Feminist Theology
RE Study Day, Wagga
As we take a look today at feminist theology, I will be guided by Elisabeth Schüssler
Fiorenza, who sees feminism is a protest movement. It has things in common with
other protest movements such as civil rights movements, anti-colonial and liberation
movements. In all these protest movements, people are fighting back about how they
have been treated, and how they have been cast by others in a derogatory and
demeaning way. They are claiming their right to stand upright, with dignity and
worth, on the ground that God has designed for them.
This link between feminism and other protest movements is important to understand
for there are common features between them. I sometimes find that conservative
church people are (rightly) outraged abut racism, but fail to see why the subordination
of women is also an outrage, for some of the same reasons. Both racism and sexism
are outrageous, and it is inconsistent not to see this.
So I have approached this introduction to feminist theology via the work of another
protest movement, that of African protest against colonialism and slavery. I am doing
so through a book by the Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe. He was among the first
Africans to write a genuine African novel, back in the 1960s. But today I am working
from his collection of essays called Home and Exile (Oxford University Press, 2000).
Achebe does not address feminism. But in Home and Exile he traces 400 years of
English people’s writing about Africans, and protests against them. There are some
interesting parallels between the protest he was making, and the protests made by
feminists. The fight is of the same nature. So it may be easier to understand feminist
theology if we look at it as a parallel with this other protest movement. I will then go
on to talk in a more focused way on feminist theology.
In Home and Exile, Achebe raises several issues that form parallels with feminist
theology. I have noted five:
1. The subject of naming, the naming of self and others, and naming to put down
(Home and Exile, pp. 5-6). In looking at what English people have written about
Africans, Achebe shows how, in those novels and essays, Africans were being
named as less than fully human, as child-like, as unable to govern themselves, as
people who had to be controlled and saved from themselves. They were only
portrayed through English eyes, who never really understood what it was like
being African, in all the diversity and richness that involves. So, too, feminist
theology is about naming, about how men have named women for thousands of
years, as child-like, as unable to govern themselves or others, as less than fully
human, as people who need to be controlled and saved from themselves. Men
have written about women and women's natures without understanding what it is
like being a woman, in all the richness and diversity that involves.
In both cases, in feminism and in anti-colonialism, the protest is for people to be
able to name themselves, and not to be named by others and to be put down.
2. This naming has social and political consequences. Those with the power to name
others, use this to serve their interests. The slave trade and colonialism were
1
explained and justified in the name of African inferiority (ibid, pp 28-9). Achebe
says that a vested interest in the slave trade produced a literature of devaluation.
Those who were defending the slave trade the most were the most derogatory in
their writing about Africans. They even managed to portray the slave trade as a
'mercy' and 'blessing' to the 'poor wretches' who would otherwise be worse off in
their homeland (ibid, p. 29-30). Another quote that Achebe gives is from Elspeth
Huxley. One of her non-fiction works, White Man's Country (Chatto and Windus,
London, 1935), has been described as 'the best apologia (justification) for white
settlement that has been written' (Home and Exile, p. 68). Elspeth Huxley lived in
Kenya among the Kikuyu. In that book she writes about the Kikuyu people:
'…perhaps it may be, as some doctors have suggested, that his brain is different:
that it has a shorter growing period and possesses less well-formed, less cunningly
arranged cells than that of the Europeans - in other words, that there is a
fundamental disparity between the capacity of his brain and ours' (quoted in Home
and Exile, p. 61).
Huxley did not make this up. She was drawing on a long tradition, one that had
dispossesed Africans of their land and governance.
So, too, the naming to put down women has had a long tradition, and has social
and political consequences. It serves the interests of male power, in church and
society. It is designed to keep women in their home, to restrict their lives and
their power. And it has relied on similar spurious biological arguments. Women
were thought of as incapable of rational thought, and as deformed males, not
quite fully human.
A modern example comes from my own experience. I was involved in the
movement for the ordination of women in the Anglican church in Australia for
about 15 years. One of the reasons for my commitment was not that ordination
was itself such an important goal, but because the movement was a protest
against the arguments that were being put forward to exclude women from the
priesthood. These included that women should not be leaders over men (headship
argument justified from scripture), or that her nature makes her unfit for this
office (arguments from the ‘orders of creation’, and from the notion that Eve
sinned first, making women in general unfit to be leaders). One example of this
last argument was given in a letter in a national newspaper when the issue was of
media interest. The letter was from a male priest who was against the ordination
of women. He said that to ordain a woman to the priesthood would be like
ordaining a dog. Neither women nor dogs were of the right nature to be priests.
