In November 1967, a group of young feminists met in an apartment in New York City. It became a regular meeting with the aim of discussing the ways in which they had been oppressed and taken advantage of by the men in their lives. The idea was that by hearing the other women complain about these issues, the participants’ ‘consciousness’ about the same issues would be raised, and they would begin to see their own lives in the same light.
It was as a result of these meetings that the phrase ‘consciousness-raising’ was born. From then on, it became a strategy employed by the women’s liberation movement in USA to mobilize the movement. Ideally, groups would consist of 7-12 women, most of whom had no background in feminism, with a feminist leader who would guide the discussion.
As a slogan and an organized strategy, this sort of consciousness-raising was an invention of late 20th-century feminism (with an obvious debt to the “Speak Bitterness” meetings organized by Mao in China in the early 1950s). But in less formal and deliberate ways, I think it is a phenomenon that goes back millennia to the original ‘consciousness-raising’ meetings of the Israelites in the wilderness (Psalm 106:25, for example).
It’s also a phenomenon that continues to be found today, far beyond the circles of organized feminism. To be honest, it reminds me of quite a few prayer meetings I have been in with other Christians. It usually works this way: first, someone ‘shares’ how they have been struggling with a certain aspect of someone else’s behaviour, or with some aspect of the church. All the group listens with understanding nods and murmurs, but all the while seeds of discontent are being planted in the minds of those listening. By the time you’ve hurriedly said your prayers at the end (if you get to that bit), you too are feeling a bit annoyed with your husband or wife, your employer or the minister (or, if it’s a group of ministers or ministers’ wives, you feel annoyed at your congregation, your lay leaders, your denominational administrators, and so on). Problems that were in the background of your thinking have now been pulled up to the foreground, and you have started joining the dots between them to form a pattern.
As Christians, we are to pray with each other, and that usually involves having to ask people what to pray for. We are meant to weep with those who weep (Rom 12:15). We are also help each other with our sin, confessing our sins to each other (Jas 5:16). But our aim is not to validate and amplify each other’s discontent. We have to be very aware that what is said creates a way of viewing the world in the hearers’ minds too. Like looking through a prism, we can create a distorted and sinful view of the world with our words.
Inevitably, the words we use to describe our own lives ‘raise the consciousness’ of others by creating resonances with feelings that they also have and by providing a model for how to perceive and respond to common experiences. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why grumbling is such a big deal in the Bible (eg. 1 Cor 10:10); why urgent, serious admonition is spoken of as a daily duty (eg. Heb 3:13); and why thankfulness ought to be a characteristic mark of Christian conversation (e.g. Eph 5:4).
As Christians, we need our consciousness raised every day. Let’s pray that God would give us conversations in the coming week—conversations in which we can help open each other’s eyes to the sins we ought to be weeping over—as well as the riches of his grace, for which we can be giving thanks and rejoicing.
