From Women’s Experience to Feminist Theology 9781474281317, 9781350005648, 9781474281324

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From Women's Experience to Feminist Theology

Religious Studies: Bloomsbury Academic Collections

This set on religion’s relationship with gender and sexuality contains nine facsimiles from our imprints T&T Clark, Mowbray, Sheffield Academic Press and Continuum. Offering a broad overview over subjects such as feminist theology, the role of sex within the church and religious cultures, the relationship between women and organised religion, and the feminisation of religion, these titles are a valuable resource for students and scholars studying religious studies. The collection is available both in e-book and print versions. Titles in Religious Studies are available in the following subsets: Religions of the World Comparative Religion Christianity and Society Religion, Sexuality and Gender Other titles available in Religion, Sexuality and Gender include: Making the Difference: Gender, Personhood and Theology by Elaine Graham Religion and Sexuality edited by Michael A. Hayes, Wendy Porter and David Tombs That They May Be Many: Voices of Women, Echoes of God by Ann Kirkus Wetherilt Religious Feminism and the Future of the Planet: A Christian-Buddhist Conversation by Rita M. Gross and Rosemary Radford Ruether Through the Earth Darkly: Female Spirituality in Comparative Perspective by Jordan Paper Bodies, Lives, Voices: Gender in Theology edited by Janette Gray, Kathleen O'Grady and Ann L. Gilroy Civilizing Sex: On Chastity and the Common Good by Patrick Riley An A-Z of Feminist Theology edited by Lisa Isherwood and Dorothea McEwan

From Women's Experience to Feminist Theology Linda Hogan

Religious Studies: Religion, Sexuality and Gender BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC COLLECTIONS

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in 1995 by Sheffield Academic Press This edition published by Bloomsbury Academic 2016 © Bloomsbury Academic 2016 Linda Hogan has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-8131-7 ePDF: 978-1-4742-8132-4 Set: 978-1-4742-9307-5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Series: Bloomsbury Academic Collections, ISSN 2051-0012

Printed and bound in Great Britain

From Women's Experience to Feminist Theology

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Copyright © 1995 Sheffield Academic Press Published by Sheffield Academic Press Ltd Mansion House 19 Kingfield Road Sheffield, SI 19AS England

Typeset by Sheffield Academic Press and Printed on acid-free paper in Great Britain by The Cromwell Press Melksham, Wiltshire

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 1-85075-520-5

CONTENTS Foreword Abbreviations Introduction

7 8 9

Part I ORIGINS OF THE PRIMARY CATEGORIES OF FEMINIST THEOLOGY Chapter 1 WOMEN'S EXPERIENCE FROM DE BEAUVOIR TO MCCARTHY BROWN

16

Chapter 2 PRAXIS: THE THEOLOGICAL BACKGROUND

64

Part II PRIMARY CATEGORIES EMPLOYED

Chapter 3 CHRISTIAN FEMINISTS AND THE CATEGORIES OF WOMEN'S EXPERIENCE AND PRAXIS

86

Chapter 4 WOMANIST THEOLOGIANS' EMPLOYMENT OF THE PRIMARY CATEGORIES

120

Chapter 5 WOMEN'S EXPERIENCE AND PRAXIS IN THE THEALOGIES OF POST-CHRISTIAN FEMINISTS

141

Conclusion A THEOLOGY FOR THE FUTURE

162

Bibliography Index of Names Index of Subjects

178 189 191

FOREWORD

Feminism is transforming theology. The organizing principles and presuppositions which have formed the matrix of conventional theology are subject to scrutiny. However, the work of feminist theology is not solely to dismantle the architecture of 'holy' knowledge which, hitherto, has been constructed from within the parameters of patriarchy. Feminist theologians are formulating new and unconventional alternative visions of a holy city in which many will feel more at home. Feminist theology does not pretend—as religion often does—to be fixed, unchanging, true. It embraces the dynamic and diverse elements found within it. Feminist theology is not a theory of everything. It does not promise to give answers, nor is it so insecure as to require the last word orfinalsay. While a variety of writing has been produced in other areas of feminist theology, there has long been a need for considered treatment of issues of methodological concern. This book provides an analysis of the nature and basis of feminist methodology, and will be welcomed by anyone who seeks a serious examination of the topic. In a manner which is both probing and incisive, Dr Linda Hogan explores the origins and roots of the primary categories of feminist theology: women's experience and praxis. It is this attention shown to the fundamental bases of feminist theology which makes the study truly radical. She contends that the way in which feminist theologians understand the primary categories of women's experience and praxis gives shape to their theology. Dr Hogan presented a paper based on this study to the first conference of the Britain and Ireland School of Feminist Theology in 1992, which was published subsequently in issue 2 of the journal Feminist Theology, BISFT is therefore very pleased to be associated with this volume, the second in an occasional series of monographs on feminist theology. Julie Clague January 1995

ABBREVIATIONS

JAAR

JR

RelSRev

SJT TD TS

TTod

Journal of the American Academy of Religion Journal of Religion Religious Studies Review Scottish Journal of Theology Theology Digest Theological Studies Theology Today

INTRODUCTION

'Feminist theory began by trying to extend and reinterpret the categories of various theoretical discourses so that women's activities and social relations could become analytically visible within the traditions of intellectual discourse.'1 Subsequent years have, however, seen a transformation of feminist theoretical perspectives. In contrast to the work of reinterpretation which was a hallmark of the early years feminist scholars are now concerned with the creation of new paradigms, disciplines and theories. Critique and reinterpretation of patriarchal theories and traditions is, at one level, essential, since it enables us to understand the lives and works of women under patriarchy. To arrest scholarly work at this level is, however, to fail to grasp the essence of the feminist enterprise. I do not suggest that it is either possible or necessary for feminist scholars to attempt to step outside patriarchal traditions completely. Patriarchy is the context within which we live and work. Yet since women's experience has been excluded from the formulation of patriarchal theories (and indeed excluded from the articulations of the problems which gave rise to such theories), reinterpretation can only effect limited transformation. In the words of Audre Lorde, 'the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.'2 And genuine change is all that interests feminists. This shift in feminist circles from expansion and reinterpretation of patriarchal traditions to the formulation and creation of alternatives is a feature of all disciplines, including feminist theology. Indeed feminist 1. S. Harding, The Instability of the Analytical Categories of Feminist Theory', Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 11.4 (1986), p. 645. 2. A. Lorde, 'The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House', in C. Moraga and G. Anzaldua (eds.), This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (Watertown, MA: Persephone Press, 1981), p. 99.

10

From Women's Experience to Feminist Theology

thea/theologians1 have been arguably the most creative within the feminist movement. Feminist theologians have attempted to effect a paradigm shift in religious studies. In questioning basic assumptions concerning beliefs, values and indeed methods, feminist theologians have moved beyond the realm of patriarchal theories towards starting points which will affirm the dignity of women. They have sought to initiate theological discussion from the perspective of women's experience and praxis. Women's experience and women's praxis are the bases upon which feminist theology endeavours to reconstruct and create new religious forms. The interaction between these categories forms the theoretical basis for feminist theology, resulting in innovation and creativity. Feminist theology has, therefore, been situated in an entirely new context. Women's experience and praxis are the primary resources, whereas androcentric texts and traditions formerly reigned supreme. As I have previously mentioned, many feminists have rejected the possibility of using the tools and categories of patriarchal theories in the formulation of alternative perspectives. Although patriarchy is the context within which the categories of women's experience and praxis have been elaborated, to include them as starting points and as norms of evaluation is indeed subversive. In according such categories primacy, feminist theologians have effected a methodological revolution. The use of women's experience and praxis signals a new departure for theology. It is my intention, in this work, to explore the origins, uses and significance of the appropriation of these categories as resources for feminist theology. Since both are used frequently, and often interchangeably, I understand my task, first, to be the unravelling of the origins and meanings of both. In Part 11 set about examining these categories. Since each has had a long and complex history, it has been necessary to be selective in my exploration. The term 'women's experience' has acquired new meaning since it has been appropriated by the women's movement. It is within 1. From this point on I will not use 'thea/theology' or * thea/theologians' but will simply refer to all feminist thealogians and theologians by the term 'feminist theologian5, except when referring specifically to the works of those feminists who construe the deity in female terms. I do so in the interests of providing a more readable text. It is not my desire to present a homogeneous picture of feminist scholarship, nor to obliterate the real differences among feminist theologians. I sincerely hope that this standardization causes no offence.

Introduction

11

this context that I explore the diversity encapsulated by the term. It will become apparent that no homogeneity can be attributed to it. The category of women's experience is essentially a celebration of the plurality and diversity of women's lives, choices, values. Yet the category of women's experience may not be appropriated uncritically by feminist theorists. It does not transcend class, racial or cultural differences but is intimately bound to them. Feminist theologians have realized that it is not sufficient to refer to 'women's experience'; this category must be deconstructed by those whose experiences have been marginal—for example poor women or women of colour. In addition to the use of the category of women's experience, feminist theologians have appropriated the term 'praxis'. Praxis has had a similarly convoluted history since Aristotle's philosophizing as to whether the life of activity or the life of contemplation is the most appropriate modus vivendi for the philosopher.1 The scope of this work will not allow for a perusal of the history of the term from its articulation in fourth-century Athens. I have selected as my starting point the revolutionary twist given to the term by Marx and his disciples. In this context the term has a very specific meaning and role in relation to theory. In this work it is not possible, however, to consider the philosophical development of the term. I will concern myself with the theological context in which praxis has come to the fore—that of liberation and political theology. It must be kept in mind, in relation to liberation theology's consideration of theology as critical reflection on praxis, that this understanding of praxis is essentially Marxian with additional critical tools afforded by theorists of the Frankfurt School. Thus praxis as a primary theological category and resource has been essentially established through the theory and activity of Latin American and other developing world theologians. Such relationships will be fully explored. Although both categories—women's experience and praxis—emerge somewhat erratically in the works of various theologians I believe that both are absolutely vital to the development of feminist theology. Since articulations of the category of women's experience can be highly theoretical and abstract, the category of praxis infuses it with a practical, critical dimension. It gives expression to the liberating activity of women which has constantly informed feminist theorizing. Having examined the origins and meaning of both terms we will turn to consider how they operate in the works of feminist theologians. For 1.

See Nicomachean Ethics.

12

From Women's Experience to Feminist Theology

the purposes of this study I will identify three major strands within the discipline. I have grouped them according to their positions vis-^-vis tradition. Reformist, womanist and post-Christian are the 'labels' that I have chosen to use. I consider that the ways in which each theologian uses the categories of women's experience and praxis essentially determines the shape of her theology. Theologians within the reformist circle have attempted to use women's experience and praxis as starting points in dialogue with the Jewish and Christian traditions. I will focus on the work of Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza and Rosemary Radford Ruether in this section. To many their stance in relation to androcentric texts and traditions is somewhat ambiguous. The essence of their work has been reinterpretation, Schussler Fiorenza in the biblical field, Ruether in the area of theological concepts. Whereas many feminists have insisted that there is a radical discontinuity between patriarchal religion and women's experience and praxis, both Ruether and Schussler Fiorenza introduce an important subtlety. Both claim that the discontinuity does not lie between Christianity and feminism but between Christianity and patriarchy. Both hold vigorously to the possibilities for renewal and reform of Christian texts and traditions based on women's experience and praxis. Thus, although both are anxious not to relinquish the Christian tradition, the critical principle upon which each element is evaluated is whether it illuminates or debilitates women's experience and praxis. I will deal with womanist theologians in a separate section primarily because they have tended to be subsumed under the weight and predominance of white Western theory. Black women's experience and praxis is in acute need of retrieval since it has been systematically negated and trivialized by whites—women and men alike. Womanist theologians have vigorously written the experience and praxis of black women back into theology. Although they have not clearly identified their position in relation to the Christian tradition, each of the womanists I will consider has woven into her theological work the 'real lived texture' of black women's lives. Since Christian religions have been associated with oppression in the experiences of the black community, a critical stance in relation to such traditions has been preserved in the memory of the community. This criticism combined with the priority given to the experiences and praxis of women of colour forms the basis of womanist theology.1 1. The past few years have seen the emergence of mujerista theology, which further draws attention to the significance of the variable of race in the development of feminist theology.

Introduction

13

The final grouping that I have chosen to consider is the post-Christian feminists. Although each of the post-Christian thealogians acknowledges that she is deeply affected by her experiences of patriarchal religions, each has attempted to theologize independently of Christian texts and traditions. Carol Christ and Christine Downing, among others, unambiguously use as their resources women's experience and praxis in the creation of new symbols, rituals and prayers and in the reappropriation of ancient, pre-Christian ones. Major methodological and epistemological issues arise in relation to the employment of these categories. In this book I will focus on two: the question of difference among women and the suggestion that these categories point us towards extreme relativism and perhaps nihilism. In the conclusion I will suggest some approaches which may enable us to deal with such impulses. It will emerge throughout this work that the categories used as primary resources are somewhat unstable and ever-changing. Indeed, both will imply instability in theorizing, since both women's experience and praxis are dynamic, ever open to the possibility of transformation. Although academic life under patriarchy has promoted the desirability of unity and conformity, feminists have begun to question the possibility of such a position without marginalization. I am fundamentally in agreement with theorists who reject the value of a 'master theory' for feminism. One must indeed question the wisdom of attempting to formulate a rigid theoretical position in an ever evolving world. Such a position will only be an obstacle to true insight. Feminist theology implicitly rejects such rigidity by using categories that are dynamic. Refusing to be regulated by the norms of patriarchal scholarship, feminist theorists have insisted on the desirability and inherent worth of aflexible,unstable position. As Sandra Harding has argued, 'feminist analytical categories should be unstable—consistent and coherent theories in an unstable and incoherent world are obstacles to both our understanding and our social practices'.1 She urges feminists to embrace instability in their theorizing and thereby move towards ever new and deeper insights. It appears to me that a genuine understanding of the primary resources of feminist theology, women's experience and praxis, requires one to consider, as an appropriate stance, conceptual instability. Since women's experience and praxis point toward difference, diversity, constant 1.

Harding, 'The Instability of the Analytical Categories,, p. 649.

14

From Women's Experience to Feminist Theology

reinterpretation, the issue cannot be ignored. Undoubtedly this will raise serious questions for theologians involved in doctrinal, hermeneutical and ethicalfields.Nevertheless the logical consequence of the employment of the categories of women's experience and praxis is that we integrate their dynamic impulses. One of the most challenging problems, of course, will be to work out how to hold on to a position that represents conceptual instability while still holding to an epistemology that is not relativist.

Parti ORIGINS OF THE PRIMARY CATEGORIES OF FEMINIST THEOLOGY

Chapter 1 WOMEN'S EXPERIENCE FROM DE BEAUVOIR TO MCCARTHY BROWN

Feminist theology operates, at the most basic level, as a theology born out of women's experience of oppression under patriarchy and out of engaged action for change. The genesis of the theology reflects this dual thrust, as feminist theology emergedfirstclaiming women's experience to be authentic human experience and, secondly, affirming the praxis of the women's movement in its splintered form, as liberating activity central to the spiritual life. The methodology of feminist theology combines these two strands, with theologians placing emphasis on different elements, as might be anticipated. The acting-reflecting model on which feminist theology operates is based on the interaction of two basic elements: experience and praxis. Theology has variously included both elements at different stages, yet their centrality in feminist theology assures its separation, methodologically, from other theologies. Women's experience is one of the central interpretive categories in feminist theory and consequently in feminist theology. Thus it is necessary to examine the meaning and development of women's experience as it emerged as a central category for feminist theory and theology. It is with the dialectical relationship between the praxis emerging from the women's movement and the hermeneutics of suspicion generated by women's experience that feminist theology is emerging as a truly transformative force. Thus it is vital that we examine the methodology in the light of the key categories of experience and praxis. At the outset it is important that I clarify my approach to the category of women's experience in relation to feminist theory in general. There is a tendency among many feminists to view theory with suspicion, even hostility. The movement towards increasingly sophisticated theoretical analysis is interpreted as a denial of the centrality of women's experience. Many fear that the control of naming and interpreting will

1. Women's Experience from de Beauvoir to McCarthy Brown

17

be wrested from individual women and eventually be seen to reside with academic feminists. Indeed similar difficulties have arisen among Marxists and critical theorists concerning the role of the intellectual and that of the proletariat in the work for the achievement of revolution.1 Although I appreciate the concerns of theorists who advocate methodocide2 I consider that the most valuable approach is not the abandonment of feminism to the unmediated subjectivity of women's lives but a reinterpretation of epistemology. In fact this is the road which many feminists have taken. We realize that it is not sufficient to reduce feminist theory to women's experience. Yet by placing women's experience at the centre of feminist thought we will begin to transform our epistemology by placing questions of what constitutes knowledge, how it is produced and who produces it,firmlyon the agenda. The relationship between women's experience and feminist theory is a complex one. Women's experience is a central resource certainly, but since it is basically fractured it requires interpretation, evaluation and critique. Feminists must be able to acknowledge and arbitrate among competing subjectivities, since women do not share a uniform experience or material reality. Thus some theoretical import is essential. Women's experience does not constitute theological reflection. However, it both informs it and operates as a criterion for evaluation. Women's experience and women's praxis together emerge as primary resources for theology but not in an atheoretical, unmediated sense. Theory derives from women's experience and praxis and is constantly reformed in dialogue with these categories. Within feminist scholarship, the category of women's experience emerges as double edged, combining both negative and positive elements. It arises initially in the context of a feminist critique of the entire structure of patriarchy and has been characterized by oppression, experienced both individually and collectively.

1. Zoltan Tar comments briefly on the ambiguity in Horkheimer's works, in his book The Frankfurt School: The Critical Theories of Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1977), pp. 35-37. 2. See the works Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978), and Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy (London: Women's Press, 1984) by M. Daly who is an exponent of this position. See also S. Griffin, Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her (London: Women's Press, 1984).

18

From Women's Experience to Feminist Theology

In this section I will consider Simone de Beauvoir's feminist classic The Second Sex1 and the theological reworking of the 'woman as other' idea by Valerie Saiving in her influential essay 'The Human Situation: A Feminine View'.2 In addition, I will acknowledge the experience of Western women documented by Betty Friedan and the womanist critique it inspired. In the context of an analysis of women's experience as a central interpretive category it is not sufficient that we focus on the negative aspects of that experience exclusively. Women have been enabled, largely through the consciousness raising of the women's movement in its various forms, to celebrate the uniqueness and value of their experiences. The celebration and affirmation of the female body is central, and provides a welcome relief from the misogynistic writings revealing an abhorrence of the female body which pepper our literary history—both sacred and secular. My exploration ranges from the affirmation of female power in Mary Daly to the positive evaluation of the experience of menstruation in, for example, Penelope Washbourne. I will also examine the critical evaluation of the experience and institution of motherhood articulated by Adrienne Rich in Of Woman Born3 and the celebration of women's experience in groups of peace activists, environmentalists and separatist communities. The category of women's experience has been the primary analytic tool that feminists have used in their critique of patriarchy. Yet the term has been used somewhat uncritically, implying homogeneity and fundamental agreement. As feminist scholarship has become gradually more sophisticated, this assumed unity has been revealed to be an illusion. Although there may be experiences which are exclusive to women, based on their gender identity, these are mediated and thereby transformed through racial, economic, social and sexual particularities. Thus feminist concerns are moving from the issues related to the differences between male and female experiences towards an exploration of the

1. S. de Beauvoir, Le Deuxieme Sexe (Paris: Gallimard, 1949). In this work I use the translation The Second Sex (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972,1982). 2. V. Saiving, The Human Situation: A Feminine View\ in C. Christ and J. Plaskow (eds.), Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979), pp. 25-42. 3. A. Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (London: Virago, 1977).

1. Women's Experience from de Beauvoir to McCarthy Brown

19

differences among women. Attention to the differences among women is indeed a challenge which must be faced, if feminist scholarship wishes to guard against exclusivity and imperialism in theory. Woman as Other The publication of The Second Sex in 1949 signalled a new departure for feminist theory. Although not written from an explicitly feminist perspective, The Second Sex provides us with one of the most comprehensive analyses of the position of women in society. Written more than forty years ago, The Second Sex continues to hold a privileged although controversial position among feminist texts. De Beauvoir's thesis is based upon the absolute rejection of the notion that the subordination of women is a given, a natural and necessary state. Indeed de Beauvoir's whole life was a rejection of such a position. Refusing to be bound by the restrictions imposed on women, de Beauvoir led an incredibly rich and active life, involving herself fully in the intellectual and political life of France. The Second Sex has not been without its critics within the feminist community, yet it must be remembered that it was not de Beauvoir's intention to write a feminist tract on the subordination of women. Indeed she explicitly states in the introduction to The Second Sex that she has no intention of spilling any more ink in quarrelling about feminism.1 At the time of writing the book she was opposed to an autonomous women's movement and believed that a socialist revolution would automatically effect the liberation of women. In later years, however, she modified her position and took an active role,firstin the demand for the relaxation of the abortion laws in France and later in editing a section on everyday sexism in Les Temps Modernes. In addition, de Beauvoir's attitude to women has come in for much attack from feminists. Many argue that she has not liberated herself from male domination either in her intellectual or personal life, since much of her work portrays an acceptance of male assumptions and thinking regarding the organization of the person and society. Her absolute confidence in rationality, thereby neglecting values often considered by theorists to be feminine (that is, more commonly developed in women rather than in men) has assured her much criticism by some feminists.

1.

De Beauvoir, Second Sex, p. 13.

20

From Women*s Experience to Feminist Theology

In the Introduction she states '[T]hus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being...she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute—she is the Other.'1 This concept of the other has its roots in the existentialist philosophy elaborated by de Beauvoir's companion Jean-Paul Sartre. The notions of en soi and pour soi, of Subject and Object, inform the philosophical works of Sartre and appear in a very specific form in the work of de Beauvoir on women. Grounded particularly in the philosophy of Being and Nothingness2 the relationship between males and females is described thus: [T]he division of the sexes is a biological fact, not an event in human history. Male and female stand opposed within a primordial Mitsein, and woman has not broken it. The couple is a fundamental unity with its two halves riveted together, and the cleavage of society along the line of sex is impossible. Here is to be found the basic trait of woman: she is the Other in a totality of which the two components are necessary to one another.3

In The Second Sex de Beauvoir introduces an important modification to the highly individualistic existentialist ethics of Sartre. The philosophical premise upon which Sartre's Being and Nothingness rested would not allow for any limitations on the individual's freedom. Based on the individual's power to choose, either transcendence or alienation, the ethics of existentialism did not address the problematic of social or ideological constraints under which individuals live. However, as political commitment became increasingly important to Sartre his philosophy was forced to take account of such difficulties. De Beauvoir, first in Pour une morale de Uambiguite* published in 1945, and two years later in The Second Sex, raised the problem of how the social conditions under which a person had to live might limit the power to choose and ultimately limit the freedom of an individual, particularly if she or he belonged to an oppressed group. 'Now, what peculiarly signalizes the situation of woman is that she—a free and autonomous being like all 1. De Beauvoir, Second Sex, p. 16. 2. J.-P. Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (London: Methuen, 1959);firstpublished in 1943 under the title L'Etre et le Neant (Paris: Gallimard). 3. De Beauvoir, Second Sex, p. 19. 4. De Beauvoir, Pour une morale de Vambiguite (Paris: Gallimard, 1947); ET The Ethics ofAmbiguity (New York: Philosophical Library, 1948).

1. Women's Experience from de Beauvoir to McCarthy Brown

21

human creatures—nevertheless finds herself living in a world where men compel her to assume the status of the Other.'1 Further reflecting the existentialist foundations of her treatment of women, she goes on to say that women are doomed to immanence,2 not allowed to operate as subject, but always condemned to the status of object, of other, of inessential, entirely subordinate to the acting subject, the essential: the man. Once she has elaborated on the basic category around which the text is organized, she goes on to deal with woman's destiny, approaching it from 'The Data of Biology', 'The Psychoanalytic Point of View' and 'The Point of View of Historical Materialism'. The chapter on biology is perhaps the most controversial in feminist circles. Based on evolutionary theory, her acceptance of radical difference between males and females in the world of humans and animals is now much disputed. Nevertheless it is in the data of biology that de Beauvoir situates women's experience of otherness. It must be stressed however at this point that de Beauvoir does not wish to invest this sexual difference with an ontological status. She is involved in an exploration of how a woman's biology influences her experience in the world. It is in her biological makeup that the female first experiences herself as other. 'First violated, the female is then alienated—she becomes, in part, another than herself...Tenanted by another, who battens upon her substance throughout the period of her pregnancy, the female is at once herself and other than herself.'3 At first glance de Beauvoir would appear to suggest that woman's passivity and otherness is an unfortunate, yet inevitable consequence of her sex. On the contrary, however, she rejects the Freudian view that anatomy is destiny. She does not invest biological data with supreme authority, but considers that biology is one of the keys to understanding the situation of women: 'for, the body being the instrument of our grasp upon the world, the world is bound to seem a very different thing when apprehended in one manner or another'.4 She insists however that '[biological facts] are insufficient for setting up a hierarchy of the sexes; they fail to explain why woman is the Other; they do not condemn her to remain in this subordinate role forever'.5 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

De Beauvoir, Second Sex, p. 29. De Beauvoir, Second Sex, p. 29. De Beauvoir, Second Sex, p. 54. De Beauvoir, Second Sex, p. 65. De Beauvoir, Second Sex, p. 65.

22

From Women's Experience to Feminist Theology

De Beauvoir then examines the data from psychoanalysis in an effort to identify the cause of woman's relegation to the category of otherness. She defines her task thus: 'we are concerned to find out what humanity has made of the human female'.1 Carol Ascher identifies the three main claims evident in this chapter as (1) that the Freudian model of psychoanalysis is deterministic, (2) that the penis envy attributed to woman by Freudian psychoanalysis and situated in the physiology of females is in effect a social creation—resultant from the symbolic power of the penis, which has been exalted just as menstruation has been defiled, and (3) that alienation and passivity are considered by psychoanalysis to be natural for women, whereas transcendence is considered to be normal for males. Thus women achieving transcendence and ultimately freedom are considered in psychoanalysis to be abnormal, deviant.2 De Beauvoir rejects the view of women offered by Freudian and Adlerian psychoanalysis, torn between viriloid and feminine tendencies.3 She sees woman in contrast 'as hesitating between the role of object, Other, which is offered her, and the assertion of her liberty'.4 The chapter on the 'Point of View of Historical Materialism' offers an integration of the existentialist categories of Subject and Object, transcendence and immanence, with the economic theories of Marx and Engels. De Beauvoir rejects the notion that private property is the root of all economic and social oppression. Instead she separates the oppression of women from that of the working classes and insists that the root of women's oppression lies, not in the institution of private property but in the innate desire that human beings have to dominate. She identifies this desire as operative from the beginning and foundational in the institution of patriarchy: If the original relation between a man and his fellows was exclusively a relation of friendship, we could not account for any type of enslavement; but no, this phenomenon is a result of the imperialism of the human consciousness, seeking always to exercise its sovereignty in objective fashion. If the human consciousness had not included the original category of the Other, the invention of the bronze tool could not have caused the oppression of woman.5 1. De Beauvoir, Second Sex, p. 69. 2. C. Ascher, Simone de Beauvoir: A Life of Freedom (Brighton: Harvester, 1981), p. 135. 3. De Beauvoir, Second Sex, p. 83. 4. De Beauvoir, Second Sex, p. 83. 5. De Beauvoir, Second Sex, p. 88.

1. Women's Experience from de Beauvoir to McCarthy Brown 23 This desire to dominate is identified by de Beauvoir as the source of the subordination of woman. It must be mentioned in this regard, however, that de Beauvoir herself in later years suggested that if she were to write The Second Sex again she would identify the source of oppression differently. In both La Force des choses,1 published in 1965, and La Longue Marche,2 an analysis of Chinese society based on her visit there in 1955, she has opted for a more materialistic explanation for the oppression of women: in her own words, I should take a more materialist position today—in the first volume I should base the notion of a woman as other and the Manichaean argument it entails not on an idealistic and a priori struggle of consciences, but on the facts of supply and demand.3

In dealing with history and myth de Beauvoir sets about proving her thesis that women are made, not born. In her discussion of nomadic and warrior cultures she considers the exaltation of hunting and killing and the subsequent denigration of the process of giving birth to be foundational: Tor it is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority has been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills'.4 She continues, examining the position of women in earliest societies, through classical antiquity and into the modern era. Her observation, based on a historical survey of the centuries, is that most female heroines are oddities: adventuresses and originals notable less for the importance of their acts than for the singularity of their fates... It is only since women have begun to feel themselves at home on the earth that we have seen a Rosa Luxemburg, a Mme Curie appear. They brilliantly demonstrate that it is not the inferiority of women that has caused their historical insignificance; it is rather their historical insignificance that has doomed them to inferiority.5

In her subsequent discussion of myths de Beauvoir deals expertly with their functioning in relation to the oppression of women in patriarchal society. In the chapter 'Dreams, Fears, Idols' and in her discussion of 1. S. de Beauvoir, La Force des Choses (Paris: Gallimard, 1963); ET Force of Circumstance (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965). 2. S. de Beauvoir, La Longue Marche (Paris: Gallimard, 1957); ET The Long March (London: Andre Deutsch, 1958). 3. De Beauvoir, Force of Circumstance, p. 202. 4. De Beauvoir, Second Sex, p. 95. 5. De Beauvoir, Second Sex, p. 162.

24

From Women's Experience to Feminist Theology

the literature of Montherland, Lawrence, Claudel, Breton and Stendhal she examines the images of women which appear. She observes, in summary, [T]hus woman is related to nature, she incarnates it...She can hold the keys to poetry; she can be mediatrix between this world and the beyond: grace or oracle, star or sorceress...She is doomed to immanence; and through her passivity she bestows peace and harmony—but if she declines this role, she is seen forthwith as a praying mantis, an ogress. In any case she appears as the privileged Other, through whom the subject fulfils himself.1

Literature plays a central role in both the creation and perpetuation of myth and always women appear as other, failing to act upon the world and thus ever failing to achieve transcendence. Women therefore tend to appear thus in myths. Closely allied to nature and therefore beyond the boundaries of patriarchal control, women symbolize chaos and wildness in addition to appearing as passive and inessential. Herein lies the ambiguity of patriarchal myths concerning woman. She represents, on the one hand, nature, carnality and thus wildness, and on the other hand passivity and otherness. In Book Two, devoted to an exploration of 'Woman's Life Today', de Beauvoir's presentation is indeed eclectic, ranging from discussions on childhood, the formation of young girls, their sexual initiation, and lesbianism to an examination of the situation of married women, mothers, prostitutes and ageing women. Having examined, in the earlier book, the sources of the oppression of women, de Beauvoir here states explicidy her central thesis: One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine.2

In order to overcome subordination as other, women must, according to de Beauvoir, act collectively, reject their position as objects and become free and authentic human subjects active in history. She sees the 'independent woman' of modernity as achieving this. Indeed she considers herself to have successfully refused to be object, to be eternally inessential, other. Her entire work embodies the existentialist demand 1. 2.

De Beauvoir, Second Sex, p. 278. De Beauvoir, Second Sex, p. 295.

1. Women's Experience from de Beauvoir to McCarthy Brown

25

that in order to live freely one must always refuse to be passive, one must instead change from being object to being subject and act freely in history: To emancipate woman is to refuse to confine her to the relations she bears to man, not to deny them to her; let her have her independent existence and she will continue none the less to exist for him also: mutually recognizing each other as subject, each will yet remain for the other an other.1

It is for her analysis of women as other that de Beauvoir has remained at the centre of feminist scholarship. Her evaluation of patriarchal culture is based upon its relegation of women to the position of other. And it is with this experience of otherness that women, reading The Second Sex, have for decades identified. De Beauvoir's description and analysis of otherness, which is the central experience of women living under the rule of patriarchy, seems to speak directly to millions of women worldwide. In addition to being a primary text in the consciousnessraising of women for decades, The Second Sex soon became the focus of much feminist scholarship.2 The Other Revised The highly significant essay of Valerie Saiving, entitled 'The Human Situation: A Feminine View', is one such work. In this Saiving (without explicitly acknowledging the importance of de Beauvoir's work) set about examining, from the feminine perspective, the evaluation of the human situation made in particular by two male theologians, Anders Nygren and Reinhold Niebuhr. Her aim in so doing was to expose the tendency in most patriarchal scholarship to consider male experience to be representative of human experience in its entirety. She understands this tendency to be indicative of the fact that 'one of man's strongest

1. De Beauvoir, Second Sex, p. 740. 2. Since this work was written we have seen the publication of de Beauvoir* s Letters to Sartre (London: Hutchinson, 1991) and more recently Witness to My Life: The Letters of Jean-Paul Sartre to Simone de Beauvoir 1926-1939 (London: Hamilton, 1992) and Quiet Moments in the War: The Letters of Jean-Paul Sartre to Simone de Beauvoir 1940-1963 (London: Hamilton, 1994) which together make a collection of the extant letters of Sartre and de Beauvoir. These have given rise to much controversy concerning their relationship and questions about the reliability of de Beauvoir's own memoirs.

26

From Women's Experience to Feminist Theology

temptations is to identify his own limited perspective with universal truth'.1 Saiving analyses this tendency with particular reference to the notions of sin and love in Christian theology. A discussion of theology's understanding of sin reveals a theology articulated exclusively from a male perspective. The experiences of women and the possibility that their failings may be different from men's are in no way acknowledged. This insight of Saiving has been much discussed elsewhere.2 Indeed much work has also been done by Carol Gilligan which works on the same assumption—in her case the theories of moral development systematized by Lawrence Kohlberg are called into question since they use men's experience only as the standard by which all are judged. Gilligan rejects the claim to universality that Kohlberg's theory of moral development makes, insisting that women make moral decisions in a different but no less adequate way. Their decisions tend to revolve, according to Gilligan, around issues of love and concern rather than issues of justice and fair play.3 Saiving's difficulty with contemporary male theologians' understanding of the human condition and in particular their understanding of sin lies essentially in their assumption that they have described a situation that is common to all humans. They have in fact articulated the experiences of only one half of humanity. The understanding of sin in terms of 'unjustified concern of the self for its own power and prestige'4 does not address the failings of women in any way. Saiving articulated her basic thesis thus: It is my contention that there are significant differences between masculine and feminine experience and that feminine experience reveals in a more emphatic fashion certain aspects of the human situation which are present but less obvious in the experience of men. Contemporary theological doctrines of love have, I believe, been constructed primarily on the basis of

1. Saiving, 'Human Situation', p. 25. 2. J. Plaskow, Sex, Sin and Grace: Women's Experience and the Theologies of Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1980). 3. Although I disagree with Gilligan's thesis that there are two distinctive modes of moral decision-making which are gender related, her insight that Kohlberg assumed the normality of male experience is important. 4. Saiving, 'Human Situation', p. 26.

1. Women's Experience from de Beauvoir to McCarthy Brown

27

masculine experience and thus view the human condition from the male standpoint. Consequently, these doctrines do not provide an adequate interpretation of the situation of women.1 However, in her subsequent discussion of the nature of women's experience, Saiving went on to locate difference in the realm of biology. Although she does not subscribe directly to the view that anatomy is destiny, such a tendency is discernible in her discussion of 'feminine experience'. In a later, more extensive discussion of this issue, Judith Plaskow,2 in opposition to Saiving, identified cultural and societal expectations of women to be the primary source of difference, which, with the privileging of male experience, and the subordination of female, leads to women being considered as other. The identification of the male as normative is crucial in much patriarchal scholarship in that it underlies all other features of patriarchy. At the basis of the patriarchal system is the assumption that the male reveals the fullness of humanity. Thus the female is viewed as being less than human. This is directly linked with the conceptualization of the divinity in exclusively male terms. In the words of Mary Daly, 'if God is male, then the male is God'.3 Indeed, there is a dialectic in operation. The predominance of the masculine character of the deity is inevitable in cultural systems based on male superiority. In addition, male domination is reinforced and validated by the presence of a masculine god. The model of a male god then bestows upon men divine qualities, whereby a hierarchy is created.4 The identification of woman as the second sex, as other, has been central to women's analysis of patriarchy. That women have been considered to be objects rather than active subjects of history, have been considered to be inessential rather than essential, is indicative of how 1. Saiving, 'Human Situation*, p. 27. 2. Plaskow, Sex, Sin and Grace. 3. M. Daly, Beyond God the Father: Towards a Philosophy of Women's Liberation (London: Women's Press, 1973), p. 19. 4. This understanding of males being normative and females being defective is by no means a stranger to Christian thought. The social and religious negation of women was further enforced in the Greco-Roman world with the advent of Christianity. Woman was clearly different and lesser. Indeed, even Ambrose, when tracing the etymology of v/r, identified its origin as animi virtus and mulier as mollities mentis. Cf. A. Friedberg (ed.), Corpus Juris Canonici (Graz, 1955), I, c. 1145 in A. Swidler, 'Woman in a Father-Oriented Religion', in God as Father? (Concilium, 143; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1981), pp. 75-81.

28

From Women's Experience to Feminist Theology

successfully patriarchal consciousness has been established. The assumption that maleness is co-extensive with humanness underlies all manifestations of patriarchy. It is this very exclusion of female experience from our definition and understanding of humanity which feminists identify as patriarchal oppression at its most potent. This experience of exclusion, of silence, is one of the central elements in any feminist analysis. Oppression has taken the form of exclusion from centres of decision-making, but also, and perhaps more importantly, exclusion from our understanding of what it means to be human. The Feminine Mystique The explosion of the women's movement onto the American scene in the early 1960s and the subsequent rebirth of feminism is centered predominantly around Betty Friedan's classic text The Feminine Mystique.1 It is important for us to examine Friedan's destruction of the suburban dream since her analysis provides one of the basic discussions of the situation of women in the Western world. Much of Friedan's analysis in The Feminine Mystique is now dated. Nevertheless it is important, since many women worldwide still live out the suburban dream of housewife and mother. In 1981 Friedan published The Second Stage,2 in which she provides us with another profound analysis of the experience of women, young and not so young, who are trying to live in terms of first-stage feminism. Here she confesses 'I sense something off, out of focus, going wrong, in the terms by which they are trying to live the equality we fought for'.3 This exploration too provides us with important insights into the nature of women's experience. Friedan identifies the deep discontent which women experience but are afraid to acknowledge as 'the problem with no name'. At the root of this problem is the expectation that patriarchy has of women that they willfindfulfilment as wives and mothers. Each woman, cloistered in her own home, has been fed a dream image of domesticity wherein all women will ultimately find contentment. That in fact women were not satisfied to be confined to such roles became increasingly obvious. Incidents of depression and nervous breakdown, alcohol and drug addiction increased 1. 2. 3.

B. Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963). B. Friedan, The Second Stage (New York: Summit Books, 1981). Friedan, Second Stage, p. 15.

