Remembering Crucified Woman & Doris Dyke

                           Crucifed Woman --  Almuth Lutkenhaus-Lackey photo: Susie Guenther Loewen

An Emmanuel College (my alma mater seminary) friend and colleague in ministry let me know about the death of one of our professors from the late 1970's, Doris Dyke. Professor Dyke lived to the ripe old age of  91 havng lived a full and varied life in a number of North American locations. She was the first woman to be appointed to the faculty of Emmanuel, a college of the University of Toronto. She had a passion for the arts and was involved in bringing a controversial sculpture to Bloor St, United Church in 1979, then to the grounds of the college. 

Crucified Woman depicted a naked female figure in a cruciform position, and many were offended by the piece, and accused the Rev. Clifford Elliot of Bloor St. United and everyone else involved of heresy and blasphemy and more. Eventually Doris wrote a book about the sculpture and what transpired. 

The following is an excerpt from a reflection written by Susie Guenther Loewen, a much more recent Emmanuel student who missed the sculptue after graduating : 

 According to theologians Doris Jean Dyke and Julie Clague, artist Almuth Lutkenhaus-Lackey sculpted “Crucified Woman” simply as an expression of women’s suffering. It was only reluctantly that she lent the sculpture to a United church in Toronto for Easter one year, unsure of whether she wanted it interpreted theologically. She was overwhelmed by the response, especially of women who for the first time, saw “their suffering, their dying and their resurrection embodied in a woman’s body,” and thereby felt God’s solidarity with the suffering specific to women.

Of course, not everyone interpreted the sculpture this way. Some saw it as heretical, too distant from the male body of the historical Jesus of Nazareth. Others saw it as too sexual, as it depicts a nude female form. Others saw it as reifying instead of protesting violence against women. 

But the responses of many women, including many survivors of sexual and physical abuse, told a different story. For instance, in 1989, upon hearing of the Montreal Massacre of fourteen women engineering students at the Ecole Polytechnique, hundreds gathered around the “Crucified Woman” to remember the victims and—and for some—God’s solidarity with them.

Doris and Cliff exhibited courage and prophetic imaginations in those "ancient" days, and pushed us all to consider the Christ of the cross who came for all who suffer.