The three foci of feminist theologies.

A white, privileged North American feminist theologian should not be so foolhardy as to attempt to say some general things about feminist theology today. To attempt to do so is to risk falling into the very trap that feminist theologies have so pervasively critiqued and resisted the temptation of casting theology into universally applicable terms. Therefore feminist theologies tend to be experiential, contextual, and particular and have become a decisive challenge to the presumed universality of theological categories and meanings.

The very label "feminist" is controversial, because of the distorted connotations and hence the resistance many have to the word, but also because of the need to name the particular social realities in which women's lives have been embedded. As much of the "feminist" theology arose originally out of the experience of white women in the U.S., its applicability to most women of the world is rightly suspect. This is why there continues to be a proliferation of designations such as "womanist," "mujerista," "minjung" theologies that take seriously the cultural, economic, and political particularity of women--for the sake of liberation and transformation of oppressive realities.

Given those limitations of the term and the task, I nevertheless suggest there are three foci that regularly emerge in these diverse kinds of theologies, namely: dehumanization, difference, and domination. These foci are not unique to feminist theologies, but are found in much of the contemporary theology, and the postmodern critiques that inform them. Feminist theologies have opened up these themes in ways that are in common with other contextually-grounded theologies. The degree to which these dimensions are increasingly found in current theological discourse may indicate the transformative effect that feminist and related theologies are already having on mainstream theology, and may eventually have on the church's life and practices around the world.

Dehumanization

Women are people.

That is the basic claim embedded in the wide array of feminist theologies. Overlooked, objectified, deprived, dispensed with, made as targets of violence and violation--these are some of the ways in which females are dehumanized throughout the world, in both blatant and subtle ways. The initial stirrings of feminist theologies are protests against this dehumanization, with the insistence that women are fully human, created in God's image. Women are empowered to become subjects, to construct theological meanings, and to claim the authority to do so.

Thirty years ago, I began my theological studies as the only woman in my seminary class. For the sake of my survival and sanity, I gravitated toward women in other seminaries who together were giving birth to a women's center. There through consciousness-raising groups, and earlier probings regarding how our experience was not reflected in mainstream--or "male-stream"--theology, we found our collective voice, challenged policies and practices, and began to theologize--to name and talk about God and divine activity in our lives and in the world. God's presence in and among us empowered our protests against the many ways in which we were dehumanized as women.

Although feminist theology begins with those multiple ways in which women have been dehumanized, this focus soon widens into other forms of dehumanization, many of them rooted in but involving more than women. Here is where feminist theology joins with many other branches of liberation theologies, anchored as they all are in experiences of dehumanization. The temptation has been to blend in with these other branches in the name of human liberation, in ways that pass too quickly over how women are marginalized because they are female which has been the womens experience, including in these other liberation movements.

Yet as time has evolved, it has also become important to stress that although feminist theology arises out of women's experiences of dehumanization, it is more than "women's theology." The dangers involved in calling this "women's" theology are twofold. On the one hand there is the danger of essentializing women and their experience. The assumption is that there is some unchanging core that is the same for all women, regardless of their social context and personal situation or that all women have a distinctive way of relating to or theologizing about God. The other danger is assuming that one has to be female in order to make certain critiques or theological claims. Although feminist theology arises out of how women are dehumanized, in probing the role of dualistic differences and domination in that dehumanization, it is joined by a chorus of other voices.

Difference

There are no uniform ways of talking about women or their experience.

In recent years, the rich, multifaceted development of feminist theologies has especially arisen because of the attention that has been given to the real material and cultural differences among women. Anthologies of "feminist" theologies, reflecting a wide variety of women's cultural and economic situations around the world, look and sound much different today than they did in the 1970s. They are rich in their inter-cultural perspectives.

When generalizations are made about all women, especially from the perspective of those who are relatively privileged, these differences often are not honored but violated. Assumptions are made, for example, about women in life-threatening situations of economic survival that are not necessarily valid. What looks like dehumanizing or liberating conditions from the outside, may be experienced quite differently by the actual women living inside these realities. Those who are "other" from "us" continually challenge our assumptions and interpretations. Differences themselves become revelatory, provoking new insights.

Yet regardless of how different women are and their situations from one another, within all societies or cultures, the basis on which gender is structured is the difference. These differences are not biologically natural, or God-given, but socially constructured between what it means to be a woman or a man, a girl or a boy in a given society. It is these assumptions, the prescribed roles, and all else that is built on the basis of gender distinctions that are rightly challenged by feminist theologies. Gender differences must be questioned and critiqued theologically, especially when they become the basis for excluding, devaluing, or oppressing those of one sex, who in nearly all societies have been female.

Such gender differences are also embedded in much of our biblical, theological, and liturgical inheritance as a church, reinforcing women's passive, receptive role in relation to males and to a God who almost always is referred to and imaged as "he." Questioning and challenging this is necessary on theological grounds, lest gender differences be mistaken as being "of God." This is empowered by faith in the Triune God who cannot be confined to any social structure, in a God who transcends and confounds patriarchy.

Domination

Power matters.

Gender differences lapse into dualistic categories in which one pole is valued over the other. Feminist theologies question and challenge the underlying dualisms that frame so much of Western theological thought. It is not only the dualisms erected on the basis of male/female differences that are called into question, but an array of other dualisms, such as spirit/body, reason/emotion, humans/nature, light/dark.

These dualisms provide the basis for interlinked structures and practices of domination: men over women, spirit over the body, reason over emotion, humans over nature, light-skinned over dark-skinned people. A critical feminist theology understands women's oppression not only in terms of gender, but also the inter-structuring of racism, class-exploitation, colonialism, and the exploitation of the natural environment. Through the ways these dynamics play off and reinforce one another, patterns of domination over women as well as the less privileged men become more entrenched. They are kept in place by what Elisabeth Schuessler Fiorenza has called "kyriarchy," that is, the rule of the lord/ master/father/husband.

   With kyriarchal structures, gender oppression is multiplied by racist
   dehumanization ... economic exploitation ... cultural colonization ...
   heterosexual prejudice ... ageist stereotypes ... religion demonization.

   (Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, The Power of Naming [Maryknoll, NY: Orbis
   and London: SCM, 1996), xxi.)

      The ethical impulse at the heart of feminist theologies leads to a
   striving to change and transform these inter-related structures of
   domination, based on the biblically-based vision of the church as a
   discipleship of equals. God's revelatory presence is experienced and named
   from within the inter-linked struggles against dehumanization and for
   justice.

(Ibid., xxxiv)

      Therefore, a critical feminist theology of liberation seeks to interrupt
   the patriarchal silencing of women and to make women visible as God's
   agents of grace and liberation. It shows that the need to silence women and
   to make us invisible in male linguistic systems and theological frameworks
   will no longer exist when the Church transforms its patriarchal structures
   of superordination that are exclusive of women or can admit us only in
   marginal and subordinate positions. The full participation of women not
   only requires the conversion and transformation of the patriarchal Church
   and its ministry into a discipleship community of equals but also the
   articulation of a new theology.

(Ibid., 172)