1. Women's Experience from de Beauvoir to McCarthy Brown

29

dramatically in the late 1950s, signalling that all was not well. Yet messages from the media, the soap operas, the plethora of women's magazines which exploded onto the market, implied essentially the same thing: that the young American suburban housewife was the envy of women all over the world. 'She had found her true feminine fulfilment. As a housewife and mother, she was respected as a full and equal partner to man in his world. She was free to choose automobiles, clothes, appliances, supermarkets; she had everything that women ever dreamed of.'1 Many social commentators had alluded to the seeming dissatisfaction of American women but laid the blame squarely on the already burdened shoulders of women—their selfishness, their ambition and ultimately their loss of femininity. Friedan refused to accept this analysis of the situation and sought instead to evaluate the role assigned to women by patriarchy, a role which women were ultimately supposed to desire. She insists: 'we can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: I want something more than my husband and my children and my home'.2 Friedan recognized that this mystique was utterly destructive of intelligent young women who had bought the myth in its entirety. Thus she suggested that the core of the problem of women today is not sexual, but a problem of identity: a stunting or evasion of growth that is perpetuated by the feminine mystique: 'our culture does not permit women to accept or gratify their basic need to grow and fulfil their potentialities as human beings, a need which is not solely defined by their sexual role'.3 The accuracy of Friedan's description of the experience of women was attested to by the reaction which followed the book's publication. It was, as is often claimed, a book which changed lives. Perhaps its most immediate and also enduring value for women was that it enabled them to recognize their own despair as a political and collective experience. Many women have concluded that the suburban dream is a destructive myth which depends on the woman forfeiting her own identity for the sake of her family. Indeed the woman's movement has enabled many women to question this role which has been assigned to them. And yet thirty years on, when Friedan describes women in America as entering the second stage, there are still millions of women worldwide who are 1. 2. 3.

Friedan, Feminine Mystique, p. 16. Friedan, Feminine Mystique, p. 29. Friedan, Feminine Mystique, p. 68.

30

From Women's Experience to Feminist Theology

being seduced by the feminine mystique, which reduces women to a state of passivity and utter dependence. The Second Stage Indeed, many women during the 1970s and 1980s have begun to throw off the shackles of the suburban dream and have chosen to take up professions and careers. It is these women whom Friedan addresses in her equally perceptive second book The Second Stage. Many women are now taking equality for granted and living out their own aspirations according to the feminist agenda. Yet, Friedan says, in the first stage, our aim was full participation, power and voice in the mainstream, inside the party, the political process, the professions, the business world. Do women change, inevitably discard the radiant, enviable, idealized feminist dream, once they get inside and begin to share that power, and do they then operate on the same terms as men? Can women, will women even try to, change the terms?1

Women have found, with participating fully in the power games of patriarchy, that they are being forced yet again into other man-made roles: that of superwoman, successful career woman and proud housewife, or else highly motivated, independent, lonely career woman. Daughters are now imprisoned as much as their mothers were—undoubtedly the chains are of a different kind but they are no less solid. Women are now expected to do two jobs: one in the 'world' and the other, no less demanding, at home. Friedan correctly identifies the need here as a need to change terms, a need to restructure and reorganize the workings of patriarchy. In the first phase women fought for participation. We have come as far as this vision will take us in terms of equality. It is now time to question the roles ascribed for women by the feminist agenda of the women's movement. The understanding of women's experience has changed radically from its first evaluation in The Second Sex. Nevertheless the description of women as other is still pertinent today. Although the situations in which womenfindthemselves now are quite different from women's situations in the 1950s, one essential ingredient remains the same. Women are and always have been trying to fit into roles ascribed to them by patriarchy. Women have yet to identify and define roles for themselves—on their 1.

Friedan, Second Stage, p. 27.

1. Women's Experience from de Beauvoir to McCarthy Brown

31

own terms. Access to the workplace, business and politics has given women a false sense of liberation. We have gained positions of power and decision making but have yet to critique the 'career woman' role that patriarchy has devised for us. Yet the entry into the patriarchal power structure by women has enabled us to come to this stage—the second stage—where we recognize that it is not the content of the role ascribed to women which is problematic, but the very ascription of a role in itself: Women in the next decade have tofindsolutions for the practical problems, riches for themselves that feel more comfortable. We're gone through the metamorphosis. We're not worms any more, but we're not butterflies yet either.1

Black Women's Experience Well, children, whar dar is so much racket dar must be something out o' kilter. I tink dat 'twixt de niggers of de Souf and de women at de Norf all a talkin 'bout rights, de white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all dis here talkin' 'bout? Dat man ober dar say dat women needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted ober ditches, and to have de best places... and ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm!... I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me—and ain't I a woman? I could work as much as any man (when I could get it) and bear de lash as well—and ain't I a woman? I have borne five children and I seen 'em mos all sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother's grief, none but Jesus hear—and ain't I a woman?2

These strong words from Sojourner Truth at the Akron Convention in 1848 were spoken in protest at the explicit racism of the women's movement. White women must acknowledge the fact that, regrettably, racism has been a feature of the feminist movement from the beginning. Many of the gains of American women in the nineteenth century were at the expense of black women. Colonial women differentiated themselves completely from black women in an effort to gain access to the centres of male power and decision-making. The women's movement has indeed a poor record in relation to the treatment of black women, and many women of ethnic minorities, including for example Hispanic, 1. Friedan, Second Stage, p. 71. 2. There are many renderings of this memorable speech of Sojourner Truth. The one that I use is in b. hooks, Ain 't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (Boston: South End Press, 1981), p. 160.

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From Women's Experience to Feminist Theology

Asian, Jewish and Slavic women. Therefore what is said in relation to the oppression of black women may often be true of women of all ethnic minorities. Racism within the women's movement is, in effect, double edged. On a more subtle and, therefore, perhaps more dangerous level than overt discrimination is the refusal to recognize the differences in the experiences of black and white women. 'Women's experience', which has been a key term in both theory and praxis, has been formulated purely from the privileged position of white women. No differentiation is introduced. Thus racism, in this context, takes the form of neglect, of exclusion. Yet a far more blatant example of racism is evident in the history of the struggle for women's rights. There is much evidence of explicit racist statements and actions against black women and men. The appeal to experience has been a central methodological principle in all feminist theory, as we have seen thus far. It has been the basis for the rejection of structures, institutions and texts. The exclusion of women's experience from the centres of patriarchal control has been the reason for their rejection by feminists. Yet we are being forced to recognize that the category of women's experience, as it has been formulated and used by feminists, is inherendy racist and thus oppressive in itself. Racism has such a strong yet subtle hold that even those most attuned to recognizing instances of oppression failed to detect the latent racism which pervaded the entire women's movement. Our appeal to experience, to validate our claims, has been almost exclusively by white women. Thus our understanding of women's experience has been that of white women. The works of de Beauvoir, Saiving and Friedan which we have examined all fail to take account of the differentiation between black and white women because of their authors' histories and cultural conditioning. The women's movement has, in effect, replicated one of the most fundamental errors of patriarchy. Much energy has been expended critiquing the works of patriarchy which assume the identity of male and female experience. Feminists have identified the tendency of patriarchy to elevate male experience to the status of common human experience and thereby exclude women from the definition and description of human experience. Feminists have contended that male experience does not exhaust the meaning of human experience. Likewise feminists must be aware that white women's experience does not exhaust the nature of women's experience. We must allow the plurality and variety of women's

1. Women's Experience from de Beauvoir to McCarthy Brown

33

experience to be included; thus the unique experiences of black, Asian and Hispanic women, and all others, must be included in our description of women's experience. Susan Thistlethwaite, in her analysis of race and gender issues in Sex, Race, and God: Christian Feminism in Black and White,1 documents the discussion between Audre Lorde and Mary Daly on the question of difference. Concerned about the neglect of black women's experience in Daly's Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism Lorde enquires as to why Daly didn't include stories of Lorde's foremothers, Afrekete, Yemanje, Oyo, Mawulisa? Lorde is insistent that the recognition of difference and plurality does not bring division. She suggests instead that it is the obliteration of difference and the assimilation of all women's experience into a definition formulated from the perspective of white women which is problematic and which ultimately causes strife between us. Lorde comments perceptively on the fear of difference which forms the basis for all forms of oppression: Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people. As members of such an economy, we have all been programmed to respond to the human differences between us with fear and loathing and to handle that difference in one of three ways: ignore it, and if that is not possible, copy it if we think it is dominant, or destroy it if we think it is subordinate. But we have no patterns for relating across our human differences as equals. As a result, those differences have been misnamed and misused in the service of separation and confusion.2

The obliteration of gender differences has been a feature of theorizing in the academy of patriarchy. Parallel to this is the neglect of race as a significant formative factor in the understanding of women's experience. It is of paramount importance that all feminists, whether they are directly confronted with the issue of race or not, be attentive to the voices of all women, whether their experience mirrors ours or not. In the words of Delores Hines, [We] are told that apples and oranges are the same, when we can see that they are not. You cannot easily substitute one for the other in a recipe. Their odours are different. They appeal to people differently. Even a blind 1. S. Thistlethwaite, Sex, Race, and God: Christian Feminism in Black and White (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1990). 2. A. Lorde, * Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference', in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press, 1984), p. 115.

34

From Women*s Experience to Feminist Theology person can tell them apart. Yet a steady stream of rhetoric is aimed at convincing Black women how much alike their lives, experiences, wishes and decisions are to those of our stepsisters.1

In this section, instead of denying the difference, I wish to be attentive to the nature of black women's experience as an integral part of the general category of women's experience. I am acutely aware that black women's experience has not been my own experience. Thus I cannot identify myself with the analysis. I shall attempt therefore to provide a description of black women's experience from the pens of black women only. I shall use the works of Audre Lorde, Alice Walker and bell hooks in particular, along with the analysis of many other critics not specifically mentioned in the text.21 draw heavily from the insights provided by these women as to the nature of black women's experience. I shall also use the structure of analysis provided by bell hooks in her work Ain 't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, hooks examines the category of black women's experience from the historical perspective. She documents the experiences of black women from the years of slavery, through Black Reconstruction in the late 1860s. Looking at the twentieth century, she analyses the lot of women during the heady years of the civil rights movement and those of the emergence of the women's movement. Her conclusions all point towards an alliance between sexism and racism which ensured that black women remained outsiders to both the civil rights and the women's movements. hooks claims, in her opening chapter, that black women have had their identities completely socialized out of existence.3 She insists that black women have been the victims of the double oppression of racism and sexism by patriarchy. This double oppression is evident even in our language. Black women are completely invisible—they are not included in either the term 'negro', or the term 'woman'. That this is the case is demonstrated by hooks by looking at the comparisons made between the plight of women under patriarchy and that of black people. White feminists in the last century drew comparisons between 'women' and 1. D. Hines, 'Racism Breeds Stereotypes', The Witness 65 (Feb. 1982), p. 7, as quoted in Thistlethwaite, Sex, Race, and God, p. 58. 2. Cf. Lorde, Sister Outsider; A. Walker, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose (London: Women's Press, 1984); hooks, Ain't I a Woman, and Feminist Theory from Margin to Center (Boston: South End Press, 1983). I have also consulted the works of Barbara Christian, Barbara Smith and Nellie McKay. 3. hooks, Ain 'tla Woman, p. 7.

1. Women's Experience from de Beauvoir to McCarthy Brown

35

'blacks'. The social status of women, they claimed, was akin to the position of blacks under slavery. It is evident, however, insists hooks, that the term 'women' refers specifically and exclusively to white women and the term 'blacks' or 'negroes' refers to black men only, hooks suggests that if the white liberationists acknowledged the overlap of the terms 'black' and 'women' in the existence of black women, the analogy drawn would be superfluous. Yet the existence of black women was ignored and they were condemned to marginality and silence. One example of this is provided by hooks; she quotes a passage describing white women's reactions to the establishment's support for black male suffrage: 'Their shocked disbelief that men would so humiliate them by supporting votes for Negroes but not for women demonstrated the limits of their sympathy for black men, even as it drove these former allies further apart'.1 This passage adequately demonstrates the point that even in language the existence of black women is negated, hooks is indeed correct when she claims that black women have been socialized out of existence—even language denies them existence. The Black Female Slave Experience The negro woman is unprotected either by law or public opinion. She is the property of her master, and her daughters are his property. They are allowed to have no conscientious scruples, no sense of shame, no regard for the feelings of husband, or parent, they must be entirely subservient to the will of their owner on pain of being whipped as near unto death as will comport with his interest or quite to death if it suits his pleasure.2

The words of white liberationist Lydia Marie Child accurately describe the status of the black woman under slavery. Yet her awareness and critique of the situation of female slaves is by no means representative of the attitude of white women. Indeed the most serious indictment of white women's racism is evident when one examines their role in the enforcement of slavery. Undoubtedly colonial women were relatively powerless in the context of the institutions which ensured that slavery as a social system remained intact. However, one must be aware that slavery existed with the complicity of white women, often increasing in severity with their contributions, bell hooks identifies four main ways in which black women under 1. 2.

hooks, Ain 'tla Woman, p. 7. hooks, Ain 'tla Woman, p. 26.

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From Women's Experience to Feminist Theology

slavery were brutalized and exploited. In all patriarchal cultures rape has been used as the supreme act of violence against women. The frequency and ferocity of such attacks is described by black poet Ntozake Shange in 'with no immediate cause': every 3 minutes a woman is beaten every five minutes a woman is raped/every ten minutes a lil girl is molested yet I rode the subway today I sat next to an old man who may have beaten his old wife 3 minutes ago or 3 days/30 years ago he might have sodomized his daughter but I sat there cuz the young men on the train might beat some young woman later in the day or tomorrow I might not shut my door fast enuf/push hard enuf every 3 minutes it happens some woman's innocence rushes to her cheeks / pours from her mouth1

Indeed the rape of black women was an institution of control, for maintaining order and ensuring the obedience of black women. Black women's encounter with violent rape often occurred on the slave ships which brought them from Africa to America. On these ships rape was used as a method of torture in order to subdue African women. They were considered to be available for any member of the crew who might wish to abuse them, 'mothers with babes at their breasts basely branded and scarred'.2 The lot of the black woman did not improve once she reached the plantations. Again she was the target of physical and sexual abuse by owners, sons and overseers who frequently used rape or the threat of it to ensure the submission of black women. Under slavery black women worked both in the fields and in the households, but nowhere were they safe from sexual violence. In the words of one female slave,

1. N. Shange, 'with no immediate cause', in nappy edges (London: Methuen, 1987). 2. hooks, Ain 'tla Woman, p. 18.

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37

the slave girl is reared in an atmosphere of licentiousness and fear. The lash and the foul talk of her masters and his sons are her teachers. When she is fourteen orfifteen,her owner or his sons, or the overseer, or perhaps all of them, begin to bribe her with presents. If these failed to accomplish their purpose, she is whipped or starved into submission to their will.1 Underlying this frequency of rape among male colonists was the assumption that African women were inordinately sexual. The image of the 'sexual savage' was imposed on African men and women, but to a greater degree on women. Ultimately originating in a religious tradition which views women to be seducers and temptresses, the notion of black women as the embodiment of sexuality and evil gained credence. In direct proportion to the extent to which black women were thought to be sexual and lustful, white women were conversely thought to be the embodiment of purity and virtue. Colonial women too accepted this description of black women—there are many instances recorded whereby colonial women, onfindingtheir husbands abusing a slave, would blame and brutalize the victim. Stanley Feldstein records an incident of the owner of a plantation being discovered raping a thirteen-year-old slave girl by his wife. The mistress's rage was directed entirely at the child who was flogged daily for several weeks.2 This incident brings us to the second tool of oppression of black female slaves: flogging. Flogging was used both with and without rape in order to punish or often simply to instill fear. Sadistic whipping of naked black women was a common feature of slavery. Flogging did not admit of any exceptions—old women, children, pregnant women and new mothers were all, without discrimination, subject to such attacks. Nakedness was a further insult in a culture which was obsessed with obliterating the female body; so too was the public nature of the attack. 'After he exhausted himself whipping her he sent to his house for sealing wax and a lighted candle and, melting the wax, dropped it upon the woman's lacerated back. He then got a riding whip and, standing over the woman, picked off the hardened wax by switching at it.'3 A further source of oppression of black female slaves was enforced reproduction. Although women were expected to work all day in the fields or in the colonial house their primary function was to reproduce. Violence was, as always, used as a threat to slave women who failed to 1. 2. 3.

hooks, Ain 't I a Woman, p. 24. hooks, Ain 'tla Woman, p. 37. hooks, Ain 'tla Woman, p. 38.

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From Women's Experience to Feminist Theology

reproduce. The comparison, made by observer Olmstead, of slave women and horses and mules is horrific, yet not surprising. A slave woman was valuable in direct proportion to the number of slave children she could produce, which were in turn either sold at slave markets or raised to work on the master's plantation. As hooks relates, 'advertisements announcing the sale of black female slaves used the terms "breeding slaves", "child bearing woman", "breeding period", "too old to breed" to describe individual women'.1 Finally, the fourth way identified by hooks in which black women were oppressed under slavery was a direct result of the idealization of white womanhood, commonly known as the 'cult of true womanhood'. Patriarchy in the nineteenth century truly divided women and demoralized black women. Commentators of the slave experience have documented many small attempts made by black women to become more 'feminine'. The promise of a new dress or a hair ribbon or a handkerchief was used by many owners to manipulate slaves, appealing to their desire to become more 'feminine', as idealized by the cult of true womanhood. Thus African women sold into slavery assimilated the values and ideals defined by the racist, sexist society and ultimately experienced themselves and their children as base and inferior. There is a particularly poignant incident related in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye? set a century later, in which Pecola's mother is thoroughly infatuated with the white children whom she cares for, feeling only contempt for her own black children. The slave experience of black women is important from many perspectives. As with all atrocities, it is important that those of slavery be kept uppermost in our minds so that we remain vigilant lest they be repeated. The slave experience has been a central formative experience for all black women. The institutionalized oppression is still only a generation past and the racism of individuals and structures has abated little. The slave experience is central to the historical consciousness of all black people, particularly women who were the victims of violent racism and sexism.

1. 2.

hooks, Ain 'tla Woman, p. 39. T. Morrison, The Bluest Eye (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1970).

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39

Reconstruction The identification of black women with sexuality and their subsequent degradation is a feature of slavery which has endured. During the period of Black Reconstruction in the years following abolition the devaluation of black womanhood continued. Although black women struggled against the stereotypes concocted by society, they failed to free themselves of the 'sexual savage' label. Despite adopting mannerisms and conduct typical of white women, black women remained within the confines allowed them by racist patriarchy. As a result, although legally freed, black women remained first and foremost the objects of male sexual violence—both verbal and physical. Deriving its impetus from the myth that all black women were sexually loose, society continued to exploit black women sexually. Thus abolition made very litde difference to the lot of the black woman. Racist patriarchy stereotyped black women as being sexually permissive. Since black women carry the burden of such an image there is little outrage when acts of sexual violence are perpetrated against them. The victim is considered to be at fault. White society in the years of reconstruction created and perpetuated another myth which in effect divided black women and men and ensured that black men allied themselves with patriarchy. The myth is that of black matriarchy. Since black women in America have always been forced to work outside the home, in addition to being housewives, their employment has been construed by patriarchy to be a threat to black masculinity. As black women were forced onto the job market into low grade manual labour they were 'masculinized': seen to be not conforming to the standard of idealized womanhood which was rampant in America. Black women were cast in a negative light. They were required, because of dire economic situations, to perform difficult manual work outside the home and were despised by men, black and white alike, for doing so. In order to cope with the reality that black women were indeed capable of performing traditional 'male' tasks, in addition to bearing and raising children, patriarchy created the image of the black matriarch—a fierce and masculinized being who had nothing in common with white, 'real' women. In the words of Jean Bond and Pauline Perry, 'the casting of this image of the black female in sociological bold relief is both consistent and logical in racist terms, for the socalled Black matriarch is a kind of folk character largely fashioned by

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From Women's Experience to Feminist Theology

whites out of half truths and lies about the involuntary conditions of black women'.1 Abolition had little effect, then, on the real lives of black women. Black men in the subsequent decades allied themselves consistently with white men where possible. During the years of slavery there was general acceptance of the male-female hierarchy among slaves and this continued. Because of the vicious nature of racist attacks on black people there was an unwillingness to acknowledge black male sexism. All were encouraged and indeed required to form a united front against racism which in turn ensured the continuation of patriarchy in the black community. Undermined by the inability to gain employment, and confined to the home, many black men experienced great rage, directed against black women and encouraged by white society. Black men began to see black women as the enemy, a threat to their already frail masculinity. In this context the Black Power movement of the 1960s emerged. Black leaders have been reluctant to acknowledge the existence of sexism in black communities since they fear it will dilute the commitment to the struggle against racism. Yet much of the rage of the black civil rights movement has been against power structures which have closed their ranks to the black male population. There was and still is little critique of the institutions of patriarchy themselves, bell hooks insists that many of the black political leaders of the 1960s movement understood their struggle to be an effort to gain support for an emerging black patriarchy.2 Black women in the movement were consigned to the roles traditionally assigned to women—they cooked and cleaned for and supported their men. Thus sexism united the two groups of men who increasingly saw black women as the aggressors. White women were considered by both black and white men to be more desirable. A measure of success for a black man was that he could possess a white woman—who conformed to the standards of ideal beauty. Black women were discarded, hated and ultimately punished for their difference by men both black and white. Black women, as a group, were thus outsiders in the black civil rights movement. Many women participated, yet only within the roles ascribed to them by patriarchy. Unfortunately the reputation of the other popular movement of the 1960s, the women's movement, is no less suspect. 1. 2.

hooks, Ain 'tla Woman, p. 72. hooks, Ain 'tla Woman, p. 97.

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White women too accepted the racist telling of American history, accepting the stereotypes of black women as strong, independent, masculinized. The women's movement excluded black women, ignored their existence and made no reference to racial identity in its theory. As a result many black women rejected the women's movement as being inherently racist. They interpreted the actions of white women to be those of people interested only in gaining access to the mainstream of American capitalism. The movement was used, they claimed, as a vehicle for personal enhancement. Much of this criticism is indeed warranted. Many mistakes have been made in the name of women's liberation. Black women's experience ought not to be a ghetto in a predominantly white account of women's experience. The term women's experience ought to encapsulate the stories of women of all races, respecting the variety and difference which this implies. In so far as it is possible, we have considered, in general terms, the category of women's experience as the focus for feminist critique of patriarchy. We have looked at leading feminists' articulations of what they perceive to be the dominant experiences of women under patriarchy. I have been attentive to the universalizing tendencies in much feminist theory. Undoubtedly the recognition of particularity, and of differences among women, has been notably absent from much feminist scholarship. With the realization that the term 'women's experience' has been central for theorists as diverse as de Beauvoir, hooks and Friedan, one must, I contend, place a hermeneutic of difference at the core of feminist thinking. Yet there are two major directions evident in feminist writing. On the one hand there is the attempt to analyse the experiences of oppression and of exclusion which women have had under patriarchy. As we have noted, racial, economic and sexual particularities ought to be as important as any desire to describe a potentially universal experience of oppression. In a more positive vein feminists have enabled women to celebrate and affirm their identities as women, reclaiming experiences which have been ignored by patriarchy, and using them as primary resources for their scholarship. Experience of Motherhood Women's experience of motherhood under the rule of the fathers has been somewhat ambivalent. Nevertheless I have identified it, within feminist scholarship, as a source of celebration and affirmation. This

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ambiguity is in need of explanation. In the introduction to Womanspirit Rising, a hugely influential collection of essays in religion, Carol Christ and Judith Plaskow identified women's experience as double edged. They identified two poles as emerging within the feminist analysis of women's experience:first,women's feminist experience, and secondly, women's traditional experience.1 We have, in the preceding pages, been dealing in a critical way with what one might call women's feminist experience, being aware that for many women the way in which this experience has been dealt with has been a source of oppression. Thus the category of women's feminist experience (that is, the recognition of oppression in the various roles which women have been ascribed and the struggle to transform them) is in constant need of revision and critique, lest it become a further source of oppression for women. Women's traditional experience, much maligned in the early decades of the women's movement, has also become an important source for feminist theory. The women's movement has enabled women to celebrate and affirm our unique experiences—primarily associated with our bodies. Women have thus analysed their experiences of motherhood, menstruation and menopause, disentangled them from the patriarchal institutions which have sought to control them, and reclaimed them as a vital resource for transformation. Many of the experiences of oppression have thus been transformed into experiences of celebration and sources of power. Motherhood has been variously experienced and analysed through the centuries. It has been a source of great joy and simultaneously a source of great oppression. In our attempt to understand this most complex of experiences we will look primarily at Adrienne Rich's work Of Woman Born, which is an examination of both the experience and the institution of motherhood. I shall also mention Carol Christ's analysis of Doris Lessing's Martha Quest2 and the experience of motherhood from a black woman's perspective. 1. Christ and Plaskow (eds.), Womanspirit Rising, p. 8. 2. C. Christ, 'Spiritual Quest and Women's Experience', in idem and Plaskow (eds.), Womanspirit Rising, pp. 228-45; also ch. 5 of Diving Deep and Surfacing: Women Writers on Spiritual Quest (repr.; Boston: Beacon Press, 1986 [1980]). Although I have not included it in my analysis of the experience and institution of motherhood, I consider S. Ruddick's recently published Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace (London: Women's Press, 1990) to be important, since she urges us to be attentive to the possibilities for peace which maternal thinking offers.

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Rich has, through her work on motherhood, enabled women to reclaim the experience of motherhood as vital, energizing and powerful. She has achieved this by recognizing the violence done to women by patriarchy with its definition of and control of mothering. Rich has separated the patriarchal definition or institution from women's actual experience of mothering and has thus reclaimed, for women, its power. Rich writes: 'My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness.'1 She opens her book with an examination of the 'anger and tenderness', ambiguously intertwined, which characterized her own experience of motherhood. Her acknowledgment of the anger and subsequent guilt which formed an integral part of that experience has enabled her to identify the power of patriarchy in its construction of the institution of motherhood. At the basis of the patriarchal institution is the assumption that all women are personally gratified and fulfilled in the experience of mothering. Relinquishing her own identity, a mother will live through and for her children, her needs always sacrificed for theirs, her life dictated by theirs. As Rich describes it, my anger \vould rise; I would feel the futility of any attempt to salvage myself, and also the inequality between us: my needs always balanced against those of a child, and always losing. I could love so much better, I told myself, after even a quarter-hour of selfishness, of peace, of detachment from my children.2 Coupled with this assumption that motherhood is the most natural and desirable state for a woman is the identification of women's bodies as the source of evil and pollution, defilement and sin. In order to hold both notions simultaneously patriarchy has divided and separated women. Mothers are pure, asexual and ultimately holy, fulfilling their duties as wives and mothers, ensuring the survival of patriarchy. All other women, with the exception of those who have renounced their sexuality entirely, are lustful, overtly sexual, cunning, sources of evil. Women are thus divided against themselves and see 'the others' as the enemy—threatening their existence. Carol Christ, in her analysis of Doris Lessing's The Children of 1. Rich, Of Woman Born, p. 21. 2. Rich, Of Woman Born, p. 23.

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Violence} has sought to retrieve as a source for spirituality the experience of Martha Quest and her painful journey from nothingness to fulfilment. Having walked out on her own marriage, Martha subsequently spends twenty years mothering another woman's children. Christ insists that the basic insight to be gleaned from Lessing's treatment of Martha's experience of motherhood is that in order for mothering to provide opportunities for insight, a mother must achieve a sense of distance from her children. This is suggested symbolically by Lessing by Martha's not being the children's birth mother. It emphasizes the central difficulty, which is highlighted also by Rich: the forced identification of mothers with children. Yet this is but a prelude to the ultimate experience and coming to knowledge which characterizes Martha's journey. Living with and through Lynda's 'madness', she explores the 'regions of nonordinary reality'2 whereby the two separated parts of women's experience, mother and witch or madwoman, are joined. 'From the integration of the separated comes a new power.'3 Both Rich and Lessing are acutely aware that patriarchy has controlled women through its definition of motherhood. The mother is the ultimate example of selfsacrifice, of selflessness. In order to maintain this situation the women who renounce this have been stereotyped as sexual, sinful and often mad. Yet the conclusion of Martha's quest and the insights of Adrienne Rich exhort women to defy the myths of patriarchy and acknowledge the existence within themselves of both elements, mother and madwoman. In addition to reclaiming our understanding of motherhood, Rich seeks to enable women to regain control of the birthing process. In an engaging chapter entitled 'Hands of Flesh, Hands of Iron' Rich insists that the questions of how women have given birth and who has aided them are political rather than personal. She states her basic position thus: [T]he woman awaiting her period, or the onset of labour, the woman lying on a table undergoing abortion or pushing her baby out, the woman inserting a diaphragm or swallowing her daily pill, is doing these things under the influence of centuries of imprinting. Her choices—when she has

1. The series entitled The Children of Violence comprises Martha Quest (London: Michael Joseph, 1952), A Proper Marriage (London: Michael Joseph, 1954), A Ripple from the Storm (London: Michael Joseph, 1958), Landlocked (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1965), and The Four-Gated City (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1969). 2. Christ, 'Spiritual Quest and Women's Experience\ p. 236. 3. Christ, 'Spiritual Quest and Women's Experience', p. 237.

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any—are made, or outlawed, within the context of laws and professional codes, religious sanctions and ethnic traditions, from whose creation women have been historically excluded.1 The issue of the control of childbirth is problematic. Many feminists claim that with the growing medicalization of childbirth, women are losing control. A further feature of childbirth is the passivity of the woman undergoing the experience. Rich sees both of these elements as inextricably linked with the passive suffering of the woman in childbirth being the result of the annexation of birthing by men. Of course this has not always been the case. Historical evidence points to the fact that up until the eighteenth century childbirth was almost exclusively the province of women. Birth attendants were usually women who used herbs and natural remedies to aid the process and ensure that childbirth was quick and relatively painless. But midwives were often considered to be dangerous, a threat to the dominant order. Indeed it is argued that the slaughter of women in the Middle Ages, under the direction of the Inquisition, can be attributed in part to women's control of birthing. Whether one subscribes to a conspiracy theory or not, the practical effect was that obstetrics was increasingly dominated by male physicians, who gradually gained almost complete control of it.2 Hand in hand with the annexation of the childbirth process by male practitioners has come the alienation of labour. Anthropologist Brigitte Jordon has insisted that childbirth is a culturally produced event. Medical practice has ignored a woman's natural aptitude to give birth and instead has instituted a complex of practices which are justified, on medical grounds, as being in the best interest of mother and child... induction and stimulation of labour with drugs, the routine administration of sedatives and of medication for pain relief, the separation of the labouring woman from any sources of

1. Rich, Of Woman Born, p. 128. 2. For a complete discussion of the gradual growth of male control of childbirth cf. B. Ehrenreich and D. English, Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers (New York: Feminist Press, 1973); also AJ. Rongy, Childbirth, Yesterday and Today (New York: Emerson, 1973), H. Graham, Eternal Eve: The Mysteries of Childbirth and the Customs that Surround it (London: Hutchinson, 1960); S. Kitzinger, The Experience of Childbirth (Baltimore: Pelican, 1973), and J. Brown et al, Two Births (New York: Random House, 1972).

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From Women *s Experience to Feminist Theology psychological support, surgical rupturing of the membranes, routine epsiotomy, routine forceps delivery, and the lithotomy position for delivery, to name just a few.1

Rich insists that women need to regain control of the birthing process. Childbirth has been torn from a woman's hands and has been treated as a medical emergency. Many women have been calling for the 'rewomanization' of childbirth. That is, women must be allowed and enabled to have natural childbirths in their homes, without induction, without unnecessary medication or anaesthesia, with the support of their families. It is only when women can reclaim and rehumanize the process that childbirth can be an affirmative and joyous experience. The experience of motherhood for black women has been characterized primarily by the struggle against appalling poverty and racism. Commentators have insisted that, since black women both during and after slavery have been required to work full time outside the home, any analysis of motherhood from a black woman's perspective must take account of this fact. Motherhood, for many black women, means poverty, violence and guilt. Many novels and essays from black women— Alice Walker, Audre Lorde and Barbara Christian, to name but a few— have analysed the experience and have insisted that race makes an essential difference to the process. Gaining control of and defining motherhood for many black women will initially take the form of economic and social reform, since motherhood is rarely a fulfilling experience when it is fraught with economic burdens, fear and violence. 'Plant these together,' she says. Then she is gone. The bird plucks a star like a glowing fruit with her beak. The wings beat with your breath. 'She's crowning!' the women cry 'Bear down. Push!' You cry out together with one voice. The child slides free. 'A girl!' the women cry in delight. They give her to her mother, who holds her close as the old women chant a song of praise: A great gift, a precious gift Has come to us... You catch the birth blood in a bowl to pour over the fields...2

1. Rich, Of Woman Born, p. 177. 2. Starhawk, Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority, and Mystery (New York: Harper & Row, 1987,1990), p. 35.

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Menstruation 1

Penelope Washbourn has insisted that for women in particular, life crises have usually been associated with having a female body. Since, as women, we have been taught to despise their bodies, we go through our lives denying our natural functions and processes. Clearly no other event demonstrates this as radically as menstruation. Few women have joyful memories of the onset of menstruation; most have memories of fear, guilt and abhorrence. 'One day I woke up and my bed was a sea of blood. I felt so ashamed and told my mother...We used to call it the "curse" in our house and so it was for me.'2 Many psychologists would agree that the feelings of shame and fear associated with menstruation are a result of cultural conditioning. Young women are taught to hide the fact that they are menstruating, are restricted in their activities, are, in effect, taught to deny the existence of this process. This denial and ignoring of menstruation is the product of centuries of misogynism. Cultic taboos associated with women in Near Eastern countries, the attitudes promoted by biblical Judaism and perpetuated in the writings of the Christian apologists have ensured that the onset of menstruation has been experienced as oppressive rather than as a source for celebration.3 Many women have sought to reclaim the experience of menstruation also and transform it into an important formative event in the life of the young woman. Ritual has been central to this reclamation. It is argued that young women who experience menstruation positively learn to trust and admire their own bodies, learn to deal responsibly with their fertility instead of denying it and learn to celebrate their identity as women. Starhawk describes the celebration of a young woman's first menstruation:

1. P. Washbourn, 'Becoming Woman: Menstruation as Spiritual Challenge', in Christ and Plaskow (eds.), Womanspirit Rising, pp. 246-58. 2. Washbourn, 'Becoming Woman', p. 248. 3. Cf. for example Gen. 16.1-3; 30.1-3; Lev. 12.2, 5; 12-15; 27.2-8; 1 Cor. 11.4-10; 14.34-35; 2 Cor. 2.9-15; Justin Martyr, Second Apology 5.3ff.; Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus 2,12; Tertullian, De Cultu Feminarum 1,1; Augustine, De Trinitate 1.1,10.

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From Women's Experience to Feminist Theology [W]e prepared for months, making her a special robe upon which each of us embroidered some symbol of power. On the appointed day, we took her and her mother down to the beach. We tied them together with a.silver cord, and asked them to run. They ran together as far as the mother could run; then we cut them apart and the daughter ran on alone. We went then to a friend's house and joined other women in a hot tub. Thirteen of us, all women, spent the afternoon telling Bethany the stories of how we had become the women we were. Each of us gave her a special gift. We dressed her in her robe, formed a circle around her, and chanted her name to empower her. Afterward, we went into the house, where the men in our community had prepared a special feast of red foods in her honour. We had wanted the ritual to be a women's mystery, but we also wanted Bethany to experience her womanhood being celebrated and affirmed by men. The men also gave her gifts... 1

The celebration of menstruation in many communities has been a feature of feminism. Menstruation can symbolize the power and fertility of our bodies and our life-giving potential. Many recognize that it is vital that young women be enabled to celebrate the mystery and creativity of their bodies in a culture which has sought to ignore and control them. Reclamation of Nature The reclamation and positive evaluation of nature has been a central theme in feminist scholarship. It has provided the focus for a specifically female culture, for rituals and for myths. We will examine the various shades and emphases within the dominant themes that emerge: the interconnectedness of all life, the immanence of the Goddess, the transformation of our notions of power and the necessity for an ecological, somatic theology. I have chosen, as representative of the different positions held, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Mary Daly and Starhawk. We will also look at the emphasis on the distortions of nature as evident in the work of bell hooks and Toni Morrison. Connected with the elevation of nature is the emphasis on peace activism. We will consider the disparate perspectives of Mary Condren and Karen Brown in this context. In this brief consideration of the experience of women in terms of nature and peace activism we must be aware of the voluminous nature of work on this topic. It has become one of the key areas in feminist scholarship and has provided an important wellspring for empowerment. 1.

Starhawk, Truth or Dare, p. 297.

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It is a significant women's experience, both in an individual and a communal sense, and therefore is an integral part of any consideration of the category of women's experience as a starting point for theology. Rosemary Radford Ruether is perhaps the most vocal of Christian feminists on the relationship between women and nature. In her work Sexism and God-Talk1 and in her many contributions to seminars and magazines she has dealt with this relationship. Ruether insists that all patriarchal traditions, with the image of the male warrior God, operate on the basis of dualities. Fundamental to the Jewish and Christian traditions, and the Platonist and Aristotelian philosophies which have formed the Western world-view, is the exaltation of intellect over body. The gradual development of patriarchal consciousness, which is manifest supremely in the separation of the deities from the realm of nature, has resulted in the alienation of body and mind, self and world, individual and community and ultimately male and female. Since the traits of rationality, intellectuality and objectivity have culturally been attributed to the male, women have traditionally been identified with sensuality, bodiliness and ultimately sinfulness. Although many feminists have rejected this identification of woman and nature, others have sought to use this traditional affinity to rehabilitate nature and restore it to a position of integrity. The idealization of the intellect and the rational, gaining impetus from the Enlightenment, has resulted in a transcendent consciousness which understands nature as something to be manipulated and controlled. With developments in technological control of nature, coupled with the worldnegating spirituality of Christianity, this transcendent consciousness is ever increasing. In addition to such an anti-immanence world-view is the identification of women with bodily existence. Further, Ruether insists, 'the exclusively male God who creates out of nothing, transcending nature and dominating history, and upon whose all-powerful wrath and grace man hangs as a miserable, crestfallen sinner, is the theological selfimage and guilty conscience of this self-infinitizing spirit'.2 Ruether proposes a dual approach to the resolution of this situation. She is adamant that in order to ensure our survival in an age of nuclear 1. R.R. Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Towards a Feminist Theology (London: SCM Press, 1983). 2. R.R. Ruether, 4Motherearth and the Megamachine: A Theology of Liberation in a Feminine Somatic and Ecological Perspective\ in Christ and Plaskow (eds.), Womanspirit Rising, p. 49.

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terrorism we must reject the dualistic transcendent consciousness which pervades our entire world-view. On the one hand, since women have traditionally been denied the possibilities for * autonomous creative consciousness'1 we must claim the capacities of intellect, rationality and objectivity for ourselves. Yet we must be cautious that we do not accept as part and parcel of such capacities the values which have brought humanity to the edge of destruction. Ruether further proposes that since women have traditionally been identified with nature we must transform this identification and be spokeswomen for the reconciliation of body and spirit.2 Ruether sees the liberation of women as intimately connected with the liberation of nature from technological control. Underlying the domination of each is the dualistic consciousness out of which patriarchy operates. The separation and elevation of one perspective at the expense of another, and the cultivation of rational consciousness, has resulted in the alienation of human beings from each other and from the earth. Ruether appeals for a revolution which will reject patriarchal consciousness and transform all relationships and social structures. 'The revolution of the feminine revolts against the denatured Babel of concrete and steel that stifles the living soil. It does not merely reject the spirit child born from the earth but seeks to reclaim spirit for body and body for spirit in a messianic appearing of the body of God.'3 There has been a tendency in some ecofeminist literature to overemphasize this dualism. Undoubtedly this division has been problematic in the ways described by Ruether. However, this is primarily because one element has been demonized. I believe that it is important for feminists not to dismiss the value of the 'cultivation of rational consciousness' since it is precisely this which has enabled women to engage in feminist criticism. The suspicion of and hostility to intellectual endeavour is a regrettable feature of some feminist, and in particular ecofeminist, work. In her recent, and some would say finest work, Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing,4 Ruether returns to the issue of ecology. She argues very convincingly that in the quest for earth-healing Western culture needs to create new narratives which will inspire and 1. Ruether, 'Motherearth', p. 51. 2. Ruether, 'Motherearth', p. 51. 3. Ruether, 'Motherearth\ p. 52. 4. R.R. Ruether, Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing (London: SCM Press, 1992).

