Pacific women, God and wellbeing

 International Women’s Day on 8 March draws attention to the lives of women, and my research explores, in the inner lives of Pacific women, how their relationship with God can affect their wellbeing, and how their image of God relates to their relationship with their parents.

How we name, visualise and describe God is most often directly correlated to our relationships with attachment figures such as a caregiver or parent. The way we talk about God and how we perceive God is also influenced by our upbringing, religious involvement and commitment, religious artwork in churches, museums and on social media.

Pacific peoples see religion and spirituality as important for wellbeing, alongside relationships with the physical environment, family, and culture.

Yet there is much we don’t know about religious belief in the Pacific. The disciplines of Christian theology, Indigenous studies, psychology, and sociology are yet to adequately investigate specific religious practices, their theological basis, and how this affects mental wellbeing for Pacific peoples.

For my doctoral studies in theology I had the chance to speak with, and learn from, 64 young Pacific women in Tāmaki Makaurau about how their images of God and cultural identity affected their mental wellbeing.

I met young māmā who were working and studying at the same time, women who were deeply immersed in their language and cultural reclamation journey, women who had been clinically diagnosed with a mental illness, women who were angry at the church, yet also those who were wholeheartedly serving in the church.

I met women who, when faced with a physical illness equally sought traditional Pacific healing methods, Western medicine, and prayer. In our talanoa (free discussion), we laughed, cried, untangled our family and village connections, and talked about how church communities in Aotearoa might better engage with Pacific congregations to talk about and support mental wellbeing.

What struck me is how much Pacific women carry – emotionally, socially and psychologically. They need to navigate how to express their cultural identity in a Western, secular context. If they aren’t fluent in their native tongue they could be mocked by their wider extended family, unable to understand conversations and so feel inadequate.

They must also fulfil their families’ expectations of what it means to be a Pasifika woman, whereas their male family members may have more social freedom. They may be responsible for caring for family members, as well as having to study and work.

And they feel obliged to succeed because that’s what our older generations moved to Aotearoa for – educational opportunity, more employment options and a different future.

These young women were also grappling with what their Christian faith meant to them in light of being able to learn more about our cultures before colonisation and the harm churches caused in their compliance with racist colonial regimes.

The power each of these women had in weaving together the aspects of their identity, holding themselves with grace while serving their families and communities is a privilege I was able to witness.   

The women had a range of images of God, which had changed over time. A positive image of God, for example, a loving and compassionate one, is one that is more likely to be beneficial for an individual’s mental wellbeing. God either compensates for the lack of relationship with parents or authority figures, or consolidates it and reflects positive relationships with parents or authority figures.

In other words, for a Pacific person, if the parental relationship with a child is not open and loving this may also be reflected in how that child perceives God – and therefore negatively affect their mental wellbeing.

God was commonly described and perceived as ‘Father’, ‘Love’, ‘Creator’, through nature-based metaphors, and as ubiquitous. ‘Feminism’ in the Pacific is not the same as Western feminism, and women spoke more often about understanding the hierarchies within their own cultures so were generally happy about calling God by a male pronoun, though those raised by single mothers refused to call God ‘Father’.

Fifty seven of the 64 women said their image of God helped them maintain a positive state of mental wellbeing. Though sometimes during negative life events, such as having an argument with a friend, women did not pray to God, God remained a constant anchor especially when they faced more significant mental distress such as the death of a family member, or stress from balancing everything in their lives.

For many of the women, God is the love that binds all the relationships within our families, who are so important in each of our lives, and propels us forward to serve them and our communities with vigour. God is ever-ancient and ever-new, compelling Pacific women to delve deeper into a connection with each of these aspects of our intersecting identities.