ABSTRACT
The core commitment of feminist theologies is to ‘the struggle for justice’. Feminist theologies are therefore always political practices which attend to women’s experiences of oppression and liberation, and seek to do gender justice in the world, the Church and theology. While the first concern is with gender justice, feminist theologies act in solidarity with other forms of this struggle for justice across such divisions as ‘race’, class, sexuality or (dis)ability. These practical struggles rest on an analysis of power relations in theology, Church, and society; their aim is to resist abuses of power that result in injustice, and to construct just human relations. Writings by academic feminist theologians are connected with women’s movements that include women who are active both within their churches and in broader justice struggles outside church contexts. As the Chinese American theologian Kwok Pui-lan makes clear, feminist theo-
logy has always been ‘intercultural theology’.1 In addition to this chapter, feminist theologies will also appear in the following three chapters on black theologies, liberation theologies, and postcolonial theologies, as feminist theologies emerge in diverse global contexts. From the late 1960s, feminist theologies arose simultaneously as Christian responses to the women’s liberation movement in the North American and (Western) European world, and through the involvement of Latin American, African and Asian women alongside men in organizations such as the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians (EATWOT). North American feminist theologians were the first to hold academic tenured positions, and thus the first to develop feminist theologies in a systematic form. Since the collapse of the Communist ‘Second World’, from the 1990s, feminist theologies have also grown within East European countries, as churches re-establish themselves as a recognized presence within society after decades of repression. The chapter title of ‘feminist theologies’, in the plural, reflects this diversity of
theologies arising in different contexts. Feminist theology, in the singular, can also be seen as both a global network and a distinct stream of theological thought, which links women activists and theologians from diverse local situations. On the one hand, a common intercultural feminist theology emerges through the exchanges
made possible by this global network; on the other, tensions and different priorities emerge, particularly between the concerns of white Western feminist theologies of European heritage and feminist theologies emerging in the postcolonial world. Postcolonial analysis reveals the power differential between white feminist theologians of ‘colonizer’ heritage and feminist theologians of colour, whose forebears were among the ‘colonized’. The continuing privileges of the Western ‘First World’ of the global north, over against the ‘Third World’ of the global south, underpin this power differential. This discussion leads towards the ground covered in the later chapter on postcolonial theologies, so the point will not be pressed further here, but it is important to keep in mind this alternative colonizer or colonized heritage of all the feminist theologies you will encounter in this chapter. It is also important to recognize that feminist theology is an argumentative community in its own right: while feminist theologies reflect their particular contexts there is also diversity and difference among feminist theologians who share the same context. Western Christian feminist theologies arose from a devastating critique of Chris-
tianity, which named it as a ‘patriarchal’ religion that is incapable of correction. Mary Daly’s Beyond God the Father is a seminal text in this respect, while the British feminist theologian Daphne Hampson, in Theology and Feminism, made similar criticisms.2 The literal meaning of ‘patriarchy’ is control by the fathers. Daly claims that Christianity is patriarchal through and through; you cannot imagine Christianity without this patriarchal control. For example, when the feminist biblical scholar, Phyllis Trible, recommended ‘depatriarchalizing the bible’ (that is removing patriarchal elements from the text), Daly responded that it would be interesting to reflect on the length of the remaining text: there might be enough to make an interesting pamphlet!3