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evoke eco-justice, that is, the promotion of just and loving relationships. This theme is also central to the elemental feminist philosophy of Mary Daly as articulated in her work Pure Lust. In a highly innovative reworking of de Beauvoir's notion of woman as other, Daly provides the basis for a separatist woman-identified culture. Daly is critical of de Beauvoir's assumption that women are the 'second sex', accusing her of accepting uncritically the memory-erasing power of patriarchy. Nevertheless she uses de Beauvoir's category of other as the basis for her biophilic philosophy. In order to overcome the hegemony of oppression and violence which is patriarchy, Daly insists that the subjectobject dualism of science and philosophy must be challenged. This will enable one to take seriously the integrity of nature and the natural superiority of women. Daly insists that woman is the primal Other within patriarchy and as such has the 'primal Possibility of Allocentric knowledge that can embrace our Selves and touch others'.1 The consciousness of her own Otherness enables woman to know other Others and effect transformations. Women are thus 'shape-shifters', drawing us into the realization of further possibilities for relationship and living. Daly has outlined four 'leaps of transformation' which must be effected in order that each woman begin to live at the level of bewitching. The starting point and therefore the first leap for metamorphosis is the perception of her otherness in relation to all the shapes and frames imposed upon a woman by patriarchy. It is in the recognition of her otherness that a woman prepares herself for transformative acts of be-witching.2 Daly is adamant that no actual shape-shifting can be effected without faithfulness to the intuition of radical otherness from the symbol-shapes, idea-shapes, relation-shapes of patriarchy. Central to the exorcism of patriarchal shapes is the 'disposing of the malegod',3 which is a crucial step, according to Daly. The next step is the recognition and consciousness of patriarchal sanctions against radical feminism. In order that the Nag Novice be able to take leaps of transformation she must be constantly aware of the hostility and violence which patriarchy has in store for her. The third step in the process is woman-identification. Daly insists that the Novice Nag must have a lust for bonding with other women, a lust for Be-Friending. The fourth and final mark of genuine 1. 2. 3.

Daly, Pure Lust, p. 395. Daly, Pure Lust, p. 395. Daly, Pure Lust, p. 399.

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metamorphosis is persistence whereby with 'the Shape-shifting acts of Be-Witching women create vortices of gynergy which can help pull women away from the traps of labeldom into Realization of their/our magnificent Otherness'.1 Daly understands patriarchy in a very particular way. Patriarchy is, in her vocabulary, synonymous with biocide—patriarchy is life-violating and destructive. Conversely Daly insists that women are naturally biophilic and must reverse the nature- and female-despising processes of patriarchy. Thus the essential connection between women and nature which is manifest in women's biophilia is central to the elemental feminist philosophy of Mary Daly. The separatism proposed by Daly has ensured that she remains a marginal, though highly significant philosopher within the feminist community. The life-affirming spirituality of Starhawk, although it has much in common with the elemental philosophy of Mary Daly, provides us with another perspective on the experience of women in relation to nature. Her most recent work Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority and Mystery provides us with an insight into her craft. We like to tell ourselves that we remember the First Mother She is alive in you as you in her... ... Feel her in your belly, at the bottom of breath Her power is life; it is stronger... ... You are her Your misty breath great clouds of gasses set in motion... ... In your veins flow ocean water... ...Life, teeming, greedy life... 2

The story of beginnings written by Starhawk provides us with a myth which enshrines her basic philosophy. Witchcraft, as interpreted by Starhawk, promotes an intrinsic relationship between the Goddess, nature and humanity. Starhawk suggests that the earth is the living body of the Goddess and is therefore sacred. We too partake in the being of the Goddess. Witches share a common understanding that the sacred is found in nature and in ourselves, that the sacred is immanent and not transcendent. Such a perspective affirms the interconnectedness of all life and assures that technological advancement is not gained at the expense of the natural realm. Perceiving the interconnectedness of all life 1. 2.

Daly, Pure Lust, p. 398. Starhawk, Truth or Dare, p. 2.

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promotes transformation of the 'shapes of patriarchy' which are based on relationships of domination, not mutuality. As a result our understanding of power changes. Rejecting the model of power-over which is central to patriarchal consciousness, Starhawk insists that power-fromwithin, truly liberative power, 'arises from our sense of connection, our bonding with other human beings and with the environment'.1 Truth or Dare is essentially an exploration of the meaning and nature of such power from within which is present in 'acts of creation and connection, in planting, building, writing, cleaning, healing, soothing, playing, singing, making love...acting...to oppose control'.2 Susan Thistlethwaite, in her analysis of the different perspective which race brings to our perception of reality,3 admonishes us to be aware of the universalizing tendencies in feminist philosophy and theology. She draws particular attention to the way in which women of colour have perceived nature and warns against the automatic assumption of a natural affinity between women and nature. Commenting on the analysis of bell hooks and on the attitude of Toni Morrison as evident from her novel Sula*Thistlethwaite insists that displacement and not harmony is the dominant experience. The alienation of the black community from the earth is a central theme in much of the writing of black women. Susan Thistlethwaite accurately interprets the situation when she writes: [0]f Toni Morrison's character Guitar Baines in Sula, Barbara Christian has written that 'like the earth, which is turned soggy by the blood of racism he is maimed'. For me this phrase captures the difference race makes when one approaches the category of nature. For the black woman, nature as she finds it has not escaped the deformations of racism. Therefore no assumptions of human capacity, of women's capacity, to relate to their 'sister', the earth, can be made without considering the factor of race in a racist culture.5

There is little doubt that the affinity between women and nature, and the possibility which this affords for the restoration ofrightrelationships, has been a central theme and experience in feminist circles. Yet this must not blind us to the hostility which many women have experienced, which necessitates that we acknowledge the distortions in nature, in 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Starhawk, Truth or Dare, p. 10. Starhawk, Truth or Dare, p. 10. Thisdethwaite, Sex, Race and God. T. Morrison, Sula (New York: Knopf, 1974). Thisdethwaite, Sex, Race and God, p. 70.

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addition to the harmonies. In the words of Alice Walker's character Shug Avery, 'but one day when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it come to me: that feeling of being part of everything, not separate at all'.1 Pacifism Pacifism is yet another context in which feminist scholars have suggested that women can celebrate their uniqueness. As in the case of nature, there is here much diversity in both the theory and praxis of feminist communities. While historically it is correct to maintain that women have rarely initiated wars or peopled the armies, feminists would agree that women have played a number of roles, both symbolic and actual, in the history of warfare. 'Women have acted as "pretexts for war", "recompense for the allies", "valuables" that need to be defended, guarantors of "the warrior's rest and recreation", nurses, and cheerleaders, "miracle mothers", "wistful wives", "treacherous tramps" and "co-operative citizens".'2 Such roles, though essentially ancillary, are those attributed to women by patriarchy. Although there is much disagreement in the nature/nurture debate as to whether women are naturally more peace-loving,31 would agree with those who reject the hypothesis that there is a discernable 'woman's nature' which is a maternal and peace-oriented one. As with the issue of the relationship to nature, I would suggest that the source of the potential of women for transformation lies not in their nature but in their status as other in a patriarchal environment. Free from a necessity to preserve the status quo women can empower each other to protest and work towards creative change,finallytaking responsibility for our lives, personal and political. The experience of active resistance to the militarism of patriarchy has 1. A. Walker, The Color Purple (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982), p. 167. 2. M. Condren, T o Bear Children for the Fatherland: Mothers and Militarism', in A. Carr and E. Schiissler Fiorenza (eds.), Motherhood: Experience, Institution, Theology (Concilium, 206; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1989), pp. 83-89. 3. For an excellent discussion of the variety of perspectives in the nature/nurture debate see J. Sayers, Biological Politics: Feminist and Anti-Feminist Perspectives (London: Tavistock, 1982), particularly the chapter entitled 'Biology and the Theories of Contemporary Feminism\ pp. 173-204, where the views of Juliet Mitchell, Mary Daly, Kate Millett, Marlene Dixon and others are discussed.

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been a formative one in the lives of many women. It thus provides us with another perspective when considering the meaning of the category of women's experience as one of the basic starting points for a feminist theology. A more marginal, though no less important perspective is provided by American anthropologist Karen Brown in her relationship with the Vodou culture of Haiti.1 Brown, analysing the way in which the Yoruban slaves dealt with their experience of oppression, has suggested that a truly transformative way to deal with one's anger at injustice is to claim it and essentially 'marry it'. She did so symbolically, by marrying, during a Vodou ritual, the war god Ogou. Recognizing that feminists have to live in a world of violence and aggression, Karen Brown is insistent that although women have traditionally been victims of war and injustice, we all have the capacity to be oppressors. In acknowledging the presence of the war god in our anger we are aware of our own potential for aggression and violence, which can be sources of creativity as well as of destruction. Lesbian Existence The issue of sexual preference and lesbian existence is a complex one, not least because of the variety of responses to the subject within the lesbian 'community' and within feminist scholarship. Here, as with most other issues, one finds the full range of the spectrum, from those who regard the choice for lesbian sexuality as simply one of sexual preference, to those who insist that lesbian existence challenges the entire structure of the heterosexual social contract and identifies compulsory heterosexuality as a political institution, maintained by a series of sanctions and rewards. There are a number of different dimensions of the discussion which can only be mentioned briefly here. These are the virtual invisibility of lesbian existence both historically and in current feminist scholarship, the nature of lesbian existence, the thesis that compulsory heterosexuality is a political institution, the relationship between homophobia and misogyny and the proposal of radical lesbian feminism to eradicate 'the straight mind' and to challenge this most basic of institutions. In a quite damning review of four contemporary tracts Adrienne Rich 1. K.M. Brown, * Why Women Need the War God*, in J. Kalven and M. Buckley (eds.), Women's Spirit Bonding (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1984), pp. 190-201.

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illustrates her point that, even within feminist scholarship, there is an assumption of heterocentricity.1 Although each text begins with a critique of the disordered nature of social relations between the sexes and also proposes a number of strategies for dealing with sexism, each of these feminist tracts, according to Rich, operates on the understanding that heterosexuality is a paradigm or norm. The token toleration of lesbianism is, in Rich's view, no longer sufficient for feminists and, although she highlights four influential feminist texts, namely Chodorow's The Reproduction of Mothering,2 Dinnerstein's The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and the Human Malaise,3 Ehrenreich and English's For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts' Advice to Women4 and Miller's Towards a New Psychology of Women,5 Rich is quite clear that these texts are simply illustrative of mainstream feminism's refusal to challenge heterosexism as a political institution. Therefore, she suggests, it is not enough for feminist thought that specifically lesbian texts exist. Any theory or cultural/political creation that treats lesbian existence as a marginal or less 'natural' phenomenon, as mere 'sexual preference', or as the mirror image of either heterosexual or male homosexual relations is profoundly weakened thereby...Feminist theory can no longer afford merely to voice a toleration of 'lesbianism' as an 'alternative lifestyle' or make token allusion to lesbians. A feminist critique of compulsory heterosexual orientation for women is long overdue.6

One of the more controversial and problematic theses put forward by Rich is that the definition of lesbianism needs to be expanded to include a range through each woman's life and throughout history—of woman-identified experience, not simply the fact that a woman has had or consciously desired genital sexual experience with other woman. If we expand it to embrace many more forms of primary intensity between and 1. A. Rich, 'Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence', in Blood, Bread and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979-1985 (London: Virago, 1986), pp. 23-76. 2. N. Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978). 3. D. Dinnerstein, The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and the Human Malaise (New York: Harper & Row, 1976). 4. B. Ehrenreich and D. English, For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts1 Advice to Women (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Anchor, 1978). 5. J.B. Miller, Toward a New Psychology of Women (Boston: Beacon Press, 1976). 6. Rich, 'Compulsory Heterosexuality', p. 27.

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among women, including the sharing of arichinner support... we begin to grasp the breadths of female history and psychology which have lain out of reach as a consequence of limited, mostly clinical, definitions of lesbianism.1 Essentially, then, Rich is identifying, as part of a lesbian continuum, actions, relationships and experiences which resist patriarchy and promote bonds between women. The question of the expression of such connections in an explicitly sexual manner is thus of marginal consequence. The strict separation of female friendship and female eroticism is considered by Rich to be yet another detrimental result of patriarchal thought. This is indeed a view endorsed by many, including Lorde2 and Heyward.3 Essentially it challenges both the conventional feminist view that lesbianism is strictly a question of sexual preference and the view of classical theology that the inclusion of an explicitly sexual dimension in a relationship between two women sets it apart qualitatively from other forms of female friendship. Another theme in the ongoing discussion about the nature of lesbian existence is the historic connection between homophobia and misogyny. It is Harrison's contention that only when we recognize 'that the social control of women as a group has totally shaped our deepest and most basic attitudes to sexuality do we comprehend the full social functionality of enforcing compulsory heterosexuality on both women and men'.4 The historical-cultural links between homophobia and misogyny will become ever more clear, according to Harrison, when we engage in a sustained analysis of the interaction of two strands in the Western tradition, the anti-body impulses and the traditional antipathy to women. Within the Christian tradition heterosexuality is given further legitimation because 'homosexuality and females both, simultaneously, threaten the uneasy balance of psychic forces and ideological functions that create the "security" of the institutional elite'.5 Misogyny and homophobia both sustain an institution which explicitly embodies a patriarchal ethics of sexuality. 1. Rich, 'Compulsory Heterosexuality\ p. 52. 2. A. Lorde, 'Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power', in Sister Outsider, pp. 53-60. 3. C. Heyward, Touching Our Strength: The Erotic as Power and the Love of God (New York: Harper Collins, 1989). 4. B.W. Harrison, Making the Connections: Essays in Feminist Social Ethics (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985), p. 139. 5. Harrison, Making the Connections, p. 142.

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A natural development of the thesis that compulsory heterosexuality is a cornerstone of patriarchy is the radical lesbian critique of Monique Wittig. In an effort to expose and destroy the 'straight mind' of conventional discourse, Wittig suggests that we abandon the use of the categories of sex, since 'masculine/feminine, male/female are the categories which serve to conceal the fact that social differences always belong to an economic, political, ideological order. For there is no sex. There is but sex that is oppressed and sex that oppresses. It is oppression that creates sex and not the contrary.'1 However, the straight mind prohibits us from examining the heterosexual relationship, that is, the obligatory social relationship between 'man' and 'woman',2 which according to Wittig takes on the character of the universal norm. As a result 'the straight mind cannot conceive of a culture, a society where heterosexuality would not order not only all human relationships but also its very production of concepts and all the processes which escape consciousness as well'.3 It is ultimately up to lesbians to destroy the conventional categories of sex, since lesbians have already defied being categorized by sex. It is this proposal which prompted one of Wittig's more infamous statements: 'Lesbians are not women'.4 For what constitutes woman is 'a specific social relation to a man, a relation what we have previously called servitude'.5 How can women escape this? In her essay 'The Social Contract' Wittig comments on the appropriateness of Rousseau's original proposal in the current context. She suggests that 'only by running away from their class can women achieve the social contract...even if they have to do it like the fugitive serfs, one by one'.6 For the radical lesbian critique of Wittig it is only when the heterosexual contract is broken and a new one formed that one can begin to speak of the liberation of the class of women. Such a comment on contemporary women's experience may appear to be somewhat marginal. Nonetheless the radical lesbian critique raises 1. M. Wittig, The Category of Sex', in The Straight Mind and Other Essays (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992), p. 2. 2. The Straight Mind', p. 27. 3. The Straight Mind1, p. 28. 4. The Straight Mind', p. 32. 5. 'One is Not Born a Woman', in The Straight Mind and Other Essays, p. 20. 6. The Social Contract*, in The Straight Mind and Other Essays, p. 45.

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some crucial questions for feminist scholarship. These include the questions of whether heterosexuality is an ideological and political institution enforced by patriarchy, whether it is either correct or helpful to speak of all women's experience as on a lesbian continuum, and, perhaps most important in terms of challenging the parameters of feminist thought, whether Wittig is right when she asserts (in a gloss on de Beauvoir's view that 'one is not born rather one becomes a woman'1) that the category of sex is simply one formulated to maintain compulsory heterosexuality. Conclusion The examination of the category of women's experience highlights the variety and diversity that it encompasses. Whereas feminists may formerly have used the category in a somewhat uncritical and essentialist fashion, we are coming to realize that such an understanding is untenable. This position is inevitable given our historical exploration of the ways in which the category has been used. No homogeneity exists among women who, wishing to provide a theoretical basis for the critique of patriarchy, situate the critical principlefirmlyin the category of women's experience. There is, therefore, a growing unease with the assumed unitary nature of women's experience, which has undergirded much feminist theory. In a very real sense, feminists of all disciplines have failed to take account' of the material differences among women, whether they be differences of economic status, race or sexual orientation. Yet one can read a growing essentialism in much theorizing, in particular in the works of 'cultural feminists'. Protest against this essentialism has come predominantly from feminists who wish to embrace post-structuralism—either in part or in its entirety. Certainly there is much in post-structuralism which is attractive for feminists—in particular the Derridean discussion of difference, which seeks to free language of the long-established hierarchy of binary opposition. The refusal to be drawn into the competition of polarities and, inevitably, hierarchies may provide a significant resource for a feminist deconstruction and a reconstitution of the notion of differences.2 1. De Beauvoir, The Second Sex, p. 295. 2. Although their work is highly complex the insights provided by Helene Cixous, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva give us yet another perspective on the meaning of the term * women's experience\ Intimately bound up with deconstruction

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Yet if the analytic category of 'woman' is one which has no meaning, as Henrietta Moore1 would suggest, how should feminists proceed in our action to protest the actual historical oppression of women? Does the discovery of some lacuna in our theory render us politically or praxically immobile? How may one continue to propose a feminist agenda for theology, based on women's experience and praxis, if the terms 'women' and 'women's experience' have been deemed to be obsolete? Indeed, our discussion of the diverse ways in which twentieth-century feminists in the Western world have interpreted and construed the category of women's experience may leave us in chaos. The actuality of living with difference, and attempting to provide a critique of those oppressive elements in patriarchy from within this diversity, may also cause much discord and discontent. However, although there is an inherent risk associated with the recognition and fostering of difference, this is, I believe, the road which feminists must follow if we are to be faithful to the character of our resources—women's experience and praxis. We have been forced (by marginalized women) to be attentive to universalizing tendencies in our theory. In our attempts to provide an alternative to the patriarchal mode of discourse, we have assumed a and the philosophy that it implies, the 'sexual/textual politics, of the new French 'feminists' deals with the question of women's experience and its relationship to literature and literary theory. Cixous, in her essays 'La Jeune Nee', 'Le Rire de la Meduse' and 'La Sexe ou la tSte', deals with the question of difference as the basis for the production of meaning. Cixous's literary theory is heavily dependent on the Derridean concept of difference, which rejects the binary opposition considered to be the production of meaning in the patriarchal system. According to Cixous feminine texts are those which point towards difference, attempt to usurp the static and closed meaning of patriarchal texts and 'revel in the pleasures of open-ended textuality'. Cf. 'Sorties', in 'La jeune nee', in E. Marks and I. de Courtivron (eds.), New French Feminisms (New York: Harvester, 1981), pp. 90-99, 'Le Rire de la Meduse', translated in Marks and de Courtivron (eds.), New French Feminisms, pp. 245-64 as 'The Laugh of the Medusa'; also 'Le Sexe ou la t§te\ in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 7.1 (1981), pp. 41-55. Julia Kristeva too deals with the question of difference and of ecriture feminine. Although reluctant to admit the existence of an ecriture feminine, she does accept that the marginal position of women within patriarchy is responsible for certain thematic and stylistic affinities in the writing of women. Kristeva does emphasize that feminity and the semiotic are alike in their marginality and in their potential for subversion. Cf. the essays in T. Moi (ed.), The Kristeva Reader (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986). 1. See her discussion of this in Feminism and Anthropology (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988), in particular chs. 1 and 6. Cf. also Ruddick's Maternal Thinking.

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homogeneity which does not exist. This is not to deny a certain commonality among women, from which we can critique structures and institutions which perpetuate oppression. The search for commonality must however be based in the recognition and celebration of particularity and diversity among women. Commonality is not coterminous with sameness; in fact it may be firmly situated in the plurality of narrative, praxis, analysis and performance which is women's experience. In this vein Sara Ruddick1 proposes replacing our notion of absolute universality with a cumulative understanding rooted in our particular social and sexual histories, since, she contends, it is not in a scattered interpretation of our different experiences that we can provide an effective challenge to the dominant ethos, but with cumulative analysis drawn from the wealth and plurality of women's experiences. This notion of a cumulative universality points towards a consideration of the category of women's experience which is firmly rooted in the praxis of women's lives. Women's experience must be situated in actual, historical praxis, in concrete experiences of oppression and attempts to overcome it. By appealing to lived experience feminists will respect the particularity of experience, attempting to ensure that no dominance based on economic or racial privilege will emerge. Accumulation and analysis of women's experience, both individual and collective, in a way that allows us to think, not in terms of universals, but in terms of concrete pluralities, ought to be the goal of feminist conceptual activity. Linda Alcoff2 suggests that we think of women's experience in terms of a positionality. She proposes that we locate our identities as women neither in biological essentialism nor in post-structural nominalism, but in a network of relations in a continually shifting context. Thus women's position in relation to economic conditions, cultural and political structures, institutions and ideologies provides the basis for our identity. She suggests that we identify women (and, I presume, men) by our position within this networking of relations. In addition to avoiding 1. See Maternal Thinking, p. 259 n. 24, also her discussion of commonality, difference and oppression on pp. 51-57. I was initially alerted to the notion of a cumulative universality by K. Zappone, both in conversation and particularly in her article'Women's Special Nature: A Different Horizon for Theological Anthropology', Concilium 1 (1991), pp. 87-97. 2. Cf. L. Alcoff, 'Cultural Feminism versus Post-Structuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory', Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 13.3 (1988), pp. 405-36.

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biological essentialism, this provides afirmbasis from which feminists can critique institutions of oppression, since one is enabled to contend that the position of women lacks power and requires alteration. In attempting to come to a clear understanding of the category of women's experience one must also be attentive to the ways in which the different philosophical schools in feminism understand the nature and roots of women's oppression. Liberal, radical, Marxist and socialist feminists essentially disagree on the causes of the oppression of women. Whereas liberal feminists locate the differences between men and women in social and cultural conditions, radical feminists locate the differences and thus the causes of oppression in the realm of nature. Physical strength augmented by economic, social and political control ensures male dominance. Marxist-Leninist feminism tends to emphasize the necessity of the redistribution of power in production, whereas socialist feminists insist that in addition to reform of production, changes in the sphere of reproduction are also essential. My analysis of the term 'women's experience' in the earlier sections of this chapter may appear to be somewhat uncritical, failing to recognize the difficulties that I have subsequently outlined. However, this serves to highlight the fact that, whether intentionally or not, much feminist theory has had a latent essentialism in relation to the construal of the category of women's experience. Thus my realization of the need, in much feminist analysis, to redress the universalizing tendencies and reappraise our understanding of difference, arose as the great plurality of women's experience became apparent. The category of women's experience holds together diverse and often contradictory elements. Although it is impossible to deal with all elements and perspectives, I have, I believe, included many of the dominant strands in feminist thinking concerning the nature of women's experience, in addition to many marginal positions. Women's experience under patriarchy has been predominantly the experience of oppression and alienation. Ranging from the philosophy of other of Simone de Beauvoir and the passivity of the housewife of Friedan, to the violence and aggression described by women of colour, feminist writing has documented this oppression. Women's otherness and marginality can also be a source of empowerment and creativity, as is evident from the work of Adrienne Rich, Mary Daly, Starhawk and others. The metaphor of quilting may be of value in our attempts to understand the interaction between particularity and commonality in relation

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to women's experience. Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza,1 in proposing this metaphor, alerts us to the fact that in fitting together the individual pieces into an overall design we give new meaning to the individual pieces. So too with the analysis of actual historical experiences of women, which ought to be transformed but in no way violated by the cumulative analysis of feminist theory.

1. E. Schussler Fiorenza, The Quilting of Women's History: Phoebe of Cenchreae', in P. Cooey, S. Farmer and M. Ross (eds.), Embodied Love: Sensuality and Relationship as Feminist Values (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987), pp. 3549.

Chapter 2 PRAXIS: THE THEOLOGICAL BACKGROUND

The uniqueness of feminist theology lies, I believe, in its integration of concepts and categories from quite disparate traditions. The category of women's experience has already been explored in the preceding chapter, which leads us to consider the other primary category of feminist theology: praxis. Feminist theology has claimed to be a praxis-based theology. We are concerned in this chapter with establishing what exacdy this means and what implications arise from this assertion. Women's experience in feminist theory and indeed theology must be situated in the actuality of women's lives. The contexts out of which women articulate their experience and engage in reflection thereon form an integral part of the category. This understanding of experience, which is at the core of feminist theology, militates against a spectator view of knowledge, and points towards the apprehension of knowledge as transformative. Just as experience is given priority in its relationship with theory (albeit not unambiguously), so too is praxis given priority in the relationship. Yet, even as we do not envisage ascribing priority to 'raw' pre-theoretical experience, neither do we advocate priority in the theological realm for mindless activism. The assertion of a primacy of praxis position is fraught with methodological difficulties. Nevertheless I consider that it is a valuable one to hold if feminist theologians are to be engaged in truly creative and transformative tasks. A commitment to an epistemology which regards praxis and experience to be the grounding for the theoretical is essential if we envisage the feminist theological enterprise to be other than simply a critical moment in an otherwise acceptable theological process. In the background to this chapter is the philosophy of Marx, of the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School and of Jurgen Habermas. The reversal of the usual order of priority in the theory-praxis relationship

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has been central to the work of each. Feminist theologians have tended to appropriate the priority of praxis position primarily from theologians of liberation and from political theology. Thus it will be necessary to consider the work of such scholars in the light of how they construe the theory-praxis nexus. I will consider mainly the works of Metz and Gutierrez but will draw also from critics such as Matthew Lamb and Charles Davis. In so doing I hope to provide a clearer understanding of the much maligned but under-researched category of praxis, which is central to the feminist theological enterprise. Origins of Praxis-Based Theologies The emergence of the category of praxis in the theological vocabulary of Christians has a variety of sources. One can however discern three predominant tendencies in the early 1960s which together assured the ascendency of the concept in much theological endeavour. One may identify first the reaction, especially in German circles, to the existentialist theology of Bultmann and Tillich. Political theologians were critical of what they considered to be the privatization of religion and argued that Christianity is intensely political. Contemporaneous with internal developments in theological circles was the dialogue with Marxist philosophers and practitioners. With a change in attitude from the days of Divini Redemptoris (1937) and with revision, in Communist circles, of the excessive institutionalization of Stalinism, genuine dialogue appeared both possible and necessary. Evaluations of the various meetings in Salzburg, Chiemsee and Marienbad from 1965 to 1967 differ,1 yet much was learned concerning the necessity of Christian political commitment. It is within this context too that many theologians encountered the dynamic category of praxis, subsequently integrating it into mainstream political theological theory. The rising theological consciousness of underdeveloped countries has 1. Evaluations of the Christian-Marxist dialogue of the 1960s are numerous; cf. D. Turner, Marxism and Christianity (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983); J. Petulla, Christian Political Theology: A Marxian Guide (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1972); P. Hebblethwaite, The Christian-Marxist Dialogue: Beginnings, Present Status and Beyond (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1977); and perhaps the most influential book of its kind, R. Garaudy, From Anathema to Dialogue: The Challenge of Marxist-Christian Cooperation (New York: Herder & Herder, 1966).

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been one of the main features in the paradigm shift, particularly in the Roman Catholic Church. In this context it provides the third point of origin of praxis in theology. Indeed the 1960s marked a watershed in the destiny of the South American continent. Critical of developmentalism and the neo-colonialism which it implied, theorists and practitioners recognized the need for radical new thinking in relation to the formerly colonized world. The previous association of the churches with the foreign powers also necessitated an alteration of their positions. Such developments were endorsed at the CELAM conference at Medellin in 1968 with the adoption of the idiom of liberation. Although the theme of liberation is not developed systematically, there is the insistence that salvation in this context implies liberation from oppressive structures and situations, and a commitment to the construction of justice. Implying the necessity of a political consciousness arising from faith, the documents reject the ideology of developmentalism and neo-colonialism. The conclusions of the conference provided the point of departure for a theory of liberation which in turn integrated the category of praxis into its theological vocabulary. Praxis in Political Theology Political theologians Jurgen Moltmann and Johannes Metz have been among thefirstto insist that praxis, in the post-critical sense, is central to the theological enterprise. It is important to consider briefly their use of this category since it forms the theological backdrop against which feminist theologians have worked out their own primacy of praxis positions. Jurgen Moltmann has most fully articulated his position in the chapter entitled 'God in Revolution' in the collection Religion, Revolution and the Future,1 originally an address to the World Student Christian Federation Conference in Finland in July 1968. Putting forward his positions in the form of seven theses, he insists that the new criterion of theology and of faith is to be found in praxis. In words reminiscent of the Marxian commentary on Feuerbach's philosophy (notably Thesis No. 2 and Thesis No. 11), Moltmann insists that

1. Although delivered in varying contexts the essays in this collection are unified by their concern to articulate a more adequate Christian response to revolution and to the nature.

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not only for him [Marx], but for the whole modern age, ethical and political praxis has become the test of theories. Truth must be practicable. Unless it contains initiative for the transformation of the world, it becomes a myth of the existing world. Because reality has become historical and man [sic] experiences himself as a historical being, he willfinda possible conformity of consciousness and existence only in historical praxis. This is the event of truth.1 Douglas Meeks suggests in the conclusion to his book Origins of the Theology of Hope that Moltmann's emphasis on the eschatological transcendence of God brings both the subjective and objective, and more importantly for our purposes the theoretical and practical elements of the dichotomy, into an open dialectic.2 This dialectic of reconciliation is seen in his insistence on practical and political involvement as the appropriate Christian stance, with its basis firmly in the constant reinterpretation of texts, traditions and experiences. By insisting on the centraiity but not the primacy of praxis as the starting point for theology, Moltmann has successfully envisioned a dialectic of theory and praxis, which, although not fully self-conscious, is implicit in his works. Praxis as the Point of Departure In my earlier considerations concerning an approach to a political theology, my point of departure was the primacy of praxis, to such an extent indeed that this primacy of praxis or the relationship between theory and praxis that was expressed in this primacy became the key concept in my approach. In the perspective of the debate about the foundations of theology as such, we may say that the so-called hermeneutical problem of theology was not really a problem of the relationship between systematic and historical theology or between dogma and history but rather a problem of the relationship between theory and praxis or between the understanding of faith and social praxis.3 Metz identifies this point of departure, the primacy of praxis, to be in direct continuity with Kantian practical reason. In explicating his opting for the primacy of praxis as the starting point for political theology, 1. J. Moltmann, Religion, Revolution, and the Future (New York: Charles Schribner's Sons, 1969), p. 138. 2. D. Meeks, Origins of the Theology of Hope (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974), p. 159. 3. J.B. Metz, Faith in History and Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology (New York: Seabury Press, 1980), p. 52.

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although he obviously draws on the insights of Left Hegelian philosophers and Frankfurt School theorists, Metz interprets it as an adaptation of Kant. The necessity of reformulating the theory-praxis relationship is acute since, according to Kant, 'a man [sic] is enlightened only when he has the freedom to make public use of his reason in all affairs. Hence the realization of this enlightenment is never a merely theoretical problem, but essentially a political one, a problem of societal conduct'.1 Thus, Metz claims, transcendental reason appears within practical reason and not the reverse, establishing an alternative relationship between theory and praxis. In Faith in History and Society, Metz elaborates more fully on the basis for and the implications of such a claim. Again he insists that political theology is 'more emphatically orientated' towards the traditions of Kant's philosophy of practical reason. He also acknowledges his indebtedness to the view of the dialectical relationship of theory and praxis held in Marxian circles.2 In perhaps his most direct elaboration on the position of political theology vis-a-vis praxis, he asserts that theory and praxis are not dealt with here in the usual order of priority, in which praxis is regarded as the continuation, implementation or concrete application of a previously defined theory. Practical fundamental theology is, on the contrary, directly opposed to a non-dialectical subordination of praxis to theory or the idea. In it, great emphasis is placed on the intelligible force of praxis itself, in the sense of a dialectical tension between theory and praxis. To that extent, it is a theology that operates subject to the primacy of praxis.3

It is interesting to note here that the 'dialectical tension between theory and praxis' is immediately transformed into the primacy of praxis as though there were an automatic progression. Metz does not however define this claim for the primacy of praxis in the traditional terms of such critical philosophies. Apart from his acknowledgment of the primal significance of Kant's practical reason, and a vague reference to the

1. Here I use J.B. Metz, The Church and the World in the Light of a Political Theology', in idem (ed.), Theology of the World (London: Burns & Oates, 1969), p. 112, which is a refined version of the article The Church's Social Function in the Light of a Political Theology', in Faith and the World of Politics (Concilium, 36; New York: Paulist Press, 1969), pp. 2-19. 2. Metz, Faith in History and Society, p. 53. 3. Metz, Faith in History and Society, p. 50.

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dialectic of theory and praxis in Marxism,1 this affinity is in no way developed. Instead Metz justifies his claim for a practical fundamental theology in terms of the practical structure of the logos of Christian theology.2 Influenced, as was Moltmann, by the Blochian notion of God as future, Metz situates eschatology at the centre of his theology and thereby insists on the primacy of praxis. This praxical structure of Christianity which both informs and is informed by the biblical notion of God is likewise extended to the christological sphere. 'All Christology is nourished, for the sake of its own truth, by praxis and particularly the praxis of the imitation of Christ. It is, in other words, expressed in a practical knowledge. In this sense, then, all Christology is subject to the primacy of praxis.'3 Christianity is not, therefore, reinterpretation of past events but future-oriented, responsive to the message of hope and expressed in terms of revolutionary Christian praxis. Thus praxis as the starting point is a response to the subversive narrative memory of Christ. It is Metz's contention, therefore, that our christological knowledge is not primarily conceptual or philosophical but narrative and therefore practical in that it is based on the category of imitatio. Metz further refined his notion of praxis in response to criticisms of his failure to distinguish adequately the positions of Kant from those of Marx. Wishing to integrate the insights of Marx vis-i-vis the ideological and political supremacy of capitalism with the more politically benign Kantian practical reason, Metz identifies in Christian praxis both moral and social elements, attempting to thereby compensate for any deficiency of a political critique in Kant. This integration aids greatly in the pursuit of the aim of practical fundamental theology which is to 'actualize the critical potential of faith in regard to society'.4 A Reckless Dream? 5

Charles Davis engages in a critique of Metz on a variety of levels. It is with his treatment of the primacy of praxis question that we are 1. Metz, Faith in History and Society, p. 53. 2. Metz, Faith in History and Society, p. 51. 3. Metz, Faith in History and Society, p. 51. 4. Metz, Theology of the World, p. 133. 5. It must be mentioned that although the lectures that comprise the monograph Theology and Political Society were delivered in 1978, in his bibliography he

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concerned here. He situates Metz firmly in the context of Marxist philosophers and the theorists of the Frankfurt School. Metz is indeed operating with the presupposition, basic to critical theory, that intellectual neutrality is impossible. This echoes a basic principle of Marxism and Left Hegelianism, the refusal to accept theoretical thought as purely contemplative and presuppositionless. Matthew Lamb terms this realization 'the end of intellectual innocence'.1 Directly related to this is the assertion that theory is not immune from praxis and that the relationship is one of interdependence, rather than the traditional position of the priority of theory. Davis is critical of Metz's attempt to refine the Marxian notion of the total mediation of theory by praxis. Davis uses an analysis of Wiedenhofer,2 who identified two distinct phases in the development of political theology. According to Wiedenhofer, in the initial phase, political theology assimilated this Marxian dialectic of theory and praxis in its entirety and only subsequently sought to revise it, as did Metz. In emphasizing the centrality of memoria in theology Metz has, according to Davis, revised the concept of theory 'so as to establish its specifically Christian character'.3 Davis, in his critique of the memoria thesis, concludes that Metz abandons any hope of truly integrating the insights of Marx and the critical theorists: Metz's half-hearted and inconsistent acceptance of the primacy of praxis comes out clearly in an article dealing with orthopraxis...Here, on the one hand, practice leads to doctrine or theory, but, on the other hand, it is not a question of mediating doctrinal insights, but of drawing the populace into a pre-existing doctrinal structure, namely orthodoxy. The new language covers a traditional outlook.4

His basic difficulty with Metz is therefore Metz's failure to achieve the primacy of praxis position in theology. He has fallen short of his includes Glaube in Geschichte und Gesellschaft: Studien zu einer praktischen Fundamentaltheologie (Mainz: Griinewald, 1977), which was subsequently published in 1980 as Faith in History and Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology, and provides us with the fullest articulation of Metz's position vis-a-vis the theorypraxis dialectic. 1. Lamb, Solidarity with Victims, p. 28. 2. Davis, Theology and Political Society, p. 7; he utilizes Wiedenhofer's Politische Theologie (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1976). 3. Davis, Theology and Political Society, p. 7. 4. Davis, Theology and Political Society, p. 9.

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intention to assimilate the 'Copernican revolution* in philosophy, which altered the traditional view of the relationship between theory and praxis in which the practical was subordinated. In holding on firmly to the notion of orthodoxy—albeit in a more palatable mode, that is, the categories of narrative and memory—Metz has refused to accept the radical implications which the position of the primacy of praxis would necessarily hold for theology. The futility of such an enterprise is expressed by one critic thus: 'The critics of Metz areright:he has not achieved praxis. His programme for turning theology from theory into praxis was reckless and his dream of the creation of a new generation of nonacademic "subjects" to do theology just whistling for the wind/1 This dismissal of the work of Metz is, I believe, both premature and foolish. It is true that in his formulations of a practical fundamental theology Metz took on board the centrality of praxis somewhat uncritically. Indeed, this has also been the position in theologies of liberation—including feminist theology. The appropriation of the dialectical relationship of theory and praxis from Marxist philosophy and the subsequent attempts to deal with the methodological implications has in fact been the hallmark of theologies of revolution since the 1960s. It is only recently that the question of the theory-praxis relationship in theology has been seriously analysed. Previous discussions centered around the assertion of the primacy of either theory or praxis. As the methodological issues are being discussed, from a variety of perspectives, it is clear that assertions of absolute primacy must be excluded. Any adequate resolution of the question will undoubtedly be integrative and inclusive. Nevertheless, although the position of Metz, with the emphasis on the primacy of praxis and the categories of narrative and memory, is not completely acceptable as a resolution of the question, insights gleaned from his work will have far-reaching consequences for future discussions of the subject. Although Metz's inclusion of both praxis and memoria in a political theology is interpreted by commentators to be problematic, I would suggest that this may be important for future developments of his work. Certainly the inclusion of both, hand in hand with the assertion of the primacy of praxis, is somewhat ambiguous. Yet I consider that Metz is attempting to honour the truth claims of Christianity while placing

1. P. Avis, 'In the Shadow of the Frankfurt School: From Critical Theory to Critical Theology', 57735 (1982), p. 536.

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contemporary praxis at its centre. To assert the primacy of praxis does not lead one to deny the all important theoretical elements in theology. In including both memoria and praxis, although the precise nature of their relationship is still problematic for Metz, he has courageously attempted to inhabit the ambiguity, and to explore the nature of the dialectic. Praxis and Liberation Theology Liberation theologians have not been hesitant to employ the analytic tools of the social sciences and in particular the categories of Marxism. Central to Marx's theory is revolutionary praxis and its priority in the theory-praxis dialectic. This has been integrated into the theological enterprise and has become a key distinguishing feature of liberation theology. Although individual theologians have embraced this to varying degrees, all have attempted to deal with the question of the relationship, either explicitly or otherwise. In order to discover how liberation theologians have integrated this revolution in philosophical thinking we will look principally at Gustavo Gutierrez and to a lesser extent at Juan Luis Segundo, Jose Miguez Bonino and Jon Sobrino. Critical Reflection on Praxis The methodological revolution in theology promoted by Gutierrez is evident from both the title and contents of A Theology of Liberation. In the chapter 'Theology: A Critical Reflection', he engages in a brief critique of the functions attributed to theology in its classical form. The inadequacies of the models of theology as wisdom and as rational knowledge in failing to promote an understanding of the faith are developed. In opposition to such models Gutierrez insists on the function of theology as 'critical reflection on praxis'l which necessarily alters the traditional emphasis on the priority and ultimately the superiority of theory. Gutierrez suggests that the notion of charity in the New Testament and the Pauline emphasis on faith working through charity are the biblical antecedents of this praxical position. Mendicant orders and Ignatian spirituality are also cited by Gutierrez as examples of the successful integration of the active life and contemplation. In addition to tracing briefly a biblical history, he finds allies in the 1. G. Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1973), p. 6.