This was not only insulting and demeaning, but such an argument had the power
to explain and justify the exclusion of women from the priesthood and from
leadership in the church.
3. Achebe raises the issue of self-perpetuating myths. By this he means that if people
are named in a certain way, and are treated accordingly, they will soon start to
resemble how they are treated. This then justifies the way they have been named.
For example, if people in Europe in the 18th century were accustomed to seeing
2
Africans in chains, captives without power, this made it easy for them to believe
in African inferiority. The myth was perpetuated by the so-called evidence.
Similarly with women, if women have not been given the encouragement and
opportunity for leadership, the 'evidence' might be that women are unfit to be
leaders. But that myth has been perpetuated by how women have been treated, or
mistreated. We need to ask ourselves about the assumptions that we carry with
us, and the so-called evidence we use when making claims about what people are
capable of. The question for both post-colonialism and feminism is this: can a
new and better self-perpetuating story be put in place, based on each person's
highest potential before God, rather than on the restrictions we have put on each
other?
4. Achebe is helpful in expressing what is wrong when we name to put down. In
theological terms we may say that he names the sin of degrading and denigrating
each other. He says that writing and thinking that denigrates some people, 'poisons
the well-spring of our common humanity' (p. 35). He calls it a form of abuse, and
says that 'abuse is not sanctified by its duration or abundance' (pp. 47-8). In other
words, abuse is never right, no matter how long it has gone on, or how widespread
it is. The effect of abuse, both in the naming and in the dispossession that goes
with it, is pain and the trauma of a diminished existence (p. 70). It can lead to the
erosion of self-esteem and a badly damaged sense of self (p. 81). This is truly a sin
if and when we do this to each other, either on the grounds of race or gender. Who
are we to damage what God has made good? Racism and sexism go together as
faults, wrongs to be righted, for each has deprived people of their dignity and
worth, and have diminished their existence.
5. The final issue that Achebe raises which is helpful in understanding feminism is
the question of what responses we are to make. There are two that are interesting
for our purposes. The first is that Achebe moved from being naïve about stories to
being suspicious. He used to think that stories were 'innocent', but grew to
understand that they carry biases and serve the interests of those who tell them (p.
33). Not all interests are bad. Some people have an interest in liberation or
reconciliation or healing, for example. But when an interest requires that some
people are denigrated for the sake of the power and privilege of others, this is not
good. So the question arises, what interests does this story serve?
In feminist theology, a very basic question of methodology is to develop the
hermeneutics of suspicion. Not all writing or thinking about women or about
humanity is innocent. Women learn to ask, what interest is being served here? So
the first response is to move from naivety to suspicion.1
The second response is what Achebe calls prophetic work (p. 44). It actively
criticises what is wrong, and seeks to bring about redemption or healing. He calls
it fighting back, or writing back. Achebe believes in the healing, curative power
1
See Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Bread Not Stone: The Challenge of Feminist Biblical
Interpretation, Beacon Press, Boston, 1984, pp. 15-18 for a development of her hermeneutics, starting
with a hermeneutics of suspicion (then of proclaimation, of remembrance, and of creative
actualisation).
3
of stories (p. 81, 83). But they will only be healing if they are on the right side, on
behalf of 'the poor and afflicted, the kind of ''nothing people'' ' (p. 95).
Feminist theology is also prophetic work, which affirms the right of women to
tell their own authentic stories. In Christian theology, Jesus stood firmly in the
tradition of the prophets, and placed himself alongside the ''nothing people''.
Feminist theology arose as a way of women fighting back and writing back, and
it did so from Christian convictions.
We now turn to look at feminist theology. To do so, we need to talk in terms of three
stages, or what has been called three waves of feminist theology.
