Horizons In Feminist Theology

By all accounts, feminist theology is at a crossroads. Even as the longstanding consensus wanes that women's experience is the source and norm of feminist theology, the specific and often contradictory experience of different groups is now highlighted, and new theoretical frameworks are being proposed. This landmark volume explores central issues of female subjectivity and feminist identity, gender and embodiment, tradition and norms, and their impact on theology. Leading thinkers in this new generation of feminist theologians rethink the central claims of feminist theology and offer proposals for the future.

By all accounts, feminist theology is at a crossroads. Even as the longstanding consensus wanes that women's experience is the source and norm of feminist theology, the specific and often contradictory experience of different groups is now highlighted, and new theoretical frameworks are being proposed. This landmark volume explores central issues of female subjectivity and feminist identity, gender and embodiment, tradition and norms, and their impact on theology. Leading thinkers in this new generation of feminist theologians rethink the central claims of feminist theology and offer proposals for the future.

Changing Horizons is the second of two volumes highlighting the ways in which Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza's work constructs a critical feminist theory and praxis of liberation, in relation to the biblical text and its legacy, and in relation to the theological and ecclesial setting of today. Schussler Fiorenza attempts to free both biblical studies and theology from disciplinary constraints and assumptions that have allowed them to acquiesce and even perpetuate forms of oppression—from racism and poverty to colonialism and gender equality.

Ten essays illustrate feminist theological awareness within the Catholic tradition (though written, for the most part, as "loyal opposition" within the church). Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza describes the theoretical and liberative theological commitments that orient her pioneering biblical scholarship, including the use of critical theory, analysis of interacting social, political, economic, and religious oppressions, and promotion of a genuinely emancipatory and democratic community of equals--in academy, church, and wider society alike.

The second edition of this highly popular introduction includes a new preface and each chapter has been revised to keep it as up-to-date as possible. 'Introducing Feminist Theology remains a lively and stimulating 'first read' for anyone embarking on feminist theology, as well as a first rate resource for those wishing to refresh their acquiantaince with it. Despite claims in some quarters that 'feminism' has been surpassed by 'gender' this book explains how vital a feminist agenda remains, and how much is still to be done, both at the theological and the practical level, to transform Christianity from two centuries of male-gendered discourse and ecclesiastical structure into a religion that adequately reflects the life of modern women.

This volume highlights the relevance of globalization and the insights of gender studies and religious studies for feminist theology. It focuses on the changing global contexts for the field and its movement towards new models of theology, distinct from the forms of traditional Christian systematic theology and of secular feminism.

This title was first published in 2002: The premise of the text is that there is a continuing need for biblical hermeneutic propsals and frameworks which emerge from the fields of both feminism and Christian theology. Feminism, the author asserts, demands not only the plotting of new routes but the restructuring of entire landscapes. As such this project, since it seeks to develop a feminist theological frame for meaning, impinges on and is impacted by innumerable inter-relating questions. In consequence, the scope of the book is necessarily both broad and interdisiplinary. The author, J'annine Jobling, uses particular texts and has articulated her own positions in response. In this way the embodied practice of thinking-in-relation is mirrored in the texts produced. This has determined the macro-structure of the thesis, which is based on an analysis of two feminist biblical scholars: Elisabeth Schussler Fionenza and Phyllis Trible. From this analysis Jobling identifies two primary principles for interpretation: rememberance and destabilization. This is a strategy which allows both materialist and post-structuralist perspectives to be set into play, each of which has vital contributions to make to feminist enterprises. The "Bible" is understood as matrix, as a set of discourses which are permeable to and intersect with other cultural discourses. The task of feminist interpretation is then to reconstitute the heterogenous biblical matrix in feminist horizons. A fundamental tenet of the book is that hermeneutics inhabits particular metaphysical constructs. Therefore, the argument extends from an interpretation of the Bible to an epistemological framework in which an eschatological hereneutic is recommended, to a metaphysical framework which takes eschatology as its structuring principle. The author argues that it is eschatology which can provide the resources for an ontological model radically disruptive of a metaphysics of presence, and in which it is possible to discern the traces of God. From this outermost limit of the author's hermeneutic investigations, the text returns to the centre: the feminist discursive community and develops a construct that the ekklesia, as a feminist deliberative space set oppositionally to structures, worldviews and idealogies operates on patriarchal logics. The relationship of this "imagined community" is compared to the Christian Church and scripture, ethics and gendered identity within a logic of equity.