The Development of Feminist Theology: Becoming Increasingly Global and Interfaith

The common image of feminism is that it is a modern western development. Feminist theology is seen as arising out of liberal Christianity in the West, especially the United States. The reality is much more complex. Intimations of feminism have existed in many cultures. I trace the beginnings of Feminist Theology in the last 40 years in one particular context in the United States, but it should be kept in mind that this story can be told from many different starting points. I will also demonstrate how, within a decade, Feminist Theology became global and inter-religious.

The development of Feminist Theology in the US in the 1960s was the fruit of two interacting movements, the Civil Rights Movement and the Feminist Movement. In the 1960s, US women reclaimed feminism in the context of the struggle against anti-black racism. Other liberation movements, such as the anti-war, anti-imperialist movements, the Gay Rights Movement and the American Indian Movement, also flowed from the Civil Rights Movement in this period.

Feminism found its theological expression first in Protestant theological seminaries of liberal denominations, such as Congregationalists, Methodists, Presbyterians and Lutherans, as these churches began to ordain women in growing numbers. As more and more women began to come to seminaries, aware that they could now be ordained, they began to demand women faculty and a feminist revision of the curriculum to respond to women’s needs in theological education and the church. A feminist rereading of theology, Biblical Studies, church history, ethics, pastoral psychology and ethics began to emerge in theological schools. Publications, such as my book, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology, ¹ became texts for feminist religious studies in seminaries and colleges, as well as reading groups in churches.

The work of US feminist theologians, such as Mary Daly, Elizabeth Fiorenza, Letty Russell and myself, quickly transcended US borders and were read in other continents. In Latin America feminism began in the late nineteenth century in the struggle for women’s suffrage. It was redeveloped in the 1970s, but was secular and hostile to the church. Catholic and Protestant women engaged in Liberation Theology were steered away from Feminism. Feminist Theology in Latin America developed as Christian women, whose critical consciousness had been awakened by Liberation Theology, began to ask gender questions, and found resources to help them develop their own reflection from resources coming from the US and Europe.

The second major development in US Feminist Theology arose in the late 70s and 80s, as more and more women ‘of color,’ African-Americans, Asians, especially Koreans, and Hispanics, entered theological education. These women began to criticize the lack of racial consciousness in the Feminist Theology they found among their white teachers and fellow students. They rejected the tendency to speak as if ‘all women were alike,’ and shared a common experience of gender discrimination, ‘as women.’ They saw the context of this experience as that of middle-class white female Americans.

These women of ‘color’ coined new names for their theological reflection from their distinct female ethnic histories. African-Americans called themselves ‘Womanists;’ some Hispanics adopted the parallel term ‘Mujeristas.’ Korean feminist drew from Korean Minjung Theology and talked of women’s ‘Han’ and of Korean women as the ‘minjung of the minjung.’

Despite this critique by women seminarians of ‘color,’ it should not be assumed that leading Euro-American feminist theologians simply lacked sensitivity to race and class critique. Several such women, by then on the faculties of theological schools, such as myself, Letty Russell and Beverley Harrison, had come out of the Civil Rights Movement, and had long spoken of the interconnection of class, race and gender hierarchies. Generally these teachers were well disposed to embrace the critiques coming from Womanists, and other women of ‘color,’ and to promote them as colleagues.

A new generation of black, Latina and Asian feminist began to take their place on theological faculties, and their writings became a part of the mandatory literature of American Feminist Theology. It was soon accepted that a socially progressive faculty should not simply have a few feminist women on the faculty, but these women should come from several ethnic groups, Euro-American, African-American, Asian, Latina. The writings of these women, and their presence on the global lecture circuit, in turn, had their influence on the budding feminism in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

It follows then that very soon, by the late 70s and 80s, one began to see an international diversification of Christian feminist theologies in Latin America, Asia and Africa. Feminist Theology generally arose in the circles of theologically educated women involved in Liberation Theology. These women were dismayed when their male colleagues resisted any incorporation of gender in their model of social analysis. Sparked by both secular feminist movements in their own societies and reading first-world feminists, these third-world women began to insist that male liberation theologians expand their social critique to include issues of women’s oppression.

Third-world Christian feminists began to insist at global meetings of liberation theologians that they needed their own women’s organization to contextualize Feminist Theology for their regional contexts. Aided by the World Council of Churches that provided funding, they organized a Women’s Commission within the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians (EATWOT) and developed a series of meetings, first national, then continental and finally global, to discuss what Feminist Theology would mean for them in each of their regions. This series of assemblies took place between 1985 and 1994. This Women’s Commission continues to exist and to meet parallel to the more general meetings of EATWOT which the women also attend. Each of the three regions, Asia, Africa and Latin America, have worked to deepen their networks of communication, and to develop journals, conferences and publications for their region.

The Asian Feminist Theology region is aided by the preexistence of an all-Asian journal, In God’s Image, founded by pioneering Korean Christian feminist, Sun Ai Lee-Park in 1980. Asian Christian feminists from the Philippines, Indonesia, Korea, Taiwan, Japan, India, Australia and Malaysia contribute to and serve on the board of this journal, and different issues of the journal focus on both different topics and different regions of Asia. The journal is edited from the Asian Women’s Resource Centre for Culture and Theology (AWRC), presently located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which also organizes conferences and other publications. AWRC defines itself as ‘an organization of women and women’s organizations in Asia engaged in promoting Asian women’s theologizing.’

