Feminist Theology - an Introduction

by Penny Jones, Woman Adviser in Ministry to the Anglican Diocese of Durham

Thank you very much for inviting me to come this evening.  Thank you not least because it has given me the opportunity to focus for myself  ideas which have been a part of my life, and my prayer and my thinking since I first entertained the idea of a vocation to the Anglican priesthood, now nearly twenty years ago. I am not an expert in feminist theology. But in the last twenty years in which I have trained for ministry and begun to exercise that  ministry, feminist theology has risen to prominence, not just in the rich West, but in Latin America, Africa and Australasia and has raised profound questions  about the nature of Christianity and its expression in our cultures.

It is a theology which arises, like many other theologies of our day (and I  shall return to this in a little while) out of particular contexts, and out of the personal, everyday experience of women (and also men) seeking to identify  themselves in relationship to the Christian tradition which we inherit. It is a theology of struggle, which has involved the often painful letting go of long held assumptions, and it is a theology of  solidarity, which has enabled women to support one another in their  quests for freedom and justice.

It is rooted in the personal. But as the women's movement  discovered long ago, the personal is also the political, and the accumulation of  seemingly small shifts and incidents is beginning to add up to a vast sea change  in the way mainstream theology is conceived and articulated. So I would like to  begin with a couple of personal incidents, which I hope will set the stage.

After some false starts, I began training to become a deaconness at Ripon  College , Cuddesdon in 1983. An American woman exchange student had paved the  way in 1980, and the first women students were admitted to what had previously  been an entirely male preserve. There were seven of us, out of a total college of about seventy. We soon discovered to our amusement that ours were the only student rooms to have a mirror - thoughtfully installed for us during the  previous summer vacation. Women it was assumed would need to check that their  appearance was pleasing to others - men need only be pleasing to themselves!  Virginia Woolf, who died of being both brilliant and female, wrote that women  are condemned by society to function as mirrors, reflecting men at twice their  actual size. Apart from the extraordinary spectacle of the male students sharing a cup of coffee and preening themselves in my mirror, life in what was essentially a boys' public school was extremely tough. I had never really taken  much note of the women's movement or the feminist revolution up to that point  -but I quickly learnt that if I was to survive I needed to find others with whom  to think , act and pray who could hear what I was saying and would take me  seriously - and these I found in a group just forming in Oxford at that time to  read feminist theology and create liturgy.

One further picture from those times, to set alongside the image of the  mirror. As in many university colleges, the walls of our theological college  were hung with the heavy portraits of past students and principals who had gone on to high office. They were exclusively portraits of white, male bishops.  Living and working beneath their gaze was subliminally oppressive in ways in  which I think I would never have appreciated had not a fellow woman student been  an artist. She found these portraits really insufferable, and asked whether for a short period one term she might exchange them for some paintings of her own, by way of an exhibition in the dining hall. The Principal, a forward thinking man who had brought about the admission of women students at great personal  cost, had no objection and it was agreed. The storm from some students and former members I leave to your imagination. But it was done. In the words of the  title of Gloria Steinem's famous book, it was an Outrageous Act and Everyday Rebellion. For some weeks the walls of the dining hall were hung with abstract portraits, often feminine in form and depicting such theological ideas as the Trinity. They were paintings full of life, and vigour and colour. They were paintings which symbolised for me very powerfully the challenge that feminist theology offers to the church in terms of its existing understandings of scripture, tradition and authority. They set up, in Monica Furlong's phrase a Mirror to the Church, enabling the church to see its own limitations and the areas in which it was in bondage, and inviting it once more  like Abraham to set out, not knowing where it was going.