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philosophical tradition. He mentions Blondel, Schillebeeckx and the Marxist tradition as initiating the transformation that may now be discerned in the theologies of liberation. Indeed Gutierrez attributes this recent concern in theology about the meaning of human action and transformation primarily to the positive influence of Marxism. 'Theology is reflection, a critical attitude. Theology follows; it is the second step. What Hegel used to say about philosophy can likewise be applied to theology: it rises only at sundown...Theology does not produce pastoral activity; rather it reflects upon it.'1 Thus Gutierrez is not simply wishing to redress the balance which exalted the theoretical to the detriment of the praxical. He does not suggest an emphasis on pastoral activity or the inclusion of elements of this concern for praxis in the biblical and philosophical traditions. Rather he suggests a complete revolution in relationships, establishing, as a result, the primary position of praxis in theological understanding. Theology ought to be post factum reflection, a second stage arising from and interpreting orthopraxis. One of the most interesting features of this insistence on the primacy of historical praxis is the realization that liberation theology is itself precisely this, that is, critical reflection on praxis. The distinguishing features of liberation theology are indicative of its praxical starting point: This is a theology which does not stop with reflecting on the world, but rather tries to be part of the process through which the world is transformed. It is a theology which is open—in the protest against trampled human dignity, in the struggle against the plunder of the vast majority of people, in liberating love, and in the building of a new, just and fraternal society—to the gift of the Kingdom of God.2

Gutierrez situates this obligation to change at the head of the theological enterprise. The attempt to validate the position of theology as critical reflection on praxis is precisely because this has been the experience of Latin American theologians. Liberation theology did not arise from contemplation of inspired texts or classics but from the attempts to understand and analyse experiences of oppression. Thus in addition to the exhortation that theology become a critical reflection on historical praxis, there is in Gutierrez's chapter an insistence that, with the theology of liberation, theology has already become such. Quoting Harvey Cox 1. 2.

Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, p. 11. Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, p. 15.

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he insists that 'the only future that theology has, one might say, is to become the theology of the future'.1 In drawing upon this eschatological vein in Cox and on the theology of hope of Moltmann, Gutierrez attempts to establish the necessity of praxis-based theology, saying 'the present in the praxis of liberation, in its deepest dimension, is pregnant with the future'.2 In reflecting on historical reality and on contemporary experiences theology will also become anticipatory and directive. This reflection is not however on static categories but is on dynamic praxis-based experiences. Indeed this underpins the divergence of such theology from that of Vatican II, which advocates that the church interpret and reflect on the signs of the times. Such an approach simply takes account of modernity. It does notfindits starting point and validation there. The position advocated by Gutierrez here is far more radical and revolutionary. With a dynamic view of praxis—ultimately borrowed from Marx—he considers the function of theology to be future-oriented: 'To reflect on the basis of the historical praxis of liberation is to reflect in the light of the future which is believed in and hoped for' ? But what is this historical praxis and how does it fit into a theological schema? It is clear that this notion comes directly from Marx via the theorists of the Frankfurt School. His understanding of praxis is indebted to his understanding of Marx's eleventh thesis on Feuerbach. Indeed, in his article 'Liberation Praxis and Christian Faith'4 Gutierrez adopts an understanding of knowledge and of history which is implicit in the theses on Feuerbach. He insists on the centrality of transformation in order that knowledge be verified. The application of already formulated principles and theories does not constitute a valid paradigm of knowledge or of history. Such an approach, with priority granted to the theoretical, is deemed by Gutierrez to be inadequate. He is emphatic that 'the praxis that transforms history is not a moment in the feeble incarnation of a limpid, well-articulated theory, but the matrix of authentic knowledge and the acid test of the validity of that knowledge'.5 1. Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, p. 14 n. 46, which situates this quotation in H. Cox, On Not Leaving it to the Snake (New York: Macmillan, 1967), p. 12. 2. Cox, On Not Leaving it to the Snake, p. 14. 3. Cox, On Not Leaving it to the Snake, p. 15. 4. G. Gutierrez, 'Liberation Praxis and Christian Faith', in The Power of the Poor in History (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1983), pp. 36-74. 5. Gutierrez, 'Liberation Praxis and Christian Faith', p. 59.

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Praxis, then, is the starting point of knowledge, and does indeed initiate an epistemological revolution of great significance in theology—if it can be sustained. The theology of Gutierrez is extremely dynamic. This derives sustenance from the fact that the foundational principle of liberation theology (that is, the priority of praxis) promotes such possibilities. A further point to be noted is that all forms of activity may not be included in the notion of historical praxis. This limitation is drawn directly from Marx's insistence on revolutionary praxis as the meaning of truth. In Christianizing this concept Gutierrez coined the word 'orthopraxis', which stands over against 'orthodoxy'. Orthopraxis has the function of recognizing 'the work and importance of concrete behaviour, of deeds, of action, of praxis in the Christian life'.1 Orthopraxis is essentially praxis from within the perspective of liberation. Gutierrez suggests that it is self-evident that Christian involvement in society ought to have a political edge. The growing social consciousness of Latin American Christians was foundational in the development of the notion of orthopraxis. Their political radicalization resulted in a similar movement in theology, and led to the defining of orthopraxis (which is to be the hallmark of Christian faith) from the perspective of the marginalized. This obligation to work for the transformation of the social order is enshrined in the notion of orthopraxis. Critical of former theologies of revolution and especially of the theology of development, Gutierrez says: [I]t was still not a theological reflection from within the liberation process. It was not a critical reflection from within, and upon, the concrete historical praxis of liberation. It was not theology done from within and upon faith as liberating praxis. When theology isfinallydone in this locus, perspectives will change.2

One of the reasons why Gutierrez is the subject of much criticism is that his writing is advocative and not apologetic in character. He offers very little analysis of his position from the perspective of first world theology and does not attempt to defend himself from almost inevitable attack. It is accurate to suggest, however, that a fundamental difficulty with Gutierrez's position from the point of view of traditional theology is his unqualified assumption of the revolution in methodology advocated by Marx and subsequent philosophers of the left. 1. 2.

Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, p. 10. Gutierrez, The Power of the Poor in History, p. 44.

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Claiming primacy for praxis, for the majority of theologians, means a commitment to establishing a dialectical relationship between theory and praxis, and a commitment to restoring praxis to the centre, since it has been for so long condemned to the periphery. Insisting that a philosophical or theological system is praxis-based, or that it has its starting point in praxis, does not lead one to exclude explicidy theoretical or literary experiences from the point of origination. Indeed the Marxian primacy of praxis brings the further qualification of 'revolutionary praxis', creative activity for transformation. Experiences of reality are immediate, requiring further analysis and theorizing. Here we can observe the dialectic in operation. Thefirststep in Segundo's hermeneutic circle does include a praxical element—in some cases it may be predominantly praxical. However, this starting point does not necessitate opting for the exclusivity of praxis. Indeed in many cases of the application of the hermeneutic circle the starting point is not praxis but social analysis. To cite Segundo's hermeneutic circle or indeed his entire methodology as an instance of a theology with its starting point in praxis is, I believe, too facile. Segundo's theology of liberation is instead highly technical and theoretical and, although it has as its central concern the articulation of a theology which is relevant to the Latin American experience of oppression, its starting point is situated in the dialectic between theory and praxis which is promoted by so-called praxis-based theologies. Such a contention is illustrated clearly in Segundo's work The Hidden Motives of Pastoral Action: Latin American Reflections.1 He is concerned in this book to reconstruct a basis for pastoral activity, which has, he claims, become irrelevant and ineffective. In so doing Segundo situates social and cultural analysis at the heart of such a reconstruction. Pursuing his analysis, he also deals with the question of an adequate response to the new pastoral situation. Underlying the entire project is a dialectic between theory and praxis. In discussing the comunidades de base advocated by the conference at Medellin, Segundo emphasizes their importance as the first and fundamental ecclesiastical nucleus. Describing the communities as 'adults who freely reflected on their faith 1. J.L. Segundo, The Hidden Motives of Pastoral Action: Latin American Reflections (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1978).

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and drew the appropriate consequences for their individual and social life',1 Segundo does not seem to be implying the 'methodological revolution' identified by some commentators. Undoubtedly he does include the experiences and reflections of the community members as central to the theological task. The model here is however one of mutual enlightenment rather than of the absolute primacy of praxis or the mindless activism suggested by many critics. On reflection, then, I would suggest that the methodology of Segundo, as illustrated by his investigation of the faith-ideologies relationship, the hermeneutic circle and the question of pastoral activity, implies a dialectic between theory and praxis, where the primacy question may eventually become obsolete. In this Segundo's methodology deviates somewhat from that of Gutierrez, who maintains the primacy of praxis as his basic methodological position, but who implies a dialectic. Jose Miguez Bonino The political ethics of Jose M. Bonino also seem to introduce some hesitation in the position of the primacy of praxis. He deals with the issue of the theory-praxis dialectic in many works, although most notably in Towards a Christian Political Ethics1 and in his article 'Historical Prabtis and Christian Identity'.3 The latter is perhaps the most direct examination of the question. Bonino effectively summarizes the positions of his colleagues and enunciates certain principles which may be discerned as common to all such theologians of liberation. It is notable in this context that Bonino is reluctant to make radical claims concerning this new methodology and is indeed hesitant to include the principle of the primacy of praxis as characteristic of liberation theology. Instead he describes the anti-idealist element thus: 'There is no direct route from divine revelation to theology; the mediation of some praxis is inevitable'.4 Here the claim of a theology with its starting point in praxis is not considered to be a uniformly held principle. The position is far less 1. Segundo, Hidden Motives, p. 54. 2. J.M. Bonino, Towards a Christian Political Ethics (London: SCM Press, 1983). 3. J.M. Bonino, 'Historical Praxis and Christian Identity\ in R. Gibellini (ed.), Frontiers of Theology in Latin America (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1979), pp. 260-83. 4. Bonino, 'Historical Praxis', p. 262.

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radical than this. Further defining this position, he goes on: 'in any case it marks the end of any theology that claims to be self-nurturing and self-sufficient or to operate in some autonomous sphere detached from historical praxis'.1 Bonino continues to define the scope of such praxis, insisting on its socio-political character. Drawing mainly on the insights gleaned from Segundo, Bonino advocates a critical stance vis-i-vis society and subtle manifestations of particular ideologies. A fundamental by-product of such a critical attitude is, according to Bonino, the realization that theology cannot 'prescind from politics and be nontemporal'.2 An option for historical praxis has been the answer of Latin Americans to the question of Christian involvement in the political realm. In discussing the relationship of this praxis to Christian faith Bonino is emphatic that 'political praxis...becomes an essential part of the argument'.3 He further refines his thesis to maintain that the employment of categories of sociology is fundamental to achieving an accurate social analysis. In so doing Bonino rejects any facile move from theological reflection to social praxis or vice versa. Such positions would fail to take account of the particularity of Christian faith or, alternatively, would discount the complexity of social and political realities. It is clear, particularly from his discussion of social analysis and Christian theory, that Bonino fundamentally accepts the priority of Christian faith in any question concerning starting points. Although he is basically concerned with the integration of historical praxis and Christian faith and he does indeed envisage a dialectical process in operation, his ultimate position seems to be the acceptance of the particularity of Christian revelation. Many other liberation theologians adopt the position of the primacy of praxis. Indeed Hugo Assman, perhaps one of the more radical theologians, insists on the centrality of truth-praxis as the foundation of theology. Sobrino too, in dealing with the question of the relationship, opts for the initial need for some involvement with reality leading to a second moment which is theological reflection. Sobrino understands this approach to be in fundamental opposition to the pursuits of 'classical' European theology, which he understands to be concerned with the transmission of a body of truths, resultant from the various divine 1. 2. 3.

Bonino, 'Historical Praxis', p. 262. Bonino, 'Historical Praxis*, p. 262. Bonino, Towards a Christian Political Ethics, p. 42.

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revelations. Sobrino's opting for the former approach signals an epistemological break with classical concerns and implies a radically different methodology which refuses to be bound by the logic and rationalism characteristic of theology done from a position of privilege. It is clear from such a discussion of the theory-praxis relationship in theologians of liberation that their theorizing has been primarily advocative. They have been concerned with the practical results of their epistemological revolution, not with analysing the theoretical implications. This is partly due to their refusal on principle to be bound by the limitations of classical theology, which would result in their subordination to it. The theology of liberation is, according to Gutierrez, an entirely new way of doing theology and not some sub-division of classical moral theology. In line with the much quoted position of Bonino, he and his colleagues 'will refuse to be subject to the academic theology of the West as a sort of norma normans to which all theology is accountable'.1 Critical Correlation Such a position, although understandable, is frustrating for the many theorists who are sympathetic to the concerns of all theologians of liberation yet who are uneasy about the methodological implications of such theologies. Both the strengths and weaknesses of the praxis-based theologies have been analysed by European and American theologians, and it is to their evaluation that we now turn, with particular emphasis as always on their interpretation of the theory-praxis dialectic. Many have commented on the primacy of praxis position (often failing to take account of the important distinction between primacy of praxis and the inclusion of praxis) and have opted instead for the hermeneutical-based position. David Tracy, Werner Jeanrond and Dennis McCann are representative of such a position. Matthew Lamb, on the other hand, who has also been an insightful analyst of the ongoing debate, has opted for a model entitled a 'critical praxis correlation',2 meaning that praxis grounds the activity of theorizing. In opposition to critical theoretic correlations which would accept that the goal of theory is praxis, this model places the correlation in praxis. In advocating such a model for theology Lamb insists that 'praxis is not only the goal but also the 1. J.M. Bonino, Doing Theology in a Revolutionary Situation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), p. 86. 2. Lamb, Solidarity with Victims, p. 82.

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foundation of theory',1 thereby assenting to the Marxian understanding of theoretical reflection. Lamb's concern is to integrate the insights of this epistemological revolution in the works of the theologians of liberation, which originated essentially with Marx. In accepting the primacy of praxis, Lamb, in his penultimate chapter entitled 'Political Theology and Enlightenment', seeks to discover how theologians of such a persuasion 'could undertake a socially critical reconstruction of church teachings'.2 The primacy of praxis essentially requires a transformative model of truth. Lamb adverts to the inadequacy of disclosive models of truth promoted by theologians who opt for a hermeneutically based theology. Such a position, and indeed positions representative of the classical theoretical enlightenment,3 'are in danger of congealing into static forms if their imperatives for transformation are not lived out in practice'.4 He insists therefore on the transformative dimension of dogma, which has been alluded to by Lonergan,5 Segundo,6 Metz7 and Francis Fiorenza.8 In the final instance Lamb would suggest that 'dogmas are expressive of a knowledge born of transformative religious love—a "love that is not to be just words or mere talk, but something real and active", a love "only by which we can be certain that we belong to the realm of the truth (I John 3:18ff)'".9 Lamb ultimately opts for the critical praxis, correlation. He uses the term 'noetic' to qualify his understanding of praxis, thus involving an intellectual dimension. Indeed Lamb's model of the critical praxis correlation is attractive in that it seems to recognize the necessity that praxis be included in the theological process, although 1. Lamb, Solidarity with Victims, p. 82. 2. Lamb, Solidarity with Victims, p. 117. 3. Lamb, Solidarity with Victims, p. 107. 4. Lamb, Solidarity with Victims, p. 111. 5. B. Lonergan, The Way to Nicea: The Dialectical Development of Trinitarian Theology (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1982), cited in Lamb, Solidarity with Victims,p. 111. 6. J.L. Segundo, Our Idea of God (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1974), cited in Lamb, Solidarity with Victims, p. 111. 7. J.B. Metz, Followers of Christ (New York: Paulist Press, 1978); also in Lamb, Solidarity with Victims, p. 111. 8. F. Fiorenza, 'Critical Social Theory and Christology', Catholic Theological Society of America Proceedings 30 (1975), pp. 63-110; also in Lamb, Solidarity with Victims, p. 111. 9. Fiorenza, 'Critical Social Theory', p. 112.

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it also affirms the theoretical. Yet Lamb ultimately opts for the primacy of praxis which grounds theory. This position is problematic for many and seems to be exclusive of alternative models for theology which would include a hermeneutical aspect. However, in adopting this correlational model Lamb seems to have modified somewhat the more radical aspects of the claims of liberation theologians in this respect. Although Lamb does insist on praxis as the goal and foundation of theory, he also accepts the theoretical or noetic character of all praxis. This is a position which, although it has been inherent in the understanding of praxis by many liberation theologians, may aid in developing the dialectical nature of the relationship between praxis and theory. In a critique of the position of Lamb, Dennis P. McCann and Charles Strain suggest that his work on 'noetic praxis' 'fails to fulfil its promise because it fails to overcome the residue of orthodoxy in its own heuristic model'.1 In his attempt to integrate the transcendental imperatives of Lonergan, Lamb has, according to McCann and Strain, taken on board presuppositions and commitments which point ultimately to some form of orthodoxy. The difficulty of Lamb's noetic praxis is analogous to those identified by Charles Davis in the orthopraxis position of Metz and Gutierrez. In a further comment on the attempts to ensure the primacy of praxis in theology, McCann and Strain conclude: 'as long as orthopraxis preempts a truly dialectical unfolding of "noetic praxis", critical reflection will provide nothing more than an apologetic for orthodoxy. But why should the eclipse of "noetic praxis" be paid as the price of orthodoxy?'2 The nature of a dialectical relationship is indeed difficult to grasp. Given our education in patriarchal society where hierarchy is understood to be the norm for relationships, our inability to comprehend the meaning of a relationship which is dialectical is not surprising. Theologies committed to praxis as integralfindthemselves in an impossible situation. On the one hand, critics deride their attempts to ascribe a central role to praxis in theology, claiming that such instances of theology are atheoretical and insubstantial. From yet another perspective, critics reject any attempts to include the theoretical dimension, for example Metz's memoria or Lamb's noetic praxis, as failing to accept the logical conclusion of a praxis position. 1. D. McCann and C. Strain, Polity and Praxis: A Program for American Practical Tlieology (Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1985), p. 45. 2. McCann and Strain, Polity and Praxis, p. 45.

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I would suggest that both critiques display an inadequate understanding of praxis, with its origin in Marx and subsequent philosophies of the left. Each assumes that the notion of praxis is in some way defiled once a theoretical or noetic dimension is included. Yet as we have seen from an examination of the proponents of such positions—both European and Latin American—theory always plays a formative role, and the relationship proposed is dialectical rather than hierarchical. A further clue as to the meaning of emancipatory praxis used by liberation and political theologians may be found in the seminal article by Charles Davis entitled Theology and Praxis'.1 Published in 1973, this article still provides us with the most comprehensive account of the meaning of praxis for theology from the perspective of one who endorses its primacy. The success of Davis's article is due to his examination of the Marxian notion of praxis in the context of theology. One is patently aware of what he means by the term 'praxis', whereas a common difficulty with the theologies of Metz, Gutierrez and others is that one is not aware of the precise meaning of the term employed. Davis accepts the basic principle of Marxism's critique of religion and, by integrating the notion of praxis, hopes to overcome its basic objection. Davis states: what characterized thought as religious for Marx was its being mere theory divorced from social practice. By claiming permanent and universal truth in theory as if it were independent of social conditions, religion uncritically reflected patterns of social dominance and concealed social reality in mystifying abstractions2

and further: 'what is rejected by Marx is any claim to have access to truth otherwise than through an activity directed to transforming society'.3 This question has been dealt with, with varying degrees of success, in political and liberation theologies. The inclusion of praxis as the starting point of theology has been a hallmark of such theories. The issue of the subsequent transformation of the theological enterprise has also been addressed. The key to understanding this apparent contradiction between revolutionary praxis and theological truth is in the appropriation of the unity of theory and praxis postulated by Marx. According to Davis, 1. 2. 3.

C. Davis, 'Theology and Praxis', Cross Currents 23.2 (1973), pp. 154-68. Davis, 'Theology and Praxis', p. 155. Davis, 'Theology and Praxis', p. 155.

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praxis in Marx covers a wide range of human activity, from bodily labour and production to political revolution. It includes criticism and theoretical activity. The common characteristic constituting human activities as praxis is their power to transform reality...Only those activities contributing to the humanization of man [sic] are praxis in the strict sense.1

In a brief analysis of the interaction between Marx, Bauer and Cieszkowski, Davis examines the basic position of Marx in relation to the theory-praxis dialectic thus: Marx, therefore, establishes a unity of theory and praxis. Theory is the consciousness of praxis; praxis is action infused with and made conscious by theory. Marx rejected the notion of theory independent of praxis... Critical theory is the conscious component of revolutionary praxis, a theoretical consciousness inseparable from the concrete, historical effort to overcome the contradictions in existing society2

This unity of theory and praxis is extremely attractive to reformers within the Christian tradition in that it seems to provide an acceptable basis for transformation. The dialectical nature of the relationship is further described by Davis thus: 'while critical theory infused revolutionary praxis and made it conscious, the transformation effected by praxis in turn changed theory by altering its basis'.3 Conclusion It is clear that there is little agreement among political and liberation theologians about either the meaning or the role of praxis for theology. Such is the intellectual climate within which feminist theologians have adopted this category. Although homogeneity is not the object desired, some articulation of the category of praxis is essential for clarity of thought. I consider that Lamb's critical praxis correlation model and Charles Davis's understanding provide the most adequate articulations of a praxis position for theologians. Both attend to the dialectic which is at the core of Marx's revolutionary praxis, without compromising the praxical. In their work praxis is neither atheoretical nor unmediated. Rather it implies an ongoing dialogical relationship between theory and activity. Once we have unravelled the ambiguities and inconsistencies in the 1. 2. 3.

Davis, Theology and Praxis*, p. 158. Davis, Theology and Praxis', p. 159. Davis, 'Theology and Praxis', p. 160.

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works of various theologians of liberation, we understand the category of praxis to imply an interplay of action and reflection, of thinking and doing. Theory and praxis are not separate, disparate poles in the relationship. Neither exists independently of the other. They are mutually informing and enlightening. To presume that theory and praxis are distinct and separate moments in the theological enterprise is seriously to misunderstand the way in which all knowledge is acquired and interpretation unfolds. Action and reflection are inextricably linked in our conceptual labour. Liberation and political theologians have recognized this, and have sought to place such a methodological suppositionfirmlyon the theological agenda. Since praxis is one of the primary resources for feminist theology, and one of the central categories in analysis, an examination of its theological background has been essential. In using the category of praxis in this way feminist theologians too shift methodologically. Epistemology is altered, what counts as theology gains a new perspective. Indeed, in appropriating the category of praxis from Marxism and from critical theory via liberation and political theology, feminist theologians have gained an epistemology which enables them to claim women's experience and women's activity as valid theological resources. Metz's assertion that praxis provides the point of departure for theology, Gutierrez's insistence that theology is critical reflection on praxis, and the myriad of related positions raise the various methodological difficulties which appropriating the category entails. We will deal with these difficulties as they arise in the works of individuals since, as one might expect, there is no uniform employment of the category among feminist theologians. It must be acknowledged, however, that the methodological implications of employing the category of praxis underpin the entire feminist theological corpus. They provide a framework whereby the work of de Beauvoir, hooks, Rich and others can gain theological legitimacy as central resources. The praxis position of feminist theology, in my opinion, further reinforces the necessity for instability and flux in our conceptual labour. To ascribe a central role to praxis is to recognize that all research, analysis, writing and the like is subject to constant critique and revision. A theology which represents that acting-reflecting model, and which is rooted in the particularity of women's experience, is bound to do so. Whether this necessitates a relativist epistemology however is something that will be explored in the concluding chapter.

Part II PRIMARY CATEGORIES EMPLOYED

Chapter 3 CHRISTIAN FEMINISTS AND THE CATEGORIES OF WOMEN'S EXPERIENCE AND PRAXIS

Introduction Although there is a significant body of material to consider, I have decided to deal with the work of both Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza and Rosemary Radford Ruether in the same chapter. As committed Christian feminists I believe that the similarities in their methodological presuppositions are more fundamental than any differences that emerge in relation to particular issues—and indeed there are many. In addition to the explicit focus of their works being different, there are significant differences in the manner in which they employ the primary categories of feminist theology: women's experience and praxis. Schussler Fiorenza, in her work, tends to employ a more overtly Marxian language and method, whereas Ruether's vocabulary is that of the prophetic-messianic tradition. Yet, even as they propose distinctive possibilities in their understanding of the substance of the categories of women's experience and praxis, both are faced with a fundamental question in relation to their employment. The problem for both Ruether and Schussler Fiorenza lies in the difficulty of reconciling the Christian tradition with the apparent abandonment of any claim to universality which the use of these categories implies. Both Schussler Fiorenza and Ruether are attentive to the radical historicity of human experience and praxis. Indeed both make this the cornerstone of their critique of patriarchal theological scholarship, and of their alternative proposals. In taking on board many of the insights of critical theory, and to a more limited extent those of Foucault, both Ruether and Schussler Fiorenza have erected a theological framework and methodology rooted in the perspectival character of all scholarship and in the demise of 'intellectual innocence'.

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Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza Schussler Fiorenza is acutely aware of methodological issues and addresses them, perhaps, more directly than any of the other theologians whose work we shall examine. First, we will consider her use of women's experience and praxis in methodology as this emerges from her biblical hermeneutics. We shall then move to her articulation of feminist theology as a critical theology of liberation and her use of the resources therein. Finally we will look at her exchange in relation to a specific methodology for feminist theology in a roundtable discussion on the subject. The rising consciousness of women from all religious traditions has ensured that sexist and exclusive articulations of divine activity are called into question. In the words of Schussler Fiorenza, while androcentric scholarship takes man (male) as the paradigmatic human being feminist scholarship insists on the reconceptualisation of our intellectual frameworks in such a way that they become truly inclusive of women as subjects of human scholarship and knowledge on the one hand and articulate male experience and insights as a particular experience and perception of reality and truth on the other hand.1

The effort to include the experiences and insights of women in the theological realm results in a 'reconceptualization of intellectual frameworks'. Indeed the entire structure of androcentric theory is called into question. Traditional concepts and dogmas, symbols and images are evaluated in the light of an expressed concern to include a female dimension. Many are discarded as irredeemably sexist and oppressive in character, while others are purged of their misogynist tendencies and retrieved. The question of the foundation for such an exercise is indeed fundamental. Schussler Fiorenza has explicitly stated that the structures of patriarchal religion are no longer, and indeed have never been, adequate, because they marginalize women's experiences. Women's experiences of the oppressive nature of patriarchal religion have deemed these traditions unusable. Thus women's experience is the arbiter in determining the validity of theological traditions. Clearly this supposition is problematic for traditional theological thinking since the revealed and thereby 1. E. Schussler Fiorenza, Tor Women in Men's Worlds: A Critical Feminist Theology of Liberation', in C. Geffrey, G. Gutierrez and V. Elizondo (eds.), Different Theologies, Common Responsibility (Concilium, 171; Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1984), p. 33.

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foundational nature of texts and traditions is called into question. Undoubtedly classical theology has already encountered a similar challenge from both liberation and black theologians who object to the doing of theology from the white middle-classfirst-worldperspective. Nevertheless I believe that the challenge from feminist theologians is more fundamental in that it confronts the entire basis of patriarchal theology. 'Feminist studies challenge male symbolic representations, historical interpretations, and our habitual consciousness of sexism as a classificatory given in our language and thought-world.'1 Schussler Fiorenza makes many such statements concerning the nature of feminist theology, yet she rarely examines the implications of such a position directly. As already mentioned, the methodological questions which arise from such a starting point are not her primary concerns. Nevertheless, she does not ignore them, but addresses them in the context of the feminist biblical hermeneutics which is her dominant focus. A Feminist Biblical Hermeneutics In opposition to many post-Christian feminists who insist that patriarchy is a hallmark of Christianity, Schussler Fiorenza is concerned with renewal. Mainstream Christian feminists, although sympathizing with many of the positions of post-Christian feminists, reject their dismissal of Christianity. Schussler Fiorenza is one such theorist, whose main contention is that this stance too easily concedes that women have no biblical history—it relinquishes our claim to a biblical heritage. She argues that women cannot afford to ignore this heritage, since it is precisely this power of oppression which has refused to grant women our history. The influence of Segundo on Schussler Fiorenza is indeed obvious. She adopts the model of biblical interpretation taken from liberation theology, which in turn is based on the ideological suspicion of critical theory. Insisting on the impossibility of intellectual neutrality, Schussler Fiorenza rejects the notion of approaching a text objectively, devoid of presuppositions. In a world scarred by exploitation and violence theology either serves the interests of the status quo or promotes transformation. From a feminist perspective one is obliged to enquire, therefore, whether theology and hermeneutics are oppresive or liberative of women. Thus, in the name of intellectual honesty one ought to make 1.

Schussler Fiorenza, 'For Women in Men's Worlds', p. 34.

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explicit one's agenda. In so doing Schiissler Fiorenza claims her feminist biblical hermeneutics to be one of both suspicion and advocacy. Feminist interpretation takes an advocacy stance for women in order that Scripture not be a weapon in the hand of patriarchy. Feminist hermeneutics then seeks to uncover and recover the contribution of women in the early Christian churches. In so doing, scholars are led also to critique the androcentric frameworks adopted by biblical scholarship without reflection on their presuppositions and biases. This thoroughgoing critique encompasses androcentric translations and interpretation, canonization in a patriarchal environment and the projection and reception of texts in a tradition which is often blatandy misogynist.1 In the work Bread Not Stone: The Challenge of Feminist Biblical Interpretation,2 Schiissler Fiorenza articulates in a very general way her aim: 'to develop a feminist biblical hermeneutics...a theory, method, or perspective for understanding and interpretation... In doing so...[to] contribute to the feminist articulation of a new scholarly paradigm of biblical interpretation and theology'.3 In discussing the starting point or foundation for such a 'new scholarly paradigm' Schiissler Fiorenza enunciates one of the basic principles of feminist theory in general: that 'feminist theology begins with the experiences of women, of womenchurch'.4 This experience has, however, been one of oppression and of injustice, and thus the starting point of most feminist theology has been the experiences of oppression and misogyny in which the Scriptures and tradition have been used to ensure the ascendency of patriarchy. Beginning from such a perspective it is not surprising that feminist theology is a critical theology. Women- Church 'The hermeneutical center of feminist biblical interpretation is the womenchurch (ekklesia gynaikon), the movement of self-identified women and women-identified men in biblical religion'.5 This notion of ekklesia 1. E. Schiissler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983). 2. E. Schiissler Fiorenza, Bread Not Stone: The Challenge of Feminist Biblical Interpretation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984). 3. Schiissler Fiorenza, Bread Not Stone, p. x. 4. Schiissler Fiorenza, Bread Not Stone, p. x. 5. E. Schiissler Fiorenza, The Will to Choose or to Reject: Continuing our

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gynaikon as the critical centre of interpretation of Scripture is interesting and undoubtedly much disputed. Schiissler Fiorenza is adamant in her claim that such a term is not intended to be exclusive in character but is used as an 'antidote' to the term 'patriarchy', 'as a political-oppositional term to patriarchy'.1 She clarifies her use of the term 'patriarchy' as 'not just ideological dualism or androcentric world construction in language but a social, economic and political system of graded subjugations and oppressions'.2 Thus Schiissler Fiorenza considers sexism, racism, classism and colonialism to be further manifestations of a patriarchal system: The locus or place of divine revelation and grace is therefore not the Bible or the tradition of a patriarchal church but the ekklesia of women and the lives of women who live the 'option for our women selves'. It is not simply 'the experience' of women but the experience of women (and all those oppressed) struggling for liberation from patriarchal oppression.3

Such a position is clearly in opposition to mainstream biblical scholarship and is ultimately problematic from that perspective. Schiissler Fiorenza takes women's struggle for liberation to be the criterion for interpretation. I understand her to include any struggle for liberation from patriarchy as an acceptable critical principle for evaluation of texts. This would include the struggle of black communities and third world communities for freedom from oppression. Yet although Schiissler Fiorenza would accept their challenge to patriarchal texts as a valid expression of this critical hermeneutics, her main concern is the struggle of women. With the experiences of women-church as the principle of evaluation of scriptural texts, one is led to enquire as to whether such texts, which have been experienced as utterly oppressive and exploitative, have any place in the ekklesia gynaikon. Indeed one marvels at Schiissler Fiorenza's commitment to such texts and traditions, since she supports the position of the nineteenth-century American feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton who insisted that 'from the inauguration of the movement for women's emancipation the Bible has been used to hold her in the "divinely ordained sphere" prescribed in the Old and New Testaments'.4 Critical Work', in L. Russell (ed.), Feminist Interpretation of the Bible (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), p. 126. 1. Schussler Fiorenza, 'The Will to Choose or to Reject', p. 127. 2. Schussler Fiorenza, The Will to Choose or to Reject', p. 127. 3. Schussler Fiorenza, The Will to Choose or to Reject', p. 128. 4. Schussler Fiorenza, Bread Not Stone, pp. 8, 155 n. 3.

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However, it is the task of a feminist biblical hermeneutics to challenge the assumption that such patriarchal texts are in some way authoritative. This challenge is initiated because of the foundational nature of the experiences of women-church which has deemed such texts oppressive. Schussler Fiorenza has further formulated some basic principles of this feminist biblical hermeneutics which is answerable, ultimately, to the experiences of women-church. In the chapter entitled 'Women-Church'1 in Bread Not Stone, Schussler Fiorenza suggests four basic elements which appear to be central to a feminist critical interpretation. In her contribution to the collection edited by Letty Russell entitled Feminist Interpretation of the Bible she has further developed the substance of such constitutive elements. She suggests that the model of interpretation from a feminist perspective must include: '(1) suspicion rather than acceptance of biblical authority, (2) critical evaluation rather than correlation, (3) interpretation through proclamation, (4) remembrance and historical reconstruction, and (5) interpretation through celebration and ritual'.2 Perhaps the most important element from our point of view is the call for critical evaluation rather than correlation. It is interesting to note that although this issue is dealt with in Bread Not Stone3 it is not listed as one of the constitutive components of the feminist model of biblical interpretation. Given that the women-church has the authority 'to choose and reject' texts, Schussler Fiorenza sees the thrust of such a discipline to be critical evaluation rather than correlation. As such, it is obliged to articulate criteria for evaluating particular texts and traditions. 'Such criteria or principles must be derived from a systematic exploration of women's experience of oppression and liberation.'4 Schussler Fiorenza has not as yet dealt with the question of the further articulation of such criteria nor has she specified what these principles, based on the experience of women-church, might be. Undoubtedly a basic difficulty with further specification of such principles may be the realization that the experience of women-church is not uniform. Texts and traditions which are experienced as oppressive by some may not be so experienced by others. Perhaps the basis of 1. Schiissler Fiorenza, Bread Not Stone, pp. 1-23, which first appeared in J. Weidman (ed.), Christian Feminism (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984). 2. Schussler Fiorenza, The Will to Choose or to Reject', p. 130. 3. Schussler Fiorenza, Bread Not Stone, pp. 13ff. 4. Schussler Fiorenza, 'The Will to Choose or to Reject*, p. 131.

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Schussler Fiorenza's failure to develop further such criteria for feminist interpretation lies precisely in the reconstruction of the plurality of the experience of woman-church vis-a-vis scriptural texts and interpretations. She is ceaseless in her efforts to preserve the integrity of the category of women's experience. Therefore she refuses to try to contain or define it. In a further effort to maintain the 'supremacy' of women-church as the hermeneutical key, Schussler Fiorenza rejects the principle of correlation proposed by Ruether. Although such a principle is, according to Schussler Fiorenza, committed to the promotion of the full humanity of women the affinity between the prophetic-messianic and the feminist principles cannot be presumed. To do so is to presume to define and predetermine the experiences of the ekklesia gynaikon. Although the feminist biblical hermeneutics proposed by Schussler Fiorenza does affirm as liberative certain biblical texts, for example Gal. 3.28, it does so not from a prior commitment to reconciling the prophetic-messianic and the feminist traditions but 'because the historical experience of womenchurch with the Bible allows us to do so'.1 Schussler Fiorenza again addresses the question of the principles of interpretation in a subsection entitled 'Toward a Feminist Interpretive Paradigm of Emancipatory Praxis', which is in itself revealing. Enquiring as to the status of Scripture in the liberation struggle Schussler Fiorenza briefly examines the principle for interpretation proposed by Segundo, Cady Stanton and James Cone. She adheres to the basic methodology enshrined in Segundo's hermeneutic circle and affirms his reluctance to specify any biblical statement as an interpretive principle because of the basic ideological character of all such expressions of faith. She rejects the criterion of the historical Jesus as the norm of truth advocated by Jon Sobrino, or the 'Black Christ who provides the necessary soul for black liberation'2 which is suggested by James Cone. Instead Schussler Fiorenza opts for less specific criteria which are inclusive of the former two but not confined to them: I would suggest that the canon and norm for evaluating biblical traditions and their subsequent interpretations cannot be derived from the Bible or the biblical process of learning within ideologies, but can only be formulated within the struggle for the liberation of women and all oppressed people. The canon and evaluative norm cannot be 'universal' but must be specific and derived from a particular experience of oppression and 1. 2.

Schussler Fiorenza, The Will to Choose or to Reject', p. 132. Schussler Fiorenza, Bread Not Stone, p. 59.

