Feminist Theology And The Challenge Of Difference

Drawing from poststructuralist, postcolonial, and queer theory, this text explores the challenges of cultivating attentiveness to difference in women's experiences and reflects on the impact of race and sexuality on feminist theology.

In the early years of contesting patriarchy in the academy and religious institutions, feminist theology often presented itself as a unified front, a sisterhood. The term "feminist theology," however, is misleading. It suggests a singular feminist purpose driven by a unified female cultural identity that struggles as a cohesive whole against patriarchal dominance. Upon closer inspection, the voice of feminist theology is in fact a chorus of diverging perspectives, each informed by a variety of individual and communal experiences, and an embattled scholarly field, marked by the effects of privilege and power imbalances. This complexity raises an important question: How can feminist theologians respect the irreducible diversity of women's experiences and unmask entrenched forms of privilege in feminist theological discourse? In Feminist Theology and the Challenge of Difference, Margaret D. Kamitsuka urges the feminist theological community to examine critically its most deeply held commitments, assumptions, and goals-especially those of feminist theologians writing from positions of privilege as white or heterosexual women. Focusing on women's experience as portrayed in literature, biblical narrative, and ethnographic writing, Kamitsuka examines the assumptions of feminist theology regarding race and sexuality. She proposes theoretical tools that feminist theologians can employ to identify and hopefully avoid the imposition of racial or sexual hegemony, thus providing invaluable complexity to the movement's identity, and ultimately contributing to current and future Christian theological issues. Blending poststructuralist and postcolonial theoretical resources with feminist and queer concerns, Feminist Theology and the Challenge of Difference makes constructive theological proposals, ranging from sin to christology. The text calls feminist theologians to a more rigorous self-critical approach as they continue to shape the changing face of Christian theological discourse.

This book engages with the critical tools of Edward Said (1935-2003) and traces the voyage of various postcolonial feminist theologians. Along four intersecting lines, postcolonial feminist theology unfolds as addressing cultural othering, religious othering, gendered othering, and sexual othering. In critical solidarity with those constructed as other postcolonial feminist theology, the book challenges the norms of Western theology. (Series: ContactZone. Explorations in Intercultural Theology - Vol. 16)

McRandal argues that the doctrinal narrative of creation, fall, and redemption provides resources to resolve the theological impasse of difference in contemporary feminist theology. The divine economy reveals a God who enters into history and destabilizes fixed binaries and oppressive categories. As created subjects, we are sustained, affirmed, and drawn back into the Triune life, patterns present in liturgy, prayer, and practices of contemplation. The grammar of Christian faith cannot ultimately be uncovered except in prayer, opened beyond itself to a source of life and giving.

This book addresses crucial issues that postmodern theory has raised for feminism and for feminist theology in particular. Postmodern critiques of metaphysics question whether feminism is ultimately foundationalist and essentialist, attributing an essential nature to "woman" and substituting a new metaphysical theory in place of the patriarchal foundationalism of Western thought. Marta Frascati-Lochhead develops this critique of metaphysics through a reading of the Italian philosopher, Gianni Vattimo. She shows how, through his interpretation of Nietzsche and Heidegger, Vattimo characterizes the violence of metaphysical thought and concludes that, for emancipatory thought today, "nihilism" is our "sole opportunity." Through a comparison of Vattimo and Derrida on the question of ontological difference, and with reference to Donna Haraway's feminist analysis of cyborg culture, the author demonstrates how Vattimo's perspective might inform an understanding of sexual difference. Drawing on the connection that Vattimo makes between the dissolution of metaphysics in our time and the Christian understanding of kenosis, the self-emptying of God in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, Frascati-Lochhead examines contemporary feminist theology in order to identify the kenotic movement in its thought. With specific reference to the works of Catherine Keller, Rebecca Chopp, Sallie McFague, and Rosemary Radford Ruether, she shows how contemporary feminist theology belongs to the metaphysical tradition that it would overcome while, at the same time, it moves in an emancipatory, kenotic direction.

Public Theology is a rapidly growing international field of study which focuses on how Christian belief and practice engage with wider social issues. Yet, whilst the ultimate concern of public theology is the well-being of society, this body of theology has largely developed without integrating the thinking of feminist theology and its insights into womens' lives and experience. Public Theology and the Challenge of Feminism argues that public theology risks re-inscribing traditional constructs of public and private, civic and domestic, and uncritical notions of gender and the work and worth of people. The book brings together both theory and case material to expose how public theology has actively downplayed or ignored feminist perspectives and to reveal how constructive feminism can be for the future of public theology.

The term "feminism" conjures up the promise of resistance to the various forms of oppression women face. But feminism's ability to fulfill this promise has been undermined by its failure to deal adequately with the difference that race makes for gender. In this book, Ellen T. Armour forges an alliance between deconstruction and feminist theology and theory by demonstrating deconstruction's usefulness in addressing feminism's trouble with race. Armour shows how the writings of Jacques Derrida and Luce Irigaray can be used to uncover feminism's white presumptions so that race and gender can be thought of differently. In clear, concise terms she explores the possibilities and limitations for feminist theology of Derrida's conception of "woman" and Irigaray's "multiple woman," as well as Derrida's thinking on race and Irigaray's work on religion. Armour then points a way beyond the race/gender divide with the help of African-American theorists such as bell hooks, Hortense Spillers, and Patricia Hill Collins.

Controversies in Feminist Theologies is a clear and accessible analysis of the current controversies within feminist theologies. It uses many of the themes of systematic theology to examine whether feminist theology has a future or whether its discourse and praxis has become bankrupt. The authors expand this question through an examination of whether the whole project of systematic theology has become outmoded. The book is the first to expose the myth of homogeneity and some of the common stereotypes and myths surrounding Feminist Theologies, from a methodological and thematic perspective. It addresses current stereotypes built around North Atlantic and Third World feminist theology, including issues concerning Mariology, the use of the Bible and the centrality of women's experiences in feminist praxis, while highlighting the richness of different and at times opposite positions in the debates of theology, gender and sexuality.

This feminist classic explores the ways in which women can read the Christian Bible with full understanding of both its oppressive and its liberating functions. In the substantial new Afterword to this edition, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza situates Bread Not Stone in relation to mainstream Biblical scholarship, Catholic and Protestant theologies, liberation theologies, and nineteenth-century feminist writings on the Bible.