I have begun with the personal - and that is right, because feminist theology  did not begin in academia. It began with the women's movement and there would be no feminist theology, no Women's Studies departments if it had not been for the women's movement. And the women's movement began with little groups, met as we are tonight to discuss things, to address particular issues and take action. Many of the first Christian feminists belonged for example to the church leagues for women's suffrage, and were involved in issues of education and social  welfare, in which they were inspired by their own, progressively radical  interpretations of the Christian faith. I need however to give you some kind of working description of "feminist theology" - of the things which shelter beneath  this umbrella phrase, and some introduction to its methods and prinicipal  exponents.

I think I can do no better than begin with the very able introduction presented by Dr. Ann Loades in her volume published in 1990 Feminist theology: A Reader, which I would recommend to anyone here seeking a single book which gives a flavour of the whole field. She writes, "Feminist Theology" is a phrase which shelters many different positions, as do the words "feminism" and "theology" taken separately. Broadly speaking there are three main types of feminism. The liberal tradition has been concerned with  equality of civil rights for women as for men, with access to educational and  professional opportunities, reproductive self-determination, and equal pay for  comparable work. Marxist feminism has been concerned with economic autonomy. Finally, there is romantic feminism, which celebrates the emotional and the  natural, to counteract the prevailing emphasis on the rational and the  technical; this includes the radicals who want to reject the male world altogether, as well as those who want mutuality between women and men, and a balance of the masculine and feminine within everyone. .....The feminist argues  that our culture, and Christian theology as one manifestation of that culture, is in fact riddled with what Gerda Lerner calls "a conceptual error of vast  proportions". For where the male has been thought to represent the whole of  humanity, the half has been mistaken for the whole, so that what has been described has been distorted in such a way that we cannot see it  correctly.......What she calls this "androcentric fallacy" has been built into all the mental constructs of western civilisation and it cannot be put right by merely "adding women" (for instance by saying "brothers and sisters" in the liturgy and leaving everything else as it is."

What is required is a radically new way of looking at things. And in some  ways one of the best ways to understand the nature and implications of feminist theology is to compare it to the reforming theology (or rather, theologies) of the sixteenth century. For like Reformation theology, feminist theology has many strands and many implications; its origins can be identified in certain  forerunners, but it comes to a head in important shifts of understanding (what might be called a "new consciousness"), and it offers profound challenges to  existing understandings of bible, tradition and authority. In the case of feminist theology however the challenges go much further, into consideration of  the very nature of theological language and of how we experience God.

Bible, tradition, authority, language and God - five key themes which I shall attempt to address briefly in turn.

Firstly, Bible. In the Reformation, the way in which we approach, interpret  and use Scripture was central. For the humanists - people like Erasmus and Zwingli - looked at Scripture with, as it were, "new eyes" - "new eyes" of  faith, assisted by the new skills of textual criticism, studying the Bible in the way they would study other ancient classical texts which formed their culture. In doing so they came up with some interesting findings, with important  implications. Perhaps best known is Erasmus' translation of the Greek New  Testament - for, by looking at the original Greek he was able to show that the Latin rendering of the Greek word "metanoia" should be "repent" rather than "do penitence". With "new eyes" he thereby cut the ground from under the traditional  Catholic sacramental system, with its high value on the "sacrament" of  penance.

In a similar way, those who have been termed feminist Biblical scholars, have  also begun to shed new light on the scriptures by their new hermeneutic - or way  of interpreting, approaching and understanding the Bible. Their "new eyes" are  the eyes of people today who look at the Scriptures with the benefit of modern textual skills allied - and this is the crucial point - with the eyes of women.  For poor old Erasmus, Zwingli and the rest - poor old Gunkel, Bultmann and the  rest - outstanding Biblical scholars who have done wonderfully well in helping  us to a fuller understanding of the Scriptures - but they had one fatal weakness, all of them - they looked at the Bible through men's eyes, and men's eyes alone and so what they saw was inevitably distorted.