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liberation...The personally and politically reflected experience of oppression and liberation must become the criterion of * appropriateness' for biblical interpretation.1 This is clearly in opposition to classical hermeneutical theory which tends, depending on the persuasion of the biblical scholar, to interpret scriptural texts with reference to the theological, historical or literary components. This subordination of texts and traditions to experience is the hallmark of feminist biblical hermeneutics. It is indeed the logical outcome of a paradigm for interpretation which takes an advocacy stance vis-i-vis all theology. 'The advocacy stance demands that oppressive and destructive biblical traditions not be granted their claim to truth and authority today.'2 The determination of the traditions' oppressive or liberative potential is the function of the women-church. It is women's experience which is the critical principle of interpretation. The subordination of texts and traditions to women's experience and praxis may, as I have suggested, be the hallmark of a feminist biblical hermeneutics; however, it is not its most radical aspect. Schussler Fiorenza is rightly aware of the question of what is constitutive of women's experience, what is universal, what is particular? Although she does not discuss the issue of the extent to which the term 'women's experience' can be used independently of the context from which it originates, she is acutely aware of the difficulties involved in using the categories of women's experience and praxis. Once she chooses to stress that the evaluative norm for hermeneutics cannot be universal, but rather is derived from specific instances of oppression and liberation, she admits that there is a certain relativism implied in her primary resources. Attention to the particularity of women's experience and praxis does not, however, undercut her ability to critique those structures and institutions which are experienced as oppresive by many women. This is so because she has a particularly nuanced understanding of women's experience and praxis which emerges in concrete struggle and engagement. In a final plea for a hermeneutics of advocacy, Schussler Fiorenza is acutely aware of the difficulties of attempting to be adequately wideranging and inclusive of all other forms of oppression while maintaining a firm commitment to the pivotal experiences of women-church. As an attempt to balance both needs Schussler Fiorenza advocates an 1. 2.

Schussler Fiorenza, Bread Not Stone, p. 60. Schussler Fiorenza, Bread Not Stone, p. 60.

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underlying 'critical theology of liberation' which would provide a basic analysis of oppression and yet enable specific interest groups to articulate their major concerns. As a prerequisite for the formulation of such a theology Schussler Fiorenza insists that Liberation theologians must abandon the hermeneutic-contextual paradigm of biblical interpretation, and construct within the context of a critical theology of liberation a new interpretive paradigm that has as its aim emancipatory praxis. Such a paradigm of political praxis has, as a research perspective, the critical relationship between theory and practice, between biblical texts and contemporary liberation movements. This new paradigm of emancipatory praxis must generate new heuristic models that can interpret and evaluate biblical traditions and their political function in history in terms of their own canons of liberation.1

A Critical Theology of Liberation With the conclusion, heralded by critical theory, of the era of intellectual innocence, the key to the interpretation of information in its various forms was considered to be the extent to which the relevant tradition participates in the experiences of oppression of a particular community. Critical theology 'uncovers and criticizes Christian traditions and theologies which stimulated and perpetuated violence, alienation, and oppression' ? In addition to such a critical edge feminist theology and indeed all critical theology is committed to the formulation of alternative and inclusive traditions and images. In this task feminist theology has taken the lead, in that it has made an enormous contribution to the development of images and symbols which promote rather than frustrate the intentions of critical theology to be liberative and justice-centered. 'Feminist theology presupposes as well as has for its goal an emancipatory ecclesial and theological praxis.'3 This elaboration of the centrality of emancipatory praxis for the theological process from a feminist perspective is reminiscent of Gutierrez's description of theology as a critical reflection on praxis. Here I understand emancipatory praxis to be rooted in the experiences of women-church, which is, according to

1. Schussler Fiorenza, Bread Not Stone, p. 63. 2. E. Schussler Fiorenza, 'Feminist Theology as a Critical Theology of Liberation', in W. Tabb (ed.), Churches in Struggle: Liberation Theologies and Social Change in North America (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1986), p. 49. 3. Schussler Fiorenza, 'Feminist Theology', p. 49.

3. Christian Feminists, Women*s Experience and Praxis Schiissler Fiorenza, the critical principle of evaluation for texts and traditions. According to her, only when theology is on the side of the outcast and oppressed, as was Jesus, can it become incarnational and Christian. Christian theology, therefore, has to be rooted in emancipatory praxis and solidarity. The means by which feminist theology grounds its theologizing in emancipatory praxis is consciousness-raising and sisterhood.1

She further elaborates on the functions of consciousness-raising, which reveals to theologians the extent of oppression—both their own and others; and sisterhood, which provides the solidarity so vital in the struggle against injustice. Let us enquire further into the precise meaning of the statement 'feminist theology presupposes as well as has for its goal emancipatory praxis'. The notion of feminist theology having for its goal a liberative praxis is in no way problematic. Although it does shift the focus significantly, it in no way disturbes the basic methodological presuppositions of classical theology. It is simply a reiteration, in more political terms, of the notion that the ultimate goal of theologizing is to enable one to live a more Christian life. It would correspond to the critical theoretic correlation model described by Matthew Lamb.2 It is the notion of feminist theology's presupposing an emancipatory praxis that requires a closer examination. One is bound to enquire as to the precise nature of the presupposition. Does Schiissler Fiorenza mean that one must be actively involved in the promotion of the liberation of women prior to theologizing? In such an event, and with the goal being the emancipatory praxis itself, the activity of theologizing would be rendered superfluous. However, if one were to understand this presupposition of emancipatory praxis as a statement of the necessity of having a prior, ideological commitment to liberation one retains the importance of theologizing as a process. The recognition of this prior commitment is indeed consistent with the principles of a critical theology. The acknowledgment and statement of such biases is fundamental to intellectual integrity, according to Schiissler Fiorenza in her discussion of feminist biblical hermeneutics. The critical opting for the promotion of the authentic humanity of women is the inherent bias, the proposition of feminist theology. Such an option is 1. 2.

Schiissler Fiorenza, 'Feminist Theology', p. 52. Lamb, Solidarity with Victims, pp. 75-82.

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not, according to Schussler Fiorenza, departing from the character of traditional theology, although the explicit acknowledgment of it is. Thus the statement that feminist theology presupposes an emancipatory praxis is not so much revolutionary as an honest assessment of the inherent and often hidden agenda of theological and indeed other forms of scholarly endeavour. The revolutionary aspect is introduced with the statement that the experience of women-church is the hermeneutical principle in formulating a relevant and liberative theology. Schussler Fiorenza continues to tease out this question of emancipatory praxis in the section entitled Tension between Christian Vision and Praxis'. She does not, however, deal with the theoretical issues involved in the perceived tension, that is, the question of the status of the Christian vision articulated in biblical passages. Instead, using the muchquoted passage from Gal. 3.27 she proceeds to highlight the discrepancy between the vision of equality articulated and the oppression experienced. Although the passage articulates a central vision, in practice it has often been disregarded, leading to experiences of exclusion and oppression by women. A Methodology for Feminist Theology In one of the early publications of the periodical Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Schussler Fiorenza and a number of leading feminists participated in an interdisciplinary 'Roundtable Discussion: On Feminist Methodology'.1 The character of 'scholarly feminism vis-a-vis political activism' was seen to be the central issue to be considered since it has been a source of much contention in feminist circles for years. The question is this: How will you refuse to let the academy separate the dead from the living, and then yourself declare allegiance to life? As teachers, scholars, and students, how available will you make your knowledge to others as tools for their own liberation? This is not a call for mindless activism, but rather for engaged scholarship.2

This call for the integration of the theoretical and the praxical is considered to be a foundational element in feminist scholarship, and, from Schussler Fiorenza's perspective, of feminist theology. She attributes the 1. 'Roundtable Discussion: On Feminist Methodology\ with contributions from E. Schussler Fiorenza, K.M. Brown, C.T. Gilkes, M.E. Hunt, A.L. Barstow, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 1.2 (1985), pp. 73-88. 2. Schussler Fiorenza et al, 'Roundtable Discussion*, p. 73.

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failure of feminist thought to overcome the dualisms inherent in the Western tradition to the inability to overcome the dichotomy, previously accepted, between theory and practice. 'It seems to me that one of the roots of our inability to overcome the dualistic mindset and perspective in women's studies in religion is our acceptance of the academic division between theory and practice.'1 She considers the refusal to accept such an academic division to be central to the emerging research paradigm. As she has done previously, she enlists the analysis of Thomas Kuhn in his work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions? Schussler Fiorenza considers the emergence of feminist scholarship to be responsible for a major paradigm shift away from the androcentric dualistic model perpetuated in patriarchal research methods and institutions. The aim is to accomplish the shift from an androcentric to a feminist paradigm. This feminist paradigm is not considered to be separatist in any way but is part of a universal movement on the part of the oppressed to reclaim their all-important contribution to scholarship. As always Schussler Fiorenza's articulation of issues from a feminist viewpoint is done in the context of the insights of liberation theology in general. 'However, as women belonging to a marginal and powerless group, we do not have the power to change the dominant paradigm as long as we and our work are not a conscious part of a women's movement for change and liberation.'3 In the context of the aim of articulating a feminist research paradigm which would provide an alternative model for research and would overcome the deficiencies of the androcentric dualistic one, Schussler Fiorenza employs the methodology of Maria Mies in an article entitled Towards a Methodology for Feminist Research'.4 Here she proposes an action-research-oriented methodology which is understood by her not as 'prescriptions to be followed dogmatically, but as an invitation for methodological experiment and innovation'.5

1. Schiissler Fiorenza et al., 'Roundtable Discussion*, p. 73. 2. T. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970). 3. Schussler Fiorenza et al., 'Roundtable Discussion', p. 74. 4. M. Mies, Towards a Methodology for Feminist Research', in E. Altbach, J. Clausen, D. Schultz and N. Stephan (eds.), German Feminism: Readings in Politics and Literature (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984), pp. 357-66. 5. Mies, 'Methodology for Feminist Research', p. 358.

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Schussler Fiorenza's appropriation of these guidelines1 from the perspective of a feminist theologian is indeed impressive. It must be mentioned however that her interest in the guidelines suggested by Mies 1. There are seven principles in all which are identified as central to the alternative feminist paradigm. Initially there is the rejection of the notion of value-free research and its replacement by the principle of conscious partiality, * which is achieved through partial identification with the research objects' (Mies, 'Methodology for Feminist Research', p. 359). Secondly, in contrast to the dominant experience where knowledge has been in the service of elites maintaining the status quo, such research must be brought into the service of the marginalized and silenced groups in society. As a consequence the view from above is necessarily replaced by a view from below, thereby engaging in the struggle against oppression in all its manifestations. The third principle is based on the much quoted eleventh thesis on Feuerbach, promoting the notion of knowledge as transformative and active rather than contemplative and analytic. Mies insists that 'the contemplative uninvolved "spectator knowledge" (Maslow) must be replaced by active participation in actions, movements and struggles for women's emancipation. Research must become an integral part of such struggles' ('Methodology for Feminist Research', p. 360). The principle just proposed is further developed. Its implications for the nature of research are examined. Active participation in the struggle for women's liberation leads one to question the understanding one has of the character of the research project. The struggle is seen to be an integral part of the research process and thus modifies the nature of research itself. The employment of the notion of conscientization from the work of Paulo Freire provides Mies with a further guideline which may be observed in doing feminist research. Accordingly she insists that the research project ought to become a process of conscientization. The tools of research must then be given to the oppressed in order that they can articulate, from their own unique perspective, their difficulties, and envision strategies for overcoming them. Mies is anxious however to develop the notion of conscientization in the service of a feminist research paradigm. She insists therefore that 'collective conscientization of women through a problem-formulating methodology must be accompanied by the study of women's indiviudal and social history' ('Methodology for Feminist Research', p. 361). The final guideline proposed by Mies is a plea for what is sometimes called 'sisterhood'. She suggests that 'women cannot appropriate their own history unless they begin to collectivize their own experiences' ('Methodology for Feminist Research', p. 362). This then is a rejection of the individualism promoted to excess by Western civilization and an opting for an existence which promotes community. Clearly this need to collectivize experience exists in tension with our plea for placing the differences between women at the centre of feminist scholarship. Undoubtedly collectivizing does enhance political efficacy. Yet this urge to unite and subsequently

3. Christian Feminists, Women's Experience and Praxis springs from the fact that she had already employed such a methodology in her book In Memory of Her. The parallels between the procedure proposed by Mies and that employed by Schiissler Fioreriza in her feminist biblical hermeneutics are obvious. Schiissler Fiorenza has continually insisted on the impossibility of intellectual neutrality and has conceived her own task as one with an inherent bias for women. The experiences of women-church as the critical evaluative principle corresponds to the view from below of Mies' methodology. That knowledge must actively promote transformation is central to Schiissler Fiorenza's understanding. She therefore insists that 'the truth' of a feminist hermeneutical position 'depends on its potential to orient biblical interpretation towards emancipation, liberation, and wholeness for women'.1 Further, she sees the double experience of women, that is, on the one hand the experience of oppression and injustice and on the other that of active participation in a liberation struggle, as the starting point for biblical interpretation. Conscientization has always been on Schiissler Fiorenza's agenda, as has the attempt to appropriate a women's history. Indeed this is perhaps the most important insight of Schiissler Fiorenza's, articulated against the tide of feminist consensus. In opposition to many feminists Schiissler Fiorenza has refused to relinquish her claim to a woman's biblical heritage. Her continual insistence that to do so is to concede to an extremely subtle form of oppression is indeed vindicated and is articulated in the sixth of Mies' guidelines. Her ceaseless pursuit of questions pertaining to the promotion of women's liberation indeed ensures that Schiissler Fiorenza's research projects fulfil the guidelines drawn up by Maria Mies. Conclusion At the most basic level one may say of Schiissler Fiorenza's theology that women's experience and praxis are indeed her primary resources. Her theology, principally hermeneutics, is informed by both categories, and her discussions on methodology reveal that at a theoretical level also she considers them to be the central sources from which she draws. As already mentioned, she considers emancipatory praxis to be both a presupposition and a goal of feminist critical theology. With a starting point in women's experiences, feminist theology ensures that texts and to universalize must be balanced against the exclusion which can occur with neglect of particularity. 1. Schiissler Fiorenza et al., 4Roundtable Discussion', p. 75.

99

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traditions formerly considered to be normative are evaluated in the light of their liberative or oppressive potential. In her contribution to the roundtable discussion on feminist methodology Schiissler Fiorenza endorses the position of Maria Mies, arguing against spectator knowledge and towards an understanding of knowledge as transformative and ultimately as emancipatory. She holds that the 'truth' of the feminist hermeneutical position is determined, not by its correspondence with what we consider to be reality, but by its potential to direct biblical interpretation towards liberation for women. In addition she integrates Mies' emphasis on the transformative potential of knowledge into her understanding of knowledge per se. Mies accepts the somewhat simplistic motto 'If you want to know a thing you must change it'l and insists that the experience of struggle for change must be accepted as the starting point for a 'scientific quest'.2 Schiissler Fiorenza colours this insight with a particularly theological emphasis. She considers the ambiguous position of Scripture within the feminist theological process—its use to perpetuate situations of oppression and injustice, particularly in relation to women, and its endorsement of an alternative vision which is inclusive and liberative. Thus, according to Schiissler Fiorenza, since the Bible is used against women in our liberation struggle, and perpetuates alienation from ourselves and at the same time has provided and still provides authorization and visions for Christian women in our struggles against patriarchal racism, sexism, classism, and colonialism, this double experience must become the starting point for biblical interpretation.3

It must be mentioned at this point that, articulated in this way, one can see a similarity between the position of Schiissler Fiorenza and that of, for example, David Tracy, who would insist on the centrality of the plurality of experiences in the reinterpretation of Christian texts and traditions. Schiissler Fiorenza does not deal with the question of the status of texts. She does, however, insist on their subordination to the experiences of the ekklesia gynaikon. This may provide the key to the difference, which mayfinallybe a question of degree. In one of her most recent works, But She Said: Feminist Practices of

1. 2. 3.

Mies, 'Methodology of Feminist Research', p. 360. Mies, 'Methodology of Feminist Research', p. 360. Schiissler Fiorenza et ai, 'Roundtable Discussion', p. 75.

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Biblical Interpretation,1 Schiissler Fiorenza does indeed address the question of the nature of biblical authority vis-^-vis the ekklesia gynaikon. Schiissler Fiorenza continues to dismiss the 'canon within a canon' position of some feminists and the critical correlation model of Ruether. Instead she quite convincingly locates her objections to these positions in her refusal to reduce the 'historical particularity and contradictory pluriformity of biblical texts'. This desire to formulate a canon within a canon and so eliminate the contradictory elements in the Bible is located, she claims, in the Western paradigm of the 'logic of identity'. Such positioning, she argues, leaves feminists with two often equally unattractive options, either accepting biblical authority or leaving biblical religions. Feminist biblical hermeneutics must be positioned instead within the 'logic of democracy', that is, within 'the discursive space of the ekklesia gynaikon, created and sustained by the emancipatory struggles and radical democratic movements around the globe'.2 Schiissler Fiorenza acknowledges that in her discussion of the ekklesia gynaikon she is greatly influenced by postmodernism and by the 'new French feminists'. She argues for the conceptualization of womenchurch with radical democracy as its norm.3 In addition to attending to the differences between women and the contradictions for women of biblical religion, such a norm 'reconceptualizes the act of biblical interpretation as a moment in the global praxis of liberation'.4 Thus she is more and more resistant to the polarization of which I have spoken, since for Schiissler Fiorenza this is a legacy of the logic of identity of which she is highly critical. There is, however, a basic confidence in tradition evident in the work of Schiissler Fiorenza and, as we shall soon discover, of Ruether, which does not exist among many feminist theologians. By definition Christian feminists have elected to dialogue with tradition in the belief that there is a liberative core masked by centuries of misogyny. Since they articulate their egalitarian vision out of the same foundational experiences, texts and traditions as classical theology, they represent perhaps a more pro1. But She Said: Feminist Practices of Biblical Interpretation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992). 2. But She Said, p. 151. 3. 'The Ethics and Politics of Liberation: Theorizing the Ekklesia of Women', in Discipleship of Equals: A Critical Feminist Ekklesialogy of Liberation (London: SCM Press, 1993), p. 344. 4. But She Said, p. S.

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found challenge than the work of, for example, post-Christian feminists. Schtissler Fiorenza is aware of the many methodological issues related to the use of the categories of women's experience and praxis to which I have alluded. The difficulties associated with the praxis position relate essentially to the status of texts and traditions previously considered to be both the primary resources and evaluating principles of theology. Schlissler Fiorenza clearly subordinates such texts and traditions to their interpretation by the ekklesia gynaikon. Such an act is not as subversive as it might seem since Schlissler Fiorenza considers that we are constantly engaged in acts of interpretation, and that scholarship is at its best engaged, and at its worst prejudiced. She is also conscious of the difficulties associated with using women's experience as a resource. Even when one has accepted the necessity for a specific theology to promote women's well-being, there are methodological issues at stake, the primary one being, in my opinion, the universalizing tendencies of much academic feminism. Schlissler Fiorenza herself is careful to avoid it in her own theorizing. She recognizes the diverse positions attributed to women's experience and cautions us to be aware of the particularity of each experience of oppression or liberation. Nevertheless she holds this position in tension with her contention that there is a certain commonality among women living under patriarchy and struggling to eradicate injustice in any form, which is the basis for some form of solidarity among women. The ekklesia gynaikon embodies this position of solidarity and thus becomes, for Schlissler Fiorenza, the touchstone of feminist theology. This solidarity is born, however, of shared concrete experience and praxis, and not of some abstract theoretical position. 'Christian feminists also do not relinquish their biblical roots and heritage. As the ekklesia of women, we claim the center of Christian faith and community in a feminist process of transformation.'l Rosemary Radford Ruether It must be mentioned from the outset that in dealing with the foundation and subsequent methodology of feminist theology as appropriated by Ruether, we are bound to employ a different terminology, since Ruether employs a language quite different from that of Schlissler Fiorenza and

1.

Schlissler Fiorenza, The Will to Choose or to Reject', p. 126.

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indeed from that of many of the liberation and political theologians. The term 'praxis', which has been central to our discussion thus far, is notable by its absence in the work of Ruether. In the infrequent instances when it is employed it seems to be devoid of the critical, dialectical character which it has been given in Marxist philosophy. Given the centrality of the notion of emancipatory praxis in the work of Schussler Fiorenza one would not expect a great affinity with a theology that does not employ the term at all. Yet there is indeed much similarity between the two. Apart from the obvious basic conviction which informs both theologies and indeed feminist theology as a discipline, both Ruether and Schussler Fiorenza are anxious to critique androcentric religion with a basic faith in the adequacy of the Christian tradition. Ruether tends to address directly the question of the starting point of feminist theology and its relation to Christian tradition more frequently than does Schussler Fiorenza. Yet as with the work of Schussler Fiorenza, much can also be inferred from Ruether's discussion of more specific issues. In this section I intendfirstto look at the works in which Ruether deals specifically with the question of the foundation of feminist theology. This will immediately lead us to enquire about the meaning, for Ruether, of the terms 'experience' and 'tradition', both of which are accorded significance in the discussion of the starting point. Having analysed the ways in which Ruether deals with the issue of how women's experience operates as the normative criterion for feminist theology, we will examine her work on specific theological topics from this perspective. We will look only at three particular issues: her method of correlation as the appropriate mode for feminist biblical hermeneutics, her project of providing a collection of texts as a resource for feminist theology in Womanguides: Readings Toward a Feminist Theology,1 and her work in Women-Church: Theology and Practice of Feminist Liturgical Communities.2 The Foundation of Feminist Theology Unfortunately the voluminous nature of Ruether's work is not reflected in her treatment of the question of the methodology of feminist theology. Our discussion is limited to some important texts, which, 1. R.R. Ruether, Womanguides: Readings Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985). 2. R.R. Ruether, Women-Church: Theology and Practice of Feminist Liturgical Communities (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985).

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although not exhaustive, reveal Ruether's attitude. We will look at the first chapter of Sexism and God-Talk: Towards a Feminist Theology, entitled 'Feminist Theology: Methodology, Sources and Norms', an article entitled 'Re-Contextualizing Theology, Feminism and Christian Commitment', which appeared in Theology Today,1 and 'Theology as Critique of and Emancipation from Sexism', from Jennings's The Vocation of the Theologian? The dominant experiences of women in the Christian tradition have been of exclusion and marginality. The task that Ruether sets herself, particularly in the monograph Sexism and God-Talk, is the formulation of certain positions central to a feminist theology. In herfirstchapter she provides her justification for such a project. Drawing upon the important discussion of theology and women's experience by Judith Plaskow,3 Ruether enunciates one of the primary principles of feminist theology: 'that feminist theology draws on women's experience as a basic source of content as well as a criterion of truth'.4 She correctly perceives that this has been a source of much contention. Her basic point in retaining this central tenet of feminist theology is her assertion that all theologizing is ultimately experiental in character. This assertion is reminiscent of Segundo's insistence that all theology is ultimately ideological and thus in need of critique. It reminds one also of Schussler Fiorenza's appropriation of the basic principle of critical theory insisting on the impossibility of scholarly objectivity or intellectual neutrality. Couched in less political terminology the force of Ruether's conviction remains. She interprets the disapproval of many to be a misunderstanding of the experiential base of all theological reflection. 'What have been called the objective sources of theology, Scripture and tradition, are themselves codified collective human experience.'5 Thus she challenges the notion of the absolute normativity of Scripture and tradition in theological reflection, although she is not, as will be evident elsewhere, anxious to disregard them. She is sincere and ceaseless in her efforts to preserve 1. R.R. Ruether, 'Re-Contextualizing Theology, Feminism and Christian Comnutment', TTod 43.1 (1986), pp. 22-27. 2. R.R. Ruether, Theology as Critique of and Emancipation from Sexism', in T.W. Jennings (ed.), The Vocation of the Theologian (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), pp. 25-36. 3. Plaskow, Sex, Sin and Grace, pp. 29-50. 4. Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk, p. 12. 5. Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk, p. 12.

3. Christian Feminists, Women's Experience and Praxis 105 what she considers to be liberative in the Christian Scriptures and tradition. Human experience is the starting point and the ending point of the hermeneutical circle. Codified tradition both reaches back to roots in experience and is constantly renewed or discarded through the test of experience. 'Experience' includes experience of the divine, experience of oneself, and experience of the community and the world, in an interacting dialectic.1

Ruether further explores the meaning and significance of this hermeneutical circle of past and present experiences. By identifying the Scriptures and tradition as 'past experience', Ruether very successfully illustrates the dialectic which is operative here. She insists that all religious ideas begin in the revelatory experience. This initial experience, whether individual or mediated through a group of interpreters, becomes socially meaningful only when translated into communal consciousness. This means, first, that the revelatory experience must be collectively appropriated by a formative group, which in turn promulgates and teaches a historical community. Second, the formative group mediates what is unique in the revelatory experience through past cultural symbols and traditions.2

The community of believers is thus gathered around a unique revelatory experience, understood and interpreted thorough extant symbols and traditions. Ruether briefly describes the process whereby, once the oral and written teachings have been established, the canon emerges and the boundaries of orthodoxy are clearly defined. This definition of a canon of Scripture results in tradition being interpreted as reflection on Scripture and ultimately reflection on the primary revelatory experience—in the dim and distant past. The ordinary believers now have increasingly complex formulas of faith, customs, rituals, and writings proposed to them as the basis for appropriating the original revelatory paradigm as personal redeeming experience... There is always an interaction between the patterns of faith proposed by teachers to individuals and the individual's own appropriation of these patterns as interpretations of experience. But these differences remain unarticulated, held within the dominant consensus about what the revelatory pattern 'means'.3 1. 2. 3.

Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk, p. 12. Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk, p. 13. Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk, p. 15.

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In fact the subversive potential of such an activity is lost because of the way in which this appropriation is understood. Patriarchal religious traditions depend on the depoliticization of such reinterpretations so as to ensure their ascendancy. Prior to the introduction of the critical element, however, Ruether is anxious to explain this appropriation of the revelatory experience in terms of the hermeneutical circle of past and present. Thus she maintains that 'the circle from experience to experience, mediated through instruments of tradition, is thus completed when the contemporary community appropriates the foundational paradigm as the continuing story of its own redemption in relation to God, self, and one another'.1 By analysing very simply the process by which primary revelatory experiences become codified in texts and traditions and the interaction between such past experiences and those of the present community, Ruether illustrates very well her basic point that all religious texts and traditions are ultimately experiential. Thus to acknowledge experience of the divine, self and others as the starting point for theology is, at second glance, not as revolutionary as it may formerly have seemed. Received symbols, formulas, and laws are either authenticated or not through their ability to illuminate and interpret experience. Systems of authority try to reverse this relation and make received symbols dictate what can be experienced as well as the interpretation of that which is experienced. In reality, the relation is the opposite. If a symbol does not speak authentically to experience, it becomes dead or must be altered to provide a new meaning.2

The crisis of tradition described by Ruether occurs when such paradigms, textual and symbolic, are experienced as either irrelevant or oppressive. She recognizes that this crisis occurs with varying degrees of radicalness. It can range from the necessity for reinterpretation of texts and traditions to the complete abandonment, as corrupt, of an entire religious tradition. Ruether attributes the crisis in tradition to the contradiction recognized between received interpretations and current experiences of the redemptive paradigm. The fundamental challenge which has been posed by Christian feminist theology lies in the fact that it reverses priority in this relationship. Once 'received symbols, formulas, and laws' formerly considered to be 1. 2.

Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk, p. 16. Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk, p. 12.

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revelatory of divinity are dependent, for their legitimation, on contemporary women's experience and praxis, the power structure is radically altered. For Christian feminists there are both theoretical and practical difficulties. To what extent can a theologian who gives priority to women's experience and praxis over against texts and traditions, considered to be foundational and thereby pre-eminent, be considered Christian? Would not the identity of Christianity be too fragmented if each group claimed priority for their experiences, over Scripture and tradition, and yet called themselves Christian? Is there not a core which must remain, regardless of experience, if one wishes to call oneself Christian? Schiissler Fiorenza too has to deal with such questions when she proposes the experience and praxis of the ekklesia gynaikon as the resources for her theology. Indeed both Schiissler Fiorenza and Ruether are aware of the methodological difficulties which emerge in relation to experience and tradition. Both deal with the difficulties by explaining what they consider to be the nature of theological reflection. Schiissler Fiorenza insists that theology is essentially biased, engaged, based in the interpretive activities of individuals and communities. Ruether, shifting the emphasis somewhat, defends her seemingly partisan position by maintaining the experiential basis of all theology, thereby reducing the radical potential to a feature of all theological reflection. Once the contradiction is recognized and articulated, as happened with the emergence of feminist theology, the process of reinterpretation and imaging anew inevitably begins. Renewal in the light of contemporary experiences leads Ruether to ask the central questions 'why seek alternative traditions at all? Why not just start with contemporary experience? Doesn't the very search for foundational tradition reveal a need for authority outside contemporary experience?'1 Ruether interprets the search for alternative liberative traditions as an illustration of the basic human need to situate oneself meaningfully in history. One cannot create new images and symbols on a tabula rasa. This acknowledgment of the values of tradition does not lead her to neglect the primacy of experience in reinterpretation and renewal, however. Ruether envisions a dialectic between contemporary experience and tradition. Thus she insists that

1.

Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk, p. 18.

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From Women*s Experience to Feminist Theology only by finding an alternative historical community and tradition more deeply rooted than those that have become corrupted can one feel sure that in criticizing the dominant tradition one is not just subjectively criticizing the dominant tradition but is, rather, touching a deeper bedrock of authentic Being upon which to ground the self. One cannot wield the lever of criticism without a place to stand.1

I am in agreement with Ruether that one must situate oneself meaningfully in history, that one can only successfully critique thus. Yet there is a certain ambiguity in her position. It arises, I would suggest, from the degree of significance that she attaches to alternative liberative traditions. How do these traditions relate to women's experience and praxis? How can images of the goddess Isis, for instance, be meaningful for Christian women today? Why does she bestow authority outside of women's experience and praxis, and outside of Christian texts and traditions? Does Ruether consider it essential that there be some regulating factor for feminist theology over and above women's experience and praxis? Such questions arise again in relation to both the critical correlation model for biblical hermeneutics and Ruether's attempts to formulate a canon for feminist theology and reveal, in my opinion, a certain unresolved tension in her work. We come now, I believe, to the core of Ruether's understanding of the novelty and thus the significance of feminist theology. Ruether has insisted constantly that to consider experience to be the starting point for theology is not in itself revolutionary. She justifies this position in revealing the experiential basis of all theological reflection. It is with the inclusion of women's experience,2 however, that feminist theology 1. Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk, p. 18. 2. In her contribution to Russell* s Feminist Interpretation of the Bible Ruether examines, in a more detailed but not exhaustive way, what she understands by the term 'women's experience*. The core of her understanding of the category of women's experience is social rather that biological. Echoing one of the basic principles enunciated by feminist sociologists, Ruether insists that women's experience cannot be understood as an isolated category but can only mean 'women's experiences created by the social and cultural appropriation of biological differences in a male dominated society' ('Feminist Interpretation: A Method of Correlation', in Russell [ed.], Feminist Interpretation of the Bible, p. 113). Central to this social and cultural appropriation is the subordination and trivialization of these differences which in turn leads to exclusion from centres of decision making and therefore historical marginality. This leads to Ruether's description: 'by women's experience as a key to hermeneutics or theory of interpretation, we mean precisely that experience which arises when

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departs from its theological predecessors. This location of the revolutionary aspect of feminist theology, not in the insistence on the centrality of experience for the starting point of theology but in the appropriation of specifically female experience, is evident too in the theology of Schussler Fiorenza. In her biblical hermeneutics the role is filled by the interpretive community of womanchurch. Ruether also enunciates this position by insisting that 'the uniqueness of feminist theology lies not in its use of the criterion of experience but rather in its use of women's experience, which has been almost entirely shut out of theological reflection in the past. The use of women's experience in feminist theology, therefore, explodes as a critical force.'1 Its uniqueness lies not in the critical principle of full humanity, but in the fact 'that women claim this principle for themselves'.2 Although Ruether attempts to avoid this experience-versus-tradition dualism, there is a certain unresolved tension in her discussion. She addresses this issue again in 'Theology as Critique of and Emancipation from Sexism'. In discussing the role of the feminist theologian, Ruether asserts that one's basic commitment ought not to be to the normative criteria of classical theology, that is, Scripture and tradition, but to the critical principle of the promotion of the authentic humanity of women. women become critically aware of these falsifying and alienating experiences imposed upon them as women by a male-dominated culture. Women's experience, in this sense, is itself a grace event, an infusion of liberating empowerment from beyond the patriarchal cultural context, which allows them to critique and stand out against these androcentric interpretations of who and what they are* ('Feminist Interpretation', p. 114). The subsequent rejection of much of patriarchal theology is not at all surprising. The critique of sexism from the perspective of justice is essential. This entire process is dependent on the articulation of women's experience of oppression and the evaluation of texts and traditions on that basis. Many would claim that this is a very limited and indeed wholly inadequate understanding of the category of women's experience. With no reference to the experiences of race, class and sexual orientation which divide women, we appear to be a homogeneous class or caste without differentiation. Such a critique would, I believe, be unfair, since Ruether is indeed aware of the great cultural and social factors which divide women. Yet there is a case to be made for the inclusion of such a position in any definition or description of the category of women's experience or praxis. Given the great and shameful oppression which many women have suffered in the name of women's liberation, the time has come when all must be attentive to the exclusivist potential in our theory and praxis. 1. Teminist Interpretation', p. 13. 2. Teminist Interpretation', p. 18.

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Therefore, according to Ruether, the feminist theologian within an essentially sexist tradition can only function by making 'a fundamental act of faith': This act of faith is not,firstof all, in the church, the tradition, or Scripture. It is an act of faith or trust in God/ess; in authentic reality or in truth itself. This act of faith is in the fullness of woman*s humanity and in a divine and created reality that intends and promotes that full humanity of woman. Whatever denies, diminishes, and distorts the full humanity of woman must be evaluated as nonredemptive.1

In this article Ruether systematizes the process, describing how this critical principle, ultimately answerable to women's experience, functions within this sexist tradition. One must keep in mind that Ruether's analysis of the relationship between contemporary experience and the codified experiences in Scripture and tradition operates within the context of her conviction that there are elements in the Christian message which enable one to transcend the sexist shackles it has acquired. Feminist theology as done by Ruether, then, is engaged in a constant reappraisal of Scripture and tradition from the perspective of contemporary women's experience. Such formerly normative criteria are evaluated according to the critical principle of feminist theology, that of the promotion of the authentic humanity of women. Ruether is hesitant to allow contemporary women's experience to determine, absolutely, the values of specific texts and traditions. This is evident from her keen search for a usable tradition which may be gleaned from the patriarchal 'rubble'. Further extending the search for an alternative historical tradition, Ruether rejects a hermeneutical circle which operates within the confines of biblical texts and contemporary experience. She wishes to throw out the net more widely, asking somewhat rhetorically Can one write new stories out of women's religious experience today and make them paradigmatic for our religious consciousness? In short, given the poverty of the official Christian tradition for symbols and stories affirmative of women, why should women set any cultural limits to their search for alternative sources for their liberation?2

1. Ruether, 'Theology as Critique of and Emancipation from Sexism', p. 27. 2. Ruether, 'Re-Contextualizing Theology, Feminism and Christian Commitment', p. 24.

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Ruether's answer is of course that one must creatively appropriate any tradition, text or symbol which will contribute to the liberation process. A Method of Correlation It is clear from Ruether's work that the prophetic-messianic principle of biblical religion holds a certain fascination for her. She is adamant that this principle is not a purely marginal or arbitrary one, but is central to the character of biblical faith elaborated by both prophets and evangelists. It is 'not just a critique of other people's religion but a critique of the deformation of biblical religion itself into forms and rituals that sacralize social oppression, the privileges of religious and social elites, and which ignores God's agenda of justice and mercy'.1 Ruether sees a definite correlation between the critical principle of feminist theology and that of prophetic religion. Ruether does recognize the element of ambiguity in enlisting the support of the Scriptures in the battle against the sexism of institutionalized religion. Like Schlissler Fiorenza, Ruether rejects the total abandonment of the biblical heritage as irredeemably sexist, and identifies in certain texts the basis for a liberating alternative. It is in the correlation between the prophetic-messianic principle of the Scriptures and the feminist principle that Ruether locates the texts' potential for providing emancipatory, inclusive paradigms. She identifies this biblical principle as the perspective from which biblical religion constantly undergoes metanoia. This self-critical principle ensures the possibility of correction and of the denunciation of the inevitable deformations which will occur— in this instance the deformation of sexism. Although the Scriptures have become an authoritative source for the justification of patriarchy, Ruether recognizes a liberative potential in many of the texts which may become paradigmatic for feminist theology. Her main focus is on the preaching of the Hebrew prophets demanding that the people of God return to Yahweh and renounce their waywardness. This call for conversion away from injustice and idolatry, so central to the prophets' teaching, is also a feature of the renewal of Judaism sought by Jesus of Nazareth and his disciples. Ruether sees a definite thematic continuity between the prophetic books of the Old Testament and the Gospels. This continuity is extended to include the critique of patriarchy by feminism,

1. Ruether, 'Re-Contextualizing Theology, Feminism and Christian Commitment', p. 26.

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which, although it may not be explicitly in evidence in the Scriptures, is accounted for implicitly. Ruether identifies some themes, which are central to the propheticliberating tradition, which she also considers to be in evidence in the feminist critical principle: the defence and vindication of the oppressed by Yahweh, the critique of the dominant systems of power and powerholders, the presentation of an alternative vision for the social order, the inauguration of a new age of peace and justice and finally the essential critique of ideology and therefore of religion lest religious systems fall into the service of oppressive social systems. The critique of oppressive and exploitative economic and social systems is central to the preaching of the prophets. The vision of a new age of harmony is the basis upon which this critique rests. Ruether understands this justice principle to be vital in the correlation between the biblical prophetic principle and that of feminist theology, for feminism is a matter of justice—the quest for the equality and dignity of all humanity and the restoration to women of the power of which we have been stripped in history. Although this critique of the existing social and political order is important and has indeed been appropriated by many liberation and political theologians, Ruether situates the revolutionary nature of the prophetic principle at a deeper level: the critique of religion itself. The prophetic tradition is then self-critical and constantly destabilizing of the prevailing religious order. The deformation of the religion of Yahweh in ignoring the agenda of justice demanded by God is a source of much lamenation. Ruether enlists this prophetic liberative principle of both Old and New Testaments in support of the agenda of feminist theology. She is aware however of the dangers of a simple identification of both themes and is anxious to radicalize the prophetic tradition in the context of feminist theology. She has gleanedfromScripture a usable tradition, which is in turn the controlling or interpretive key, discarding and selecting the various biblical texts and traditions. Thus the entire biblical message becomes completely transformed and takes on an advocacy role in the attempt to create a society devoid of hierarchies. From the perspective of feminist theology this critique of hierarchy becomes an explicit critique of patriarchy. It is an appropriation of the prophetic principle by women. This appropriation of the prophetic principle as feminist critique engages further, according to Ruether, in the

3. Christian Feminists, Women *s Experience and Praxis process of scriptural hermeneutics, interpreting and reinterpreting texts in the context of new communities: Continuity with the prophetic tradition, then, is not simply restatement of past texts but the constant renewal of the meaning of the prophetic critique itself. This means that prophetic critique is in a constant state of revision by situating itself in contemporary issues and contemporary consciousness of good and evil and by becoming a vehicle for the critical consciousness of groups who have been shut out of the social dialogue in the past.1 It is clear then that although Ruether does perceive a definite correlation between the biblical prophetic-liberative and the feminist critical principles she does wish to maintain a certain critical distance between the two. Schiissler Fiorenza, in her rejection of Ruether's method of correlation, fears too facile an identification. She does not accept the automatic identification alluded to by Ruether. Schiissler Fiorenza's note of caution is, I believe, worth considering in this context. Nevertheless one must acknowledge that although Ruether does ascribe to the prophetic-liberative principle of Scripture a certain uncritical predominance, she returns again and again to insist on the ultimately controlling role of women's contemporary experience in the form of the critical principle of feminism. Yet the tension in the work of Ruether already alluded to, between the importance of tradition and the experiential basis of feminist theology, remains. Womanguides As the title might suggest, Ruether is engaged here in providing a collection of texts, both ancient and new, which may be a useful resource for feminist theology. Our interest in it here is to understand how Ruether conceives this task and how it is situated in relation to the already extant traditional canon. In examining this I hope to throw further light on the relationship between the resources of feminist theology—women's experience and praxis—and the foundational texts and traditions that they replace. Ruether is adamant that feminist theology is desperately in need of a new textual base from which, eventually, a new canon may emerge, since feminist theology cannot be adequately developed exclusively from the patriarchal documents of the Old and New Testaments. Although Ruether does recognize that traces of the memories of women's experience can be read between the lines, she insists that 1. Ruether, 'Feminist Interpretation\ p. 118.