The first wave of feminism
This is generally situated in the19th century, and arose from Christian women who
were becoming active in the anti-slavery campaign in America and England. They
found that, although they were working on behalf of others, they were being criticised
by the church for their public activities because they were women. An article called
'The Christian origins of feminism' by Muriel Porter traces this history (St Mark's
Review Winter 1992, pp. 20-27). She takes the example of Sarah Grimke, a Quaker
who was active in publicly campaigning against slavery. In 1837, as she was touring
the New England district, the region's Council of Congregation of Ministers wrote her
a 'pastoral letter', arguing that it was against woman's nature to be involved in public
leadership. The letter said in part:
The appropriate duties and influence of women are clearly stated in the New
Testament. The power of woman is her dependence, flowing from the
consciousness of that weakness which God has given her for her
protection…When she assumes the place and tone of man as a public
performer…she yeilds the power which God has given her…and her character
becomes unnatural. (cited in Porter, p. 4).
Here Grimke, and all women with her, is being named as weak and dependent. This is
supposedly her God-given nature. But she wrote back, with views of her own about
the nature of woman. She replied,
I ask no favours for my sex. I surrender not one claim of equality. All I ask of
our brethren is, that they will take their feet from off our necks, and permit us to
stand upright on that ground which God has designed us to occupy (cited in
Porter, p. 5).
All she was asking was that she be allowed to be herself, whom God had designed. It
was from experiences such as these that women turned their attention to women's
issues, and to the way that women's subordination was argued from the Christian
scriptures. Sarah Grimke argued instead for the equality of women and men, based on
Genesis 1. She worked to defend women's emancipation as a Christian cause (Porter,
p. 4).
Another influential woman of this same time was Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She too
was actively involved in the anti-slavery movement, and yet was being denied full
4
participation on the grounds that she was a woman. She then turned her attention to
the plight of women and spent the next 50 years of her life campaigning for women's
political equality. While in her seventies, Elizabeth Cady Stanton focused on women
and the church. She came to believe that the equality of women that she had been
fighting for in political and social life, should also be demanded within the church.
She also came to realise that neither church nor state would allow the equality of
women so long as the Christian scriptures were being used to teach the subordination
of women.
Therefore Stanton decided that it was time for women to revise the scriptures and
their interpretation for themselves. Men, she thought, were working through coloured
glasses, which biased their work in favour of themselves and against women. She said
that men,
…had never been and could not, at present, be relaible interpreters of the texts
because their authority, power and knowledge were flawed, having been based
on a false premise - that of male superiority and female inferiority.2
Yet Stanton did not see the problem as resting only with men. She realised that the
great majority of women uncritically accepted the churches' views of womanhood
with 'gullible acquiescence'. By not thinking for themselves, about the restrictions put
on them and whether these were valid or not, women were 'unwitting accomplices in
their own subjection'.3
What she felt was needed was a critical awareness, what we may call today a 'feminist
consciousness', or an awareness of the politics of interpretation. It was particularly
important that the power of the scriptures to subordinate women was broken. Thus
Elizabeth Cady Stanton worked with other women to produce the Women's Bible
published in 1895, dealing with those texts which involve women and their
interpretation. Her contribution to feminist biblical studies has been valuable, even
though her views were considered by later feminists to be limited by her own social
location.4
Much of the focus and effort of the first wave of feminism revolved around women's
suffrage by the end of the 19th century. Once this campaign achieved its goal over the
next few decades, the rallying call was gone, and for a while there was not the same
energy for feminist causes.
The second wave of feminism
The second wave of feminism is usually traced to the 1960s, along with other civil
rights, liberation and anti-colonial movements. It is during this time that the role and
status of women was being studied in a systematic manner, in numerous disciplines philosophy, history, sociology, psychology, theology. In terms of feminist theology,
2
'Politicizing the Sacred Text: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Women's Bible', in Searching the
Scriptures: A Feminist Introduction, Vol. 1, ed. E.S.Fiorenza, Collins Dove: North Blackburn, 1993, p.
56.
3
ibid, p. 54.
4
More can be learned about Elizabeth Cady Stanton in: Loades, A., Feminist Theology: A Reader,
Louisville, 1990.
5
all the Christian doctrines in systematic theology, the scriptures, and the practice of
the church were examined for the way in which they included (or not) women's
concerns and valued women as equal to men. Where and how did the Christian
tradition and church life diminish women, or degrade them? This was what the second
wave of feminism considered in a focused way. Sometimes this really challenged the
Christian church.
It may be helpful to consider two women who began their careers in the 1960s and
have been very influential in teaching and publishing in feminist theology over the
next 40 years. They can be considered among the foremothers of feminist theology.