But when viewed through women's eyes, allied to the skills of modern biblical  criticism, old stories can suddenly become new stories, and old questions (many  of which have made our faith a deadly boring one) are replaced by new and lively  ones. For women scholars have begun to uncover to the sight of all, two  different strands within our scriptures - the one alarming, the other  encouraging. There is a strand within our Judaeo-Christian scriptures which  despises women, which treats them with contempt as often less than human. This  is a strand (vigorously exposed in books such as Phyllis Trible's Texts of Terror, which it is difficult to redeem and which has had damaging repercussions in the lives of women for generations. At the same time there are  other stories and images, often little known and little valued , which give hope to women, and suggest a liberative strand within our Scriptures, capable of communicating some "good news" to the forthcoming generations. Such stories and  texts represent the "lost coins" of the scriptures, which scholars such as Ann Loades and Elisabeth Schlussler-Fiorenza are striving to recover. I shall try to  give you just one or two examples of this new way of looking at Scripture, and  then pass on.

Think to begin with, simply of the tenth commandment "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his  mansservant nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his donkey nor anything else  that is thy neighbour's". The woman is the possession of the man, and a  possession in the scale of things inferior to his house. A woman was unclean after the birth of a daughter for twice as long as after the birth of a son.  Phyllis Trible writes,"Less desirable in the eyes of her parents than a male child, a girl stayed close to her mother, but her father controlled her life until he relinquished her to another man for marriage. If either of these male  authorities permitted her to be mistreated, even abused, she had to submit without recourse. Thus ,Lot offered his daughters to the men of Sodom to protect a male guest (Gen.19v8), Jephthah sacrificed his daughter in order to remain  faithful to a foolish vow (Judges 11), Amnon raped his half sister Tamar (2Sam. 13) and the Levite from the hill country of Ephraim participated with other  males to bring about the betrayal, rape, murder and dismemberment of his own concubine (Judg.19)" Texts of terror indeed! - and even in less extreme cases  the Biblical narrative is predominantly a male story in which women if not actively mistreated are regarded as of little account.

Much work has therefore begun to recover such stories as do exist, which run counter to this patriarchal tradition. For example the story of Moses has been reinterpreted to give due weight to the role of the two slave women, Shiprah and Puah, who before Moses birth are the first to oppose the Pharoah, refusing to  kill newborn sons, and to give a proper account of the importance of Miriam and Moses mother in the story of the Exodus. Moreover improved knowledge of the  texts has led to reinterpretations beginning with for example the creation account in Genesis 2. Contrary to tradition woman is not created the assistant  or subordinate of man. Rather most often the Hebrew word 'ezer, helper' connotes  superiority as for example in Deuteronomy33v29 "blessed are you, O Israel! Who  is like you, a people saved by the Lord? He is your shield and your  ezer/helper"

Similar work is being done with the New Testament, where some wonderful  insights have been made. Think for example of Mary, sitting at the feet of Jesus, who commends her actions in the face of Martha's disapproval. She does not sit there submissively. She sits at the feet of the Rabbi, because that was  the traditional posture of the student - a posture exclusively adopted by men. Or think of the three parables of the kingdom in Luke 15, the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son - there tucked in the middle, between the images of God as shepherd and father, is the unexpected image of God as housewife, sweeping the room and looking for the lost not with the traditional bishop's cross, but with a broom. Or - and this must be my last , though there are many more examples, think about the story of the loaves and the fish. who was it that  helped Jesus to feed the five thousand? Generations of stained glass windows and Sunday School books have depicted a little boy, offering up his packed lunch -  and they could be right. But not necessarily!

For the Greek word is gender neutral. It is "paidarion" And if you look it up  in a Greek dictionary you will find that it means a "small child" - and my  dictionary adds "by extension a small boy. By extension? by whose extension? By  the male scholars' extension - who are guilty of the androcentric phallacy that half counts for the whole. I want to know in most stereotypical families who usually gets put in charge of the sandwiches - and I would like to commission a new stained glass window, with a little girl offering the bread and fish to  Jesus. Because it matters.

