When I saw Women Talking, the theater was packed. I live in Winnipeg, Manitoba, a stone’s throw from where Miriam Toews, author of the novel on which the film is based, grew up. Surely not everyone in the theater that night was Mennonite, but plenty were. Myself included.
In the film, the women of a conservative Mennonite colony wrestle with what to do following a years-long series of rapes in their community. The women have been instructed to forgive their attackers, or else be barred from heaven. Despite this command from the men of the community, the women see three paths forward: do nothing, stay and fight, or leave. The film follows the women’s debate.
The women are hemmed in by the structures of the colony. Although it was boys in the community who committed the rapes, the women come to blame the elders and their desire for power. That desire is not limited to the elders; one woman, Agata, points out that the elders “have taught the lesson of power to the boys and men of the colony, and the boys and men have been excellent students.”
As the women debate, doing nothing is ruled out pretty quickly. One character, Mariche, appears with a bruised face, an indication of the domestic abuse she endures. Her mother, Greta, apologizes for instructing her daughter to forgive her husband, time and time again. Greta, her face pained, has come to recognize that affirming her daughter’s marriage was condoning the abuse. Mariche responds, “It’s not only the men and boys who have been excellent students.”
In their debate, the women negotiate what it means to adhere to their theological priorities of love, forgiveness, and pacifism in the midst of sexual violence. These priorities are not unique to the women of the colony or to conservative Mennonites; rather, they resonate with Mennonite theology across the spectrum.
Their desire to embody these priorities leads to nuanced questions and conversation. Is forgiveness even possible if they remain in the colony to fight back? Is leaving an act of pacifism or a sin of disobedience against God?
Is forgiveness even possible if they remain in the colony to fight back? Is leaving an act of pacifism or a sin of disobedience against God?
Forty-five minutes south of Winnipeg lies the Mennonite community that I grew up in. This community, and the many surrounding Mennonite communities, witness to the varying ways Mennonites make their way in the world today. In and around my hometown, there are fundamentalist, evangelical, Old Colony, and relatively progressive Mennonite church communities.
Interpretation of Scripture is a hot topic in my hometown. Over the past year, the subject has been particularly polarizing. Disagreements on what it means to take the Bible seriously have caused significant division within the town.
In the church I grew up in and remain part of, congregants hold to many traditional markers of Mennonite faith. One of those is interpreting Scripture in harmony with Jesus Christ. Another is affirming the authority of the Bible in shaping ethics, not just beliefs.
So we Mennonites in the audience could easily recognize that the complicated questions raised by the women in Women Talking are not separate from Scripture. These themes also appear within the pages of the Bible. But this raises a challenging question: what do we do with Scripture passages that seem to place God on the side of the men in the colony, who justify the abuse the women have suffered because of the colony’s boys?
Ezekiel 16 is one such passage. The chapter is an extended metaphor. God is depicted as a man who rescues an abandoned girl (16:3-7). This girl represents Jerusalem (16:2-3). The man later marries the girl (16:8), but she turns to prostitution (16:15-29). As punishment, she is stripped naked and killed (16:37-40).
This text is rarely encountered by the average churchgoer, although those who make it deep into a Bible-in-a-Year reading plan will encounter it eventually. But we cannot ignore passages like Ezekiel 16, tucked into the corners of Scripture that we’d rather not dwell on. By ignoring them, we accept their logic and allow such passages to condone abuse.
When watching Women Talking, what strikes a viewer of faith is that, for these women, abandoning God is never an option. On the contrary, the way they wrestle with the implications of the choices in front of them reveals their deep faith. And they model a way forward.
Adhering to the priorities of their faith does not require accepting their current situation. At one point, Agata mutters repeatedly, “The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, rich in loving kindness and forgiveness.” Versions of this line appear throughout the Bible; Exodus 34:6-7 is perhaps closest to the woman’s refrain.
Yet, the phrase doesn’t appear in Scripture exactly as quoted. Agata has paraphrased slightly by including forgiveness so prominently. Agata’s interpretive act reflects Mennonites’ emphasis on interpreting Scripture within the community. As reflected by this paraphrase, love, forgiveness, and pacifism guide their path.
At the same time, they come to realize that love and forgiveness do not require submitting to abuse. In fact, it becomes clear that love for their children and faithfulness to God requires them to leave.
When the women decide to leave the colony, they model resistance. They resist the command to forgive the attackers, at least for now. They reject the power structures of the community they belong to. They challenge the idea that their suffering is God-ordained. Yet the women’s resistance and rejection do not equal a loss of faith.
Instead, when they face their situation head on, they recast their theological commitments through the lens of protecting their children and preventing murder. They show us that in the face of gender-based violence, pushing back is not unfaithful but instead is an act of love.
When watching Women Talking, what strikes a viewer of faith is that, for these women, abandoning God is never an option.
The women’s model holds for all of us readers of Scripture. Like any metaphor, Ezekiel 16 brings together two unrelated things to make a comparison. There are ways the two parts of the metaphor might be alike, and there are plenty of ways that they are different. We do not need to accept Ezekiel’s comparison and focus solely on the connection being made. We do not have to ignore the limits of the metaphor—the ways it fails. By rushing through the metaphor and interpreting it purely as a text blaming the exile on the sinfulness of the people of God, we accept that the violence in the text is justified.
Resisting the logic of Ezekiel’s metaphor can come in many forms. One way is by considering the historical context. Attending to the historical realities of Israel in the exilic period highlights the traumatic, war-torn setting of the book. While the setting does give some context for the metaphor’s use, it does not eliminate the dangers of the metaphor. So we have to continue searching.
A second way of resisting the logic is by considering the literary functions of the text. By examining the metaphor, we consider how the metaphor assumes that gender-based violence is justified. Naming the harmfulness of the metaphor opens up the conversation to considering what other texts might engage with the themes of sin and unfaithfulness in ways that build up the people of God and invite us into repentance. As we resist Ezekiel’s metaphor of a woman stripped and killed, the words of Jesus come to mind, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7, NRSV).
It is neither a rejection of faith nor of God to resist the logic of Ezekiel’s metaphor that violence against a vulnerable woman can be justified. Resisting it is ultimately an act of love. Remember, after Jesus addressed the scribes and Pharisees, they all left. None condemned the woman. Jesus’s response? “Neither do I condemn you” (John 8:11).
Rather than a rejection of faith or a failure to take Scripture seriously, resisting Ezekiel’s metaphor is a reflection of careful engagement with Scripture and deep commitment to loving God and neighbor. This resistance participates in a Mennonite way of engaging Scripture: reading the Bible in conversation with Jesus and in a way that transforms our ethics. Pushing back against the metaphor in our communities of faith challenges us to consider how our words and our structures can maintain the status quo or can embody grace and love. Considering it alongside Jesus’s words challenges us to notice the vulnerable within and outside of our communities of faith. Jesus calls us to reform our structures to protect the vulnerable, not expose them.
With Jesus’s words echoing in our ears, the women of Women Talking invite us to stand with the vulnerable and protect those among us at risk of violence. Doing nothing should not be an option. Instead, our questions and our resistance reveal our faith.