I have chosen these two women not only for their influence but because they had
different responses to the patriarchy of the church. The first, Mary Daly, ended up
leaving the church because of her feminist convictions. The second, Elisabeth
Schussler Fiorenza, had a counter argument. She was a feminist because she was a
Christian. It is interesting to note their different arguments.
Mary Daly is an American Catholic woman who gained her higher degrees in Europe
in the 1950s. She received doctorates in philosophy and theology from the University
of Fribourg, and in 1966 was appointed lecturer in theology at Boston College in
USA, where they were deliberately making appointments of women to lecturing
positions. In response to the hope for the church surrounding Vatican II, and anger at
its shortcomings, Mary Daly wrote The Church and the Second Sex (1968). She was
highly critical of the church for its sexism, but remained hopeful of reform.
By the early 70s, Daly's views had shifted. She could not see how women could be
liberated while remaining within the church, since it was an institution that was
inextricably tied to sexist ideologies and which idolised masculinity. She felt that for a
woman to be freed from patriarchy and to become her own authentic self, she would
need to leave the church. Daly drew on the metaphor of the exodus. She argued that
women in the church were like the slaves in Egypt, and that freedom meant coming
out of Egypt into the promised land. She announced her exodus from the church and
invited others to join her. Her next book, Beyond God the Father (Beacon Press,
Boston, 1973) is a result of these views.
Daly saw feminism and Christianity as incompatible. She argued that, in so far as
Christian theologians:



proclaim women's subordination to be God's will;
have a fixation on male symbolism for God and for the human relationship to
God; and
encourage detachment from the reality of the human struggle against oppression,
focusing instead on private, spiritual concerns,
then Christianity is incompatible with feminism, and is compatible with sexism.5
5
Beyond God the Father, pp. 19-20.
6
Daly's second point, on male symbolism, is illustrated in the following example. It
takes us back to what Achebe says about naming. Daly quotes a male theologian
writing about the same time as she was. He is talking about God as Father.
To believe that God is Father is to become aware of oneself not as a stranger,
not as an outsider or an alienated person, but as a son who belongs or a person
appointed to a marvellous destiny...
Daly's criticism is that this theologian is blind to the maleness of his view of God, to
the exclusively male language for Christians ('son') and therefore to the exclusion of
women in this 'marvellous destiny'. She replies that,
A woman whose consciousness has been aroused can say that such language
makes her aware of herself as a stranger, as an outsider, as an alienated person,
not as a daughter who belongs or who is appointed to a marvellous destiny. She
cannot belong to this without assenting to her own lobotomy.6
These are strong words. All Mary Daly's subsequent books have been from what has
been called a 'post-Christian' stance. But her book, Beyond God the Father, has been
very influential, and has remained as a challenge to the Christian church in its failure
to name women, let alone include women as equal to men in all areas of church life.
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza was also studying theology in the 1960s in her country
of origin, Germany. She was the first woman to be allowed to study the full
theological program alongside the men training for the priesthood in a Catholic
seminary. Although she received two advanced theological degrees and published a
book in 1964, she was refused a doctoral scholarship on the grounds that it would be
wasted on a student who, as a woman, had no future in the academy. Not only were
there no precedents for this, but there was resistance to the idea of a woman teaching
and training priests.
Fiorenza moved to the USA in the 1970s and was given a full-time teaching position
at Notre Dame University and later at the Episcopal Divinity School, where she has
had a long and distinguised career as a New Testament scholar, and feminist
theologian. Fiorenza has changed the way we do theology and biblical studies.
She begins by paying homage to Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her pioneering work.
But Fiorenza wanted to take it further. Fiorenza also wanted to make clear that for
her, being a feminist is an integral part of being a Christian. With the rise of feminist
theology in America in the 1970s and 1980's women debated whether it was better to
stay in the church and try to reform it from within, or was it better, like Mary Daly, to
get out of 'slavery' and find a better place. Fiorenza saw these as false options. It is not
an 'either/or' choice. What this debate was neglecting was the idea that Christian faith
itself may contain within it the inspiration and warrant for liberation. That is, you
could stay in the Christian faith as the very place from which to call the Church back
to its true nature, that of a community and discipleship of equals.
6
Beyond God the Father, p. 20.
7
Fiorenza was also critical of Mary Daly's assumption that one could get out of the
church into some free, liberated zone. Where would such a place be? It was a false
hope. All social institutions are effected by patriarchy, not just the church.
