Seminary theologian travels world to discuss gender

But it was while wading in the rice paddies of Vietnam recently that Miller, 39, discovered the fascinating cultural differences between women and men in Vietnam.
 

A Vietnamese scholar she interviewed advised her that in order to “understand what it means to be male or female” in Vietnam, “one has to understand ‘wet-rice’ agriculture.”
 

“In wet-rice agriculture, both men and women have specific gifts that they give, and each one is necessary for the rice to flourish and to grow,” said Miller, who also has visited India, Mexico and four communities of Native Americans in her research on sex and gender.
 

Miller has spent the last year on sabbatical while speaking to men and women about an idea that has fascinated philosophers since Aristotle and Plato, and Jewish and Christian theologians since the time  of the Old and New Testaments: What does it really mean to be male and female?
 

In Vietnam, Miller said the male scholar told her that a man’s role is to prepare the fields, so “the man does everything for that field to receive and bear rice.” 
 

“And, yet, it’s the women themselves who actually plant the rice,” Miller said. “Women come in by hand and plant the rice in the fields. Then they will come back later and will uproot the rice and plant it again. He said, ‘Women are the ones who plant because women give life.’ So, I got in the fields with them. I had to roll up my pants above my knees, take off my shoes. It was an amazing experience.”
 

Miller’s interest in dealing with gender issues in education was fueled by a Vatican document, released in 2019, entitled “Male and Female He Created Them: For a path of dialogue on the issue of gender in education.”
 

She said the question of what it means “to be created male and female in the image and likeness of God” intrigued her, and the document also indicated there was an “educational crisis” because of so many misconceptions about the topic.
 

“I felt those are very good questions, and the Good News should be able to propose some answers through the way Jesus treated men and women, and these are questions that cause us to think further about the way we teach in our schools. These questions are as old as Adam and Eve. It’s an educational crisis that has become an educational call.”
 

In her reading, Miller discovered many insights. The rise of the feminist movement in the U.S. in the 19th century has much to do with the injustices women faced in society, and they exist even today with women and children being targeted by the universal scourge of human trafficking.
 

She said women in 11th century Europe had “more rights, more possibilities and more freedom than a woman in the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries. Not knowing that makes it really difficult because (women) feel some of the grievances are wrong.”
 

The church also has much to say about the topic.
 

“The great gifts that the church has to offer are that we are created male and female and that we are also resurrected as male and female, as Jesus Christ teaches us,” Miller said.
 

Book is her first goal
 

Miller’s first goal is to complete her world travels and write a book on the topic. In the next several months, she will head to Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda and then spend time in Italy, France, Hungary and Poland. In each country, she is introduced to scholars who can talk about the male-female question from their individual perspectives and also from the perspectives of their culture.
 

She also has established with three others the International Institute of Culture and Gender Studies and has launched a blog – www.redeeminggender.com – to share news of her research.
The Vatican document, she says, states that the world has “begun to separate sex and gender instead of distinguishing between those two.”
 

“Sex is a sacramental reality of being created male and female,” Miller said. “That’s not just biological but also spiritual – the entire human person, body and soul. We call the particular way that each of us lives that out as our gender. So, it’s our particular way of being female or male.”
 

Abuse, alcoholism challenges
 

On Native American reservations, she heard women talk about how harmed they had been by male abuse, alcoholism and drug use. “Their desire is to find a safe place where they can develop as women and then call their men out of that cycle of abuse and call them back to who they are as native Americans,” Miller said.
 

In India, she heard documented stories about married women committing suicide at a much higher rate – sometimes being set on fire – because the dowry they brought into the marriage was not substantial enough.
 

But Miller said some Indian scholars believe the view of female inferiority is changing.
 

Miller finds solace in Jesus’ words in the 22nd chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew. Jesus says when men and women are resurrected, they “will neither marry nor be given in marriage but will be as the angels in heaven.
 

“It tells us we are not just created male and female but also that we will be resurrected male and female for the rest of eternity,” she said. “Being male and female is so good that God wants it to exist.”
 

It is important to listen sympathetically to transgender persons who have been hurt by their  gender identity issues, she said.
 

“One of the ways we respond to it is showing that we agree with these people that they suffer,” Miller said. “We agree that their call is to happiness. And then we say, ‘What brings true happiness?’
“What the studies show is that people who get into the transition process, usually 10 years afterwards, have a 20% higher suicide rate than the rest of the population. They realize that the happiness they thought the surgery or transition would bring them no longer exists.
“Be willing to listen to them and then share with them your concern that this isn’t the way they’ll be happiest in the long or even in the short term.”
 

Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at [email protected].