50 Key Concepts in Theology

Feminist Theology
An approach to theology that aims to give women their true value.
Feminist theology began as a critical analysis of the neglect of women’s
experiences in Christian thinking and practice. Not only was traditional
theology written by men with little regard for the distinctive voices of women,
but much Christian theology was hatefully misogynistic. Tertullian’s remark
that women were ‘the devil’s gateway’ was an extreme expression of an active
misogyny at the heart of Christian theology.
Like feminism in general, feminist theology is not so much a distinct
theory as a range of approaches and perspectives united by what one writer
has called ‘an ethical commitment to giving women their true value’ (E.
Wilson: Hidden Agendas, Tavistock, 1986). This commitment has found a
range of expressions, from rights-based campaigns for equality, to radical
‘goddess’ theology, post-Christian feminism and lesbian feminism.
Although there were some earlier examples of feminist theology, such as
Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s The Woman’s Bible (1895), it really took root in the
late 1960s and early 1970s with the publication of landmark books by Mary
Daly (The Church and the Second Sex, 1968) and Kari Borresen
(Subordination and Equivalence, 1968).
Inspired by secular feminism, feminist theologians started treating the
Christian tradition with active suspicion. Church structures were criticised for
the exclusion and oppression of women, theological language was scrutinised
for sexism and patriarchy, and the very structures of theological reasoning,
including the male conception of God, were subjected to feminist critique.
At the centre of these approaches was a re-reading of the Christian
tradition – in particular, the Bible. For example, Elisabeth Schüssler
Fiorenza’s In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of
Christian Origins (1983) tried to look through the layers of patriarchal
(mis)interpretation to detect the voices of women within the Christian
Scriptures. Fiorenza showed how the production, translation and
interpretation of the biblical texts operated to oppress women: ‘A feminist
reconstruction of history can no longer take patriarchal texts at face value but
must critically interpret them in a feminist perspective.’
Although the critique of patriarchy was, and remains, very necessary, it
has also been important for feminist theologians to present a constructive
religious vision. For example, feminist critique exposed spirit–matter dualism
as essentially sexist: the spirit was associated with the ‘rational’ male and

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matter with the ‘feminine’ body. This critique has been crucial to the
development of numerous theologies of the body, sexuality, biology, bio-
ethics and ecology.
One of the central issues has been the extent to which the traditions of the
churches really provide adequate resources for a properly feminist theology.
For some, like Sarah Coakley (Powers and Submissions: Spirituality,
Philosophy and Gender, 2002), traditional trinitarian doctrine provides all the
materials necessary for a feminist theology. But for others, the tradition must
be radically adapted or supplemented with images of a feminine God, Christa
(a feminine Christ), the figure of the Earth-goddess, or even the re-
appropriation of witchcraft.
As with secular feminism, feminist theology has tended in the last decade
to become ever more abstract and academic – and as a result, more distant
from the practical campaigns for women’s justice and social reform that
characterised so-called ‘First Wave’ and ‘Second Wave’ feminism. The future
of feminist theology lies perhaps not only in new theoretical developments
but also in a reconnection with practical issues of justice for women.
THINKERS
Mary Daly (1928– ): a radical feminist theologian who famously refused
to admit male students to her classes at Boston College. In Beyond God the
Father and subsequent works she argued that ‘If God is male, then male is
God. The divine patriarch castrates women as long as he is allowed to live on
in the human imagination.’ Daly used language and concepts in imaginative
ways in order to disrupt patriarchy, which she believed was written into all
our patterns of Western thought. She argued that we need to recover earlier
concepts of God, particularly ‘negative theology’, Aquinas’ theology of Being
and his conception of ‘God as a verb’.
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (1938– ): a pioneer of feminist
interpretation of the Bible.
Daphne Hampson (1944– ) has argued in Theology and Feminism that
feminism must follow a post-Christian trajectory because the Christian
tradition, centred on a male Messiah, simply cannot be redeemed. Hampson
says she has ‘rejected the Christian myth … The myth is not neutral; it is
highly dangerous. It is a brilliant, subtle, elaborate, male cultural projection.’
Carter Heyward (1945– ): a lesbian feminist and one of the 11 Episcopal
women ‘illegally’ ordained in Philadelphia in 1974. Heyward has drawn on
Martin Buber’s theology to develop a theology of ‘right relation’: ‘We are

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born in relation, we live in relation, we die in relation’ to one another, to the
cosmos and to God.
John Knox (1505–72): a Reformation theologian and the author of a
virulently misogynistic text entitled The First Blast of the Trumpet Against
the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558), in which he argued that ‘to
promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion, or empire above any
realm, nation, or city, is repugnant to nature; an insult to God, a thing most
contrary to his revealed will and approved ordinance; and finally, it is the
subversion of good order, of all equity and justice.’
Rosemary Radford Ruether (1936– ): a pioneer of feminist theology who
criticised traditional Christology as patriarchal and anti-Semitic. Ruether said
we must go back to the Jesus tradition of the Gospels to find the resources for
a feminist theology.
Tertullian (155–230): one of the earliest Christian theologians, he was
infamous for the misogynistic views expressed in On Female Fashion and
other works.
IDEAS