Feminist Theology

Feminist Theology. A theological movement of various strands united in a determination to secure social justice for women. Its origins may be traced to 19th-cent. social campaigns, but it was only after the end of the Second World War (1945), and particularly in the 1980s, that it posed a serious challenge within the Christian tradition. Here the central issue is the unease about associating the female or feminine with the godlike. Since it is agreed that God transcends both sex and gender, feminist theologians argue for a humanly inclusive theology, the ‘envisioning’ of God in a gender-inclusive way. The stumbling-blocks to attributing the full ‘image of God’ to women are held to be fourfold; failure to find the feminine in God; insistence that woman is derivative and hence secondary to man; the assumption that woman is characterized by passivity; and the tendency to identify women with bodiliness as opposed to the transcendent mind. It is claimed that the modern acknowledgement of the equal importance of the part of women in human reproduction (where the male was previously considered the primary source) has wide implications, including that of appropriate language for God, notably metaphors of mother/father. Feminist theologians are also concerned about other groups held to have been devalued, and about complications of race and class. They seek the integration of ethics with theology, especially in relation to such issues as pregnancy-termination, the use of fetal tissue, and artificially assisted human reproduction, and they emphasize the values of which women are culturally the bearers, such as care and interdependence. Feminist theology is influential in ecclesiastical life as a movement in active lay theology and spirituality. See also WOMEN, ORDINATION OF.