It matters that not only in Scripture, but in  tradition, in glass, in pictures the experience and contribution of women to  Christian history has been ignored, despised and rejected. It is not just that women have been omitted from the Christian story so often - like the little girl  with the loaves and fish, like the woman who anointed Jesus, whom Jesus said  would always be remembered for what she had done - yet the men who wrote the gospels could not even remember her name!; like the women who helped the early church fathers such as Jerome to their insights, yet never got any of the credit  it is not just that they have been omitted - it is that the absence of women's  eyes and voices from the Christian theology of the past has led to a distorted  theology.

The great first-wave Christian feminist Emily Wilding Davison reflected on this - you may remember her as the North east woman who was killed after  throwing herself out before the king's horse in the 1913 Derby as a suffragette protest - and in a notable essay she wrote of how the early church fathers had even debated whether women had souls - can you imagine that? - but that is how  you end up if you close one eye, or try to walk on one leg - you lose whole (or  should we say"holy") perspective and you can only hop,not walk, leave alone run  -well, said Emily, the early Fathers just about grudgingly agreed that women probably had souls, but we have suffered the results of their dualistic thinking  in our Christian doctrine ever since. Their oppositions were frightenly simple -  heaven and earth, soul and body, light and darkness, creator and creature, male  and female. They were also profoundly wrong, based as they were on basic  biological principles which we now know to be incorrect. They assumed that males were the primary creators, that children originated only from the male seed and that women were nurturant and in that sense non-essential , to be suppressed and feared. Consequently the fear of woman, the fear of nature and the fear of the  body surface and re-surface again and again in Christian tradition and history.

We sometimes assume that our Christian tradition is unchanging - that it stretches back through time in some kind of unalterable line to the apostles and Jesus himself. And of course, there are facets of the teaching and life of Jesus that inform our lives as Christians today . Yet history has shaped that tradition in new ways in every generation, and it is no different in our own. And it is one of the chief insights of theologians in the last fifty years or so, that theology is not so much received as a given unalterable block of  teaching, as done/made - forged out of the experience of wrestling with God, and scripture and the wisdom of the church to create sense and meaning out of our  lives as we live them. In this sense all theology is always contextual - it arises out of the contexts which shape it.

Feminist theology arises out of the context of the women's movement; it arises out of the cultural perception that it is no longer  acceptable or just that women, while representing 51 percent of the world population, perform two-thirds of working hours, receive only one tenth of the world's income and own less than one per cent of the world's property; it arises out of new biological understandings of the mutuality of male and female in  creation - and is consequently a theology of liberation alongside other theologies of liberation which are seeking to redress the grievances of oppressed peoples throughout the world.

In doing so, feminist theologies challenge not only the notion of a given  tradition,but like Reformation theologies, challenge traditional understandings  of authority in the Church. They demand that women's eyes and voices be included  and be heard. We simply cannot do and believe as the fathers of old, or today, tell us simply because they are (or were) fathers - whether doctors of the  church, Pope, Archbishop, Vice-Moderator or priest, or minister. Authority must  be de-centred; must begin with ourselves, our context, with the vision and word of God in our own eyes and voices, and in relationship and dialogue with all those of faith, women and men as well, the lowly as well as the mighty. And so one of the bright hopes of women's ordination to the priesthood in the Anglican church was for flatter, more democratic structures, more co-operative patterns  of working between clergy and laity, and an acknowledgement of the ministry of all - it is of course a hope still to be fully realised!

Yet to be really effective, Feminist theology needs also to challenge  accepted patterns of authority and political domination in the wider world, and in recent years feminist theologians have turned their mirror away from just the church, and are beginning to write again about social and political freedoms and the issues of ecology, environment and the planet. For example, the American feminist theologian Rosemary Radford-Ruether in her book Gaia and God, an ecofeminist theology of earth healing remarks that:

We need to think and act globally as well as locally. We need to become knowledgeable about parallel movements in Western and Eastern Europe,  Asia, Africa and Latin America, and also the distinct problems of different  regions and their interconnection with our own lives".

