Search Results (36)

Feminist and women religious scholars seek reconciliatory resources beyond the conservative/progressive binary that fuels conflicts, undermines communication and agency, and sustains oppressive structures. Drawing on feminist theology and religious anthropology, this qualitative study investigates how progressive clergywomen in South Korea exercise agency to move beyond this binary. It argues that their agency integrates resistance with measured accommodations of conservative elements, reflecting reconciliatory self-reconfigurations shaped by Korean historical and theological shifts across democratization, an intertwined conservative—progressive landscape, and personal influences, especially family. Central to this shift are (1) anthropological and theological reorientations that emphasize human vulnerability, resilient Christian faith/identity, and a shared foundation of Christian life transcending dichotomies—faith/activism, personal/social salvation, and oppressed minjung/oppressor—and (2) a rediscovery of conservative elements, including biblical centrality and everyday sharing. These reorientations find practical expression in contextual sensitivity, embodied faith, and a gradualist approach. Building on earlier scholarship—especially in Korea—that highlights conservative laywomen’s agency, this study analyzes rare cases of progressive clergywomen pursuing change amid tensions with conservative congregations, identifying feasible and sustainable pastoral resources. Their resistance to binary anthropology and their reconciliation of faith and social engagement contribute to renewing Minjung theology. The study further enriches religious anthropology by illuminating the organic interplay between personal and public motivations. Full article

Patriarchy has long structured Christian life and practice. In many Baptist settings, even formal affirmations of women in leadership leave a gap between stated commitments and women’s lived experience. This study investigates how Baptist congregations cultivate empowering environments for women by tracing the interplay of beliefs, practices, and processes through which theology is enacted in congregational life. Drawing on feminist theology and lived-religion perspectives, and using constructivist grounded theory, we conducted nine semi-structured interviews with 15 women clergy across seven U.S. Baptist congregations. Analysis proceeded through iterative initial, focused, and theoretical coding with attention to reflexivity and trustworthiness. Findings highlight four interlocking dynamics: structural shifts in leadership and policy that institutionalize gender equity; cultural and theological intentionality in worship and congregational routines; relational practices of support and education; and the persistence of microaggressions and benevolent sexism that complicate progress. Synthesizing these themes, we adapt Cornwall’s cyclical account of empowerment and Carr’s feminist praxis into a Spiral of Congregational Empowerment for Women comprising six phases (see Discussion). This study contributes to feminist theology, congregational studies, and the sociology of religion and offers practical implications for congregations and ministerial formation to align worship, policy, culture and accountability for sustained gender equity. Full article

Film, as a medium, serves not only as a significant source of entertainment but also as a powerful instrument in shaping attitudes, beliefs, behaviours, social norms, and identities. Since its inception, cinematic art has been closely intertwined with religious themes, with many film narratives drawing implicitly or explicitly from biblical texts and religious traditions. Consequently, theologians and ecclesiastical authorities were quick to identify film as a potential locus theologicus. Given film’s ability to spark debates on deeply ingrained views and beliefs, feminist theology, which critically reflects on gender power relations within religious communities and theological texts, finds it intriguing to explore how cinematic narratives can challenge the millennia-old depiction of God as a man. This article aims to examine how the art of cinema contributes to theological reflections on the female metaphors of God, particularly through female Christ-figures and God-figures, which occasionally appear in films such as Chocolat, All That Jazz, Always, Dogma, and The Shack. These characters defy traditional religious language, which often employs masculine imagery and metaphors for God, portraying female God as an independent chocolatier, a single mother, an elegant hairdresser, a beautiful young seductress, a curvaceous African American bread maker, and a witty, clownish girl. In these cinematic depictions, female God is compassionate, empathetic, kind, witty, forgiving, and profoundly in love with her human creations. At the same time, all of these female characters are powerful, assertive, strong, and self-confident. Full article

