On Mutuality

Sometimes, people will ask me what the end goal is.

As in, if power was truly shared, if there was no more male privilege, how would it work?

To answer I talk about a community marked by mutuality, where power is allocated according to gifting, and where it is joyfully and humbly given and received.

The other day I came across the following quote on mutuality, from the book Women in the Greetings of Romans 16.1-16 by Susan Matthew. Enjoy, and imagine with me a world, and especially a church, where this was normal.

“Mutualism in this context may be defined as follows: it refers to relationships of reciprocity (i.e. where each has sometime to contribute to the other) whose purpose is mutual promotion (i.e. where the task of each is to serve the interests of the other).

Because of this purpose in mutual service, relationships may not be simultaneously equal: in one serving the other there will be temporary forms of asymmetry. But, crucially, this asymmetry is reversible and constantly reversed: there is never a settled hierarchy in one direction, but continual processes of reciprocal asymmetry in which a relationship of power which is unbalanced at one time or in one respect is continually reversed and unbalanced at another time or in another respect, in a dynamic, non-static, process of mutual promotion.”