Love as a Liberatory Praxis
‘For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life’. John 3:16. I have known this verse of the Bible since I started attending children’s Sunday school. It was my go-to memory verse when it was time to play the Bible game. The rhythm of the words will flow out of my mouth with confidence. Not missing a word or forgetting the next word. Less than a minute, I am beaming with pride to have read John 3:16 without pausing or looking at the Bible. I understood from John 3:16 that God sent Jesus Christ to the world to die for sinners. And He did this because He loves us. Of all the verses in the Bible that talk about love, it became the one verse I could easily remember. A reminder that someone loves me so much that He died for me.
I consider love to be the most important thing in our lives. I have seen people do things and not do things for love’s sake. I have read stories of random acts of kindness from people who are moved by love. Their moral compass is love. Even the second commandment Jesus gave to His followers is to love their neighbours as themselves. Love is both an inward motion as it is an outward motion. Self-help books talk about the power and importance of love. These books emphasise self-love as the first step to giving and receiving love. I have read a couple of books in which the authors stressed the importance of people doing the work of loving themselves. Movies and songs tell us that love is the greatest and most wonderful thing to love and be loved.
I am propelled, however, to question who receives all these messages about love. Who is listening, and are we passing the right love message?
If there is so much information about love in this world, why is there so much injustice, too? Injustice is everywhere.
The year is 2023, and the injustice we face today must force us to join the movement that seeks a liberatory world. A world that heals and restores humanity and the autonomy of every individual. A world that is only made possible through liberatory praxis of love.
We bear witness to the increasing influence of fundamentalism in shaping global and national agendas that reinforce oppression. From regressive laws exacerbating impunity for intimate-partner violence perpetrators to the attacks and killings of women’s activists and feminists and the growing marginalisation of women’s rights organisations, women and girls are being denied justice, protection, and the autonomy to experience, receive and give love. Emerging data shows that since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, violence against women and girls, particularly domestic violence, has intensified. In the 2021 UN Women report, around 45,000 women and girls worldwide were killed by their intimate partners or other family members. This means that, on average, more than five women or girls are killed every hour by someone in their own family.
Violence has eroded our way of life, and the killing of women and violence against women, girls and vulnerable groups is normalised and even sometimes celebrated. Religious fundamentalists continue to influence reproductive policies and reinforce the need for continued power and dominance over women and girls, further stripping us of autonomous rights to make decisions about our bodies and lives.
It is becoming impossible to agree with the messages about love in a world where violence persists. Everywhere I turn for justice and love, patriarchy manifests through different forms of resistance. Patriarchy as a psychological egoism operates both in our public and private lives. Patriarchy — both its structure and psychology — supports and enforces structural injustices of fundamentalism, sexism, and classism. We need to recognise the moral and spiritual injury inflicted by patriarchy. At the heart of patriarchal domination is an extreme lovelessness. As we see again and again in our private and public lives, there is a recent uptake in patriarchal fascist governance, which threatens women’s agency and bodily autonomy everywhere. Patriarchy, like any other system of oppression, does not create the context for experience, give and receive love.
Historically, women are said to be fragile, subservient and even sacrificial. Today, women continue to defy these narratives. Women are choosing themselves. We see women become more audacious and disruptive as they become more critical in the wake of the contemporary feminist movement. Notably, African women continue to push back on existing colonial legacies. African women are creating spaces that engender multiple ways of living, framing and dreaming of alternatives that uphold values influenced by the principles of intersectionality and love. Women’s work in resisting patriarchy recognises the pluraversity of our identities and how it shapes our experience in the world. Even though our society is not built from an intersectional lens, women, in their diversity, are forced to interact and navigate a system that was not built for them and by them. As Slyvia Tamale noted in her book Decolonisation and Afro-Feminism, ‘the epistemic value of intersectionality is that it provides us with a critical lens within which to view the world’.
In the liturgy in a time not so far away by NAWI Afrifem Macroeconomics Collective, the curator shares, ‘In a time not so far away, a time perhaps parallel to the one we are in now, a new way is coming into being’ bell hooks in her book communion- the female search for love said ‘that females are born into a patriarchal world, which first invites us to make the journey to love and then places barriers in our way, is one of life’s ongoing tragedies’.
We cannot continue like this. We must not.
We do not need more strategies to respond to and navigate patriarchy. What we need is to give voice to the role love plays in healing and enabling a new way of being. We must recognise and join the movement of knowing and practising love as a transformative force.
We must begin to see clearly how much love matters, not just love in this patriarchal culture but a deeper understanding of love as a transformational force demanding each individual accountability and responsibility for nurturing our liberatory and spiritual growth.
I end this essay with bell hooks’ expression of love as ‘the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth. Love is as love does. Love is an act of will–namely, both an intention and an action.’ To love is to openly and honestly express care, affection, responsibility, respect, commitment, and trust. Knowing what we mean when we speak of love is the starting point of our liberatory journey.
