Settler Feminist Theology: The Potential for Postcoloniality

Pākehā or Settler Theology

The idea of engaging in developing a Pākehā or settler feminist theology – in relation to postcolonial feminist theologies – is complicated by the difficulty of clearly defining a ‘flaxroots’ Pākehā theology. While there are many theologians on the lands called Aotearoa, as with other areas of Oceania the impact of the land on theology is not always clear. In 2022, John Flett conducted a longitudinal analysis of three major journals across the Oceania region to establish the prevalence of theological publishing in these journals which reflected ‘the distinct accent of the Oceanic voice’. ⁶ Flett’s findings were that, by and large, the publishing in these journals indicated that theology done on the lands of Oceania rarely drew from local contexts, proving ‘impotent to speak to the lived experience of local peoples’. ⁷ As a snapshot of the region, Flett’s analysis of these journals reveals a lacuna in the theological landscape where theologians are seeking to speak universally rather than lowering their horizon to their own lands.

This is not to say that there are not theologians working to fill this gap in the lands of Aotearoa. There is significant work done by Māori theologians and a growing interest among settler theologians to develop a voice which speaks to theological connections found in the settler experience of colonization in Aotearoa. Recent work by Andrew Picard and Andrew Clark-Howard highlights the need to focus on ‘Pākehā settlers and their deployment of theo-logics to embed white supremacy in the sedimented structures of society, which continue to advantage us and distort our understanding of reality’. ⁸ Similarly, Richard Davis proposes a ‘decolonial settler theology’ which seeks to work as a ‘complement to Indigenous political theology that resists settler colonialism and its narratives’. ⁹ While still a burgeoning area of theological inquiry, the few voices speaking specifically into this space from a Pākehā perspective highlight how critical it is that the inheritors of colonial structures seek to speak theologically into this history and present reality.

Within the field of biblical studies and feminist theology, Judith McKinlay has offered critical and extended reflection on her role as a Pākehā scholar and a feminist undertaking postcolonial readings of scripture. McKinlay considers in her work the stories of women in the bible and draws thoughtfully from her own positionality as a settler theologian on these lands in Aotearoa. Central to her work is McKinlay’s recognition of her relationship to this land as an inheritor of colonization and the different approach to postcolonial criticism that this positionality requires. She explains that:

Although postcolonial criticism has largely been an enterprise undertaken from the perspective of the colonized, I shall be attempting this from my position as a settler descendent in the post/colonial world of Aotearoa New Zealand, with the expectation that the task of examining ‘how the colonizer constructs and justifies domination of the other in various places and periods of history’, which is Musa Dube’s description of postcolonial criticism, will bring to life some uncomfortable, disquieting and challenging questions of interpretation and understanding. ¹⁰

McKinlay’s work as a Pākehā feminist explicitly naming the tensions of postcoloniality for a settler descendent is exemplary of the possibility for Pākehā feminist voices speaking critically into fields of postcolonial theologizing. However, despite the significance of McKinlay’s work her engagement with postcoloniality as a Pākehā has not been supported sufficiently by further Pākehā feminist scholarship.

One of the complicating factors in establishing a ‘Pākehā’ or ‘settler’ theology on the lands of Aotearoa is the difficulty found in defining these terms. In Aotearoa Pākehā is a word commonly used to refer to settlers, especially white settlers. Pākehā is not an easy word to explain: Alison Jones describes it as ‘a tuna-term, a slippery eel of a word; it wriggles easily away from one’s grasp’. ¹¹ In spite of complex, and ever continuing, discussions of the origins of the term and its specific meaning, ultimately, as Ani Mikaere explains, ‘it is for the tangata whenua to determine Pākehā status in this land, and to do so in accordance with tikanga Māori’. ¹² What can be said about the name with certainty is that ‘there is nowhere else in the world that one can be Pākehā’. ¹³ To be Pākehā, then, is to understand oneself and one’s belonging in Aotearoa in relation to Māori, rather than as an independent, and therefore dominating, existent. Lydia Wevers’s explanation is an apt summary: ‘If Pakeha could understand itself as a conferred identity, an identity that has meaning in relation to its ‘other’ term, Maori, and to our shared history and evolving, diverse, unequal society, it might suggest we do not take so much for granted and learn to overcome our monoculturalism and normative thinking’. ¹⁴ Understanding what it means to be Pākehā in this way is central to my belonging in Aotearoa and my engagement in the task of theologizing on these lands, raising for me the question of what this connection means within feminist theological scholarship.

