The Good Creation: An Ecowomanist Reading of Genesis 1-2

Abstract In his creative activity recorded in Genesis 1-2, God interacts with a formless, chaotic, space. It is stated that God began to speak things into being and that at the completion of everything he created; God saw that it was “all” good. As a Motswana woman, I see in God’s concluding remarks a hope for the future. In a world characterized by panic due to the impending ecological decline and crisis, there is need to go back to the beginning of all things. One can safely conclude that God loves all his creation; human, animate and inanimate. However due to patriarchal structures of our world, there has been domination of women and the natural world. The structures of suppression and abuse of the female gender by the male have modelled into those of humans over non-humans. In this paper I endeavor to show that there is an interconnection between women, in particular black women’s oppression and the subjugation of the ecosystem leading to its depletion. My argument is that there is need to re-visit the idea of an “overall” good creation. Domination of women, land and animals is against the creator’s vision of a good world. An appreciation of women across all cultures, classes, races, sexual orientations etc, as part of the good creation can be a starting point for an appreciation and care of all God has created