To respond to feminist theology is therefore to grow into living relationships with others seeking liberation and redemption for the whole earth, and to grow into a deeper relationship with a richer God. This  requires a re-thinking and a re-speaking and a re-enacting of our faith on every  level. And this is the crunch - and the painful bit for everyone - because if feminist theology is truly a theology of liberation we know that liberation and Gospel-freedom doesn't come cheap - it demands much of ourselves as well as of others in the courage to be - and this leads me finally to the themes of  language and God. For if we are to grow in faith and in God in the light of the "new eyes" and "new Voices" now opening, we shall need to renew our language of  faith and God, bringing together our male tradition with the lost coins of female insight. We need new language, and new liturgies - new ways of speaking and living God which heal and honour the fullness of God and of God's Gospel  Good news.

It is possible to find within our Scriptures feminine language for God as  well as masculine. There are verses which speak of God as a mother eagle, as a mother conceiving, as a womb, as pregnant, as breast feeding, as a midwife, as a  mother hen and so on - they are not frequent, and the masculine images are  dominant. But they are there and they help us to remember that as well as being  beyond all gender, God is inclusive of all gender and all human experience, and that it is therefore legitimiate to use these kinds of metaphor of God both in  private prayer and public liturgy. Moreover it is essential that we do so - for as the early fathers asserted "that which is unassumed is  unredeemed" - in other words if God in Christ does not take on our full humanity - feminine as well as masculine then the feminine is unredeemed, and  Christianity must be rejected (as indeed it has been by such theologians as Mary  Daly and Daphne Hampson) as irredeemably sexist and therefore deeply and repugnantly immoral.

It is therefore for us in our generation to set about with joy the task of recreating our liturgies and our doctrines, with the "new eyes " of faith. We need to translate our faith into language which is liberative for today, just as the great reforming theologians translated the Bible and liturgy into the  vernacular for their own time. And to help us on our way, I have brought with me  some handouts of a hymn by Brian Wren (and please note that not all feminist  theologians are women - it is the ability to see things from a woman's perspective which is important, rather than the biological gender of the theologian), and some prayers by Janet Morley, both of whom have done a great deal of work in this field. They might serve as starters for small group  discussions, if there is time for that, or it may be that you have questions and  comments which you now wish to put to me, and I will do my best to make some  kind of reply. Thank you for listening.

Penny Jones

Prayer for Maundy Thursday

Christ, whose feet were caressed
with perfume and a woman's hair,
you  humbly took basin and towel
and washed the feet of your friends.
Wash us  also in your tenderness
as we touch one another;
that, embracing your service freely,
we may accept no other bondage
in your name.  Amen

Mothering Sunday

God our mother,
you hold our life within you;
nourish us at your breast,
and teach us to walk alone.
Help us so to receive your tenderness
and respond to your challenge
that others may draw life from us
in your name. Amen

Easter 5

O God for whom we long
as a woman in labour
longs for her  delivery;
give us courage to wait,
strenth to push,
and discernment to know the right time;
that we may bring into the world
your joyful  peace,
through Jesus Christ. Amen.

For the dying

O God who brought us to birth
and in whose arms we die,
we entrust to  your embrace
our beloved sister.
Give her release from her  pain,
courage to meet the darkness,
and grace to let go into new life,
through Jesus Christ, Amen.

All Desires Known - Janet Morley 1988

Brief Bibliography

Ann Loades - Feminist Theology: A reader

Mary Daly - Beyond God the Father

Elizabeth Schlussler Fiorenza - In Memory of Her

Monica Furlong - Mirror to the Church

Daphne Hampson - Theology and Feminism

Sally McFague - Models of God

Sarah Maitland - A Map of the New Country

E.Moltmann-Wendel - The Women around Jesus

R. R. Ruether - Sexism and God-Talk

Phyllis Trible - Texts of Terror

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