he” reflected a “natural order” and “the worthier is to be preferred.” These men were largely ignored, but later on, male-centered grammarians took up the cause, and insistence on the use of “he” became a strong issue among grammarians in the early 19th century. An 1850 Act of Parliament made “he” the legal term.

Despite all this, 19th century British novels show the usage of “they” and “he” with a singular antecedent to be about equal; Americans, however, being less sure of their natural language instincts and depending more on grammarians’ rules when writing formally, have been more rigid about the “he.” The remarkable fact is that, even with the full weight of the educational and publishing establishments against it, the use of “they” is still persistent. Thus, grammarians insisted on what they considered to be number agreement between the pronoun and its antecedent, ignoring gender agreement. They succeeded, however, in imposing ‘he” only as a literary device, deeply ingrained through book-work among the highly educated. But because the usage is a dictation of grammarians and not our instinctive one, it can be reversed. The reversal would bring literary language closer into line with colloquial language, and the price -- obscuring number concord, already naturally weak -- is not excessive. Number is neutral; gender is not.

IV

Since a generic pronoun referring to both singular and plural antecedents is available to us, encouraging its use is to go with the current of the natural language. Further, using “they” is an acknowledgment that the insistence on “he” as the normative personal pronoun was what constituted the original attack on the language, made on the dubious grounds of strengthening some “natural order.” But the English language has obstinately retained an opening for reasserting that the pronoun “they” represents the natural order.

There are other practical means for avoiding “he.” More frequently than the Americans, the British use “one” consistently throughout a sentence, as in: “If one is prepared, one should have no trouble.” Although Americans are more accustomed to changing to “he” after the first “one,” the British usage is a wholly acceptable way of avoiding “he” in certain sentences. If an American rejects the formality and yet wants the picture formed by words to be honestly neutral, the speaker can accurately say: “If one is prepared, they should have no trouble.”

“He or she” is another serviceable method for getting around the third-person ambiguity. Language purists of the late 18th century discouraged this usage, although “one or more” and “person or persons” were not frowned on and remain frequent in the language. Here was yet another scruple that elevated number clarity above gender clarity. Still, for a person who today intends to be understood unambiguously as referring to both sexes, but who has been warned off “they,” this form is more congenial. Politicians make use of it more and more. It tends, however, to become burdensome and awkward.

One other way to achieve better language balance is by recognizing that, since the pronoun “he” is used quite frequently simply as an illustration of an action, then “she” could be substituted just as naturally, effectively and frequently. For “she” is as exemplary of persons as “he.”

A variety of ways, then, of avoiding the male-generic confusion in both the noun and the pronoun is readily available in the English language as it stands. Our natural inclination, before intimidation by the grammar rules, is to choose native, unambiguous forms. Regardless of schoolbook rules, what it comes down to in the end is usage -- conscious usage at first -- in order to bring about the general acceptance of truly generic terms (the rules will catch up) and thus bring about the unambiguous recognition of women as included in the considerations of humankind. Our anthropologist could then forget herself and get on with studying society. But she might still be left with a minor, less psychologically disorienting barrier to her acceptance into the full range of human rituals -- the fact that she dropped in from another planet.

The standard language, evidence indicates, is determined by and in turn supports the most powerful societal group. So there is still a long way to go before the public role of women, and thus their hand in the written language, becomes as powerful as that of men. When a group is dependent, language usage degrades that group: lasting change must go with social change. But this social change is indeed taking place.

The English language has in the past been flexible enough to respond to changing social conditions rather than becoming entrenched, clinging to static forms. Certainly English encompasses as many influences as any language in the world, compounded as it is of Germanic and romance languages, Latin and Greek, with borrowings from almost every tongue. Without offending its own basically receptive nature, English might well accommodate itself to the increasingly visible female, acknowledging that she is not, by her gender, an exception in the affairs of life. That accommodation would at the same time affirm the historic and instinctive direction of the English language.

Archives: Articles

The Red-Haired Saint: Is Mary Magdaline Key to the Easter Narratives?

Two or Three and God

The ‘Multiple Factor’ and Economic Development

I

II

III

No Steps to Heaven

The Weight of Leviticus

The Contemporary Church

Fostering Change

Federal and State Laws

Mainstreaming the Alienated: The Church Responds to a ‘New’ Minority

The Church and the Alienated

Case in Point: The Physically Disabled

Theology of the Alienated

Practical Responses of the Church

The Increasingly Visible Female and the Need for Generic Terms

I

II

III

IV

Homes for the Unwanted

Our Misfit Children, Young and Old

‘Ye Must Become as Little Children’

Partnerships of Youth and Age

A Place Called Community

The Political Role of Community

True Community and False

Demythologizing Community

The Risk of Seeking Community

Models of Community

The Identity Crisis in the Seminaries