There are issues specific to Aotearoa in this discussion of coloniality, due in large part to the agreements made in Te Tiriti o Waitangi and ongoing debates about colonization and partnership. Pākehā and Māori can, in light of Te Tiriti, both be seen as founding partners in this country, giving a sense of Pākehā as New Zealanders, but as New Zealanders in relationship to, rather than at the expense of, Māori. ¹⁵ As with any settler context, the work of settler theology – that is, theology which engages questions of coloniality – addresses specific issues which may not be applicable beyond this whenua. To me, the reflections on these issues by settler theologians is a work of postcolonial theology through the critical unpacking of coloniality, and the work to dismantle these systems can stand as a decolonial act. The specific issues which Pākehā theologians in Aotearoa face have limited relevance elsewhere, yet the methodologies developed can offer possibilities for settler theologians operating in other colonial contexts.

Connections to Feminist Theology

Alongside this burgeoning field of settler theology, there is work needed to address significant gaps in the field of feminist theology generally. The broad nature of feminist theology makes the field difficult to define. Simplistically, the feminist focus results in an approach to theological work which, through feminism’s privileging of politics and praxis, prioritizes liberation and women’s experience. One possible way of delineating this work is as follows: Feminist theology is theology which seeks the liberation of all humanity through a specific focus on women’s realities and theological visions, in order to build equity between women and men. ¹⁶ This focus on women’s realities results in an intention to create change in the oppressive structures that are part of these realities.

Feminist theology can, therefore, be defined broadly in terms of liberation and women’s experience. Despite the broadness of this definition, the focus for much feminist theology from white women has been directly primarily at the need for women’s liberation from patriarchal structures, rather than a wider view of liberation from other oppressive power structures. Eilidh Galbraith’s recent article in Feminist Theology gives a detailed account of this ‘trouble with white feminist theologians’, highlighting how the failure of white feminist theologians to engage with issues of race and coloniality reinscribes the forms of power that white feminist thinkers are ostensibly against. ¹⁷ In formulating her argument, Galbraith engages with Kyla Schuller’s The Trouble with White Women where Schuller argues that white feminisms focus on ‘a single axis of power in which sexism is the basic, underlying, most fundamental social inequality. Capitalism and colonialism, and the racism that fuels their engines, lie relatively inert’. ¹⁸ Although throughout the history of feminist theology there have been key white scholars who have worked to broaden the scope of women’s liberation that is called for – I think here particularly of Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza’s naming of kyriarchy instead of patriarchy with the intention to shift the focus to ‘multiplicative structures of oppression’ ¹⁹ – too little work has been done by white feminist theologians to reckon with white women’s benefitting from and ongoing complicity in oppression.

It is out of this persistent lacuna in the work of white feminist theologians that, I argue, the question of settler involvement in postcolonial feminist theology must be asked. Instead of only deferring to women of colour as the agents of broadening the scope of feminist theology to include the diversity of oppressions which women experience, there is a need for feminist theologians who inherit settler realities to move past ‘sanctioned ignorance’, drawing on Laura Donaldson’s language, and work towards ‘epistemic decolonization’. ²⁰ To me, this work fits squarely within the call of feminist theology to the liberation of all women – this is a work of liberation which cannot be limited on gendered lines, but must take seriously the oppression women face due to the ongoing structures of colonization and racism, among others.

In light of this call for white women to participate in a truly liberative feminist theology, I turn to postcolonial feminist theology as a field which offers a potential avenue for this work to take place. In Kwok’s foundational text explaining postcolonial feminist theology, she describes how ‘doing postcolonial feminist theology, it can be argued, is akin to the ‘writing back’ process in postcolonial literature – only that this time, the writing subjects are the formerly colonized Christian women, and the matter to be discussed is theology’. ²¹ Postcolonial feminist theology as a field seeks to elevate the voices of indigenous and two-thirds world women to describe and transform colonial realities, seeking the type of liberation the feminist theology aspires to. In her description of postcolonial feminist theory in general, Kwok argues that

‘Postcolonial feminist critics have stressed the intricate relationship between colonialism and patriarchy such that the analysis of one without the other is incomplete . . . The exploration of the interstices of different forms of oppression under the shadow of the empire constitutes the exciting post-colonial feminist project’. ²²

With the addition of theology into this postcolonial feminist project, Kwok posits a type of writing which can ‘reflect an acute understanding of the social, cultural and political impact of colonialism and neocolonialism on women’s lives and on the Christian communities’. ²³ This is work which is critical for the increased awareness of the diversity of women’s experiences and the range of liberative work which is included in feminist praxis.