In this article, the author provides a fresh reading of three women-centered narratives from the Gurucaritra, a sixteenth-century Marathi devotional text. Based on the analysis of three distinct narratives from the Gurucaritra, the author examines the narratives through two key lenses: women’s subjectivity and the “hermeneutics of intersubjectivity”. I argue that although women’s voices are absent or marginalized in religious narratives, we can retrieve and amplify their contributions by reinterpreting traditional narratives to emphasize the roles of female characters. In the process, we can situate these narratives within their social contexts, thereby shedding light on women’s nuanced and multifaceted positions within the social and spiritual fabric of their societies. Full article

The Women’s March on 21 January 2017, opened a new social and political landscape for Muslim women to engage in Islamic liberatory activism. I locate Muslim women’s participation in the marches following the 2017 ‘Muslim travel ban policy’ as a site for discovering the link between the politics of resistance and the utility of Islam as a source for liberation. I argue that Muslim women living in minority and post-secular contexts resort to faith as a source of agentival liberation to address the political rhetoric of anti-Islamic sentiments and policies. The outcome of this research demonstrates (1) how Muslim women activists challenge the Western narratives of being oppressed and explore the ways they want to represent themselves; (2) how Islam serves as a catalyst for theological resistance and how this enhances the role of Muslim women as moral and spiritual agents in transforming their political and social conditions; (3) how the Islamic liberation in the US context historically intersects with Black churches’ resistance toward White racism; and (4) how Muslim women’s agency as spiritual beings is linked to the promotion of justice in the Western liberatory movements. Overall, the article shows how Muslim women resort to their spiritual journey and use such narratives to confront unjust political rhetoric and policies. Full article

This article seeks to rethink martyrdom, suffering, and resurrection from the perspective of queer theologies within the Latin American context and in dialogue with the praxis of the first faith communities who witnessed Jesus’ martyrdom. Starting from the queer body of Jesus—which incorporates in its praxis an ethos without gender violence and discrimination—the theological reflection contributes to the recovery of the fundamental principles of human experience. To this end, the analysis begins by addressing the feminist contribution to the understanding of violence against women to then rethink the intersection of bodies, sexuality, and violence against queer individuals and communities as a theological locus. It concludes by recognizing that queer theologies configure a resistant theological community that empowers queer bodies as a territory of hope of resurrection and transformative political action that does not disregard the suffering and the injustices perpetrated against them. Full article

In recent theological scholarship, there has been a wave of interest in the tradition of spiritual sense and marginal social identities within analytic and philosophical theology. In this article, I explore the theologies of spiritual sense in analytic theology (AT) to highlight part of the reason for the predominance of cisgender heterosexual voices in the field. Many feminist voices in AT express a common concern for a lack of integration between the mind, the body, and spiritual sense, which has enshrined the post-enlightenment cisgender heterosexual ‘man of reason’. Through an exploration of these feminist voices (Sarah Coakley and Michelle Panchuk), I argue that the field does not simply need more diverse voices but also voices of spiritual sense that undo a straight cisgender elitism. This elitism has kept the field from widely examining the anthropological questions of sexuality and gender, ethics, and theodicean dilemmas of desire and faith. By opening analytic philosophical approaches to spiritual sense, the field releases noetic control that has two consequential outcomes. Firstly, the field revalorizes pneumatology and ethics. Secondly, as a consequence of this, the field can see those who were previously unseen and heard, and, therefore, AT can develop into a sensing and thinking discipline capable of perceiving the queer or other in its midst. Spiritual sense and its priority for bodily and cruciform realities of suffering and desire can move the field from homogeneity to embracing the diverse ethical concerns of sexuality, gender, and race, and subaltern or queer subjectivities which are yet to be represented well in its midst. Using a distinctly neo-Augustinian approach, I argue that Augustine’s philosophy of the amor dei, with its emphasis on analytic clarity and inner spiritual sense, can redeem the eyes of AT’s heart. Full article

