Article

Creed

Trauma

6 November 2023

5 min read

The tale as old of time

There is no fairy tale that resolves the suffering of women but there is another side to their stories of violence and anonymity, Claire Williams reflects.

Claire Williams

Claire Williams is a theologian investigating women’s spirituality and practice. She lecturers at Regents Theological College.

A woman stand beside a busy road with her back to the camera. There is a red sky behind her.

Florian Kurrasch on Unsplash.

From accusations of assault by celebrities to the murder of a teenage girl on her way to school, and the discussion on television about feminists and their lack of sexual appeal - we have had our fill recently of stories of trauma and violence done to women. These events are brutal interruptions to the lives of women whose futures have been changed, or even stopped, by these terrible acts. It is a story that we read in the news over and over again. It is also an ancient story, of women who are mistreated by men in power over them. It is the tale as old as time. When we tell these tales we anonymise women, for their own safety and privacy, but also lock them in their story. They are, to those of us who read or hear about it, only the tale of violence, we see nothing else about them.

We feel our past in our bodies, we know ourselves in our bodies and these feelings and knowings are part of the story that remains untold, that isn’t understood by anyone.

In one ancient telling in the bible, there is a story of a woman who is cast out, loses position, hope for the future, agency and bodily autonomy. Hagar was a servant in the household of Abraham. She was an Egyptian and therefore of a different ethnicity to her master and his wife, Sarah. Hagar, as a servant, had no choices in life and would do what she was told and when she was told. So, when she was commanded to become Abraham’s wife in order that he might have a child with him, she had no choice at all. In the bible there are stories of Abraham and his quest to have a son and heir when Sarah had been unable to conceive. It was indeed Sarah’s idea. Hagar underwent what could be described as a rape and a forced pregnancy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Sarah and Hagar fell out. Hagar ran, she ran away from the cruel treatment of her mistress and the violence perpetrated unto her and into the wilderness. Hagar’s story is out of time with our own stories yet has resonance none the less because of her subjugation, the violence done to her and the consequential fear and fleeing. I wonder as I read about Hagar, what she looked like, or what her other stories are. What did she like to do? What had her hopes been for the future? But Hagar, is unseen by us, apart from the stories of violence done to her. She is unseen like the women who are raped, stabbed, assaulted, followed, catcalled, touched and upskirted. For these unseen women, stories are all that remain.

Telling of the stories isn’t enough. With violent, or emotional, trauma, words are only some of the message. We feel our past in our bodies, we know ourselves in our bodies and these feelings and knowings are part of the story that remains untold, that isn’t understood by anyone. The loneliness from being unknown is bone deep. That nobody understands is part of the horror of the traumatic injury. Hagar’s story does help us here. Twice Hagar runs into the wilderness to escape from Sarah and Abraham. When she is there, she expects to die. After her child is born, she puts him away, under a bush, so that she doesn’t have to watch him die. Both times in the wilderness, where she is away and hidden there is one who sees her and acts. The first time, so the bible tells us, Hagar is met by an angel in the wilderness who speaks to her and promises her the future we assume she has lost, Hagar identifies her visitor as from God – the first person to do so. In response to God seeing her, she sees God. She is not anonymous to God. The second time, as she lays down to die, God provides not only hope but water and we learn that she has a future with her son.

The story of Hagar is told still, as a reminder that God sees. This does not mitigate the harm that is done to women, nor use it for higher purposes. However, we only know a small part of these stories, these terrible accounts of horrors, God holds their entire stories together.

There is no fairy tale that resolves the suffering of these women in the stories, either the ancient story or the most recent ones. Male violence against women is repetitive and so far, little abating it. I do not offer a solution to why these terrible things happen to women, why they continue to happen even though millennia separate Hagar from today. Nonetheless, despite the uncertainty that surrounds the traumas wrought upon women in situations such as above there is another side to the story of violence and anonymity, that is of a hope in God who sees the women and offers a future.

That future we discover does not retreat from the misery of the past but moves on through it.

These women are not unknown, their stories, which are acts of resistance to the violence that was perpetrated upon them, are known to God. With telling and retelling of the stories of women we testify to their story and acknowledge it. There is hope in this situation, a promise that those who come to Jesus can find rest, that they will not feel condemned or ashamed in his presence and that there is the possibility of hope and wholeness in the face of such devastating actions of humanity. This can seem trite and it does not offer a sticking plaster solution to the problems of great trauma, but rather a God who, in Jesus, is a witness to the pain and the hurt and one who offers peace, who sees the women at the heart of these stories of terrible violence and who knows them. The promise of the future is that every tear will be wiped away, that when the final plans of God are enacted on earth there will be a world where there is no longer violence and the long-lasting pain, injury and horror will be removed.