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From Women's Experience to Feminist Theology in their present form and intention they are designed to erase women's existence as subjects and to mention women only as objects of male definition. In these texts the norm for women is absence and silence... Their own point of view, their own experience, their own being as human subjects is never at the center. They appear, if at all, at the margin. Mostly, they do not appear at all.1

As a result it is imperative for the survival of feminist theology that a collection of texts, which may eventually become a canon, be provided, a collection which makes women's experiences visible, central. Ruether suggests reading between the lines of patriarchal texts andfindingfragments of our own experience along with finding remains of alternative communities where women 'did enter into critical dialogue'.2 Asa result, although the patriarchal texts of the Old and New Testaments are not completely rejected, such texts lose their normative character, are displaced from centre stage. It can be gleaned from her discussion that although Ruether is anxious to preserve, to some extent, the integrity of the tradition, albeit utterly patriarchal, the controlling factor is always the question of how it illuminates and serves women's contemporary experiences. The fact that the existing canon fails in this regard leads Ruether to formulate an alternative collection of texts. This in effect displays Ruether's attitude to the question of tradition more adequately than all other considerations. Ruether is keen to preserve and renew existing mainstream traditions and texts but they are not to be considered normative. Ruether is also insistent that this work need not be restricted to past symbols and texts: 'New liberating experience is empowered to write new stories, new parables, new midrashim on the old stories. We, too, can write new texts to express our new consciousness.'3 Thus in the attempt to provide a resource for feminist theology Ruether is prepared to step outside extant traditions and engage in the process of formulating an entirely new one based primarily on the wealth of women's experiences. However, one central difficulty emerges. One recognizes the absolute need for source books for feminist theology, providing a wellspring of rituals, prayers and symbols from which one might draw. Yet when Ruether speaks of a 'canon' one tends to get uneasy. For me at least the term implies that a certain predominance or normative character is given 1. 2. 3.

Ruether, Womanguides, p. ix. Ruether, Womanguides, p. xi. Ruether, Womanguides, p. xii.

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to particular texts and traditions. Surely such a canon would be inconceivable for feminist theology. As we write new texts, tell new stories and perform new rituals we must be constantly aware that as our experiences evolve so too will our canon, and perhaps more importantly, as silenced women begin to find their voices our 'source book' will be utterly transformed.1 Women-Church Our final consideration in this section is with the important work Women-Church: Theology and Practice of Feminist Liturgical Communities. Although this notion, as one might expect, has a more ecclesial focus than the women-church suggested by Schiissler Fiorenza, the two concepts have much in common—the differences being those of emphasis. Ruether maintains that this book was written out of the realization that women are 'beginning to recognize the need for autonomous bases for women's theologizing and worship'2 instead of waiting for the existing institutions to change. Although this book is primarily liturgical in focus, it does deal with a number of theological questions which arise as a result. Ruether envisions women-church as a feminist community or as a community of liberation from patriarchy and is keen that it be accepted as such. She recognizes that a number of questions and fears must be taken account of, namely, to what extent can such a community authentically claim to be church, while at the same time rejecting so much of what has been historical Christianity? How can it avoid becoming sectarian, unable to correct its own myopia by reference to the larger wisdom of the tradition and of the other human communities around it? How can it affirm a specifically 1. During her contribution to a conference entitled Turning Back the Streams of War: Women, Religion and Violence', in Dundalk in May 1991,1 asked Dr Ruether about her use of the word 'canon' in this context. She suggested that she may not have been correct to use the term given the associations which it has gained through history. She had, she said, been thinking of the term in its original Greek meaning, where 6 KCCVCOV is like the Latin regula or norma, anything that serves to fix, regulate, determine other things, or perhaps where mvoveq are general rules or principles, or further, models of excellence, classics. Indeed it is in this vein that I speak in the forthcoming chapter of the black women's literary canon. However, in the theological context, given the meanings which the term has come to acquire, I remain hesitant about its use. 2. Ruether, Women-Church, p. 4.

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From Women *s Experience to Feminist Theology women's journey of liberation without becoming separatist and negating the humanity of males and their need also to be incorporated into such a journey of liberation from patriarchy?1

Ruether attempts to deal with these questions in the chapters entitled 'Women-Church: A Feminist Exodus Community' and 'The Ecclesiology of Women-Church'. In an effort to invalidate the activity of patriarchy which has, according to Ruether, split women from women across generation, class and cultural lines, she suggests that there is a need for a period of withdrawal from men and communication with each other. 'Precisely because of women's isolation from each other...women need separate spaces and all-female gatherings to form the critical culture that can give them an autonomous ground from which to critique patriarchy.'2 Ruether does not support ideological separation per se but understands women-church to be an important stage of collectivization of women's experiences. She is, she accepts, quite unclear as to how or when this stage would be transcended in a liberative and redemptive community of male and female. She does not, however, think of this stage as being a matter of 'a few years': it may be a question instead of generations, since the power of patriarchy is so deeply embedded in our collective consciousnesses. Yet she does anticipate the beginnings of such a community when 'women shape a sufficiently clarified critical culture so that some men feel compelled to try to understand it on its own terms'.3 Again Ruether returns to the basic questions which a feminist theology has to contend with. Indeed this work, one of the most recent to be written, is perhaps her most radical on the questions of women's experience and praxis in relation to tradition. In Women-Church, and to a certain extent in Womanguides, Ruether has freed herself of the concern for tradition and its retrieval which seemed to be dominant in her considerations of Scripture. Ruether is moving continually towards the assertion of the adequacy of women's experiences as a normative criterion for doing feminist theology. This must be understood in relation to two basic points, however. First, Ruether constantly affirms the experiential basis of all theology—thus, in her mind the novel element here is not the inclusion of the notion of experience but of women's experience. Secondly, as can be understood from Women-Church, 1. 2. 3.

Ruether, Women-Church, p. 5. Ruether, Women-Church, p. 59. Ruether, Women-Church, p. 61.

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Ruether considers such a community to be a necessary but passing phase, and thus does not advocate ideological separatism but a period of temporary, although vital, withdrawal. Nevertheless, although her most recent work does go a long way in attempting to resolve the difficulties in selecting praxis or hermeneutics, experiences or traditions, the tensions remain in her work. Conclusion In using women's experience and praxis as primary categories, Ruether has to deal with some major methodological issues. First, there is the question of using women's experience and praxis as critical hermeneutical principles over and above Scripture and tradition. Ruether has attempted to deal with this by insisting on the experiential character of all theology. Schussler Fiorenza likewise alludes to the biased character of all the scholarship in an effort to minimize the problem. Although such a position is understandable it in no way operates to resolve the inherent tensions in the work of almost all Christian feminists. All theological discourse does indeed carry with it the interests of its originator. However, within the Christian tradition, certain pivotal experiences are given a foundational status over and above the experiences of those in another era. Daphne Hampson articulates, in the most extreme terms to date, the difficulty just mentioned.1 Indeed debates between Hampson and Ruether centre around this point. The core of Hampson's critique of Ruether, and indeed of all Christian feminists, is that they have failed to deal with the foundational nature of the incarnation and subsequently of the Gospels. Ruether claims that such a statement reveals an inadequate understanding of the nature of Christian revelation, which is eschatological, and not tied to particular subversive memories or texts. To a certain extent I agree that, although such a position may not have been actively encouraged by many of the Christian churches, theological discourse has always stressed the anticipatory rather than a static, history-bound understanding of Christian revelation. Yet however one understands Christian revelation, if one claims to be a Christian feminist one necessarily considers certain elements of the gospel to be foundational for one's identity and one's faith. Christian feminists have yet to resolve this difficulty in the context of their

1.

D. Hampson, Theology and Feminism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990).

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commitment to women's experience and praxis as their primary resources, recognizing the perspectival nature of truth claims and of theological knowledge which these imply. The other central methodological issue which arises for feminist theologians using women's experience and praxis as their primary resources is the question of how sophisticated and nuanced one's understanding of these categories is. In shaping new values, attention to the diversity of women's experience and praxis is essential if we are to retain the integrity of such categories. This attention to difference, coupled with a commitment to resolving the tensions which such an unstable position implies, is a profound challenge for feminist theologians today. Finally, the categories of women's experience and praxis in theological scholarship raise an important epistemological question for feminist theology. The demise of the correspondence theory of truth and the abandonment of the 'search for sure foundations' is a hallmark of postmodernism. Critical theory, Marxist philosophy and post-structuralism are in the ascendency and the appreciation of the radical historicity of the human person heralded by such theories informs every discipline. Feminist theology is in dialogue with such traditions; indeed it draws much of its critical edge from insights gained from such discussions. Feminist theologians, including those who have elected to remain within the Christian tradition, have appropriated many of the positions advocated by such theories, especially those dealing with the perspectival nature of all human knowledge, and the instability that this implies. Many feminist theologians outside the Christian tradition also need to resolve the problems that such positions raise for a religious world-view, yet the questions arise more acutely for Christian feminists. Ruether and Schiissler Fiorenza each have to deal with these tensions, which emerge once one has elected to use women's experience and praxis as one's primary resources. Both have attempted to diffuse this difficulty with their theoretical positions by insisting that in their works they simply acknowledge the biased character of all scholarship. Reconciliation of such tensions will not be easy. Yet one must recognize the ambiguity of the Christian feminist position, at once advocating an understanding of knowledge which is reluctant to make claims for universally valid criteria and for objectivity, while critiquing much of patriarchal theory and providing a somewhat normative vision. Having analysed the works of both Schiissler Fiorenza and Ruether in

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order to discover how the categories of women's experience and praxis operate as the primary resources, we must acknowledge that many problems remain. My suggestion, albeit a radical one, is that feminist theologians begin to appreciate the truly revolutionary character of these primary resources, placing difference and conceptual instability at the core of our theorizing. One of the crucial questions will then be whether in so doing feminist theology will have embraced a relativist epistemology.

Chapter 4 WOMANIST THEOLOGIANS' EMPLOYMENT OF THE PRIMARY CATEGORIES

The categories of women's experience and praxis, which I have identified as the primary resources for a feminist theology, play different roles for different theologians. Since both categories are evident in quite disparate theologies, as one might expect, the substance of both changes radically from one tradition to another. Attention to the issues of race, economic status and sexual orientation, all of which effect profoundly how one understands women's experience and praxis, is absolutely central if we are to engage in self-critique and development. In the context of womanist theology, the categories of women's experience and praxis have a very specific orientation. The life experience of women of colour and the truth-in-action that it embodies are its primary resources, providing us with a rich tapestry of lived experience from which all women may draw in the construction of a theology which is vibrant and self-critical. As has already been mentioned, a hermeneutic of difference appears to be the primary emergent theme in my examination of the consequences of using women's experience and praxis as one's primary resources. In attempting to preserve the integrity of one's resources I consider it essential that feminist theorists begin to comprehend both the incredible pluralism that these categories imply, and the methodological positions that they will necessitate. As we consider the work of womanist theologians, then, such issues will constantly arise. My main concern in this section is to examine how black women's experience and praxis have shaped the theology that is now emerging. As with much theological work from a feminist perspective, the term 'praxis' is rarely employed yet is central to the enterprise. The employment of the category of praxis—particularly in the theology of liberation emerging in Latin and South America—has caused both a methodological

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and an epistemological shift. Praxis, liberating activity and the insights gained from it, is considered to be foundational to the theological task and thus transformative of knowledge. This contention, which has inevitably been controversial, also informs the work of feminist and womanist theologians. The activity of black women, past and present, slave and non-slave, is considered to be an essential resource in the formulation of a theology that is neither racist nor sexist. The category of praxis, though rarely alluded to explicitly, is considered to be, along with black women's experience, a vital resource for theology. We will examine, therefore, the meaning of the term 'womanist theology' and the methodology that is employed here. Since the literary canon is the source par excellence for understanding black women's experience we will look briefly at its development and how it is used by Katie Cannon1 and Delores Williams2 in their respective theological works. In the background will be the literary expertise of Barbara Christian,3 Alice Walker,4 Audre Lorde5 and Nellie McKay.6 As a clarificatory point I must mention in this context that I use the term 'canon' in relation to the classic texts of black women's literature. I noted in the previous chapter that I am somewhat critical of Ruether's use of the term in connection with the collection of texts and liturgies of women-church.7 In the theological realm canonicity has come to imply a fixed, unalterable collection of texts given normative status. Given such pejorative connotations I feel that it is unwise to use the term in relation to feminist theology. In the realm of literature, similar debates have 1. K. Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988). 2. D. Williams, 'Womanist Theology: Black Women's Voices', in J. Plaskow and C. Christ (eds.), Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989), pp. 179-86; 'Black Women's Literature and the Task of Feminist Theology', in C. Atkinson, C. Buchanan and M. Miles (eds.), Immaculate and Powerful: The Female in Sacred Image and Social Reality (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985), pp. 88-110. 3. B. Christian, Black Women Novelists: The Development of a Tradition, 1892-1976 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1989). 4. A. Walker, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose (London: The Women's Press, 1984). 5. Lorde, Sister Outsider. 6. N. McKay, 'Reflections on Black Women Writers: Revisiting the Literary Canon', in C. Farnham (ed.), The Impact of Feminist Research in the Academy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), pp. 174-89. 7. See Chapter 3, p. 115.

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emerged concerning the notion of a canon and what would constitute the content of such a canon. In this context, however, Katie Cannon uses the term without explicit reference to such debates. Womanist Theology The term 'womanist' has been coined independently of the theological realm. It has come to mean a feminist of colour, since the term 'feminist' and indeed the entire feminist movement has been experienced by many as intrinsically racist. We have examined this experience when looking at the development of the category of women's experience, so it will not be necessary for us to deal with it further. Novelist and poet Alice Walker may be credited with coining the term 'womanist'. She prefaces her work In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose with an explication of the term.1 She suggests that the source of the term is in black folklore, with the expression 'you acting womanish',2 which refers to 'audacious, courageous or willful behaviour...Responsible. In charge. Serious.93 She continues: A woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually. Appreciates and prefers women's culture, women's emotionalflexibility...and women's strength... Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female. Not a separatist, except periodically, for health. Traditionally universalist, as in: 'Mama, why are we brown, pink, and yellow, and our cousins are white, beige and black? Ans: 'Well, you know the colored race is just like a flower garden, with every color represented.' Traditionally capable, as in: 'Mama, I'm walking to Canada and I'm taking you and a bunch of other slaves with me.' Reply: 'It wouldn't be the first time...', Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself. Regardless. Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.4

I have quoted Alice Walker's definition of the meaning of 'womanist' at length in order to understand the power it implies. The concept of 'womanist' clearly enables black women to affirm and celebrate their colour and their Afro-American heritage, in a way in which the term 1. Cf. also the roundtable discussion on 'Christian Ethics and Theology in Womanist Perspective', in the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 5.2 (1989), pp. 83-112, which deals with Walker's definition. 2. Walker, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens, p. xi. 3. Walker, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens, p. xi. 4. Walker, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens, p. xii.

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'feminist' does not. Walker claims a connection with feminism—and indeed it is to the detriment of feminism that it has not been able to respond to the charges of racism levelled against it. Delores Williams has been an important commentator on and contributor to the development of the term 'womanist', with particular reference to theology. In her important article 'Womanist Theology: Black Women's Voices' she comments on the meaning of the term in the context of its being coined by Alice Walker in her work In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. Based on the concept of cultural codes identified by bell hooks,1 Williams claims that the term 'womanist' is based on 'codes which are female-centered and...point beyond themselves to conditions, events, meanings, and values that have crystallized in the Afro-American community around women's activity and formed traditions'.2 It is obvious from this statement that women's activity is a central factor in the womanist tradition. Williams states that events, meanings and values have as their source women's activity, which in turn has formed traditions. This epistemological model is reminiscent of that used by liberation and feminist theologians when they insist that the praxis of the oppressed and marginalized is an important source for theology. We will discuss the various literary devices employed by black women writers to record and interpret the activity and experience of women. In relation to these records Williams insists that it is the task of the womanist theologian to seek out the 'voices, actions, opinions, experience, and faith'3 of the many forgotten and neglected women of the black community. Such are not the traditional resources for theology! Williams has identified some themes that emerge from Walker's development of the term. Of primary importance is the folk culture of the black community. In particular, Walker emphasizes the folk culture of the poor of the black community, which she insists is less individualistic. In this setting the respect for knowledge gained from lived experience is emphasized. In addition to affirming and celebrating the values of folk culture, Walker places special emphasis on the lives of black women. Thus women who defied the constraints of slavocracy occupy a special place in womanist history and theology. She also identifies black women's 'historic connection' with men and with their children to be important—in a way that has not been true of much feminist experience. 1. hooks, Feminist Theory from Margin to Center. 2. 3.

Williams, 'Womanist Theology', p. 180. Williams, 'Womanist Theology', p. 181.

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Walker and Williams insist that mothering and nurturing are central for the womanist. With these brief remarks concerning the meaning of the term 'womanist', we must look more closely at it in relation to theology. Williams is anxious to make clear that womanist theology is in its infancy and that her own remarks are introductory—the work of prolegomena. She is aware that womanist theology, like its feminist counterpart, will use many sources, 'biblical, theological, ecclesiastical, social, anthropological, economic, and material',1 in addition to the key sources of black women's experience and activity. Ultimately womanist theologians are concerned with bringing the praxis and experience—social, cultural and spiritual—of black women into the discourse of theology and ethics.2 The activity and experience of black women are then considered to be authoritative sources for womanist theology. They provide the critical principles upon which texts and traditions are evaluated and deemed to be usable or not. The question of the validity of womanist and indeed feminist theology has been much debated. Clearly the use of the black women's experience and praxis as authoritative sources is problematic for a religious system which claims to have already established authoritative texts and traditions. Christian feminist theologians, for example Schtissler Fiorenza, Ruether and Harrison, have claimed that the Christian tradition is in need of renewal and reform from a woman's perspective. The androcentric nature of the development of the tradition, coupled with much sexism and misogyny in the texts and traditions, necessitates reinterpretation. Each theologian would insist that patriarchal Christianity is flawed, and that renewal from a feminist perspective is essential in order that the liberative core of Christianity not be distorted. Thus in the light of the destructive nature of patriarchy, critique and renewal from a feminist perspective is revelatory of the essence of Christianity, and does not distort either the underlying methodology or epistemology. As Schtissler Fiorenza, Ruether and Harrison have implied, in the final instance, it is the experiences and praxis of women that are considered to be central. The critical principle, ultimately, is the experience of the ekklesia gynaikon. In womanist theology it is the experiences and activity of black women that are foundational.

1. 2.

Williams, 'Womanist Theology', p. 181. Williams, 'Womanist Theology', p. 181.

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Methodology of Womanist Theology Katie Cannon's discussion of black womanist ethics is the most comprehensive work in womanist theology to date. Although much of her discussion revolves around the question of ethics and the moral wisdom of black women, her insights are equally applicable to other theological issues. Cannon is aware that the 'real-lived texture' of black women's lives has resulted in an ethic that is often contrary to the values promoted by the Christian tradition, since 'racism, gender discrimination and economic exploitation, as inherited, age long complexes, require the Black community to create and cultivate values and virtues in their own terms so that they can prevail against the odds with moral integrity'.1 In a world scarred by racism and sexism, black women have lived out moral wisdom. Their resources have not been the norms and principles engineered by the Christian tradition but rather the 'various coping mechanisms related to the conditions of their own cultural circumstances'.2 In her work Black Womanist Ethics Cannon insists that the moral wisdom of black women reveals the qualities and values that have been experienced as important in the lives of black women. Therefore the methodology of black womanist ethics departs radically from that of mainstream ethical discourse. It begins, according to Cannon, with experience instead of with theories or principles. Her intention is not to formulate a normative ethic but to enable black women to appreciate the richness and value of their collective moral counsel. Womanist ethics and indeed theology have, as their sources, the collective experience and activity of black women. The black womanist theologian gives authoritative status to these sources. Both Katie Cannon and Delores Williams consider black women's literature to be an important ethical and theological resource. Cannon points out that the black women's literary tradition has never been used as a resource for interpreting the ethical and theological values that the community embodies. She further reveals that she has 'found that this literary tradition is the nexus between the real-lived texture of Black life and the oral-aural cultural values implicitly passed on and received from

1. 2.

Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics, p. 2. Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics, p. 4.

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one generation to the next'.1 In attempting to understand and value black women's activity and experience Cannon suggests that nothing surpasses the black women's literary canon as a source. It records, explains and interprets the traditions that black women have created and cultivated. Its centrality cannot be over-emphasized. Delores Williams too affirms the value of the literature of AfroAmerican women writers as a source for theology.2 She points to the work of black liberation theologians, such as James Cone, who use the work of black poets, novelists and dramatists to understand the character of black experience which is central to their theological works.3 White feminist theologians such as Carol Christ and Judith Plaskow have also looked to the fiction of women (of all races) to illuminate the nature of women's experience and praxis, which is foundational for their theological works.4 Thus the use of the literary canon as an important resource for understanding the complexities of human nature in all its diversity is not a recent phenomenon. However, since black women's experience has never been of concern to theorists of any discipline (with the exception of black women themselves) up until recently, their literature too has been neglected. Katie Cannon has described black women's literature as a 'literature of necessity'.5 It has been the only channel of expression for decades. In the previous centuries folklore held this important position. Audre Lorde says of literature: [F]or women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.6

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics, p. 5. Williams, 'Black Women's Literature\ pp. 88ff. J. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (New York: Lippincott, 1970). See Christ, Diving Deep and Surfacing. Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics, p. 78. Lorde, 'Poetry is not a Luxury', in Sister Outsider, p. 37.

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Black Women's Literature Since the literature of black women has been identified as the primary resource for understanding the character of women's praxis and experience, past and present, it is necessary to look more closely at the development of the tradition. I am dealing here purely with the literature of Afro-American women since this is all that the scope of this study allows. Some preliminary remarks are necessary. First, the literature of black women has been considered by writers and readers alike to be vital for their lives.1 Further, Cannon notes that the literary activity of black women is not considered to be a purely individualistic enterprise. Speaking about the question of the accountability of black women writers she quotes Dexter Fisher thus: 'to be totally centered on the self would be to forget one's history, the kinship of a shared community of experience, the crucial continuity between past and present that must be maintained in order to insure the future'.2 Black women's literature is deeply rooted in the community in which they live. As a result, the literary canon is seen to parallel the history of the Afro-American community. The works of these women record the historical experiences of slavery, abolition and subsequent racism that the Afro-American community have endured—and indeed continue to endure. In attempting to give a brief outline of the development of the black women's literary canon, I rely heavily on the summaries provided by Barbara Christian,3 Mari Evans4 and of course, Katie Cannon.5 This overview is selective and is not to be thought of as complete. Most commentators locate the beginnings of the creative literary efforts of black women in 1746 with the publication of the poem 'Bar Fights' by Lucy Terry. This poem commemorated an Indian raid on the white settlement of Dearfield, Massachusetts.6 Phyllis Wheatley, a slave in the late eighteenth century, also published poetry: Poems on Various Subjects Religious and Moral was published in 1773.7 Wheatley died of 1. 2. 3. 4. 1984). 5. 6. 7.

See Lorde, 'Poetry is not a Luxury', p. 37. Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics, p. 77. In Black Women Novelists. M. Evans, Black Women Writers (1950-1980) (New York: Anchor Press, In Black Womanist Ethics. See Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics, p. 78. Cf. J. Mason (ed.), The Poems of Phyllis Wheatley (Chapel Hill: University

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malnutrition and neglect in 1784. McKay insists that the works of Terry and Wheatley confirm that black women did make use of their literary voices in the eighteenth century.1 Although Wheatley did omit any reference to her colour and tended to look towards the tradition of her captors, Alice Walker defends her thus: 'a woman who still struggled to sing the song that was your gift, although in a land of barbarians who praised you for your bewildered tongue. It is not so much what you sang, as that you kept alive, in so many of our ancestors, the notion of song'.2 Abolition in the mid-nineteenth century changed the legal status of the black community. With abolition came a huge number of slave narratives, autobiographies and biographies describing black women's experience under slavery. The narrative of Harriet Jacob entitled Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and published in the name of Linda Brent in 1861 is one such work.3 Undoubtedly these autobiographies and slave narratives provide us with an important source for understanding the lives of black women under slavery. The novelist Frances Ellen Walkins Harper also captures the experience of black women after abolition. Her novel Iola Leroy* published in 1892, is considered to be the first novel by an Afro-American woman. Literary critic Barbara Christian considers this work to be highly significant, since she claims that Harper is concerned with refuting the dominant stereotypes of black women.5 The subsequent work of black women writers at this time reflects the fact that racism was the single most significant factor in their lives. The literature was a 'literature of protest, critical essays and social polemics'.6 Women such as Anna Julia Haywood Cooper and Ida B. Wells Barnett became the campaigners for justice for their communities and their literature confirms this fact. The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s led to the popularization of the literature of the Afro-American community. Among the literary figures of this period women figure prominently. Zora Neale Hurston, Nella of North Carolina Press, 1966), quoted in Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics, p. 92. 1. McKay, 'Reflections on Black Women Writers', p. 176. 2. Walker, 'In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens', p. 237. 3. McKay, 'Reflections on Black Women Writers', p. 178. 4. Christian, Black Women Novelists, p. 3. 5. Christian, Black Women Novelists, p. 5. 6. Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics, p. 82.

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Larsen and Alice Dunbar Nelson are the most widely known. Although severely limited by the dependence on the patronage of some benevolent white people, the novelists of the Harlem Renaissance reflected the wealth of culture, folklore and experiences of the Afro-American community. The literature of Hurston, Larsen and Dunbar Nelson uses the activity and experience of black women and men as the primary resource, revealing the complexity and richness of black life at this time. It is impossible to mention all of the women who have contributed to the black literary canon and who have thereby enabled us to understand more fully the character of black women's praxis and experience, past and present. Margaret Walker's Jubilee} Ann Petry's The Street,1 Alice Walker's The Color Purple and the novels of Toni Morrison,3 Paule Marshall4 and Toni Cade Bambara5 have all examined the variety of experiences and activity which black women have lived. Again we will examine a select few in due course. Black women are now exploring all aspects of their lives, 'writing from inside of their own experiences, and the knowledge of the experiences of black women for more than three hundred years in America' .6 The literary canon of black women has emerged from the naming of experiences previously unnamed and often unnameable. Black women have emerged as makers of a powerful literature which requires the feminist community to acknowledge its racist past. Womanist theorists have been adamant that we acknowledge that the experience of women is characterized by difference. This difference is vital both academically and politically. In recognizing the complexity of black women's experiences, womanists too are placing at the core of their theologizing, their sociology and their literary criticism a hermeneutic of difference.

1. M. Walker, Jubilee (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966). 2. A. Petry, The Street (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1946). 3. T. Morrison, Bluest Eye; Song of Solomon (New York: Knopf, 1977); Sula; Tar Baby (New York: Knopf, 1981). 4. P. Marshall, Brown Girl, Brownstones (New York: Random House, 1959); The Chosen Place, The Timeless People (New York: Harcourt Brace & World, 1969); Praisesongfor the Widow (New York: Putnam, 1983). 5. T.C. Bambara, Gorilla, My Love (New York: Vintage, 1972); The Salt Eaters (New York: Random House, 1980); The Sea Birds are Still Alive (New York: Random House, 1982). 6. McKay, 'Reflections on Black Women Writers', p. 186.

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From Women*s Experience to Feminist Theology The Life and Work of Zora Neale Hurston

Katie Cannon's interpretation of the life and literature of Zora Neale Hurston is central to our understanding of womanist theology. Throughout this book I have been concerned with the ways in which feminist and womanist theologians use, as primary resources, the praxis and experiences of women. Although the notion of praxis is perhaps more elusive than that of women's experience it is, I believe, important in the works of these theologians. Whether implicitly or explicitly, feminist and womanist theologians are aware that the category of praxis provides an important critique of our understanding of experience. Since the work of many feminist theorists is highly analytical and thereby abstract, the notion of praxis mitigates against this tendency. The literature of black women, however, has rarely exhibited this tendency towards abstract discussions on the nature of women's experience. In contrast to the feminist works of white women, the literary canon of black novelists, poets and collectors of folklore emphasises the truth-inaction of black women's lives. It is, as Cannon often maintains, with the real-life texture of black women's experience that she is concerned. Having considered in general the historical experience and the literary tradition of Afro-American women, Cannon turns to the life and works of Zora Neale Hurston. In both her life and literature Cannon finds important insights which reveal the moral wisdom of black women, gleaned from centuries of survival and often contrary to mainstream Christian ethical teaching. As has already been mentioned, although Cannon focuses on ethics in particular, much of her discussion is relevant to all other theological issues. Cannon deals with the life and work of Hurston thematically. In examining her life Cannon interprets all events in terms of how 'her life conveys the way the Black woman embraces, out of this loss of innocence, an invisible dignity in the self-celebration of her survival against great odds'.1 Encouraged by her mother to 'jump at de sun' while her father tried to instill passivity and docility, Hurston was aware from an early age of the racism and injustice she would inevitably experience. Cannon tells of the death of Hurston's mother while Hurston was still a child. Cannon finds in the deathbed speech of the

1.

Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics, p. 99.

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fictional character Lucy1 a reflection of the wisdom of Hurston's dying mother. This instruction is considered by Cannon to be vital in our attempt to understand the moral wisdom of black women. An ethics for survival, the moral counsel is clearly based on the lives of black women rather than on the texts and traditions of Christianity. This motherdaughter counsel described by Hurston is an important feature of the writings of black women. A result of lived experience, this advice sought to teach daughters to survive the oppression that they would inevitably encounter: member tuh git all de education you kin. Dat's de onliest way you kin keep out from under people's feet. You always strain tuh be de bell cow, never be de tail uh nothin\.. Don't you love nobody bettem'n you do yo'self. Do, you'll be killed 'thout being struck uh blow.2

Having gained an Associate Arts degree from Howard Academy Zora Neale Hurston made her way to New York and became a novelist of the Harlem Renaissance. Since she refused to conform to the expectations of the Harlem community she was unpopular. Her novels were ridiculed by her peers and her folklore collections neglected. In 1948 she was falsely charged with assaulting a ten-year-old boy. Although charges were dropped when it became evident that she was not in the country at the time, the scandal devastated her. She wrote: '[M]y country has failed me utterly. My race has seen fit to destroy me without reason, and with the vilest tool conceived of by men so far... All that I have believed in has failed me. I have resolved to die.'3 She existed in poverty until she eventually died in 1960. Katie Cannon interprets the life of Zora Hurston in terms of 'invisible dignity'. She examines 'invisible dignity' as it relates to moral agency, racism, gender discrimination and poverty. From an examination of Hurston's life, Cannon insists that Hurston, in common with the AfroAmerican community generally, 'understood suffering not as a moral norm nor a desirable ethical quality, but rather as the typical state of 1. Z.N. Hurston, Jonah's Gourd Vine (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1934; London: Virago, 1987). One may note that Zora gave the character Lucy Ann Potts in this novel the same name as her own mother. 2. Hurston, Jonah's Gourd Vine, p. 207, quoted in Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics, p. 101. 3. Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics, p. 114, quoting Hurston's letter to Carl Van Vechten in 1948, held in the James Weldon Johnson Collection, Yale University Library, New Haven.

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affairs'.1 Virtue, in the black community, is not associated with the endurance of suffering; rather, 'the quality of moral good is that which allows Black people to maintain a feistiness about life that nobody can wipe out'} Cannon describes Hurston as an unctuous moral agent, learning by experience and thereby deconstructing established norms and principles. Hurston fought against racism in American society, against sexism in her own community, and against poverty all of her life. The many lessons that can be learned from her life are collected by Cannon here. Zora Neale Hurston's life, her praxis and experience, is used by Cannon as a central resource for the construction of a womanist ethics. In using the life of Zora Neale Hurston as a resource for a womanist ethics, Cannon is breaking new ground methodologically. The life, as related by Cannon, serves to clarify the material realities of black women's lives and to formulate values appropriate to such experiences. Hurston's life experience is employed in two distinct ways by Cannon. First, her life reveals values and priorities for black women which do not necessarily correspond lto those of the prevailing ethos. Secondly, Hurston is presented as an individual who herself exercised her moral agency and whose life embodies the importance of living according to values gleaned from lived experience. Cannon deals with Hurston's literature in two parts, fiction and nonfiction, which latter includes essays, articles and her collections of folklore. Again she identifies a central theme in each section. In her fiction Cannon sees the theme of 'never practised delicacy', which is often converted to quiet grace. In her non-fiction, Canon suggests, one can discern the theme of unshouted courage. These themes, according to Cannon, converge to imply values and principles for behaviour. In dealing with both fiction and non-fiction Cannon is anxious to point out that Hurston never presented a complete ethical system—this was not her focus. Instead Cannon suggests that implicit in her entire works is the assumption that values evolve from the collective wisdom of the community. In relation to 'never practised delicacy' transformed into 'quiet grace as truth', Cannon points out that black women have always had to face the harshness of life squarely and therefore have never been allowed the luxury of docility or modesty. She qualifies the notion of grace with the word 'quiet', since she claims that black women 'have never been granted 1. 2.

Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics, p. 104. Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics, p. 104.

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the protective privileges that allow one to become immobilized by fear and rage'.1 Their moral agency is exercised as quiet grace 'without the mumble of a single word, without an eruptive cry to the hierarchical systems that oppress [them]'.2 This moral agency is not to be understood as passivity, however. Black women have had to create their own values in order to deal with the oppression that they have encountered, overturning the 'normative moral structure'3 of the dominant society. Hurston's fiction provides us with characters who embody this moral agency of quiet grace. Cannon suggests that this quiet grace is manifest (in the novels of Hurston) in the search for truth, which is an important element in all of her work. Hurston uses extensively the folklore of the Afro-American community. In her novels she reflects the historical reality that black women and men relied heavily on the cumulative moral wisdom gleaned from folklore, interpreting their experiences and activity accordingly. Cannon deals with Hurston's novels Jonah's Gourd Vine, Their Eyes Were Watching God,4 Moses, Man of the Mountain5 and Seraph on the Suwanee6 in terms of quiet grace as truth. She maintains that Hurston again deals with the question of moral agency, describing the 'painful regeneration one must experience before one possesses the quality of quiet grace'.7 This quality of quiet grace in the search for truth is identified by Hurston as central to the moral counsel of the AfroAmerican community, communicated from one generation to another. Although there are many other qualities which may be emphasized, Hurston's novels focus on this quiet grace as central to the 'treasury of ethics'8 of the Afro-American community. Cannon moves on to a brief discussion of Hurston's non-fiction, comprising letters, essays and her all-important collections of folklore.9 She 1. Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics, p. 125. 2. Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics, p. 126. 3. Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics, p. 127. 4. Z.N. Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1937; London: Virago, 1986). 5. Z.N. Hurston, Moses, Man of the Mountain (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1939). 6. Z.N. Hurston, Seraph on the Suwanee (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1948). 7. Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics, p. 141. 8. Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics, p. 143. 9. Z.N. Hurston, Mules and Men (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1935); Tell My Horse (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1938; Berkeley: Turtle Island, 1981).

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interprets these in terms of 'unshouted courage, a virtue evolving from the forced responsibility of Black women'.1 She describes this courage as 'the quality of steadfastness, akin to fortitude, in the face of formidable oppression'.2 We must note at this point that the quality of unshouted courage in the face of appalling oppression is a theme that is evident in the majority of the works of black women, past and present. Indeed the folklore collections provide us with an immense amount of information regarding this quality. The oppression under which black women live severely limits their ethical choices. Cannon insists, in relation to folklore and folk wisdom, that 'the values and virtues therein teach Blacks the usefulness of prudence, the relativity of truth and how to dispel the threat of death in order to sieze life in the present'.3 The folklore collected by ZoraNeale Hurston describes the 'action-guides' considered to be valuable for the black community, given their situation. Cannon's discussion of the life and work of Zora Neale Hurston as a valuable resource for a constructive ethic is indeed enlightening. I have been unable to do justice to the wealth of information and insights she provides. Her organization of Hurston's life and literature in terms of how invisible dignity, quiet grace and unshouted courage relate to moral agency provides an important focus for the discussion. There is much more, though, relating to the moral wisdom of Afro-American women, that can be gleaned from Hurston's work. Cannon's discussion in relation to these themes points the way forward for other works of this kind. Although it is not quite explicit in Cannon's work I understand her to be working towards an ethics which proposes a moral wisdom based in the complexities and particularities of women's (and men's) lives. To do otherwise would be methodologically inconsistent. She is adamant that a black womanist ethics does not appeal to the absolute norms and principles of the predominantly white academic community. If one supposes (as I believe one ought) that this statement is not purely a protest against the racist and sexist nature of extant ethical traditions but is a serious methodological position, then one must enquire as to the foundations for ethics and the possibility of arbitration among competing principles. This essentially raises the spectre of relativism in the ethical realm. There are many difficulties which have to be dealt with if one seeks to validate the use of experience and praxis as one's resources for ethics. 1. 2. 3.

Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics, p. 143. Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics, p. 144. Cannon, Black Womanist Ethics, p. 145.

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They are indeed similar to those of Joseph Fletcher's situation ethics. That the use of these categories seems to point one towards relativism appears increasingly obvious as one analyses the works of feminist and womanist theologians. It will be in the ethical realm, however, that such impulses will appear most acute. Clearly Cannon has not alluded to such methodological implications. Her task has been to provide the womanist community with an instance of ethical theory which arises from and is answerable to their lived experience. She has outlined the methodological assumptions which inform her work and has successfully used the life and works of Hurston in the formulation of a womanist ethics. It remains for her, or indeed for other theorists, to extend this methodology to the entire ethical corpus and to consider the new shape of ethical theory that will emerge, as experience and praxis are given priority. The book Black Womanist Ethics provides an excellent illustration of how feminist and womanist theologians have sought to find alternative resources for their theology. Women's experience, as always legitimated by women's praxis, has provided this resource. In the case of Katie Cannon's work it is black women's lived experience and praxis that provides the foundation for a constructive ethics. This has indeed resulted in a paradigm shift, since the traditional sources for theology are placed side by side with this new resource and evaluated accordingly. Cannon has gone in search of moral wisdom as it is revealed in the life and literature of Zora Neale Hurston and has found therein valuable resources for ethics for contemporary women, black and white. The Color Purple The publication and literary success of Alice Walker's The Color Purple marked a new era in the tradition of black women novelists. Both the novel and the film received critical acclaim and resulted in a greater recognition for the works of contemporary black women writers. In addition the book sparked off much controversy, particularly among the black community, many of whom considered it to be a misrepresentation of black women's experience. All of Alice Walker's works including The Color Purple are, I believe, in the tradition of the literature of Zora Neale Hurston. By this I mean that Alice Walker, together with many other women writing today, explores all aspects of black women's experience, negative and positive.