There is also a specificity to what Kwok describes in that it is ‘postcolonial’ feminist theology. More than broadly anti-racist or liberative feminist theology, what Kwok proposes is a form of feminist theology which gives priority to understanding women’s experiences within the ongoing realities of colonization globally. These are also contextualized realities – no two colonial contexts are the same – and as such there is a requirement within postcolonial feminist theology for a diverse range of voices to be heard. In her outline of the field Kwok addresses the question of settler involvement in this process. She states that ‘not only do the colonized need to disengage from the colonial syndrome, the colonizers have to decolonize their minds and practices as well’. ²⁴ In saying that, Kwok recognizes the need for different approaches depending on a woman’s relationship to colonization:

‘Because of all the multiple social locations and subject positions, I will argue that both the (former) female colonizers and the (former) colonized women are able to do postcolonial feminist theology, although they will have different entry points, priorities of issues, accents, and inflections’. ²⁵

Despite Kwok’s invitation to (former) female colonizers to participate in postcolonial feminist theology, there has been limited engagement from settler theologians. As discussed in relation to white feminist theology in general above, for many feminist theologians operating out of colonial contexts, the focus of their theologizing has remained directly on liberation from patriarchal realities, rather than a broader recognition of the forms of oppression women encounter. In response to Kwok’s openness to settler involvement in postcolonial feminist theology, I consider below the potential postures, benefits and risks raised by settler, and in my context Pākehā, work in postcolonial feminist theology.

Work in postcolonial feminist theology in Aotearoa does exist, with Moeawa Callaghan’s utilizing the framework of postcolonial feminist theology in her articulation of the methodological underpinnings of indigenous women’s Christology. Callaghan explains how colonization and the reality of women’s experience in Aotearoa are inextricably linked: ‘Had colonization not been our experience, or the imposition of racist, sexist, heterosexist, classist ideologies not occurred, the development of Māori women’s theories to respond to colonial constructs may not have been necessary’. ²⁶ For this reason, Callaghan works to articulate an approach to Christology which aligns ‘Kaupapa Māori theory with postcolonial feminist theology as a strategy for resisting continuing colonial imperialism in theology’. ²⁷ Callaghan’s work here is exemplary of the contextual nature of postcolonial feminist theology through her use of epistemologies located in the whenua of the lands of Aotearoa. As postcolonial feminist theology, Callaghan’s work seeks to name and transform colonized realities and she does this through the indigenous epistemological framework most contextually appropriate to her own work. Callaghan offers an indigenous engagement with postcolonial feminist theology, with the question remaining if there is a role for Pākehā feminist theologians in Aotearoa to similarly engage with postcolonial feminist theology.

The Call to Listen

From this survey of settler theology in Aotearoa and the potential connections to postcolonial feminist theology, my argument is that there is a gap for the development of a settler, and specifically Pākehā, feminist theology which takes seriously the role of white women in the formation and ongoing structure of colonization. Furthermore, this theology could consider, with the wider field of postcolonial feminist theology, the liberatory role of feminist theology and the potential intersectional challenges that settler feminist theologians need to engage in. There remains, however, a question of the role of white women in postcolonial theology and how, if they should, settler women can carefully approach this role with a posture of listening and self-critique. To me, there are clear benefits for white feminist theology when engaging with postcolonial feminist thinking; what is less clear is whether these benefits are mutual and if it is possible to guard against the types of domination which have so commonly accompanied white interactions with indigenous ways of knowing.

