Sponsored to coordinate political themes among Mainline Protestant lobby offices, along with other Religious Left allies, this year’s “Ecumenical Advocacy Days” was themed: “Development, Security and Economic Justice: What’s Gender Got to Do with It?”
The March 26 plenary opened with an operatic call-and-response rendition of “God Hear Our Prayer.” The song was a pantela, a Spanish word referring to a crossing between places, and embodied the unabashed social justice message upon which “Advocacy Days” was founded 10 years ago. Fittingly, the song foreshadowed a mishmash of critical feminist thought, environmental politics, and Christianity.
“The environmental crisis is a theological problem” Dr. Daisy Machado insisted. A professor at Union Theological Seminary, Machado’s theme was “Ecocide and Femicide on the Border: A Call to Embodied Justice.” She called for stewardship of the environment and care for the women who often closely tied to its upkeep.
Citing The Historical Roots of our Current Ecological Crisis written by medieval historian Lynn White Jr., Machado exhorted the audience to think critically about the role Christianity plays in our understanding of nature. She diagnosed environmental degradation as an outgrowth of an errant belief that the environment was created for man’s pleasure. Interestingly, in his 1967 essay White pointed to animists as the model guardians of nature because they were horticulturalists who sought to “placate the spirit in charge of that particular situation.” Later on, White cited “centaurs, fauns, and mermaids” as paragons of human-nature interaction.
Inspired by White, Machado suggested increased violence against women on the U.S.-Mexico border stems from a Christian misunderstanding of our relationship with nature. If we see nature as subordinate to humankind, and unworthy of good stewardship, it is easy for our innately patriarchal society to treat women as subhuman. Consequently, she argued, that this hatred of the world has grave consequences for human dignity.
Since the mid 1990s, over 400 workers at Mexican border factories, or maquiladoras, have gone missing, Machado noted. Nearly all were young women who left their villages hoping for a better life. Instead, “being so close to the U.S. and yet so far from God,” their lives were taken by unknown assailants, she regretted. The surviving workers have 14-hour work days and are continuously exposed to toxic byproducts of the appliances they assemble. Their bodies, she asserted, represent the casualties of sexual and environmental violence that so far are unpunished.
Machado pushed deeper into her critique of ecocide and its ramifications. Citing Elizabeth Dodson Gray, author of the enviro-spiritual book Green Paradise Lost, Machado deconstructed the tacit societal hierarchy that places God and men at the top, plants and animals at the bottom, and women and children in the middle. In that same book Gray openly questioned the legitimacy of the Genesis account of man’s fall.
Neither of the authors Machado references offered traditional Christian perspectives about creation and ethics. But Machado pushed the boundaries further by acclaiming Coyolxauhqui, an Aztec goddess. The deity was decapitated by her younger brother, who after prematurely springing from his mother’s womb, tossed his sister’s head into the sky to become the moon. The legend claims the severed head, as the moon, comforted her mother. Oddly, Machado cited this fallen goddess as an inspiring symbol for reconciling gender-enviro-theological confusion.
Machado implored the audience to adopt a “communitarian point of view” of our “cosmic covenant,” as our shared values now do not look at the bodies of others as a reflection of our interconnectedness. Although Machado blamed bad theology for exploitation of women and the earth, her own theology seemed highly dubious.
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