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These women are writing primarily for black women, not for a position in the established literary canon. 'For what black women as writers have consistently provided for themselves and others has been a rendering of the black woman's place in the world in which she lives, as she shapes and defines that from her own impulses and actions.'1 Delores Williams looks at the story of Celie in The Color Purple in terms of the possibility for transformation. In her article2 she has previously considered the story of the slave woman Vyry in Margaret Walker's Jubilee and that of Lucy in Hurston's Jonah s Gourd Vine. Undoubtedly Celie's story has been a vital source of inspiration for women, black and white. Williams claims that the central insight lies in the fact that 'black women help other black women become moral agents redefining right and wrong from the perspective of female experience'.3 This process obviously requires a catalyst, who in The Color Purple comes in the form of the dynamic Shug Avery. Williams insists that this catalyst's guiding Celie through transformation points to the fact that wholeness for black women depends 'on the successful social and spiritual healing of a black female self-concept' .4 The oppression that Celie has suffered, at the hands of her stepfather and later her husband, provides the backdrop for her liberation. Guided through a reappraisal of her physical, emotional and spiritual life by Shug, Celie isfinallyenabled to claim her own identity. This reclamation has a profound impact on her understanding of relationships. Having reconstructed her understanding of the notions of self, other and God, Celie has learned to live for herself. The moral and spiritual life of Celie is indeed enlightening. It is based entirely in her own actions and experiences. Having freed herself from the racial and sexual oppression that determined her life, Celie has constructed for herself (and later her extended family) an ethic that is based in the affirmation of black womanhood, rather than in its negation. In addition to reconstructing the ethics by which she lives her life, Celie's experience enables her to understand God and her relationship to divinity in an entirely new way. Her notion of God is as radical as her notion of human relationships. Redefining her understanding of self in relation to God, Walker writes: 1. 2. 3. 4.

McKay, 'Reflections on Black Women Writers', p. 174. 'Black Women's Literature*. Williams, 'Black Women's Literature', p. 96. Williams, 'Black Women's Literature', p. 97.

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[DJon't look like nothing, she [Shug] say. It ain't a picture show. It ain't something you can look at apart from anything else, including yourself. I believe God is everything, says Shug... She say, My first step away from the old white man was trees. Then air. Then birds. Then people. But one day when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it come to me: that feeling of being part of everything, not separate at all.1

Williams, like Cannon, has identified aspects of women's praxis and experience, portrayed in literature, which may provide important resources for the feminist and womanist theological task. In addition to using particular texts as sources, Williams identifies some common assumptions lying beneath the works of women writers which are also important to the task of theology from a womanist perspective. Williams claims that in order to understand the character of black women's experience, one must examine racial and gender history, since they are determining factors. Within racial and gender history, Williams identifies two basic thrusts: first, the oppression of the Afro-American community by the white population, and secondly, the appreciation of a cultural heritage based in the folk tradition. The folk tradition has had an important role in determining the character of black women's praxis and experience. The life and works of Zora Neale Hurston provide evidence for this, as do the works of Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and others. From this folk tradition emerges an important factor in the formation of black women's experience. As is emphasized by Alice Walker in her essay In Search of Our Mothers* Gardens, it is the mothers and grandmothers who have handed on this creative impulse. In the form of oralaural tradition black women writers have received their creativity from their foremothers. In the words of Alice Walker, They were women then My mama's generation Husky of voice—Stout of Step With fists as well as Hands How they battered down Doors And ironed 1. A. Walker, The Color Purple (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982), p. 167.

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From Women's Experience to Feminist Theology Starched white Shirts How they led Armies Headragged Generals Across mined Fields Booby-trapped Kitchens To discover books Desks A place for us How they knew what we Must know Without knowing a page Of it Themselves.1

Next Williams points to the fact that from the perspective of black women female and family liberation are inextricably bound. Therefore, she suggests that there is a need for an expansion of the analytic categories of feminism. Since the liberation of women and family are mutually dependent, Williams adds that the theologian must 'simultaneously use race, gender, and class analysis to forge inclusive categories for theology informed by the black woman's and the black family's experience'.2 A third assumption that emerges from a journey through the literary canon of black women, from a theological perspective, is that 'white North American and Afro-American attitudes toward black women's sexuality affect black women's struggle to survive, to change, and to be liberated'.3 Since black women's sexuality has been devalued in this racist and sexist society feminist theologians must deal with this as part of any attempt to examine the nature of women's experience of oppression. The question of sexuality forms an integral part of this struggle. Conclusion Womanist theology, in partnership with feminist theology, has sought to reinterpret the theological task in the light of women's experience and 1. 2. 3.

Walker, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens, p. 243. Williams, 'Black Women's Literature\ p. 105. Williams, 'Black Women's Literature', p. 105.

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praxis. As is evident from our consideration of womanist theology here both categories are central to the enterprise. Emphasis on praxis as an important source for theology is evident in the work of both Cannon and Williams. The understanding of black women's experience is not that of an abstract concept but of a dynamic and lived experience. The inclusion of the notion of praxis, albeit implicitly, assures a recognition of the real-lived texture of black women's experience, which is recorded in the literary canon and is significant for womanist theology. There is indeed much of value in Audre Lorde's statement that the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. In attempting to dismantle the foundations of oppressive theories womanist theologians have come to realize that critique from a feminist perspective will only be effective if the tools we use are not themselves products of the power relationship we seek to destroy. Thus feminists have moved beyond the canon of acceptable critical principles to use those which, although not entirely devoid of the vestiges of patriarchy, do not have a vested interest in the preservation of oppressive theological systems. The use of the experience and praxis of women of colour as resources for theological reflection is indeed radical. As women have been marginalized in theological discourse, women of colour have been doubly despised and have suffered the consequences of being black and female in a racist, sexist society. The impact of their presence in the theological realm has yet to be realized. I have already alluded to the methodological difficulties we face here. Undoubtedly it is essential that feminist theologians clarify the options they have taken in relation to their primary theological resources. The methodological issues relating to continuity with tradition and with our identity as women belonging to a religious tradition emerge most acutely in relation to Christian feminists and womanists. Yet they too have made a fundamental choice, insisting that in the event of a conflict of interests, their primary commitment is to women's well-being rather than fidelity to a tradition. Christian womanists and feminists however tend to insist that there is no conflict between women's well-being and the liberative core of Christianity; difficulties arise only with the patriarchal distortions of the Christian tradition. Nevertheless Christian womanists, like Christian feminists, have identified the experience and praxis of the diverse community of women as their methodological centre—as is evidenced by the work of both Cannon and Williams. When one is dealing with the experience and praxis of any marginalized

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group one needs to be aware of the danger of universalizing, and of failing to differentiate among the diverse positions that each group includes. It is altogether too simple to talk of 'black women's experience and praxis' as if it were homogeneous, just as it has been usual to theorize universally concerning 'women's experience'. As one reads the black literary canon, which is one of the principal sources for understanding womanist experience and praxis, certain predominant themes emerge. The wisdom of the 'ethics of survival' has for example been central for a race which has been systematically abused and defiled in history. Yet as these themes emerge from the 'real-lived texture' of black women's lives we must curb any impulses to universalize such experiences, lest we neglect or undermine less articulate or contrary experiences and praxis. There will be many criticisms of the methodological assumptions of womanist theology. In thefinalinstance, however, womanist and feminist theologians insist that in order to formulate a theology that answers the spiritual needs of contemporary women, we must use as primary resources our praxis and experience. The categories already formulated by patriarchy will not enable women to create adequate theologies. It is only by leaving behind the categories and principles central to patriarchal religions that women can truly move beyond these traditions. Herein lies the ultimate justification for the use of the categories of women's praxis and experience as resources

Chapter 5 WOMEN'S EXPERIENCE AND PRAXIS IN THE THEALOGIES OF POST-CHRISTIAN FEMINISTS

We have been exploring the ways in which feminist and womanist theologians have been employing the categories of experience and praxis in their work. In this chapter it is mainly the work of post-Christian thealogians that will come under scrutiny. The number of women who have turned to the goddesses as a source for spirituality is growing rapidly. Many thealogians have abandoned the perimeters of traditional faith and have found, in the myths and rituals of various goddesses, a spiritual home. In this chapter the work of Carol Christ will be our main focus of attention. We will also consider the work of Christine Downing and Judith Plaskow. Unlike Downing, Plaskow cannot be classed as a postChristian feminist thealogian. She isfirmlyrooted in the Judaic tradition and is in dialogue with it. I include her at this point in my analysis because of her interest in the role of literature in feminist theology. Indeed the interaction between theology and literature will be our first point of focus. We will consider how women's literature has become an important resource for feminist theology. Since literature has been the primary medium through which we have come to understand the nature of women's experience, it provides us with an important resource for theology. To this end we will consider Plaskow's Sex, Sin, and Grace: Women fs Experience and the Theologies of Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich and Christ's Diving Deep and Surfacing: Women Writers on Spiritual Quest, focusing on her work on Margaret Atwood's Surfacing,1 Adrienne Rich's poetry collection Diving into the Wreck2 andNtozake Shange's choreopoem/or colored girls who have considered suicide, 1. 2.

M. Atwood, Surfacing (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1972). A. Rich, Diving into the Wreck (New York: Norton, 1975).

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when the rainbow is enuf.1 In exploring the relationship between theology and literature as proposed by Christ, we can come to understand how central the work of women novelists and poets is to the formulation of a theology that reflects the experience of women. The examination of the category of praxis is always more complex in the context of feminist theology, since the term itself is rarely employed. Nevertheless the understanding that activity, lived experience, is central to the theological enterprise is rarely far from the surface. Indeed the terms 'women's experience' and 'women's praxis' often overlap. Implicit in the term 'women's experience' is the element of praxis. Liberating activity, which in turn changes consciousness and transforms understanding, is at the core of the term 'women's experience'. Praxis guards against the tendency to understand the category of women's experience in abstract and thus non-political terms. The inclusion of the notion of praxis in our theology mitigates against a theology which is static and conceptually stable—features considered desirable by many theorists. In relation to the category of praxis and the thealogy of post-Christian feminists we will consider another of Christ's influential works. Laughter of Aphrodite: Reflections on a Journey to the Goddess2 is based entirely on Christ's experience and praxis, and documents her journey away from traditional religion towards the goddesses of ancient Greece. Finally, we will deal briefly with Christine Downing's influential work The Goddess: Mythological Images of the Feminine.3 Her work again reveals an interaction between the personal and the thealogical. Downing claims that she has come to understand myth 'from the discovery of what it means to live a myth'.4 Thus we will look at her work as another example of a thealogy firmly rooted in personal experience, using as its resources praxis and women's experience. Women's Experience and Literature Feminist literary criticism has alerted us to the fact that literature has been central to the cultural construction of womanhood. Since literature 1. N. Shange,/or colored girls who have considered suicide, when the rainbow is enuf (London: Methuen Drama, 1990 [1978]). 2. C. Christ, Laughter of Aphrodite: Reflections on a Journey to the Goddess (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978). 3. C. Downing, The Goddess: Mythological Images of the Feminine (New York: Crossroad, 1984). 4. Downing, Goddess, p. 1.

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tends to reflect gendered experience, it has been important for feminists to critique the representations of women in extant texts and to promote woman-centred writing. The agenda for gynocritics has been defined by Elaine Showalter as a project to 'construct a female framework for the analysis of women's literature, to develop new models based on the study of female experience...Gynocritics begins at the point when we...stop trying to fit women between the lines of the male tradition, and focus instead on the newly visible world of female culture.'1 In the theological realm also gynocritics will be important. Since womanist and feminist theologians have tended to employ women's fiction as important resources for understanding women's experience it is essential that they engage in an adequate literary criticism also. To date there has been very little discussion of hermeneutics in the use of the fiction of Atwood, Shange and others in theology. Feminist theologians have tended to look towards these texts for a variety of reasons: for positive evaluations of womanhood, for the envisioning of alternative roles, values and options, for instances of resistance. Predominantly, however, they have tended to look to this fiction for articulations of women's spiritual quests, using thefictionas religious texts. As we consider particular thealogians' use of the fiction of women writers it will be important to be aware that both the thealogians' and the novelists' agendas are set by the differences in material realities, sexual, racial and class-based, which inform their works. Thus there can never be a simple appropriation of the fiction of women without due regard for the various textual strategies and contextually bound differences which divide women and which militate against the assumption that a text reveals one true meaning. In dealing with Judith Plaskow's use of literature as a resource for understanding women's experience, and thereby as a resource for feminist theology, we must firstly contextualize it. Her book Sex, Sin, and Grace uses the category of women's experience to critique the concepts of sin and grace as they emerge in the works of Niebuhr and Tillich. In the background is the already-mentioned article by Valerie Saiving 'The Human Situation: A Feminine View', which Plaskow acknowledges as a major source of inspiration. Her purpose is to promote the possibility of

1. Towards a Feminist Poetics', in M. Jacobus (ed.), Women Writing and Writing about Women (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1979), p. 28.

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a systematic feminist theologyfirmlybased on the category of women's experience. Plaskow is keen to point out the difficulties in coming to an adequate definition of the term * women's experience'. She differentiates what has been written by men on the nature of women's experience from what has been written by women on the subject. She points out that women have rarely been allowed the possibility of self-definition. Women have lived with the internalized male definitions of women's experience. Thus she concludes: [T]he expression * women's experience', as it is used throughout this book, will refer to a complex of considerations; male definitions of women and the lived experiences of women within, in relation and in opposition to these definitions...'Women's experience' means simply this: the experiences of women in the course of a history never free from cultural role definitions.1

Plaskow firstly surveys some of the literature written about women which has created the myth of the 'eternal feminine'. We have considered much of this work previously.2 Plaskow insists that there is a complex relationship between the definitions of women's experience and the actual experiences of women, since we have internalized much of what is expected of us. She opts, however, for a view of women's experience as it emerges in the philosophical work of Simone de Beauvoir, particularly The Second Sex, the anthropological work of Margaret Mead3 and the literary work of Doris Lessing.4 Plaskow acknowledges the particularity of her definition of women's experience as that of a white, middle-class, Western woman. It is with Plaskow's use of literature that we are mainly concerned. Plaskow considers Doris Lessing's five-volumed work The Children of Violence to be an important resource for understanding the nature of the experience of modern, middle-class, white women. Plaskow tends to concentrate on the early novels, which describe Martha's conformity to the dominant expectations and her subsequent attempts to abandon them. Plaskow recounts Martha's failure to take responsibility for her 1. Plaskow, Sex, Sin and Grace, p. 11. 2. Cf. the chapter entitled 'Women's Experience' in Sex, Sinf and Grace, 3. M. Mead, Male and Female (New York: Dell, 1968); Sex and Temperament (New York: Dell, 1968). 4. See The Children of Violence series, comprising Martha Quest, A Proper Marriage, A Ripple from the Storm, Landlocked and The Four-Gated City.

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own life with her acceptance of traditional marriage and motherhood, and later, when she has abandoned one mythology (that of traditional marriage and motherhood), she takes up another almost immediately: Communism. The first four novels of The Children of Violence series essentially tell of Martha's constant failure to come to terms with the social definitions of women's experience. Although Martha does experience moments of transcendence within the boundaries defined as women's experience, her relationship to these social definitions is a mixture of 'acquiescence, despair, and struggle'.1 The final volume in the series is The Four-Gated City, This is clearly the most important volume for both Plaskow and Christ since both discuss it widely. Set in London, The Four-Gated City documents Martha's journey 'into the realm of extraordinary reality'.21 have discussed this briefly in relation to definitions of motherhood with reference to Adrienne Rich's work Of Woman Born? Plaskow interprets Martha's story in The Four-Gated City in terms of her self-exploration. The intensity of this exploration brings her into the realm of extraordinary reality. She explores the regions of madness and, deriving strength from this, she seeks out and tests 'unknown and frightening parts of herself .4 In the subsequent chapters of her book, Plaskow looks at the theologies of Niebuhr and Tillich, with particular emphasis on the doctrines of sin and grace contained therein. Plaskow maintains that neither theologian has taken account of women's experience in the formulation of his doctrines. She deals with each theologian separately, yet she concludes that both have formulated their doctrines understanding male experience to be normative. Plaskow's critique of the notion of sin is widely known. Niebuhr's understanding of the primary form of sin as pride and Tillich's emphasis on hubris reveal, according to Plaskow, that both are working from a definition of human experience which is entirely androcentric. They have failed entirely to take account of women's experience in developing their respective theological positions. Although Plaskow's work draws upon a particular form of women's experience she recognizes this fact. She has, she claims, simply sought to contribute from her own perspective and does not claim a normative status for her 1. 2. 3. 4.

Plaskow, Sex, Plaskow, Sex, Cf. Chapter 1, Plaskow, Sex,

Sin and Grace, p. 44. Sin and Grace, p. 44. above. Sin and Grace, p. 47.

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understanding of the term 'women's experience'. She acknowledges the particularity of her definition. In concluding her work Plaskow also recognizes the critical nature of her work, yet she points towards reconstruction. She insists that 'the point is that the submerged perspective of women's experience, once brought to expression, precisely in its particularity has the power to direct our attention to previously unexplored aspects of human experience'.1 In using Lessing's The Children of Violence as a resource in the reinterpretation of the categories of sex, sin and grace, Plaskow introduces experiences not usually visible in the theological realm. Alongside biblical narrative and ecclesiastical tradition, an articulation through fiction of the perception of a woman is introduced. This narrative gains predominance in the work of Plaskow both because it is a telling of reality from a marginal perspective and because it cautions us to become aware of the perspectival viewpoint from which the theologies of Niebuhr and Tillich are formulated. Carol Christ essentially moves on from the critical theology of Plaskow to construction. Again Lessing's work provides an important resource for understanding women's experience. Christ deals primarily with the final volume in the series, The Four-Gated City. Her concern is with Martha's attainment of insight. Christ considers this text to be an important source for women's spirituality. Martha has discovered herself as central to the process of insight and goes on to develop prophetic powers. This almost Utopian work provides women with important reformulations of traditional theological categories. Those mentioned by Plaskow have already been alluded to. Christ alerts us to the transformative and indeed spiritual significance of the work. Women prophets are surely in short supply in the Christian tradition. Christ ascribes prophetic insight to Martha when she has eventually invented herself and has begun to live according to the values gained once patriarchal definitions of womanhood have been discarded. This is a provocative interpretation which will indeed encourage women to disregard traditional definitions of womanhood and enable us to locate religious insight firmly in the experience and praxis of women. In Diving Deep and Surfacing Christ again considers at length the importance of women's stories in the articulation of their experience. Christ uses the term 'story' in a broad sense, incorporating in her 1.

Plaskow, Sex, Sin and Grace, p. 175.

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definition fiction, poetry, narratives and song. These articulations of experience enable women to understand themselves and ultimately to express their individual spiritual quests. Christ does not explore at length a theory of story. She acknowledges that she draws heavily from the work of Michael Novak1 and Stephen Crites2 on story. Their work points to the centrality of stories in creating an understanding of self and world. Stories have a sacred dimension, point towards 'a source of meaning that gives purpose to people's lives'.3 Christ develops this theory in relation to women's stories. She describes the difficulties thus: [T]here is a dialectic between stories and experience. Stories give shape to experience, experience gives rise to stories. At least this is how it is for those who have had the freedom to tell their own stories, to shape their lives according to their experience. But this has not usually been the case for women. Indeed there is a very real sense in which the seemingly paradoxical statement 'Women have not experienced their own experience* is true.4

Women have lived in relation to the cultural expectations of patriarchal society and have rarely been able to articulate their own experience apart from these. There is, however, a considerable development in progress. Women are at last beginning to interpret their own experience and are rejecting the stories of patriarchy. Women are now writing their own stories, infiction,poetry, music and art. Christ insists that this new literature is vital since these women are patently aware of the gap between their experience and the traditional articulations thereof. Ntozake Shange asks: somebody/anybody sing a black girl's song bring her out to know herself... ... sing her song of life she's been dead so long

1. M. Novak, Ascent of the Mountain, Flight of the Dove: An Invitation to Religious Studies (New York: Harper & Row, 1971). 2. S. Crites, 'The Narrative Quality of Experience', JAAR 39.3 (1971), pp. 291311. 3. Christ, Diving Deep and Surfacing, p. 3. 4. Christ, Diving Deep and Surfacing, p. 5.

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Christ interprets this new telling of women's stories as a revolutionary act. Stories articulate women's quest for social and spiritual wholeness. Thus, in Naomi Goldenberg's opinion, they are the sacred texts of a new spiritual consciousness. Carol Christ uses them in precisely this way.2 Women's spiritual quest, as articulated by these new stories, takes on a distinctive form. Christ identifies the stages in the journey towards spiritual wholeness which are evident in the literature. As one would expect, each stage is variously developed. Individual authors emphasize different stages in the spiritual quest. It usually begins, according to Christ, with an experience of nothingness, a nothingness created in the gap between accounts of patriarchal expectations and the individual's actual feelings. This nothingness usually precedes 'an awakening, similar to a conversion experience'.3 This is in turn followed by a new naming of self and reality 'that articulates the new orientation to self and world achieved through experiencing the powers of being'.4 The achievement of insight is neverfinal.Women's spiritual quest is a process leading to ever new and radical understandings of self and reality. Margaret Atwood's Surfacing Many of Atwood's novels revolve around the theme of women's experiences of patriarchy and their subsequent attempts to defy expectation.5 Her consideration of such an experience in Surfacing is perhaps her finest to date. Her creativity is in evidence throughout the work, and she reaches new heights with her unconventional and radical ending. Surfacing tells the story of one woman's internal search for wholeness which is paralleled, in the novel, by her search for her missing 1. Shange, for colored girls, p. 4. 2. Christ, Diving Deep and Surfacing, p. 12. 3. Christ, Diving Deep and Surfacing, p. 13. 4. Christ, Diving Deep and Surfacing, p. 13. 5. Cf. for example Bodily Harm (London: Virago, 1983); Cat's Eye (London: Virago, 1990); Lady Oracle (Toronto: Seal Books, 1979); and The Edible Woman (London: Virago, 1980).

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father. Christ interprets the entire novel in terms of the woman's refusal to be a victim. Eventually, Christ suggests that the woman realizes in relation to her missing father that 'it was no longer his death but my own that concerned me'.1 Christ suggests that the protagonist is essentially concerned with power. She experiences herself as completely powerless and victimized. Her realization of her own powerlessness is made all the more acute by her return home. In an effort to retrieve her lost power she delves into her past, impelled by the recognition that it is there that she has lost it. The novel recounts her many attempts to deal with this, first through images of her childhood and then in attempting to decipher her father's drawings on maps. Finally, submerged in the lake, having discovered her father's body, she recalls the instance when she relinquished her power. 'This revelation unlocks the mystery of the confusing stories of husband, child, marriage. The childbirth was an abortion; the wedding day—the day of the abortion; the husband—the lover who told her to have the abortion.'2 In accepting this, the woman finally realizes that she must accept responsibility for her action. She rejects the division between good and bad, legitimate and illegitimate which in the past allowed her to evade the consequences of her actions. It is her own experience that now defines reality for her. That night she conceives a child. Atwood's use of language evokes very strong images reminiscent of the goddesses; in the words of Christ, the protagonist is 'at one with nature and her sexual power, in tune with the rhythms of the moon, complete in herself .3 She realizes that she wishes to stay in the wilderness and, having got rid of her companions, she 'ritually breaks her connections to the human world',4 purifying clothes and books and also herself in the lake. She is being transformed. In Christ's words, 'she experiences direct union with the great powers of life and death in nature. All boundaries between herself and other forms of life are abolished. She becomes the transformative energy.'5 In allowing her past to surface and in renouncing her delusions of innocence she reclaims her own power. In the words of the woman, 'this above all, to refuse to be a victim...give up the old belief that I am 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Christ, Diving Deep and Surfacing, p. 41, quoting Surfacing, p. 123. Christ, Diving Deep and Surfacing, p. 45. Christ, Diving Deep and Surfacing, p. 47. Christ, Diving Deep and Surfacing, p. 48. Christ, Diving Deep and Surfacing, p. 48.

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powerless'.1 Christ indeed treats this work as a sacred text. It tells of one woman's spiritual quest for wholeness, for holiness. In this quest the protagonist affirms her own power and her connection with nature. She is transformed in this very action. What emerges is a powerful and transformative vision of a woman who, in refusing to be a victim, makes the journey to spiritual insight. The Poetry of Adrienne Rich The poetry of Adrienne Rich, in particular Diving into the Wreck and The Dream of a Common Language,2 is also understood by Christ as revealing women's spiritual quest. Both collections reveal women's experience to be truly transformative. Rich is acutely aware of the dichotomy that exists between women's experience as defined by men and the experience that women are only recently beginning to claim and to name. As she has already done with Margaret Atwood's Surfacing, Christ sets about interpreting the poems as revelatory of women's spiritual quest. She identifies the experience of nothingness moving towards awakening, insight and eventually new naming. Rich's poetry fits these categories excellently, since she is essentially concerned with women's search for identity and fulfilment. In Diving into the Wreck Rich speaks honestly of experiences of nothingness—the nothingness that comes once a woman has abandoned the myths and fantasies of patriarchal love and romance. In Trying to Talk with a Man' she describes the couple's inability to communicate, confessing that trying to do so is 'like testing bombs'; the landscape they inhabit is a 'desert' with 'deformed cliffs' filled with 'dull green succulents'.3 In the early poems of this collection Rich explores the wreck and the nothingness that comes with abandoning it. Her 'souvenirs of what I once described / as happiness'4 surround her, yet she pushes herself towards new realities. It is the wreck that is the source of these new realities and relationships. In naming the nothingness of the wreck Rich says 'yet never have...we been closer to the truth / of the lies we are living'.5 When women name 1. 2. 3. 4. p. 77. 5. p. 79.

Christ, Diving Deep and Surfacing, p. 49. A. Rich, The Dream of a Common Language (New York: Norton, 1978). Christ, Diving Deep and Surfacing, p. 77. Rich, Diving into the Wreck, p. 5, cited in Christ, Diving Deep and Surfacing, Rich, Diving into the Wreck, p. 6, cited in Christ, Diving Deep and Surfacing,

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the nothingness of the patriarchal wreck they are, according to both Rich and Christ, empowered. The subsequent poems in Diving into the Wreck explore the insights that come once the woman rejects the destruction of the patriarchal wreck. Further, Rich explores the interior journey on which she embarks. Christ concludes her consideration of Rich's interior spiritual journey with the claim that Rich has reached the sacred centre, the centre of wholeness. 'This is the place. / And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair / streams back, the merman in his armoured body / We circle silently / about the wreck / we dive into the hold /1 am she: I am he.'l Christ continues her exploration of Rich's poetry as revelatory of women's spiritual quest with The Dream of a Common Language. This significant work cannot be dealt with in full here, yet a few comments may suffice to indicate its importance. There is little doubt that this entire collection is concerned with women's realities, with new naming and with shaping 'women's experiences of new being'.2 As the title implies, Rich is concerned with exploring the implications of a new language, which will centre around 'a celebration of women's experience, values and history'.3 She celebrates the forgotten women of the past, the explorers, scientists, mothers and daughters. She celebrates both women's traditional values and the emerging values of feminist consciousness. She celebrates love and creativity between women. The celebration ends when she has learned to 'love myself / as only a woman can love me'.4 Rich charts the spiritual journey of women from the experience of nothingness to new naming and insight. Her works reveal how women's experience can indeed be the source for spiritual insight. Christ maintains that in dealing with the experience of many women, past and present, Rich has indeed begun to understand 'how the world might be transformed by women's new naming'.5 Her contribution, in the words of Christ, lies in the fact that 'though all women will not follow the path Rich has charted, her visions of women's strengths, women's values,

1. Rich, Diving into the Wreck, p. 24, cited in Christ, Diving Deep and Surfacing, p. 81. 2. Christ, Diving Deep and Surfacing, p. 8. 3. Christ, Diving Deep and Surfacing, p. 85. 4. Christ, Diving Deep and Surfacing, p. 94, quoting The Dream of a Common Language, p. 76. 5. Christ, Diving Deep and Surfacing, p. 96.

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and women's love for women, for themselves, holds much to inspire all women's quests'.1 for colored girls who have considered suicide, when the rainbow is enuf There is little doubt that this choreopoem by Ntozake Shange has been a major resource for many theologians, feminist and womanist. Christ too considers this to be an important articulation of one woman's spiritual quest, and thereby a significant resource for feminist theology. Christ again deals with the poem in terms of the writer's journey from nothingness to new naming and insight. Shange's experience of nothingness is, however, made more acute by the overt racism of society. In her own words, 'bein alive & bein a woman & bein colored is a metaphysical // dilemma / I havent conquered yet /'. 2 Yet through the conversation between seven women Shange presents us with a vision, a new image of black women 'who have considered // suicide / but are movin to the ends of their own // rainbows'.3 Through the series of poems these women tell their stories. They tell of the pain and violence that they endured growing up. They tell of rape and abortion and relationships between men and women. Christ comments on Shange's determination to reflect women's experience alone: 'i've decided to wear my ovaries on my sleeve / raise my poems on my milk / & count my days by the flow of my mensis / the men who were poets were aghast...'4 The choreopoem moves from one experience of nothingness and violence (which characterizes the experiences of many black women) to another—speaking about the pain and humiliation that many women have experienced. Throughout the poems Shange alternates between describing black women's nothingness and black women's strengths. This she does with reference to their memories of Africa: 'when I walked in the pacific // i imagined waters ancient from accra / tunis // cleansin me / feedin me'.5 At this point the mood of the poem changes somewhat. One can feel the power begin to rise. The emphasis now, instead of being on remembering pain and violence, is on the attempts to deal with them. The women 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Christ, Diving Deep and Surfacing, p. 96. Shange, for colored girls, p. 45. Shange, for colored girls, p. 64. Shange, nappy edges, p. 16. Shange, for colored girls, p. 36.

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resolve to be honest about their experiences, to name them and to refuse to take abuse in the future. Each woman in turn insists 'my love is too delicate to have thrown back on my face...my love is too beautiful to have thrown back on my face...my love is too sanctified...'1 And instead of continually forgiving her oppressors the woman in blue confirms 'i'm gonna tack a sign to my door // leave a message by the phone // "if you called // to say yr sorry // call somebody // else // i dont use em anymore'".2 Christ interprets as thefinalchallenge the story told by the woman in red, of Crystal and Beau Willie Brown. Finally, having contemplated suicide, the woman experiences spiritual awakening and connectedness with nature. The woman in red then reveals 'i found god in myself // and i loved her / i loved her fiercely'. At this point all the other women begin to repeat this, affirming themselves as the centre of the spiritual quest. Furthermore, as Christ comments, this statement is an acknowledgment of 'her self's grounding in larger powers'.3 Christ concludes, that this powerful statement of self-affirmation 'is a clear vision of new being on the far side of nothingness'.4 The new visions based on women's abilities to overcome experiences of nothingness are central to the articulation of a new theology. Christ is involved in the contemplation of divinity from the perspective of women's experience. It is clear that it is the varied and plural experiences and activities of women that provide the resources for this theology. The use of the literature of women novelists and poets is important since they describe women's stories and articulate women's new visions. The resources used by Christ in Diving Deep and Surfacing Writers are indeed different from those used by mainstream Christian feminist theology. She is not interested in retrieving tradition but is concerned with an entirely creative enterprise, based on women's experience and praxis, intending 'to weave the threads of women's visions into a new theory of human nature'.5 When we consider Christ's use of the texts of Rich, Shange, Lessing and Atwood as sacred texts we are bound to enquire as to what shape of a religious tradition so based would emerge. Clearly an affirmation of womanhood rooted in an appreciation of the material differences among 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Shange, for colored girls, p. 46. Shange,/or colored girls, p. 53. Christ, Diving Deep and Surfacing, p. 117. Christ, Diving Deep and Surfacing, p. 117. Christ, Diving Deep and Surfacing, p. 130.

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women would be central. Fundamentally one may anticipate, considering the methodological presuppositions evident in Christ's work, that this tradition would be sourced in the autobiographies of women, dynamic and ever-changing, as women's experiences become ever more articulate and visible. Praxis-Based Theology From the discussion of the works of Christ and Downing I hope that the centrality of the categories of experience and praxis will be apparent. The methodological difficulties emerge primarily in relation to feminist theologians who wish to remain within their particular traditions and thereby effect reform. The status of their praxis and experience, and indeed its validity, is much disputed. In relation to post-Christian feminists the question of the validity of women's praxis and experience does not emerge so acutely, since these women have already opted to make these categories the methodological centre of their work. Consequently they have relegated already-established traditions to a subordinate role. The thealogy of Christ, and indeed of Downing, are fine examples of the efforts of post-Christian thealogians to place at the centre of their thealogies the praxis and experience of women. Yahweh as Holy Warrior Christ attempts to deal with this important image of God from a feminist perspective. This involves a combination of reflection on personal praxis and experience, philosophical and thealogical speculation, literary analysis and historical research. Personal experience and praxis provide the initial insights, which are considered with the use of more traditional tools of scholarship. Christ describes her intention thus: 'I would like to examine the implications of my contention that the image of Yahweh as liberator in Exodus and in the prophets is part of an image of Yahweh as divine warrior that I as a feminist and peace activist reject'.1 Christ considers the close association between patriarchy and war. She does not, she insists, attribute war to the nature of males, any more than she attributes pacifism to women's nature. However, she maintains that patriarchal culture, which promotes the concept of masculinity, is essentially responsible for the close association between power and violence. 1.

Christ, Laughter of Aphrodite, p. 79.

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She examines the symbolic function of a god of war 'in cultures where warfare is glorified as a symbol of manhood and power'.1 She further insists, in relation to the exodus story, that the image of Yahweh as liberator and the concern for justice displayed in the prophetic writings cannot be separated from the image of the warrior god. Since she finds the image of a warrior god totally unacceptable in the age of nuclear and chemical weapons, she rejects the value of the use of Exodus and prophetic images of God. Christ quotes Adrienne Rich's 'The Phenomenology of Anger'2 as an important source of personal insight: I suddenly see the world as no longer viable: you are out there burning the crops with some new sublimate This morning you left the bed we still share and went out to spread impotence upon the world...3

Values proposed and enforced through patriarchal culture are responsible for ourflirtationwith nuclear destruction. Christ is hopeful that women's experience and praxis can provide us with alternative values and insights 'with which we could reconstitute the world: a world without war, without violence as we know it today in patriarchy'.4 Christ is keen to point out that her views on violence and war, and thus her views on the image of Yahweh as Holy Warrior, are based in her praxis and experience of the peace movement. She associates herself closely with the praxis of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Women's Strike for Peace and Women's Party for Survival.5 The basis for her theological reflection on this important Jewish and Christian image of God is essentially her peace activism. The actual content of her critique has not been our focus here. Her rejection of the image of the warrior god (an image which has, she points out, been a major source of inspiration for liberation theologians) 1. Christ, Laughter of Aphrodite, p. 75. 2. Christ, Laughter of Aphrodite, p. 74. The Phenomenology of Anger' comes from Diving into the Wreck, p. 165. 3. Christ, Laughter ofAphrodite, p. 74. 4. Christ, Laughter of Aphrodite, p. 74. 5. Christ, Laughter of Aphrodite, p. 79.

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is a clear example of the centrality of women's praxis and experience in the feminist thealogical enterprise. A Daughter of the Father God Christ deals with another image of the deity from the Jewish and Christian traditions in a similar fashion. She explores, through consideration of her own experience, her thesis that 'to know ourselves as daughters of a Father God who claims to be the only parent is to be involved in a pathologically dependent relationship in which our strength and power as women can never be fully affirmed'.1 She affirms the particularity of her own experience and accepts its limitations. Nevertheless she recognizes it to be important since it has been the central resource for her thealogy. Christ goes through the Lord's Prayer line by line and describes her reaction to it. She shares many personal experiences and insights about her family and professional life. She describes the 'pathology of exclusion' which women experience (either implicitly or explicitly) in such liturgies. For example: 'Hallowed be Thy name'. In naming the Father holy, did I understand that his name was a masculine one? Did I make an intuitive connection with my mother's often repeated declaration that the happiest day of her life was the day she took my father's name? Did I understand that to be female was to have a name that was not holy? Did I suspect that to be female was to live in a world where men—but not women—had the power to name the world, to define 'reality' as they saw it or wanted it to be?2

Christ broadens her discussion to include her relationship with 'fathers'. She focuses specifically on the academy and her attempts to gain acceptance. She recounts how her abstract modelling of herself on the fathers in no way helped her integrate career and family. Her experiences further led her to question whether the daughters would ever be accepted in the house of the fathers3 and ultimately this led her to question 'the role of the Father God in legitimating the world of the fathers and sons that I experienced as excluding me'.4 Again Christ's dialogue with the image of God as Father is built around her story of her relationship with 'the fathers'. Her story is, in many ways, representative of the stories of many women involved in 1. 2. 3. 4.

Christ, Laughter of Aphrodite, p. 93. Christ, Laughter of Aphrodite, p. 94. Christ, Laughter of Aphrodite, p. 94. Christ, Laughter of Aphrodite, p. 99.

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theological research. This powerful critique of the image of God as Father is centred in her personal praxis and experience. Her explicit acknowledgment of this fact is important. The considerations of the images of God as Father and God as Holy Warrior are but examples of Christ's dialogue with tradition from the perspective of women's praxis and experience. Her dialogue touches on many other symbols and traditions which are evaluated in the light of the basic categories of feminist thealogical thought. Journey to the Goddess Christ frames her entire creative thealogy in the context of her personal praxis and experience of her journey to the Goddess. The essays in this section are based on both research into Goddess history and participation in Goddessrituals.As in the previous section, Christ uses a combination of the traditional tools of scholarly activity (research, literary analysis) with the less conventional resource of feminist theory— personal praxis and experience. Christ suggests that the sources for the Goddess spirituality which has become an important force in the lives of many women are the ancient traditions of Goddess worship combined with the personal experiences of contemporary women. The traditions are evaluated on the basis that they either illuminate contemporary women's experience or they do not. As always, it is in relation to women's activity and experience that such traditions are considered. Christ deals with many issues relating to both the history and symbolism of Goddess worship. I will limit my discussion here to her consideration of the psychological and political significance of Goddess symbolism in her chapter entitled 'Why Women Need the Goddess'.1 Christ mentions four aspects of Goddess symbolism: 'the Goddess as affirmation of female power, the female body, the female will, and women's bonds and heritage'.2 She acknowledges the existence of many other aspects which are excluded from the discussion. Christ maintains that at its most basic level Goddess worship affirms female power as both legitimate and beneficent. She is using a notion of female power which has emerged from the praxis of women's communities and collectives. In contrast to patriarchal power, which feminists 1. This chapter is an important article in its own right. It originally appeared in Anima (Spring 1975) and has been reprinted many times. 2. Christ, Laughter of Aphrodite, p. 120.

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have described as 'power over', female power has often been defined as 'power from within' and 'power with'. Again Christ does not suggest that power from within is the exclusive preserve of women. It is, however, in direct opposition to the notion of power evident in patriarchal society. It does reflect a particular world-view, which itself has emerged from the praxis of women's collectives and is thus associated with the outsiders of patriarchal culture—women. Christ then deals with the affirmation of the female body as an important implication of Goddess symbolism. Since patriarchal religion has displayed little other than contempt for and fear of women's bodies, the affirmation associated with Goddess spirituality is significant. An enumeration of the instances of patristic or medieval denunciations of the female body is not required here. Experiences of women's groups suggest that this is one of the significant factors in many women's rejection of traditional Christianity. Of course, religious traditions are not alone in their denigration of women's bodies—advertising and pornography (among other things) also reveal society's misogyny. The praxis of Goddess rituals is often centered around the reclamation and celebration of the female body. Rituals to celebrate a young girl's first menstruation, to celebrate childbirth, menopause and so on form an integral part of Goddess worship. In addition, the Goddess is affirmed in youth, maturity and old age. Thus, in relation to female bodies, Goddesscentered worship enables women, in praxis, to reclaim and celebrate our physical in addition to our spiritual selves. Christ deals similarly with the issue of female will and that of women's bonds and heritage. Coupling women's praxis and experience with symbols from traditional Goddess worship, Christ argues persuasively as to why women need the Goddess. She summarizes: [T]he symbol of Goddess has much to offer women who are struggling to be rid of the 'powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations' of devaluation of female power, denigration of the female body, distrust of female will, and denial of the women's bonds and heritage that have been engendered by patriarchal religion. As women struggle to create a new culture in which women's power, bodies, will and bonds are celebrated, it seems natural that the Goddess would reemerge as symbol of the newfound beauty, strength, and power of women.1

1.

