Chapter 5
Kat Armas, Abuelita Faith: What Women on the Margins Teach Us about Wisdom, Persistence, and Strength
What can we learn from women on the margins if we treat them as theologians and see their lived experiences as central to all?
Kat Armas’ work takes this question and tries to answer it through her reflections on stories from her own life and families, the histories of women around the world, and the recovered narratives of women in biblical texts that are often overlooked or misunderstood.
The theology of las abuelas is borne in lo cotidiano—the quotidian, the everyday, the mundane.
Instead of just thinking about the marginalized, Armas invites us to think with them. She believes that the abuelitas possess “a connection to Jesus that empowers, despite the ways dominant culture has attempted to strip them of their dignity, even and especially in the name of Jesus” (32). Armas draws upon the abuelitas to ponder lessons of anti-colonialism, truth-telling, community-making, hand-crafting, surviving, protesting, persisting, and dancing.
The final chapter is titled: “Resolviendo in La Lucha.” This is the fight of survival “in which powerless people find power and agency to face their daily lives” (174).
Armas reflects on the Lord’s Prayer and wonders if Jesus knew that most people’s realities would be one of simply figuring out how to get by day to day. She is convinced that when “those who are marginalized through systems that keep them down speak up for themselves, God listens” (178).
Maybe God does listen… but then what?