Latin America also has a journal that draws articles from across the whole continent. It is Conspirando; a journal of ‘ecofeminism, spirituality and theology.’ This journal was founded in 1991 by a feminist collective based in Santiago de Chile. It publishes in Spanish four times a year and recently celebrated its 60^th issue with a special edition called ‘Shared Wisdoms’ that drew on 52 writers from across Latin America, as well as a few North Americans. The Conspirando collective also organizes occasional schools of feminist reflection, called ‘Shared Gardens’ or ‘Schools of Ecofeminist Spirituality and Ethics,’ as well as book publications.

African Feminist Theology has developed a network across Africa called the ‘Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians,’ who have developed conferences and book publications. They are hampered, as are all third-world networks, by the differences of language imposed by the various colonizers. In Africa this particularly means the gap between Anglo-phone and Franco-phone Africa, with the result that English-speaking Africa tends to be more organized. Recently the Circle has been focusing on conferences and publications about the relation of women, religion and HIV/AIDs in Africa, a disease which is devastating many African nations.

Feminist Theology is not only developing world wide in a Christian context. Since the 70s it has also been expanding in Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist contexts. An interaction of western and third-world contexts is evident in these interfaith developments.

Jewish feminism began to develop in the 70s in dialogue with Christian feminism among US Jewish women, some of whom had been educated in Christian seminaries, such as those of Yale and Harvard. The pioneering representative of this Jewish Feminist Theology is Judith Plaskow, author of the 1980 classic, Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective. ² Jewish feminism often draws on practical concerns for an inclusive practice of Judaism. For example, Lynn Gottlieb’s She Who Dwells Within: A Feminist Vision of Renewed Judaism,³ focuses on stories and liturgies that reflect Gottlieb’s 20 years as a founding rabbi of Congregation Nahalat Shalom in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Another leading Jewish feminist, Marcia Falk, has rewritten the Jewish prayer book in inclusive Hebrew. ⁴

Jewish feminism also exists in Israel, but this is complicated by the fact that only Orthodox Judaism is officially recognized in Israel, in both its Sephardic and its Ashkenazi forms, and these are the most resistant forms of Judaism to feminism. Jewish feminism flourishes mainly in Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism, found dominantly in the United States. Many Israeli feminists work in universities as anthropologists, sociologists or historians, seeking social justice for women in an Israeli society where organized Judaism plays a major political role, rather than doing feminist rabbinic commentary.

Buddhist feminism also has had a major development in the US, although there are increasing movements on the practical level among Buddhist feminists in countries such as Thailand, Taiwan and Korea. In the US many of the leading Buddhist feminists have been American converts, such as Rita Gross, originally a Lutheran, and then a practicing Jew, before becoming a Buddhist, and Sandy Boucher, who moved to Buddhism from post-Christian feminist therapy movements. Gross’s 1992 book Buddhism after Patriarchy ⁵ seeks to do for Buddhism what systematic feminist theological revisionism has done for Christianity, critiquing those traditions which made women secondary in theory and practice and vindicating the gender-inclusive potential of Buddhism. Sandy Boucher’s Turning the Wheel: American Women Creating a New Buddhism ⁶ documents the way American feminist converts are reshaping this ancient religion in the US context. She highlights the struggle for the full ordination and credentialing of women dharma teachers.

The ordination issue is important for Buddhist feminists in Asia. In the Theravada tradition in Thailand the lineage of women’s ordination died out, while the Mahayana tradition through China preserved a lineage of women’s ordination. In order to be ordained Thai women either need to go through the Mahayana tradition, unacceptable in Thailand, or else accept a secondary form of female monastic life lacking full ordination. However in Korea and Taiwan, there are well organized orders of Buddhist nuns running schools and temples, several of which have branches in the United States.

Muslim feminism is particularly volatile world wide, because it seeks to counteract the authority of strong and sometime violent anti-feminist Islamist fundamentalist movements. Recent conflicts have sparked new Muslim-Christian dialogue in Europe and the US. Universities seek Islamic scholars for their faculties, some of whom are Muslim women with feminist sympathies. Muslim feminists play a dual role. They seek to correct the bias of western culture which sees Islam as a retrograde religion hostile to modern humanism, while toward their own societies they seek to oppose the reading of Muslim tradition by Islamists who want to restore what they see as the original pure tradition in which women were totally subordinated and confined to the home. Muslim feminists hold out a vision of Islam as an egalitarian tradition that needs to be both rediscovered in its original potential and developed anew today.

In 2012, feminist theologies are both global and inter-religious. Although still influenced by the West, they have for several decades been seeking their own historical and cultural roots and development in their own distinct contexts across the many nations and regions of the world. They face opposition and backlash from fundamentalist movements, not only Islamic, but also Christian, Jewish, Buddhist and Hindu. But they also find many niches where they are flourishing, and developing new dimensions in both theory and practice.