The Here and Now or the Hereafter: Feminist Theology and Women's Experience in Conflict

2003 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-64
Author(s):  
Ellen Clark-King
2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 182-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Wigg-Stevenson

This article constructs and deploys a set of autoethnographic narratives from the author’s experience as a Baptist minister to critically retrieve the category of ‘women’s experience’ for feminist theological construction. Autoethnography, as a response to the crisis of representation in the Humanities, uses personal narratives of the self to reveal, critique and transform wider cultural trends. It therefore provides helpful tools for analysing, critiquing and transforming theological thought and practice. Following the article’s methodological sections, the constructive sections use the crafted autoethnographies to re-frame Rowan Williams’s vision for how church and world co-constitute each other towards God’s just ends. Whereas Williams argues that this co-constitution occurs through processes of interactive transformative judgment, the feminist theological understanding argued for here founds the process instead on interactive, transformative grace.


2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 60
Author(s):  
Karen Campbell Nelson

The meaning of testimony and truth play an important role in both a legal/judicial discourse and a religious, particularly Christian discourse. I trace the history of testimony in legal discourse, beginning with the Hammurabi Code and its influence on ancient legal codes of Mesopotamia, including that found in the Pentateuch and continue with a discussion of multiple meanings of testimony in Augustine and French philosopher, Paul Ricœur that begin to lay the groundwork for bridging the two discourses. Contributions from feminist theology, particularly the validation of women’s experience as a source of theology, the role of immanence, and the shift from understandings of power as “power over” to “power with” as well as a transitional justice framework help make the case for dialog between these two discourses so they can enhance and strengthen each other. I include in sections of the article my own narrative to accent the theme of testimony. Keywords: Kesaksian, kebenaran, konteks hukum, pengadilan, konteks iman, hermeneutik.


1997 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-136
Author(s):  
Dorothy A. Lee

From a hermeneutical perspective, the method of examining the prominence and status of women and female characters in a given text is an important but partial way of dealing with biblical texts. Feminist theology needs to recover a sense of “biblical theology” (despite the problems associated with that term), a theology that is sensitive to women's experience and theological reflection. The Johannine notion of “abiding” provides an example of such biblical theology. It is focused on the centrality of relationship, intimacy, and reciprocity, challenging Enlightenment individualism and subject-object bifurcation.


Horizons ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 33 (01) ◽  
pp. 54-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Beste

ABSTRACTIn the light of what appears to be a growing consensus that historicist and postmodern thought undermines the credibility of appeals to women's experience as a source of theological and moral knowledge, I assess whether these criticisms do indeed discredit appeals to experience as a legitimate source of knowledge and norm for feminist theology. While such critiques pose insightful challenges to assumptions underlying the appeal to experience, I argue that they do not definitively discredit the appeal to experience itself. Drawing on trauma theory and the work of Margaret Farley and Martha Nussbaum, I seek to show how women's experiences can be defended as a credible source of knowledge and a norm for feminist theology.


Author(s):  
Harriet A. Harris

This chapter examines four modes of feminism and their diverse epistemological attitudes: liberal, experience, women’s-voice, and poststructuralist feminisms. Liberal feminists commit to objectivity, autonomy, and impartiality; experience and women’s-voice feminists claim epistemic privilege for women or the marginaliazed; and poststructuralists typically avoid epistemological claims. While they diverge over whether to aspire to truth claims, all feminist theologians are interested in our realizing our humanity. This chapter considers Schiller’s aesthetic philosophy that argues that truth is established and humanity realized only when experience (e.g. the data of feminist vigilance) meets with formal reasoning (our propensity for universal norms). Since experience and form are opposites, they can meet only through paradox and play. Insofar as feminist theologians privilege women’s experience over form, they risk evading the paradox that is necessary to the instantiation of truth. The chapter suggests four lessons to learn from paradox for the epistemology of theology.


2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 248-256
Author(s):  
Megan Clay

One of my projects as a Research Fellow for The Institute for Theological Partnerships (ITP) at the University of Winchester is the Feminist Theology and Art Forum. This project was born out of my Doctoral thesis which combines both art and feminist liberation theologies. Thus creating a methodology in which art as language gives voice to women’s experience within the theological world. The Forum so far has opened a window of opportunity for female artists and feminist theologians alike to exhibit visual artwork that demonstrates their incarnational experience through the concept of Christ/a and Mary/Miriam from a feminist theological perspective. There have been two exhibitions with a third exhibition this year which will have a feminist ecological/theological theme highlighting the important role that many women globally play in their own wellbeing and flourishing in connection with the Earth/Gaia. This article moves briefly from personal experience, which is where all feminist theology begins, into the wider world of possibilities for women to use both art and feminist theology as a model for expressing another way of speaking their experience theologically, ecologically, socially and politically and in so doing create a space in which they too may flourish.


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