ABSTRACT
A second group of liberation theologies which are examples of Christian theologies that make a very strong claim to contextuality are feminist or feminist informed theologies. These theologies claim a strong presence in Christian communities and in academic theology in the twenty-first century. They will be examined here for the ways in which they function as contextual theologies and for the ways in which the clear and direct theological claims to contextuality, such as is often made by feminist theologians, are in fact acutely problematic. This chapter will examine the ways in which the context of gender has come to inform Christian theology through feminisms. It will also focus on how the diversity of women’s lives has forced feminist informed theologies to take account of the complex and multilayered nature of oppression and to recognize that the context of any human life has many dimensions and can never be reduced to just one thing such as gender, social and economic status, race or sexuality. So, in this chapter, feminist informed theologies will be critically interrogated
for the outworkings of feminist claims to contextuality. The aim of the previous chapter with its focus on Latin American liberation theology was to examine how years of colonial rule, imperialism and oppressive social, economic and political regimes gave rise to a theological movement steeped in social consciousness and driven to challenge this oppression. Women’s experiences of gender-based oppression and the rejection of gendered oppression will be examined now for the ways in which they have given shape to feminist informed contextual theologies. Gender, experienced too often in an oppressive way, is the contextual root of these theologies. We will see from their historical origins, through early and then more sophisticated developments, the ways in which feminist informed theologies make clear claims to be consciously contextual, if not radically contextual, Christian theologies. Some of the most significant and telling criticisms that have been made of feminist informed theologies focus on the very claim to be contextual. Feminist informed theologies are criticized for failing to understand human contexts in their fullest, plural and most fluid forms. What will be argued here is that just as it is not possible to only take the
category of poverty to define and understand Latin American liberation
theology as a contextual theology, neither is it possible only to take the category of gender to fully understand the contextual nature of feminist informed theologies. Feminist informed theologies, just like the contexts that inform these theologies, are multilayered, diverse and ever changing according to the different experiences of women. We are moving on, then, from exploring the roots of explicitly contextual theologies in Latin American liberation theology to the outworkings of contextual theology through feminist informed theologies. As in the previous chapter with its study of Latin American liberation theology,
this chapter will give an account of feminist theologies through their historical development as liberation theologies. In this chapter the historical mapping lays the foundation for a detailed evaluation of the claims to contextuality made by feminist informed theologies. To begin with, this chapter will examine the early presence of feminisms in Christian theology to the blossoming of diverse and varied feminist informed theologies in the 1980s.