Any attempt at a settler postcolonial feminist theology needs to be guided by an appreciation of mutuality between cultures and epistemologies. Rather than a hierarchical understanding which sees particular ways of knowing, especially those that are western, as more rigorous and sounder, post-/decolonial theologians seek to know from the underside. As Callaghan explains,

‘in some contexts within many majority world countries the white male Christian tradition continues to be treated as the normative text while indigenous traditions become the context for the processes of enculturation or contextualisation. In a postcolonial approach indigenous resources are treated equally and interpreted interdependently with western sources’. ²⁸

This appreciation of the range of resources for theology should be an area where the relationship between postcolonial theology and feminist theology thrives. Foundational to feminist approaches to theology is an appreciation of the range of ways in which theological knowledge is encountered, especially due to a prioritization of experience and the everyday realties of women’s lives. However, despite this foregrounding of diversity, white feminist theology has often failed to listen widely – particularly when confronted by racial forms of oppression within which white women are complicit – and has instead created an internal hierarchy of sources for theology. Indigenous voices are relegated to separate field of theologizing, rather than held with the mutuality resources could be afforded.

This understanding of mutuality stands, then, as a core challenge for the development of a settler postcolonial feminist theology. In the context of Aotearoa, this challenge is particularly pronounced in how Pākehā women listen to Māori interpretations of their own realities. In her discussion of the balance which is foundational to Māori understandings of gender roles, Ani Mikaere elucidates how white women ‘have been quick to accuse Māori society of being sexist’. ²⁹ ‘Regardless of their intent’, Mikaere claims, ‘feminists who presume to understand and to judge Māori institutions in this manner offer little in the way of support for Māori women’. ³⁰ One way that this has manifested has been in the focus white feminists give to women’s speaking on the marae, a debate in which whaikōrero – speech making that in most contexts is only offered by men – is the only recognized form of speaking. ³¹ White women, failing to truly listen to wahine Māori explanations and interpretations of their experience, impose their own judgments and speak on behalf of women that they presume to be oppressed by patriarchy.

The failure to listen and speaking on behalf is not liberative but instead acts as a form of further objectification. As Mikaere explains, ‘Pākehā feminists who criticize from a position of ignorance and, very often, racism, simply add a further layer of oppression to Māori women’s realities. They perpetuate the process of colonization’. ³² The example of speaking on the marae highlights the need for a posture of engagement by Pākehā feminists with wahine Māori that seeks learning and not thinking on behalf. This approach is one which is fundamental to postcolonial theology: the voices of indigenous women have an epistemological privilege and it is not for the inheritors of colonization to determine the validity of this speaking. As Kwok explains, ‘the voices of indigenous women have been least heard in the theological discourse. The inclusion of their critical contributions to the global voices of Christian women struggling for justice, liberation, and peace is long overdue’. ³³ For settler women more broadly, the inclusion of the voices of indigenous women may require a silencing of white voices for the sake of listening to understand – not to master indigenous ways of knowing but to create space for ‘egalitarian encounter’. ³⁴

The turn to listening for settler feminists requires more than simply letting another speak, but must be supported by a process of learning which allows for the listener to begin hearing the speaker. As Aileen Moreton-Robinson explains in an Australian context, ‘learning the language of another does not necessarily result in changing the subjectivity of the person who carries the baggage of a different culture, but it does make dialogue possible’. ³⁵ Learning the language here denotes more than a linguistic need for hearing to take place, but also an acknowledgement of cultural factors that must be understood. While learning in these ways makes listening easier, it does not, as Moreton-Robinson notes, offer a clear path to solidarity or unity beyond difference. However, the dialogue made possible by learning is one which centres humility and a recognition of the unknown experience of the Other. Humility is required to be able to listen in a way that does not impose expectations – that is, objectify – or think on behalf of the speaker.

Working from this call to listen, a potential role for settler feminist theologians in postcolonial theology is in the decentring of white knowledge. Overly defined ways of knowing create limits on openness from dominant positions. As I discussed above, white feminist theology has suffered globally from a failure to decentre whiteness and a universalisation of women’s experiences under patriarchy. A postcolonial approach to feminist theology instead recognizes the enculturation of all knowledge and, therefore, an openness to engagement with non-dominant forms of theology. From this recognition of enculturation, white feminist theology is able to be decentred as norm and named as particular cultural theological reflections.

