Critical Pedagogy Essay

Why can’t I be a Bishop? In many church communities, including my own, women are seen as second class citizens. Women are not ordained to positions that are considered as traditional male roles such as deacons, elders, ministers, bishops or pastors. They are ordained to positions that where created exclusively for women such as missionaries and evangelist. “Women are expected to sing in the choir, serve on the usher and stewardess boards, participate in the missionary society, cook in the kitchen, teach children in the Sunday School, and serve in all those position that are regarded as ‘women’s work.”
All women in the church sit in the pews. Ordained missionaries or evangelist are not permitted to sit on the pulpit with their male counterparts.
Mother’s, Evangelist and Missionaries, however are seated in “special” sections reserved for women ministers. In one particular aspect my faith community is progressive in that, women are allowed to preach. However, this is as far as they are able to go. “In the African Methodist Episcopalian (AME) Church, a progressive denomination in comparison with other independent black churches, women were not permitted ordination in the nineteenth century.” This dualism where women are acknowledged as preachers but not leaders creates tensions within the congregation. Church leaders have claimed superior rights and privileges for men on several grounds. First that Jesus Christ was a man and secondly, that he did no women was chosen as one of the twelve apostle. For the black clergy, Christ did not choose black men either, so where is their argument. Finally, scriptural authority. The literal reading of these scriptures has resulted in the continued oppression of women and justifying a patriarchal system that continues to dominate and oppress female members of congregations. 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 “Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.” 1 Timothy 2:12 “I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.” 1 Timothy 3:2 is recited every year during our ordination services (with emphasis added) a practice that serves to reinforce what the “role” of a woman in church should be. “A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, given to hospitality, apt to teach.” The continued oppression of black women has led to “rampant anti-intellectual bias inherent in so many churches.” The responses of some men is to resent women who are qualified for leadership on an academic and professional basis. No matter how intelligent a woman is, she is not good enough because she is not a man. These practices have led to missed opportunities for women to exercise their God given gifts and for building up the body and for the edification of the church. The struggles of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960’s – 70’s reinforced sexism in the black community. “Black clergymen became bold advocates of women’s inferiority, emphasizing their supposed lack of intelligence, natural weakness, and passivity” Gloria Durka, professor in the Graduate school of Religion and Religious Education at Fordham University, states that, “it is women who must take the initiative and work for their own personal and professional empowerment.” The lack of attention to the everyday realities of women of color, undermines the understanding of their particular dimensions of liberation. oppression for black women often described as double jeopardy, is two pronged; both racists and sexist. Black women cannot choose between these two realities.
Alice Walker, author, poet and activist has been credited with coining the term womanist, which she first used in her essay “Coming Apart” published in 1979 anthology Take Back the Night. Walker wrote: “Womanist encompasses feminist as it is defined in Webster’s but also means instinctively pro-woman. It is not in the dictionary at all. None-the less, it has a strong root in black women’s culture. It come (to me) from the word ‘womanish,’ a word our mothers used to describe, and attempt to inhibit, strong, outrageous or outspoken behavior when we were children: ‘Your acting womanish!’ A labeling that failed, for the most pat to keep us from acting ‘womanish’ whenever we could, that is to say, like or mothers themselves and like other women we admire”

In her 1983 book In Search of our Mothers’ Garden: Womanist Prose, Walker redefined her description of the womanist in a poem. The definition was expanded to include women who love other women and men sexually or non-sexually. Shaped by a spirit of love that embraces the beauty in music, dance, the cosmos, food, herself and others. When Walker states that “Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender,” she highlights the point that “white feminism was not always adequate or appropriate, partly because feminism was sometimes racist.” White feminism focused on the plight of white women while a womanist is concerned primarily with liberation for all the oppressed. Liberation theology as defined by the New World Encyclopedia is a Christian school of theology developed in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s, focusing on liberation of the oppressed.
Liberation theology is a faith that strives to raises critical consciousness to the causes of oppression. This theology is linked to religious education when it focuses on the role that education can play in the fight for liberation and the struggle for social justice. Paulo Freire, Brazilian educator and philosopher pioneered the idea of critical pedagogy as both an education philosophy and a social movement. Critical pedagogy views teaching as an inherently political act “guided by passions and principles, to help students develop a consciousness of freedom, recognize authoritative tendencies and connect knowledge to power and the ability to take constructive actions.”
In the “Pedagogy of the oppressed” Freire introduces the concepts of humanization and dehumanization. Humanization is the process an individual undertakes to regain their humanity. Reclaiming one’s humanity can only happen when an individual or group comes to the awareness that their humanity has been taken away. The process of liberation begins with a group of black female theological students at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York studying with Dr. James Cone who express the concepts of womanist theology that was inclusive of their experiences of sexism and racism in the academy and the
church.
The distinctive struggle of African American women for racial and sexual freedom birth the womanist worldview. Robert Pazmiño defines a worldview “as a collection of underlying presuppositions from which one’s thoughts and actions stems.” Thus, a womanist theology develops as a religious conceptual framework that revises the traditions, practices, scriptures and biblical interpretation with a special lens to empower and to liberate African American women. When the oppressed finds out that they are being oppressed, “reflection and action become imperative,” they must liberate themselves and their oppressors. Freire express that liberation can only begin from the oppressed group and it cannot be attained by chance, it can only come about by deliberate planning.
“Philosophy of education attempts to articulate a systematic scheme of thought which can guide practice.” How can womanist theology be articulated or transferred to others in a way that can inform and guide practice? Using Norman DeJong philosophical ladder Pazmiño formulates critical questions that serves as foundation for developing an education philosophy. Ladder or hierarchies have been used in philosophy and science to represent the ascent to clear consistent and conscious thought. The first rung or foundational question ask, what is the basis of authority? Second, what is the nature of the person, or who will be the focus. Third, what are the purpose and the goals? Fourth, what structures and by what agents are the purposes and goals realized? Fifth, what resources, tools, and methods will be utilized to implement educational goals and purposed? Finally, how will the impact of purposes and goal be measured?
Nancy Lynne Westfield is Associate Professor of Religious Education at Drew Theological School and Graduate Division of Religion. An African American woman, she writes as Womanist religious educator. Westfield teaching and research are at the intersections of womanist studies, liberative and experimental pedagogy, spirituality, mysticism, imagination and Black Church studies. She defines Womanist religious education as a “pedagogical. Epistemological, spiritual and social political implication of the ‘tridimensional phenomenon of race, class and gender oppression in the experience of African American women.” Through her experiences Westfield develops a pedagogical approach around the “notion of hospitality as a foundational practice of resilience for African American women.” The rest of this paper will focus on how Westfield educational philosophy aligns with Pazmiño s foundational questions.