While Rosemary Radford Ruether is widely, and rightly, acknowledged as a prophetic Catholic scholar–activist, her interest in and experience of mysticism is rarely emphasized. However, Ruether had an impactful mystical experience as a young woman, and the themes of this experience echo throughout her body of work. This paper paints a portrait of Ruether as both a profoundly prophetic scholar–activist and a spiritually attuned seeker of the very divinity that she encountered in her twenties. In the process, this paper first offers a democratized and demystified vision of mysticism by drawing on the work of Bernard McGinn, Dorothee Söelle, and Jess Byron Hollenback. Next, it offers a biographical sketch of Ruether, contextualizing her early mystical experience within the broader pattern of her spiritual and intellectual path. It interprets Ruether’s mystical experience, through which she encountered the divine as a feminine presence suffusing creation, as a meaningful source of inspiration for her decades-long commitment to an anti-patriarchal, ecofeminist theology. Full article

This article discusses an inherent paradox in contemporary conceptualisations of community as a challenge to diaconia. Logics of protection separate insiders from outsiders, producing a fundamental antagonism between those who belong to the community and those who threaten it. During pandemics, this logic is exacerbated. When contagion threatens all, even the community needs to be protected from itself. Immunitarian defences are required for the safety of all community members. However, measures implemented to ensure immunity can also harm people’s mental and somatic health. This paradox presents ethical and practical challenges for inclusive justice, including diaconia. Concerning this dilemma, the article draws on Roberto Esposito’s reframing of community and immunitarian defence. Esposito argues that immunitarian mechanisms must promote tolerance of otherness through openness to its presence within. I suggest that this openness can be seen as a fundamental ontological vulnerability shared by all living creatures. Learning from recent contributions within vulnerability studies and feminist and trauma theologies, I employ Tony Addy’s concept of conviviality as a model for diaconal community building, seeking to elucidate the relevance of Esposito’s thinking to postpandemic diaconal practice. Full article

In contemporary Western society, fatness speaks for itself, affirming the fat person as an aesthetic and moral failure even before they say a word. Fat bodies, and fat female bodies in particular, are produced and reproduced as sites of excess and obscenity. Christian theology has protected itself from the contaminating touch of fat by ignoring fatness in theological discourse. Especially concerning is the relative absence of ‘fat talk’ from liberation and feminist theologies. It is time for a different word to be offered on fat that does not speak for itself and that emerges from the lived experiences of diverse women as they interpret their own faith and fatness. This essay explores the need for critical feminist theologies on fat liberation and identifies some features they might display. Here, I discuss Feminist Participatory Action Research and ethnography as methodologies that might help feminist theologians researching fat to prioritise the overlooked bodies and stories of fat women, and to continue liberation theology’s longstanding commitment to constructing historical projects oriented towards social change. Fat liberation, as a historical and theological project, calls for a ‘conversion’ to fatness and for a critical questioning of assumed ‘truths’ about fat. It positions the struggle against fat hatred as a pursuit of life and as faithful participation in the liberating activity of the God of Life. Full article

This article will bring together the work of Soren Kierkegaard and John Wesley for the purpose of showing the relevance of their theologies for the empowerment of women. The particular focus will be on the doctrine of original sin. The paper will first address the question of why Augustine’s novel doctrine became the orthodox position and why his construction restricts its applicability to women. It will then move to Soren Kierkegaard’s understanding of anxiety and despair in his treatise, The Sickness Unto Death. In the theology of Soren Kierkegaard, there is room to interpret his understanding of original sin as “gendered”. For him, despair is the counterpart of original sin. It finds two forms: 1. despair is willing to be a self apart from the Power (God) that constitutes the self, and 2. despair is not willing to be a self at all. Feminists have questioned the legitimacy of original sin in its traditional form, and a few have even used Kierkegaard on the way to offering an alternative to pride. One method used here is to explicate this insight further. Another method is to put Kierkegaard and John Wesley in dialogue for the purpose of imagining selfhood for women more hopefully. If “despair” can be imagined as a wounding of the self, Wesley’s therapeutic model—seeing original sin as a disease and sanctification as its cure—has much to offer the conversation on personhood and empowered subjectivity, particularly for women. The primary research question investigated here is how a conversation between feminism, Kierkegaard, and Wesley offers an alternative to Augustine’s “orthodoxy” without rendering the idea of original sin completely untenable and useless for women within Christianity. Even though Wesley’s curative paradigm has been highlighted in more recent years, its particular strength to speak into the lives of those who do not/cannot will to be a self has perhaps yet to be fully mined. It reveals itself in the entire Wesleyan history of affirming women. However, the author believes the potential power of Wesley’s theology can be further unleashed by examining its mechanism’s in countering “female despair”. Full article