Connected to Kwok’s work in outlining postcolonial feminist theology, Callaghan highlights how ‘the deconstructing of dominant constructs of Christ allows the freedom for marginalized (and indigenous) communities to progress their own christological claims’. ³⁶ There are shared benefits in the decentring of white knowledge and the recognition of the validity of indigenous theological reflection. For settler feminist theology to engage in this act of decentring, first steps can be found in María Pilar Aquino’s calls to intercultural dialogue. She explains that

‘each participant in the dialogue must relativize his or her own ways of understanding humanity and the world. This relativization means that the different parts in the dialogue renounce the prescribed certainties that kyriarchal-monocultural and Eurocentric knowledge has bestowed on them’. ³⁷

This relativisation of knowledge empties the centre and opens space for the flourishing of inputs from the whole range of women’s experience.

The process of decentring whiteness also requires white feminist theologians to adopt an attitude of self-critique, naming the competing tensions in white women’s experiences and moving to a position of owning their identities. In considering the role of difference in feminist theology, Margaret Kamitsuka argues that the first step in owning one’s identity is recognizing privilege and complicity in systems of oppression. She explains that ‘unless white feminists are willing to delve into the issues surrounding racial privilege, such self-naming will not only lack substance but will work to reinforce the privilege it is supposed to acknowledge and de-centre’. ³⁸ For settler feminist theologians, as well as other white feminist theologians who inherit settler realities, there is critical work to be done in unpacking historical and contemporary privileges from colonization. Due to a focus on patriarchal oppression, white feminist theology has insufficiently reckoned with the competing positions of oppression which white women face as ‘both colonized patriarchal objects and colonizing race-privileged subjects’. ³⁹

Simple turns to solidarity between white women and colonized communities fail to recognize this duality of white women’s experience. Kwok explains how:

White women who settled in the colonies were discriminated against because of their gender, but benefited from class and racial privileges and were protected by white institutions. Such contradictory subject positions of white women disrupt the simple homology of man is to woman as colonizer is to colonized, just as the metaphoric usage of women as ‘slaves’ has been challenged as overlooking the actual material conditions of life under slavery. ⁴⁰

Settler feminist theologians must engage in postcolonial feminist theology both through a process of listening to indigenous experience and critical reflection on white women’s complicity in colonization. On one level, this means naming privilege and recognizing the limitations of solidarity. For example, McKinlay opens her work stating: ‘While as a woman I have personally experienced the tactics employed by those with greater influence and more direct access to privilege, as a Pakeha woman I have benefited from the power gained and exercized by the dominant culture’. ⁴¹ These acknowledgments also serve to highlight that settler women, like Pākehā, do not come to the task of postcolonial feminist theology from the same position as colonized women do. ⁴²

This recognition of white women’s dual connections to oppression – as colonizer and patriarchally colonized – contributes to an owning of identity which, in turn, decentres white normativity. There is a need for the explicit naming of difference within feminist theology so that all subjectivities are differentiated, and not just labelling of those who are not white. Ellen Armour explains how due to a failure to label their experience as such, ‘Middle-class white women . . . are raceless and classless – “women” who need no other identifying label. This approach toward intersecting oppressions ignores the role of race and class privilege in shaping what it means to be a white woman’. ⁴³ However, race and class, or colonization in the case of this article, performs a critical shaping role regardless of the position of dominance or subjugation. Settler women’s perspectives and experiences are impacted by the processes and structures of colonization in which they have participated and/or benefitted from, and in order for this position to become decentred as norm there is a need to acknowledge this impact.

There has been some reticence among white feminist theologians to adopt this label due to a concern about alignment with the type of white feminism which is necessarily critiqued for failure to engage with the realities of race and colonization. When white feminism is only a bad thing, the question must be asked of how feminists who are white and wish to work against white feminism should label themselves. The realities of racial dynamics and labelling are, ultimately, contextual and I cannot speak fulsomely to solutions outside of my own context. In the lands of Aotearoa within which I write, I chose to use the identifier of Pākehā feminist theology as a enculturating label which holds in tension the reality that I speak from as an inheritor of colonization, but also as one who is named by relationship to Māori as the indigenous people of this land. I use this identifier with a similar intention to McKinlay who explains how: ‘I need to write as a Pakeha, non-Maori, owning our history and not assuming a cultural heritage that is not my own’. ⁴⁴ To name this work as Pākehā feminist theology is to develop an engagement with postcolonial feminist theology while recognizing the positionality from which I come to this work as one of colonizer, not colonized, who is also defined by relationship to the indigenous peoples of these lands.