The God who knew Hagar and the anonymous women who report sexual violence today, also knows the end of their story, and that end is hopeful, even if it doesn’t feel that way yet. Ultimately, God intervenes for Hagar. She is cast out, she expects she will die and potentially see her son lost too. Hagar, who names God is in return named by God, ‘Hagar’ he says as he ushers her into a future,

‘get up, hold your boy, I will make him into a great nation’.

That future we discover does not retreat from the misery of the past but moves on through it. We leave Hagar with her fully grown son, both thriving in the wilderness with Hagar arranging his marriage. I picture her, a matriarch in her own right, with her son, not overcome by violence anymore.

This reading of Hagar is from the work of Dr Eve R Parker in her forthcoming contribution to ‘Theologies from the Inside Out: Critical Conceptions of Pregnancy and Birth’ ed. Karen O’Donnell and Claire Williams, SCM forthcoming 2024.

Article

Comment

Paganism

Sport

28 July 2024

8 min read

Paris 2024 and Christianity’s opening ceremony

A subversive Olympic opening relies on Christianity’s own beginnings.

Tim May

Tim is an associate vicar of King’s Cross Church (KXC), a London-based Anglican church.

A painting of the Last supper showing Christ and the disciples at a table.

da Vinci's Last Supper.

Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, held on the River Seine, has unsurprisingly caused controversy. Such moments, where one nation through pageantry and spectacle performs itself to all others, never fail to draw comment. The 2024 ceremony has drawn various detractors, not least those claiming the ceremony was an “attack on Christianity.”

You might remember the masterful opening to the London 2012 games. Director Danny Boyle’s theatrical spectacle told a symbolic story of nationhood. By depicting the bucolic, the industrial, and the NHS, he considered the UK in both dark moments and at its brightest. With a great exhibition of British humour, James Bond appeared to parachute out of a helicopter with HRH Queen Elizabeth II, while Mr Bean entertained the whole wordlessly through sardonic single-finger piano playing.

Widely held to be a creative triumph, Boyle was preceded by the Beijing Olympics where its opening ceremony, CGI fireworks put to one side, wowed the world with unprecedented size and scale, reminding us that we live in an era of Chinese power.

Tokyo 2021, delayed by a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, involved 1,800 drones filling the skies – a faultless demonstration of a technological age where Japanese engineering has been indispensable.

The sporting side of things was easily forgotten as we witnessed an emphatically kitsch depiction of French history and culture.

In 2024 Paris, the weather was perhaps the greatest focus of attention, which suited the British commentary perfectly. We Brits surely are the world experts in making light-entrainment out of describing rain. Soggy athletes sailed the Seine on a variety of uninspiring looking barges. Sanguine but soaked, the athletes dutifully waved and smiled; adorned not in gold, silver or bronze but flimsy ill-fitting plastic ponchos.

Overshadowing this athletes’ parade were the creations of theatre director Thomas Jolly, mastermind of the whole ceremony. Boldly deciding to choose the city as a stage, rather than make use of the conventional choice of a stadium, the sporting side of things was easily forgotten as we witnessed an emphatically kitsch depiction of French history and culture.

Although the weather somewhat thwarted proceedings, it was the content of the performance that drew criticism.

Far-right politicians decried Jolly’s offering as a violation of French nationhood. Conservative pundits focused their criticism on Jolly’s elevation of LGBTQIA+ culture.

Christian commentators have, with various degrees of rancour, condemned a strange scene where Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting of the Last Supper was subverted by a pastiche of ostentatiously queer characters. At the centre of which was not Jesus Christ but a robust-looking figure resembling Lady Liberty.

Elon Musk spoke up in protest too, posting that it was ‘extremely disrespectful to Christians.’ Full-throttled cries of blasphemy resound, and probably for good reason. What we witnessed was Christ being usurped and replaced by the insurgency of self-expression and the currently sacred idea of diversity and inclusion.

Ahead of the ceremony, Jolly told British Vogue about the heart behind his creation: “there is room for everyone in Paris. Maybe it’s a little chaotic, it’s true, but that allows everyone to find a place for themselves.” The opening ceremony will be a success, Jolly says, “if everyone feels represented in it.”

I guess this isn’t the case for the thirty per cent of the world who would identify as Christian. That’s because every family and flavour of Christianity would recognise that Holy Communion, the central act of Christian Worship for 2000 years, the institution of which is depicted in da Vinci painting, was being publicly and globally vandalised.

When Christianity becomes moral wallpaper to an entire civilisation and its culture, it unsurprisingly becomes a target for satire.

How can we make sense of this moment? Is there anything more for the Christian to contribute other than indignation or outrage?

Whenever something like this occurs it reminds me of the central role Christianity has played in Western culture. The intelligibility of the ceremony’s controversial scene rests on the idea that da Vinci’s painting is a globally recognised symbol. Otherwise, we would have just been watching a really strange dinner party with no food. But with Da Vinci’s famous painting in our mind the subversive power of Jolly’s scene hits hard.