Francisco de Osuna’s Fifth Spiritual Alphabet of 1542, subtitled Consolation for the Poor and Warning for the Rich, is a Spanish text on economic inequality in Western Europe. Osuna treats the life-threatening political divisions of his day, including those intended to reduce people to objects of uselessness and slavery, with spiritual and practical advice that defines free will as true wealth and focuses on the responsibility of the rich for producing poverty. I examine Osuna’s theology and sensorial, embodied imagery in dialogue with Francis’ encyclical Fratelli Tutti: On Fraternity and Social Friendship (2020), particularly Francis’ concept of a “beautiful polyhedral reality”, through the lens of twenty-first century decolonial feminist and social theory. I argue that Osuna’s work is a compelling Franciscan precedent for combating avarice and indifference that is best understood through scholarly perspectives critical of the legacies of patriarchy and colonialism. Full article

The question of women’s ordination to offices within churches, and in particular to the ministry of word and sacrament, gave rise to one of the major ecclesiological debates of the modern era. In common with other contested issues during this period, different approaches to biblical interpretation and the doing of theology were at stake, but while the precise chronology, arguments and outcomes differed in particular denominations and locations, comparison across a range of churches—certainly within Britain—indicates that these were related predominantly to wider social and cultural changes, more than to internal theological debates. In Scotland, extensive discursive attention was devoted to the place and role of women in the church for over a century before the Church of Scotland extended eligibility for ordination to women. Questions about the ministry and authority of women have particularly exercised ecclesiastical institutions during heightened periods of campaigning for reforms to women’s status and rights in society. The first wave of feminist activism culminated in their enfranchisement (1918 and 1928). Many Protestant churchwomen were deeply engaged in the struggle to become equal citizens. They believed that it was a profoundly Christian obligation to exercise their citizenship to build a better world. They also contended that women should not be prevented from exercising the ordained ministry of word and sacraments, as a matter of justice and as a gospel imperative. This article considers the progress of efforts to that end in some Scottish Protestant churches between 1918 and 1968, and their framing in the contemporary discourses of citizenship and equality, particularly during the interwar years. It discusses factors which impeded or facilitated that innovation, and the major societal changes from the 1950s which created a conducive context for the Church of Scotland decision. Full article

This article explores how pastoral care is performed in an age of climate change. University students suffer from a wide range of stresses, reducing their well-being. Climate change compounds these stress reactions, even where students are not directly affected. As climate change affects concrete, material matters, human reactions to it may no longer be viewed and treated as purely inner psychic states. Thus, climate change disrupts usual divisions of material, social, and mental features as separate categories, underscoring instead the close-knit relations between them. Given the far-reaching ways climate change affects mental health, the article presents an ethnographical-theologically-driven model for basic conversation in pastoral care with students in the midst of escalating climate events. Making use of theories from anthropology, psychology, and theology, this article builds on in-depth interviews with Danish university chaplains about their pastoral care with students. The model extrapolates from these theories how pastoral care may support students in the era of climate change through a triad of organizing themes that come to the fore in the interviews: “Mothering the Content”, “Loving Vital Force”, and “Befriending the Environment”. Full article

In this article, I explore the interplay of yoga, theology and the time of perimenopause and menopause. Through an approach centered physically, theologically and philosophically on becoming, I find an integrated web of thinking, feeling and moving that weaves new ways of perceiving and living this time of change; an example, I suggest, of what Keller calls creatio ex profundis, new creation from the depths of a life. I bring aspects of process theology (along with feminist and queer theology), phenomenological materialism, embodiment and somatic psychology/physiology into conversation with personal narrative. I examine ideas of severance, threshold and emergence, and images such as release, holding and breath that resonate helpfully with the holistic embodiment of yoga, theologies of change and (peri)menopause. Full article