Risks

Even with careful attention to the postures of Pākehā feminist theology described here, (former) colonizer – to use Kwok’s phrasing – involvement in postcolonial feminist theology is not without risk. Part of the problem of feminism within the colonial project that Kwok identifies is the way that ‘saving brown women functions as a colonial ideology helping to camouflage the violence and brutality of colonialism by sugarcoating it as a form of social mission’. ⁴⁵ While this posture of white women, under the guise of feminism, saving brown women from brown men has been robustly critiqued and work on labelling the enculturation of whiteness and white women’s complicity in colonization will help mitigate this ongoing ‘social mission’, there remains the danger that white women’s involvement in postcolonial feminist theology could become part of this project. If the intention for involvement with postcolonial feminist theology is to work for the liberation of colonized women on settler terms, then this remains a colonial project of ‘saving brown women’. Conversely, settler work on postcolonial feminist theology should focus on decolonizing their own epistemologies and practices, and listening for the sake of understanding not re-narrating indigenous realities. Nevertheless, the risk of re-colonization by settler involvement in postcolonial feminist theology must be attended to and held as a critical concern for feminist theologians stepping into this space.

Within feminist theory, Suzanne Persard gives a critical account of the risks intrinsic in decolonizing feminism. In particular, she highlights the danger of an overuse of the ‘rhetoric of decoloniality’ which ‘neutralises the very language of coloniality while producing the effect of repositioning the US as the primary site of decolonial intervention’. ⁴⁶ In Persard’s words:

I am concerned with the ease and self-righteousness with which calls to ‘decolonise’ are deployed that actually replicate a certain kind of romanticised pre-colonialism that is ahistorical, erasing difference in the name of radical feminist solidarity. This erasure of difference(s) produces a fictitious unified subjectivity among people of colour who seem to be all oppressed by white supremacy, without regard to the ways in which inter-group and intra-group violence masquerades under decolonial ambitions. ⁴⁷

Persard raises the problem of ubiquitous uses of decolonial which recentre white voices by placing ‘scholars of colour as temporary afterward within a Euro-American feminist trajectory’, and meant that ‘Decolonising feminism has evolved into the primary analytic that produces a metonym for universal oppression’. ⁴⁸

Instead, Persard calls for a specificity in the use of the language of decoloniality to ‘subsequently resist its role as the name for a universal “Other”, a universal oppression or a more radical alternative to something else’. ⁴⁹ For postcolonial feminist theology, Persard’s insights about the rhetoric of decolonization within feminism highlight the need for contextual responses and an intentionality about the appropriateness of the connection to postcolonial feminism. Not all work by feminists working from colonial contexts can be called postcolonial: as Kwok puts it, ‘feminist theology, especially as it has been done by white feminists, is not intrinsically anti-imperialist’. ⁵⁰ Persard’s work cautions an over identification with the work of decolonization and undergirds a recognition that any settler engagement with postcolonial feminist theology must be undertaken cautiously so as not to appropriate the work of this field for an alternative white feminist agenda.

Conclusion

Settler feminist theologians need to reckon with their complicity in the oppression of women through the structures of colonization. Feminism which solely maintains patriarchy as the central metric of oppression fails to take into account the complex situation of white women as both objects under patriarchy and colonizers of women. The use of women’s experience as a central source for feminist theology should lead to an openness for the diversity of women’s realities, and yet the failure of white feminist theology to sufficiently take race and colonial oppression seriously shows an ongoing unwillingness to reckon with this named tension.

As a way forward, I offer here an argument for settler feminist theologians to engage in the task of postcolonial feminist theology – as Kwok has defined it – to work for the decolonization of their own work and contexts. Postcoloniality must always be contextual so I consider first my own reality as a Pākehā woman who has benefitted from colonial structures on the lands of Aotearoa. However, the potential avenues for settler postcolonial feminist theology I outline here are more broadly applicable. The task I suggest here for settler feminist theologians is not to impose on or undermine indigenous speaking or to re-colonize the field of postcolonial feminist theology. Rather, I call for a postcolonial approach which questions settler realities and epistemologies, to decolonize from the position of the colonial alongside the work already occurring among indigenous feminist theologians.