Christ, Laughter of Aphrodite, p. 131.

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Laughter of Aphrodite The final chapter in Christ's book describes vividly how her praxis and experience of Goddess-centered worship have become foundational for her creative thealogy. We have discussed previously how the categories of praxis and experience have been fundamental to her critical dialogue with patriarchal religion. The final chapter describes both of these categories as basic to her journey to the Goddess. She recalls: 4[M]y initiation into the symbols and rituals of the Goddesses began...when my own experiences of the silencing of the voice of my experience and perception within patriarchal religious and academic structures led me to desire a validating female God language'.1 This chapter takes the reader on a journey to Delphi, home of Gaia, to Elusis, where Demeter and Persephone were worshipped, and to Lesbos where Christ was initiated into the mysteries of Aphrodite. Such intense and liberating spiritual experiences are palpably the cornerstone of this work. Her participation in and creation of rituals (both alone and in community) are her primary resources for understanding the value of Goddess worship for women in a patriarchal world. That she acknowledges such experiences as the foundation for her thealogy is evident. She affirms the power and value of her own praxis and experience when she announces fearlessly that they are central for thealogical understanding. She says of feminist thealogy: [A]s feminist thea- and theologians, we are challenged to name in more explicit ways than most of us have done the personal sources of our understandings of women's experience and of our theo- and thealogical visions. Not only will this make our work richer and more interesting, but also more true to the insights from which feminist thealogy begins.2

Christ certainly takes up the challenge herself. Christine Downing's Thealogy Downing's exciting work The Goddess: Mythological Images of the Feminine is a further instance of the merging of personal praxis and experience with thealogical and psychological reflection. Downing deals also with her journey to the goddesses, identifying in particular with Persephone. Downing's intention in this book is to explore the meaning and 1. 2.

Christ, Laughter of Aphrodite, p. 184. Christ, Laughter of Aphrodite, p. xv.

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working of myth. She does not do so in any abstract way but states from the beginning that she has learned about myth 'from the discovery of what it means to live a myth'.1 She prepares us for her highly innovative work by telling us that 'these chapters interweave childhood memories, dreams from many different periods, and a complex history of identifications'.2 This book then examines the development and significance of mythological images of the feminine. She recalls that her initial awakening to the quest for the Goddess began with a dream, which she recounts. She insists that 'to be fed only male images of the divine is to be badly malnourished';3 hence the need to recognize the female images and symbols. Downing considers the significance of the various female images of the divine in a novel way. Based entirely on her own experience of identification with the various goddesses at different times, Downing explores the strengths and values of different goddesses. For example, when dealing with Pallas Athena, she says: 'Athene is a goddess I once loved... She was all I wanted to be and I gave my soul to her—selfconfident and courageous, clear-eyed and strong, intelligent and accomplished, judicious and fair...'4 This is the starting point from which Downing goes on to describe the illumination Pallas Athena brought to her and the values she may hold for contemporary women. The function of this brief comment is not to summarize the content of Downing's work. The Goddess: Mythological Images of the Feminine holds similar considerations of the myths associated with Demeter and Persephone, Hera, Artemis, Gaia and others. Our interest is in the methodology of the work. Downing's thealogy is truly transformative in that it accomplishes a significant shift in method. Using praxis and experience as the primary categories of her work, Downing introduces us to an alternative form for thealogical writing. Downing's recounting of her dreams and experiences is important since she explicitly acknowledges personal praxis and experience as the major resources in a feminist thealogy. This book is not purely autobiography, though it does contain much that mainstream scholarly research might consider to be more appropriately situated thus. Downing's work is, rather, a serious 1. 2. 3. 4.

Downing, Goddess, p. 1. Downing, Goddess, p. 1. Downing, Goddess, p. 4. Downing, Goddess, p. 100.

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consideration of the meaning and significance of the various mythological images of the feminine, using as a major resource the categories of praxis and experience. Conclusion It has become very clear from our exploration of the works of Plaskow, Christ and Downing that feminist thealogians have expiicidy named their own praxis and experience as their major resources. This has resulted in the rejection of patriarchal religious traditions by the majority of these women (with the exception of Judith Plaskow, who has remained in dialogue with the Jewish tradition). It has emerged therefore that a significant methodological shift has taken place. Although texts and traditions are not rejected completely, they are evaluated on their abilities to illuminate contemporary women's praxis and experience. These key terms are the central categories of feminist thealogy. Praxis and women's experience, although similar, bring different emphases to the discussion. Attention to the history and philosophy of the term 'praxis' ensures against the possibility of excessive abstraction and thereby political ineffectiveness. Praxis and experience combined provide an important starting point for feminist thealogy and theology, since the centrality of contemporary life for theological insight is affirmed while guarding against the potential danger of mindless activism. As experience and praxis undergird the theoretical, the theological realm is truly transformed. Women novelists and poets, who have articulated women's experience from a variety of viewpoints, emerge as important for theologians. So too does the praxis of women's communities, whether they be gathered around legal, pacifist or ecological issues. It is the insights of these women, articulated collectively or individually, which provide the resources for feminist theologians. As I have mentioned, I do not wish to limit the feminist theological endeavour to women's experience and praxis. It is not in unmediated 'raw' experience nor in unreflective activity that feminists place their hopes. Women's experience and praxis do however provide the primary resources, and their employment thus moves us towards an alternative methodological tradition. Feminist theologians, regardless of the difficulties involved, remain convinced that an epistemology that acknowledges the priority of experience and praxis is the only one that will ensure the complete transformation of the theological process.

Conclusion A THEOLOGY FOR THE FUTURE

The rules break like a thermometer, quicksilver spills across the charted systems, we're out in a country that has no language no laws, we're chasing the raven and the wren through gorges unexplored since dawn whatever we do together is pure invention the maps they gave us were out of date by years... 1

Throughout this work I have been anxious to insist on the radical newness of feminist theology. Its alternative vision is based primarily on how it chooses its starting points and how it proceeds methodologically. Thus, feminist theology has essentially effected a revolution in theological scholarship—in both content and method. As a result, one can recognize the accuracy of Rich's metaphor of a journey without maps. As the primary resources for feminist theology, women's experience and praxis have been considered in this work. In examining both the origins and development of these categories, together with the ways in which they have been employed by feminist theologians of varying commitments, some issues emerge which may help us to do theology for the future. As we have seen in thefirstpart of this book, liberation and political theology have provided the methodological framework for feminist theologians. The integration of the Marxian category of revolutionary praxis has enabled theologians to understand their resources differently. The inclusion of praxis as the starting point and norm of evaluation for theological scholarship has radically altered both methodology and epistemology. This choice of a praxis-based methodology is not simply a whim, but 1.

Rich, Dream of a Common Language, p. 31.

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is dependent on the motivation of communities of women, in the case of feminist theology, or communidades de base in the case of liberation theology. In the analysis of how research ought to proceed, liberation and political theologians adopted, with modification, Marxian methodology and epistemology, in particular the famous eleventh thesis which insists that 'the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is, to change it'.1 Philosophy would then be the theoretical arm of revolutionary praxis. Liberation and feminist theologians envisage a similar role for theology. Adoption of this perspective has altered the epistemological presuppositions of feminist theology. Theological knowledge is gained from a commitment to the examination of women's experiences of oppression and to envisioning a liberative alternative. It is praxical as opposed to theoretical: To achieve a feminist standpoint one must engage in the intellectual and political struggle necessary to see natural and social life from the point of view of that distained activity which produces women's social experiences instead of from the partial and perverse perspective available from the (ruling gender) experience of men.2

The appropriation of the methodology and the epistemology of Marxism and of critical theory, with its emphasis on praxis and the dialectical relationship with theory, is the backdrop against which feminist theologians have justified their employment of the category of women's experience as a further theological resource. It legitimizes their appeals to experience and activity as source and content of feminist theology. However, theology based on women's experience and praxis must be subject to the same critique as traditional theories. We have discovered in our examination of the category of women's experience that theorists need to acknowledge the perspectival character of their truth claims. Since all scholarship bears the biases and concerns of its source we cannot claim a universal normativity for feminist theory or theology. The writings of de Beauvoir, Friedan, hooks and others, together with the insights of feminist anthropologists, lead us to posit a tremendous 1. K. Marx, in L.D. Easton and R.H. Guddat (eds.), Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society (New York: Doubleday, 1967), p. 400. 2. S. Harding (ed.), Feminism and Methodology (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1982), p. 185.

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diversity and often conflict in relation to women's experience. Likewise the assumption of theoretical positions arising from a praxis-based theology requires us to examine, in a self-critical manner, any articulation of a feminist paradigm which appears to be given a normative status. In the second part of this book I have attempted to deal with representatives of Christian feminism, of womanist theological discourse and of post-Christian feminism in the context of how women's experience and praxis operate as theological norms—as primary resources and as norms of evaluation. Each of the theologians involved has been engaged in attempting to effect a paradigm shift, to provide a theoretical framework that reflects women's concerns and interests. Whether theologians are attempting to dialogue with dominant religious traditions, as for example Schussler Fiorenza, Ruether and Plaskow, or whether they have abandoned this for woman-centered religious traditions, each theology provides a fundamental challenge to mainstream theological discourse. As we have discovered, Schussler Fiorenza considers women's experience and praxis to be the final arbiter on questions of validity of texts or traditions. Her understanding of women's experience is quite specific, however, since it is the experiences of the ekklesia gynaikon, of women committed and struggling against patriarchy, which provides the primary resource. The ekklesia gynaikon has the power 'to choose and reject' since it both presupposes and has for its goal emancipatory praxis. The plurality of women's experiences and praxis is central to the ekklesia gynaikon. Although Schussler Fiorenza considers experience and praxis to be the evaluative norms, her understanding of the categories is based in concrete, specific circumstances, and not in some abstract desire for normativity. Ruether too considers women's experience to be both the source of content and the criterion of what is considered to be valuable for feminist theology. Although she is less attentive than Schussler Fiorenza to the issue of the great plurality of women's experiences and the instability that this would imply, her understanding of the category of women's experience is both social and historical. This cultural and social appropriation of the biological differences between women and men necessarily leads one to an appreciation of the great variety of perspectives among women committed to women's well-being. The explicit celebration of women's experience and praxis as resources and as evaluative criteria raises many methodological difficulties for

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Christian feminists, to which I have alluded. I consider that, although some ambiguities still remain, both Schiissler Fiorenza and Ruether have dealt with these methodological difficulties adequately. In the final instance, in relation to a religious tradition, one has to decide whether one accepts the traditional relationship of already extant symbols, rituals and value systems dictating the parameters of what may or may not be experienced, or whether to reverse that relationship. In my opinion both Ruether and Schiissler Fiorenza have been prepared to accept women's experience and praxis as the theological categories par excellence. It remains for both of them truly to integrate the radical insights that must flow from this. The theological writings of Katie Cannon and Delores Williams have perhaps been more successful in accepting the radical implications of using women's experience and praxis as primary theological resources. Both have used the life experiences of women of colour, past and present, to shape significantly the womanist theology that is emerging. The literary canon is used as a central resource for understanding the experiences of both oppression and liberation of women of colour living in a sexist and racist society. Methodologically, the claims of womanist theologians have been more modest, and thus retain a greater affinity with their resources. Cannon states explicitly that her intention is not to formulate a normative ethics for women of colour, but to enable them to appreciate the richness of their moral heritage. She seeks to erect no framework that would be considered universally acceptable but rather accepts the necessary limitations of the enterprise, given the specific and perspectival nature of her primary resources. Women's experience and praxis are unambiguously the primary resources and sources of legitimation in the thealogies of post-Christian feminists. In line with womanist theologians, here also literature is considered to be a significant source for understanding the nature of women's experience. Both Christ and Downing are to be admired for their unequivocal assertions that their thealogies are experience- and praxis-based, which indeed we have discovered in our examination of their works. Both Christ, in her critique of traditional religion and in her journey to the Goddess, and Downing, in her mythological reflections, draw with confidence on their experiences and praxis, both individual and communal, placing these categories firmly at the centre of their thealogical discourse. The problems that plague the works of feminist theologians are not

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unique to this discipline, but arise wherever scholars attempt to take seriously the historical and social character of human experience. Postmodern relativism, arising from the abandonment of any pretensions to universality or to objectivity in relation to knowledge, and which provides feminist theology with important tools with which to critique patriarchy, raises profound questions for feminist theory itself. Feminist theologians must face squarely the challenge of rigorously applying the insights of historicism to our own appeals to women's experience and praxis. Indeed it has been my contention throughout that a thorough understanding of the categories of women's experience and praxis will necessarily lead to a recognition of the difficulties that emerge if we apply the rigours of critique to our epistemological and methodological assumptions. I would suggest therefore that our examination of the use of the categories of women's experience and praxis raises two fundamental points for feminists, which may enable us to do our theology with greater methodological precision in the future. First, feminist theologians must place a 'hermeneutic of difference' at the core of theologizing; secondly, we must acknowledge the fact that universalism is not an appropriate attitude for feminist theology to adopt. I am aware of my tendency in this conclusion, and indeed throughout the entire work, to equate universalism with imperialism in theorizing. Although many may take issue with this I believe that an impulse towards sameness and uniformity has been central to universalizing tendencies in much of patriarchal scholarship. It is only when we begin to envisage a universalism based on difference and not on its obliteration that the spectre of imperialism will recede; hence my emphasis on the pejorative connotations of the term. A Hermeneutic of Difference Helped are those who love and actively support the diversity of life; they shall be secure in their differentness.1

With this beatitude the Gospel of Shug concludes. Indeed Alice Walker's The Temple of my Familiar is itself such a celebration of diversity, which opens up, to those of us unfamiliar with the writings of women of colour, an invaluable tapestry of difference. 1. A. Walker, The Temple of my Familiar (London: Women's Press, 1989), p. 283.

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A theology based on women's experience and praxis must of necessity acknowledge and learn to value difference. However, an evaluation of most feminist theory of the last three decades would conclude that much theorizing has tended towards imperialism. Women of colour have alerted the feminist community to its racist and classist potential and practice. The works of Barbara Smith, bell hooks and Alice Walker, among others, have taught white feminists that we have repeated the central crime of patriarchy in failing to acknowledge the particularity of our own experience. White women's experience and praxis has been 'honoured' with the badge of normativity, while women of colour have been further marginalized, in the name of justice. Such a whitewashing of experience has not gone unchallenged. Womanists have demanded that white feminists own this history of oppression. If you are 14, female and black in the U.S.A. you have one solitary voice though you number 3 million no nuance exists for you you have been sequestered in the monolith the common denominator as persona what I am getting to is the notion that as a people who have so claimed 'the word* we don't even pay attention to who is speakin.1

A feminist theology must be constantly vigilant lest it fall into the amorphous mass that Ntozake Shange identifies. As women, individually and in community, begin to articulate their priorities and values, theorists need to resist the desire to propose some form of universal normativity. As women attempt to formulate theologies, the notion of difference must be centrally located. The articulation of symbols, hermeneutical principles, values and so on must be grounded in the complexities and contradictions of women's concrete experience and praxis. The absence of a cohesive and universal perspective in feminist theology ought not to be interpreted as the lack of a sound theoretical basis. A theology based on an understanding of women's experience and praxis, which is sensitive to racial, class and sexual differences among women, must recognize women's 'different primary emergencies'.2 1. Shange, nappy edges, p. 3. 2. M. Quintales, quoted in E. Culpepper's 'New Tools for the Theology: Writings by Women of Color', Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 4 (1988), p. 45.

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If we appreciate, in our theology, that women have 'different primary emergencies', be they racial, sexual or class-based, we will be more modest in our claims for our theology. The life experience, commitments and priorities of those who articulate theology are inextricably bound to theology itself. As life experiences change, as alternative voices are allowed to be heard in the theological realm, our theory too must change and develop. Difference, then, must emerge in feminist theology as a key hermeneutic principle. To employ a hermeneutic of difference is not merely to tolerate a benign pluralism. Toleration such as this never abandons the imperialistic tendencies so evident in patriarchal and in many white feminist theories. To employ a hermeneutic of difference is to celebrate and truly value diversity, and ultimately to be challenged in one's own vision. But to employ a hermeneutic of difference is not simply to value difference but to consider it to be central to the process of interpretation. It means employing difference as an analytic category and allowing it to inform both our interpretation and indeed its underlying philosophy. In our attempts to speak of women's experience or women's praxis, particularly in our search to describe a common experience or praxis, we cannot begin from the assumption of sameness. Indeed if there is a commonality to be described it shouldrightfullyoriginate from those on the margins. Any minimizing of difference must legitimately come from women who have previously been excluded from defining the category of women's experience. In the final instance, employing a hermeneutic of difference may revolutionize our theological endeavour. You say my name is ambivalence? Think of me as Shiva, a many armed and legged body with one foot on brown soil, one on white, one in straight society, one in the gay world, the man's world, the woman's, one limb in the literary world, another in the working class, the socialist, and the occult worlds. A sort of spider woman hanging by one thin strand of web. Who me confused? Ambivalent? Not so. Only your labels split me.1

A Normative Feminist Vision? Feminist theologians across the spectrum seem to make claims regarding the normative status of a feminist theological position, in ways that a true appreciation of the radical historicity and diversity of their primary 1.

Culpepper, 'New Tools', p. 49.

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resources may render problematic. Indeed we have seen from our consideration of the categories of women's experience and praxis in the early chapters of this book that one should be reluctant to make any such claims, apart from a recognition of the utterly social and historical character of feminist theology's resources, and the difficulties in employing a language of certitude that this implies. Yet theologians appear to claim a normative status for their work that may be methodologically impossible. Sheila Greeve Davaney1 is indeed critical of feminist theologians, both reformist and revolutionary, who, she claims, imply that there is a correspondence between their feminist vision and divine reality and will. In her critique of Schussler Fiorenza, Ruether and Mary Daly she claims that each theologian implies that feminist analysis provides us with a vision that has an ontological normativity, which those of patriarchy do not. It is her contention that such theoretical assumptions cannot be made, in the light of both the diversity of women's experience and praxis and the methodological issues that originate in the social and historical character of these categories. Davaney is adamant that if feminists take seriously the nihilistic implications of this historical consciousness, we can no longer claim some privileged access to understanding reality. Since we recognize that all knowledge bears the biases and interests of the knower, how can feminists or indeed any other group claim validity for their unique perspective? Feminist theory must therefore abandon any belief that it critiques from a location of special insight. She suggests that feminist theology provides an alternative vision which is no more accurate than that of patriarchy. The diversity revealed by the categories of women's experience and praxis, together with the recognition of the perspectival character of theological knowledge, must, according to Davaney, lead us to abandon all claims to certitude and all appeals to an ontological grounding for feminist theology. The problems that this presents for feminist theology are indeed deep1. In this conclusion I use two articles by Davaney, both of which address the methodological issues described: 'Problems with Feminist Theory: Historicity and the Search for Sure Foundations', in Cooey, Farmer and Ross (eds.), Embodied Love: Sensuality and Relationship as Feminist Values, pp. 79-95, and The Limits of the Appeal to Women's Experience', in C. Atkinson, C. Buchanan and M. Miles (eds.), Shaping New Vision: Gender and Values in American Culture (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Research Press, 1987), pp. 31-49.

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rooted. While one would acknowledge the importance of appreciating the historicity of experience and praxis, and the diversity of perspectives that feminist theology encompasses, to embrace this form of relativism seems impossible for an engaged theology. Undoubtedly the resources that feminist theology has chosen to use for its methodological framework and norms for evaluation give rise to these difficulties. Our exploration in the first part of the book has already alerted us to the problems inherent in this framework. It must be admitted also that our examination of the works of feminist theologians of all persuasions has highlighted these difficulties. Most theologians appear to be unwilling to work out the ambiguities in their respective positions. It is precisely because most feminist theologians have failed to address this issue that Davaney has engaged in such a thoroughgoing critique. Her position is indeed persuasive and demands that feminist theologians begin to address explicitly the issues surrounding the nihilistic and relativistic directions towards which their primary theological resources appear to be pointing. Although I would be reluctant to accept unreservedly Davaney's position, I do believe that feminist theologians need to address this basic challenge. As has already been mentioned, the logical conclusion to the employment of women's experience and praxis as one's primary resources ought to be relativism. However, in an effort to avoid a relativism that would lead one to fail to distinguish between the experience and praxis of oppressors and those of their victims, we must consider 'the limits of the appeal to women's experience'.1 This radical relativism implied by the use of the categories of women's experience and praxis may be limited by the appeal to pragmatic, ethical foundations rather than to ontological ones, by placing the experiences of communities rather than individuals at the centre of feminist theology, and finally by truly appreciating the embodied nature of all our knowledge. Pragmatism If we identify women, and indeed the category of women's experience, not in terms of biological essentialismbut by women's position within (or, as is more likely, outside) a network of relations we may avoid claiming 1.

This phrase forms the title of the excellent article by Davaney.

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ontological priority for women's experiences. We may indeed come close to the view of standpoint epistemology, which would recognize that those in oppressed groups may be in a position to have a more complete vision than their oppressors. This is not because of any a priori access to truth (as against, for example, Mary Daly's contention that women-identified women are at the centre of all true interpretations1), but because of women's particular location in history. Arising from women's experiences of oppression and because of the collective articulation of and commitment to justice and to right relationships, feminist theological thinking may claim a pragmatic, but not an ontological priority. In locating the significance of the feminist theological vision in the type of commitments that it inspires, and not in any abstract claim to correspondence with divine (or other) reality, one does not abandon oneself to relativism. Although I do not agree completely with Davaney's position I recognize the importance of her proposal that feminist theology give up appeals to ontological reality for validation and appeal instead to pragmatism. By grounding validation in the life-experience, values and commitments that such a vision inspires, feminist theology would be taking seriously the epistemology that flows from the use of the categories of won\en's experience and praxis. The feminist vision is valid, because women (and feminist men), attentive to the voices of marginalized groups, have collected, analysed and critiqued in 'communities of resistance and solidarity'. Because of the values it inspires feminist theology may claim an ethical priority. Feminists may not claim a universal enduring significance for their vision; however, we may, and indeed we do maintain that the commitments central to the feminist vision are foundational for our age. The feminist vision may be considered to be more adequate than the patriarchal one because it is committed to providing a more complete description of reality. It seeks to do this by being attentive to the embedded nature of all experience and attempts to celebrate rather than to obliterate difference. Indeed, when we accept that there is a variety of standpoints among feminists—for example lesbian or womanist—we must move from grounding validity for the feminist vision in ontology, and move towards an appreciation of the contextual nature of all truths. Grounded in a reluctance to move towards a normative theory for 1.

Daly, Pure Lust, pp. 163ff.

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feminists, this tendency towards relativism need not imply an inability to choose among competing values. Liz Stanley, for example, in opposition to radical relativism, defines the relativism appropriate for feminists as the belief that 'judgments of truth are always and necessarily made relative to the particular framework of the knower (while its perceived opposite, "foundationalism", is an insistence that "the truth" rather than a number of truths, exist independently of the knower)'.1 Such a relativism, she suggests, recognizes the significance of the subjective in the categories of women's experience and praxis while accounting for resistance to a patriarchal telling of reality. Although this may be helpful to some extent in formulating an epistemology that is responsive to the debates concerning the nature of the relationship between power and knowledge, I suspect that employing such terminology may lead to further confusion. The Centrality of Community Without denying the importance of each individual's experience and praxis, feminist theology need not attach equal importance to each individual's subjective, unfocused and unanalysed experience. Beverly Harrison, citing Michelle Russell, alerts us to the dangers of 'taking our own particular form of victimization, isolated from a collective context, and making that our morality'.2 An emphasis on community and on the realization that interconnection and relationality are the keys to creative and mutually enriching discourse is therefore vital. An emphasis on the communitarian and collective nature of all women's experience and praxis ought to be central to feminist theology. Such a perspective enables us to avoid the dangers of either universalism or unrestrained relativism. The community out of which a woman articulates her experience is reflected in the stances adopted by that individual. Thus women's experience and praxis is never unmediated, unadulterated by the collective within which and out of which we theologize. All our theology bears the limitations and indeed the strengths of the community from which it emerges. 1. L. Stanley and S. Wise, 'Method, Methodology and Epistemology in Feminist Research Processes\ in L. Stanley (ed.), Feminist Praxis: Research, Theory and Epistemology in Feminist Sociology (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 41. 2. B. Harrison, Making the Connections: Essays in Feminist Social Ethics (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985), p. 240.

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Thus one of the elements that distinguishes the position of feminist theology from 'mere subjectivism* is the presence of community. Undeniably great diversity and indeed much disagreement is evident in the priorities of feminists of all persuasions. An enlightened theology must neither disregard the often substantial differences of priorities and commitments, nor abandon the desire for a certain cohesion among the seemingly inevitable conflicting experiences. Such a community must be rooted at its most fundamental level in the ambiguity, complexity and difficulties of diverse human nature. The insights of the Mudflower Collective in their attempt to consider the relationship between Christian feminism and theological education are invaluable for any consideration of the meaning of community either in praxis or theoretically. Precisely because Mudflower acknowledges that the community 'is fragmented by the diversity of... cultures... experiences, and...commitments'1 of its members, it provides us with a model for women's communities. In avoiding neither the particular nor the embodied character of our theology we are challenged to communicate and to make certain commitments. The community endeavouring to engage in feminist theology is required to be a community of enquiry, debate, dialogue. Undoubtedly the conditions essential to the promotion of such a community are much debated. The later works of Jiirgen Habermas,2 together with those of Michel Foucault,3 provide important discussions of such matters. Access to reality or to truth is not the preserve of majorities, not the property of those sufficiently strong to impose their definitions and values on others with less wealth, less political power, less education. The creation of conditions in which creative, mutually empowering discourse can occur 1. This experience of the Mudflower Collective is related in God's Fierce Whimsey: Feminism and Theological Education (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1985), p. 63. For an extremely topical discussion of a similar experience see K. Metz, 'Passionate Differences: A Working Model for Cross-Cultural Communication\ Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 5.7 (1989), pp. 131-53, which tells of Palestinian and Jewish women involved in a project entitled 'A Passion for Life: Stories and Folk Arts of Palestinian and Jewish Women*. 2. J. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests (London: Heinemann, 1973); Legitimation Crisis (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973). 3. M. Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (New York: Harper & Row, 1976); Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980).

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is the first step in the theological process. We must recognize and critique the power element implicit in most patriarchal theory. To divest such knowledge of its power is impossible. One is therefore obliged, in the service of dialogue, to acknowledge and if necessary compensate for the interest factor in all our knowing and discourse. The language of universals tends to be that of the dominant classes, the privileged. Feminist theology must eschew all impulses to claim a universalist position, since in so doing it would essentially deny the possibility of discourse and the value of diversity. Indeed many feminist theologians have begun to explore the importance of such an alternative vision. Sharon Welch in her Communities of Resistance and Solidarity1 asserts the primacy of the particular and suggests that the possibility for our critique of racism, imperialism or sexism lies not in a universal, abstract sense of justice, devoid of any concrete sense, but in our engagement in actual situations of resistance and solidarity. Our ability to evaluate is sourced in praxis and concrete experience, not in allegiance to abstract, benign universals. Without dispute one must recognize the tensions that exist between an understanding of the relational and perspectival character of the theology I am suggesting, and the extreme relativism so feared by many commentators. Feminist theology must guard against such a potential danger with a very clear understanding of the accountability of individuals and communities. Feminist theologians are alert to the possibility that in their praxis and theorizing they are unaware of their perpetuation of yet unrecognized instances of subjugation. Instability is therefore a vital component in the feminist theological arena. With the deepening of our realizations of the significance of our differences, and with the emergence of new voices, a realism which is nonetheless responsive to the contextual character of our experience is essential in order to promote further dialogue. In the words of Mary Daly, '"together" does not mean in lockstep or simultaneously, but each according to her own lifetime. The moving presence of each Self calls forth the living presence of other journeying/enspiriting selves.'2

1. S. Welch, Communities of Resistance and Solidarity: A Feminist Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1985). 2. Daly, Gyn/Ecology, p. 366.

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Embodied Thinking In dealing with the potentially radical implications of the centrality of the categories of women's experience and praxis we should also be attentive to the feminist understanding of embodied thinking. Indeed, an appreciation of embodied thinking, as articulated by Carol Christ,1 will enable us to reconcile the relativism towards which employment of the categories of women's experience and praxis seems to be pointing with our unshakable commitment to the feminist vision. Christ, in opposition to Davaney, does not see the embrace of thoroughgoing relativism to be a necessary consequence of our employment of women's experience and praxis. Instead she argues that feminists must acknowledge the ambiguity of our conditional acceptance of the postmodern framework alluded to by Davaney, but not embrace it absolutely. Inhabiting this ambiguity rather than unequivocally accepting relativism is the course of action proposed by Christ. If we use women's experience and praxis as our primary resources, and if we are attentive to Davaney's insistence that we acknowledge their radical historicity and their perspectival character, then of necessity we must recognize the limited nature of our truth claims. Yet we need not infuse patriarchal perspectives with a similar authority or validity. Our experience and praxis would not allow us this. The function of feminist theology is not to provide a universally normative vision with unique access to the 'way things are'. Feminist theology must understand itself to be rooted in women's particular experience and praxis. 'We can affirm the relativity of all universal truth claims, because we know that all truth claims are rooted in time and space, in experience and body.'2 All knowledge in some way reflects the interests of the knower. Because of the embodied, experiential character of all knowledge we should not be hesitant to accept that our truth claims are in some senses relative. Yet although we can affirm this embodied character we need not abandon our belief in the value of the feminist theological enterprise. The values promoted by feminist theology will continue to function as the basis for our theory and praxis. They will however have an ethical 1. C. Christ, 'Embodied Thinking: Reflections on Feminist Theological Method', Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 5.1 (1989), pp. 7-15. 2. Christ, 'Embodied Thinking', p. 14.

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rather than an ontological reference, since there is no experience that is not perspectival. The programme for feminist theology, then, ought not to be an embrace of the relativistic and nihilistic impulses that are potentially present in our resources, although an awareness of the ambiguity is essential. Feminist theology ought instead, according to Christ, to become more embodied, 'by acknowledging and affirming the conditions of time and space, which limit our perspectives as well as giving them their distinctive perspectival power'.1 I would therefore suggest that an appreciation of embodied thinking, regard for the centrality of community in feminist theory and praxis, appeals to the pragmatic rather than the ontological, together with the recognition of women's unique position in patriarchal society, will enable feminist theologians to eschew the extreme relativism proposed by Davaney, while accepting the ambiguities involved in using as one's primary resources women's experience and praxis. In this book I have been exploring the meaning and the employment of the categories of praxis and women's experience in feminist theology. From our examination two major methodological issues have been raised. It is absolutely vital, in my opinion, that feminist theologians place a hermeneutic of difference at the core of their theory. So too is it essential that they be attentive to the ambiguity of using experience and praxis as resources and yet claiming validity for the feminist agenda. In so doing feminist theologians will achieve greater methodological integrity. Certainly the works of the feminist theologians that I have considered do contain these elements. It is my suggestion however that feminist theologians become more attuned to the methodological implications of their primary resources. Feminist theology then will be modest in its claims. A theology that flows from the complex nature of its primary resources demands this. Because of the contextually bound nature of all knowledge and commitments, feminist theology in its entirety may envisage itself to be akin to Schussler Fiorenza's notion of prototype.2 Indeed, when theologians are truly aware of their work as prototypical rather than archetypical they 1. Christ, 'Embodied Thinking\ p. 15. 2. This suggestion is forwarded by R. Chopp in her enlightening article 'Feminism's Theological Pragmatics: A Social Naturalism of Women's Experience\ JR 67.1 (1987), pp. 239-56, and can be referenced in Schussler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, p. 33ff., and Bread Not Stone, p. 14.

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will have begun to integrate the epistemological consequences of the fractured nature of their primary resources. How then will this affect the shape of feminist theology in the future? I believe that a hermeneutic of difference and an awareness of the ambiguities arising from the limits of the appeals to women's experience may result in a theology that is conceptually unstable. As women and feminist men embark on theological journeys it may be helpful to consider Sandra Harding's suggestion that we embrace conceptual instability in our analytic categories.1 This is neither to choose anarchy nor to adopt nihilism. It is, however, to adopt arisk-filledand thoroughly honest stance in relation to the universalizing potential in our theology. Conceptual instability would renounce all attempts to regulate and define women's experience and praxis in the service of a universalist position. Without denying our common bonds and commitments, our interconnectedness, it is essential that feminist theology integrate the methodological implications of using as its primary resources women's experience and praxis. ... we're driving through the desert wondering if the water will hold out the hallucinations turn to simple villages the music on the radio comes clear— neither Rosenkavalier nor Gotterdammerung but a woman's voice singing old songs with new words, with a quiet bass, a flute plucked and fingered by women outside the law.2

1. 2.

In 'Instability of the Analytical Categories of Feminist Theory'. Rich, Dream of a Common Language, p. 31.

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INDEX OF NAMES

Alcoff, L. 61 Ascher, C. 22 Atwood, M. 141, 148 Avis, P. 71 Bambara, T.C. 129 Barstow, A.L. 96 Beauvoir, S. de 18-25, 59 Bonino, J.M. 77-79 Brown, J. 45 Brown, K.M. 55, 96 Cannon, K. 121, 125-28, 130-34 Chodorow, N. 56 Chopp, R. 176 Christ, C. 42, 44, 126, 142, 147-59, 175, 176 Christian, B. 34, 121, 128 Cixous, H. 59, 60 Condren, M. 54 Cone, J. 126 Cox, H. 74 Crites, S. 147 Culpepper, E. 167, 168 Daly, M. 17, 27, 51, 52, 171, 172, 174 Davaney, S.G. 169, 170 Davis, C. 70, 82, 83 Dinnerstein, D. 56 Downing, C. 142, 160 Ehrenreich, B. 45, 56 English, D. 45, 56 Evans, M. 127 Fiorenza, F. 80 Foucault, M. 86, 173

Friedan, B. 28-31 Garaudy, R. 65 Gilkes, C.T. 96 Graham, H. 45 Gutierrez, G. 72-75 Habermas, J. 64, 173, 174 Hampson, D. 117 Harding, S. 9, 13, 163, 177 Harrison, B.W. 57, 172 Hebblethwaite, P. 65 Heyward, C. 57 Hines, D. 34 hooks, b. 34-38, 40, 123 Hunt, M.E. 96 Hurston, Z.N. 131, 133 Irigaray, L. 59 Kitzinger, S. 45 Kristeva, J. 59,60 Kuhn, T. 97 Lamb, M. 70, 79, 80, 95 Lonergan, B. 80 Lorde, A. 33, 34, 57, 121, 126, 127 Marshall, P. 129 Marx, K. 11, 64, 65, 67, 70, 73-76, 80, 82, 83, 162, 163 McCann, D. 81 McKay, N. 34, 121, 128, 129, 136 Mead, M. 144 Meeks, D. 67 Metz, J.B. 67-69, 80, 173, 174 Mies, M. 97, 98, 100

190

From Women's Experience to Feminist Theology

Miller, J.B. 56 Moltmann, J. 67 Morrison, T. 38, 53, 129 Novak, M. 147 Petry, A. 129 Petulla, J. 65 Plaskow, J. 26, 27, 104, 144-46 Quintales, M. 167 Rich, A. 18, 43, 45, 46, 56, 57, 141, 150, 151, 162, 177 Rongy, A.J. 45 Ruddick, S. 42, 60, 61 Ruether, R.R. 12, 49, 50, 103-11, 11316 Saiving, V. 18, 26 Sartre, J.-P. 20, 25 Sayers, J. 54 Schiissler Fiorenza, E. 12, 63, 87-97, 99-102, 176

Segundo, J.L. 76, 77, 80 Shange, N. 36, 142, 148, 152, 153, 167 Showalter, E. 143 Smith, B. 34 Stanley, L. 172 Starhawk 46, 48, 52, 53 Strain, C. 81 Swidler, A. 27 Tar, Z. 17 Thistlethwaite, S. 33, 34, 53 Truth, S. 31 Turner, D. 65 Walker, A. 54, 121, 122, 128, 137, 138, 166 Walker, M. 129 Washbourn, P. 47 Welch, S. 174 Williams, D. 121, 123-25, 138 Wise,S. 172 Wittig,M. 58 Zappone, K. 61

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Abortion 149 Aphrodite 142, 157-59 Artemis 160 Biblical hermeneutics 87-91, 93, 101 Black Christ 92 Black Power movement 40, 41 Canon 101, 105, 113-15 Childbirth 45, 46 Communidades de base 163 Critical theology 94-96

Kantian practical reason 67, 68 Lesbianism 55-59 Liberation theology 72-79, 82-84 Menstruation 42, 47, 48, 152, 158 Methodocide 17 Methodology 96-99, 120-22, 163, 165 and womanist theology 125, 126, 132-35 Motherhood 42-44, 46, 47 Orthopraxis 73, 75, 81

Demeter 159, 160 Difference 16, 17, 33, 34, 59-62, 119, 138-40, 166-68, 171 Embodied thinking 175-77 Enlightenment 49, 80 Epistemology 14, 17, 84, 117-19, 161, 163, 171 Eternal feminine, the 144 Feminine mystique 28-30 Feminist biblical hermeneutics 89-94, 108-14, 117 Feuerbach, L. 66, 74 Frankfurt School 11, 64, 68, 70, 74 Gaia 159, 160 Goddess 52, 140-42, 157-60, 165 Gynocritics 143 Habermas 64, 173, 174 Hera 160 Hermeneutic circle 76, 92, 105, 106, 110

Persephone 159, 160 Political theology 66, 67 Postmodernism 101, 166 Poststructuralism 59,61, 118 Pragmatism 170-72 Praxis and feminist thealogy 154-61 and feminist theology 88, 89, 95 and liberation theology 66-72 and tradition 102-10 as a starting point for theology 6769 noetic praxis 80, 81 origins of 62-66 primacy of 9, 17, 60-62, 64-79, 8184 theory of 11, 61, 62 and womanist theology 138-40 Prophetic-messianic principle 111-13 Reconstruction 39 Relativism 13, 14, 118, 119, 135, 166, 170, 172-74

192

From Women's Experience to Feminist Theology

Second Sex, The 19-25, 27 Separatism 50-52, 115, 116 Sin 26-28, 143-45 Slave narratives 127, 128, 137 Spiritual quest in Atwood 148-50 Christ 146-48 Plaskow 143-46 Rich 150-52 Shange 152, 153 Thealogy 10, 13, 142-61 Women and racism 31-42 Womanist ethics 125, 126, 130-35

Womanist theology 12, 122-26, 13840, 167, 170 Women-church 89-94, 164, 165 Women's experience and literature 127-52 and nature 50-54 and pacifism 54-56, 154-56 and rationality 49-51 and slavery 31-39 and story 146-48 and the home 28-30, 40 and tradition 102-107, 109, 110, 117-19, 161, 165 and war 54, 55, 154-56 as other 19-26, 51