Patriarchy did not originate with the church, says Fiorenza, though it was mediated by
it. Rather, what originated with the church was an alternative to patriarchy, a
movement that she describes as a 'radical discipleship of equals'.7 The early Christian
church was founded on a vision of a community of equals, where the former divisions
between people were broken down (Galatians 3:28).
The implication of this is that Fiorenza sees feminism alongside the civil rights
movements, liberation and anti-colonial struggles, as they are all protests against
situations of inequality, or where democracy and equality have been deformed. For
her, Christianity and feminism go together, for both are concerned with equality.
Baptism into the church is baptism into this 'discipleship of equals'. Feminism is a
reclaiming of the equality that is one's birthright (through baptism).
The third wave of feminism
The third wave of feminism started in the late 1970s and runs concurrent with second
wave feminism. It can be thought of as a change of paradigm, or way of thinking,
rather than as another stage in time. What was under question was the way feminist
theology had been done so far, by white, middle class women, speaking on behalf of
all women, who were largely unaware of the differences between women that really
did matter. Women of colour challenged this. They wanted to be recognised for their
different experience of being a woman, different in terms of race or class, that is,
social location.
Feminist theology had been focused on the question of gender, or of 'women's
experience' compared with men's experience. But not all women have the same
experience of being a woman. A poor, black African woman has a different
experience of the world than a middle-class white American. Unless that difference is
recognised, white women are doing to women of colour what men have done to
women - speaking for them, naming them instead of letting them name themselves, or
remaining blind to their existence and needs.
Third wave feminism is a challenge to second wave feminism to make sure that the
differences between women are recognised and acknowledged and respected as
women attempt to make connections with each other for the sake of change.
The African American writer, Alice Walker (author of The colour purple), coined the
term womanist theology for the theology done by women of colour. She wanted to
distinguish it from white women's feminism, and allow for women of colour to have
their own voice. An influential spokeswoman for womanist theology is an African
American poet and writer, Audre Lorde, particularly in her book, Sister Outsider
(Crossing Press, New York, 1984). She wrote to Mary Daly, pointing out that,
7
Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Discipleship of Equals: A Critical Feminist Ekklesia-logy of Liberation
(Crossroads, New York, 1993).
8
Within the community of women, racism is a reality force in my life as it is not
in yours. The white women with hoods on in Ohio handing out KKK literature
on the street may not like what you have to say, but they will shoot me on
sight…For then beyond sisterhood is still racism (Sister Outsider, p. 70.)
Third wave feminism builds the concerns of race and class into its theology, not just
gender. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza has made a significant contribution to third wave
feminism in her shift from using the term ‘patriarchy’ (used to describe the system of
women’s oppression in terms of gender, men ruling over women), to using her own
term, ‘kyriarchy’. This refers to the ‘rule of the Lords’, and includes interlocking
structures of domination, where class and race are taken into account.8
Rather than an ‘us against them’ model, kyriarchy as a model looks more like a
pyriamid. At the top you tend to have white, educated middle class European and
American males, and at the bottom, black, poor, third world women. However, not all
men are at the top – because of their class, education or race, some men are lower in
the hierarchy of power and rule. And not all women are at the bottom – Condoleezza
Rice, for example is African-American and female, but way up the top of the pyramid
because of her education, class and status within the American administration.
A kyriarchal model enables people to be placed within a system whereby they can
know and recognise multiple ways in which they are related to each other in terms of
social and political power. As an educated, middle class white woman, for example, I
have quite a bit of power compared with an uneducated poor, aboriginal woman in
Australian society, and I need to know the ways in which we are related by
interlocking power structures, if we are going to have anything in common to say
about feminist/womanist theology in Australia. Otherwise my power, even for
feminist theology, may further disempower Aboriginal women. This is the work of
the third wave of feminist theology.
Feminist theology has had a major impact on all areas of Christian theology, Biblical
studies, liturgy and practice. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza is a good ‘window’ onto its
development, as well as being a major player, and a ‘foremother’ of feminist
theology.
Heather Thomson
St Mark’s National Theological Centre
School of Theology, Charles Sturt University
Canberra
Sept 2007
Fiorenza began to develop the concept of ‘kyriarchy’ in But She Said: Feminist Practices of Biblical
Interpretation, Beacon Press, Boston, 1992, pp 7-8. See Index for more references.
8
9