The view, popularised by the historian Tom Holland among others, would go as far as to suggest that Christianity’s effect on Western culture is so pervasive that even moments of protest and subversion, as we saw in the Paris ceremony, are cultural phenomena inherited from the Protestant Reformation. Regardless of how far you agree with Holland’s thesis, Jolly's subversion only makes sense because of the dominant role Christianity has played in shaping the western imagination, and that is a position of latent power that should cause pause for reflection.

I’ve read half a dozen articles from a certain sort of right-wing journalist who parrot thoughts like, “they wouldn’t do that with the Quran”. That might be right, but it fundamentally misses the point. Blasphemy, let’s say, in Iran, would certainly not involve the Last Supper.

The scene made sense only because of Christianity’s now diminishing position of power but it's a position of power, nonetheless. When you align Jesus Christ with the status quo, with the corridors of power, when Christianity becomes moral wallpaper to an entire civilisation and its culture, it unsurprisingly becomes a target for satire. Especially for anyone or any group that feels persecuted or marginalised. I’m not for a moment defending what Jolly did but trying to understand why it happened.

The last supper, the meal Jesus shared with his friends the night before his crucifixion, was the opening ceremony of Christianity.

The kind of cultural power Christianity has had in the West comes at the cost of clarity because Christianity was itself originally a counterculture. Crucifixion, a supreme act of imperial domination, became the foundation of Christian thought and ultimately its greatest symbol. The original Christian movement was seen itself to be blasphemous for contradictory reasons by both the Jewish and Roman religious leaders of the time.

The fundamental difference between Christianity and merely holding conservative values that should not be transgressed, is God. It was genuine belief in Jesus Christ as the long-awaited messiah of the Jewish people and the Saviour of the whole world - a belief that led his first bedraggled and bewildered disciples to live in such radical and counter-cultural ways that many were killed by the Roman Empire.

It is right for his followers today to speak up and say how wrong it is when the special and sacred things he did for them are yet again trampled on in public, but it's also worth remembering that’s how the story started - with Jesus’ body brutalised and broken. That somehow, in moments like this, we miss the power of Jesus when we simply defend him on grounds of “decency” and “respect.” Instead, if we return to the original events themselves, Jolly’s depiction, in its mockery and subversion, actually reveals the power of The Last Supper.

Da Vinci’s painting was not intended for a gallery but was originally painted on the wall of a fairly obscure monastery, transported to a gallery years later to become primarily art, it is more a foundational aid to the faithful to remember the original events Da Vinci is depicting.

The last supper, the meal Jesus shared with his friends the night before his crucifixion, was the opening ceremony of Christianity. Every time a Christian takes Holy Communion - the central act of Christian worship for over 2,000 years - they remember the opening ceremony where:

“Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins”

The most peculiar part of the opening ceremony of Christianity - more peculiar than any sight we saw last night - is the presence of Judas. The biblical accounts describe Jesus’ knowledge of Judas’ intentions to betray him to the Romans, and yet Judas is still welcome to the table. If there’s space for Judas, then there is space for all of us. The opening ceremony Christianity cannot be remembered without the presence of Judas the betrayer, and Peter the coward or Thomas the doubter. The great irony and the big mystery of the Christian Faith is that you can’t out-sin grace. You can mock it and subvert it, but Christ died for the ungodly.

Last night’s scene doesn’t come close to the original events. Not only was Jesus betrayed by his friends, he was then tortured, humiliated and executed publicly in just about the most excruciating way humans have devised. That was blasphemy of another level, but it was also victory because God was choosing to love inclusively beyond any human metric.

Tom Holland may be right that no part of western culture has escaped Christian influence, but I want more than a little downstream influence.

This means that there’s nothing more inclusive than the opening ceremony of Christianity and yet, at the same time, nothing more exclusive. It is not us who provide the food but God. In Jolly’s performance, the Last Supper scene was concluded by the French actor Philippe Katerine, emerging painted head to toe in blue. Whilst this bearded smurf caused baffled sniggers across the planet, Katherine was apparently representing Dionysius, The Greek god associated with wild drunken parties. The food on offer by Jolly is wild desire and self-expression. In Christianity the food is God himself, his body and his blood. God’s love is given not simply expressed, even to those who will betray him.

Moments like this will become harder for Christians to navigate. It feels like just as a wave of secular liberalism wants to finally vanquish the power position Christianity has painted for centuries, a new conservative vanguard of resistance is rising to protect or enrol it for its own means. From the mouth of Modi or in Trump’s tirades, a new religiously armed populism is raging. Tom Holland may be right that no part of western culture has escaped Christian influence, but I want more than a little downstream influence.

Take us back to the opening ceremony, to the foundation of Christian faith. Take us to the waterfall, where the torrent flows straight down from the mountain, and save us from the slow-moving sludge of the wide river downstream. Take me back to the opening ceremony of Christianity. To the table where God welcomes a Judas like me, to the meal where the master became a servant and washed his followers' feet. Take me back to eat food I could never afford and wine I could not create.