Odja Barros: "The sexist interpretation of the Bible is responsible for the culture of violence against women and LGBT people."
Speaking to TV 247, the PhD in theology discussed feminist Christianity and denounced the death threats she has been receiving for officiating a same-sex marriage.
By Ricardo Nêggo Tom - While same-sex romantic relationships still generate much controversy among conservatives, the idea of religious marriage between homosexuals provokes extreme reactions from many self-proclaimed Christians. Machismo, misogyny, and homophobia are present in biblical texts and allow for a fundamentalist interpretation by the faithful. A guest on the program "A Tone of Resistance," the feminist evangelical pastor Odja Barros criticized these idiosyncrasies of Christianity. “This is one of the topics I work on as a theologian, writer, and pastor, denouncing that the sexist reading of the Bible is responsible for this culture of violence against women, against LGBT people, and against different groups in this society, who are affected by this sexist reading of the Christian faith. And this is an interpretative tradition, because the Bible is a text, and we know that every text is polysemous. That is, it carries the burden of a patriarchal, sexist culture limited to its time. It is important that the reader can update themselves in their own time, which makes it possible to understand these issues and make interpretations that free this text from this patriarchal heritage and seek in it the essence of biblical revelation.”
Odja Barros also cites “the historical and cultural interferences that are the result of the narrative and redactional construction process of the biblical text, which were predominantly carried out by power groups, because those who had access to the texts and writing were privileged groups where men of the religious tradition of the time predominated.” A women's rights activist, the pastor even directly attributes the alarming increase in femicide crimes in the country to the sexist interpretation of the Bible. “I recently wrote a text, during the 16 days of activism against violence against women, where I argue precisely that we cannot change this culture of femicide and violence against women without revising our Christian faith tradition, which, in some way, fuels these unequal structures and gender violence.” A proponent of an inclusive gospel focused on social issues, the PhD in theology reacts to what she calls the "predominance" of a single interpretation of the Bible, intended to break with the secular nature of the state and establish a prejudiced and exclusionary Christian religious state.
Invoking the evangelical support base that sustains the Bolsonaro government, the pastor warns of the risks of combining the Christian religion with a political ideology with a totalitarian bias. “I have never seen so closely this predominance of a single interpretation of the Christian faith tradition, relating it to the context we are currently living in, especially in Brazil, since we have seen a clear articulation taking shape in the country that borders on the ambition of a Christian religious state. That is what we are seeing. The dream of some Christian religious leaders is, in fact, to transform the Brazilian state into a Christian state. There are very worrying signs regarding this. And I wouldn't just include the neo-Pentecostal movement within this articulation base. There are also traditions of historical churches involved in this project, such as Baptists and Presbyterians, for example. The interpretation is much deeper. It even includes a conservative Catholicism that has never left power and has never abandoned the desire to dominate the Brazilian state based on its Christian morality. So much so that many progressive agendas do not advance because there is a combined lobby between Catholics and Evangelicals to prevent the advancement of certain agendas on human rights.”
The death threats he received after officiating a same-sex marriage between two women support his argument that it is necessary to deconstruct the sexist and homophobic interpretation of the Bible, replacing it with the gospel of love and inclusion that Jesus Christ preached. “What fuels this type of violent and fundamentalist reaction is the use of biblical verses isolated from their contexts to defend prejudice against homosexuals. The young man who attacked me and threatened to kill me on social media said he has been studying the Bible for five months. I have been studying the Bible for years and still need to continue studying. He, because of one verse, thinks I am wrong and feels entitled to kill me for it. See how dangerous this type of manipulation and misuse of the Bible is. And we need to warn about this danger. Not everyone can open a warehouse, put a Bible in their hand, climb onto a pulpit and say that now they can speak in the name of God, teach the Bible and make homophobic, sexist, racist speeches that we have to listen to as the word of God. This is very serious. That is why I am fighting for this position, so that we study and seek serious references, because these are the things that feed elements like the one who threatened to kill me. And they are, indeed, capable of killing.”
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