The context and development of feminist theologies
Mooted by female academics, this type of theological thinking appeared in the 60s in the United States, in the wake of the Second Vatican council [1] and Ecumenical movements[2]. It is at around the same time that a Liberation Theology[3] was coalescing around combatting poverty in Latin America, as were “black” theologies, questioning “racial” hegemonies in the US.
The other driving factor was the growth of the movement for the emancipation of women. Over and above the theoretical debt to feminism acknowledged by these women's theologies, its drives were also the condition needed for the emergence of their discourse. Women were finding their voice and accessing knowledge not as individuals but as a group. They spoke up about their body as framing their experience as women and fully-fledged humans. The growing number of women accessing academic research lead to the acceptance of analytical categories allowing for the systematic deconstruction of traditional scholarship.
This new theology fully blossomed in the United States where more or less diverging trends evolved, ranging from a thoroughgoing critique to parting with Christianity, as in Mary Daly's[4] case. While, originally, theoretical thought had remained on the margins of academic scientific disciplines, it arrived in the universities in the 70s under the guise of Women's Studies[5] , and some university theology courses in the US and Canada afforded them an official setting. Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza[6], a leading figure of this academic feminist theology in the 80s, contributed, through the translation of her works, to the dissemination of these ideas beyond the English-speaking realm. The period saw the development of those theologies in Canada's French speaking circles, notably in works by J. Lacelle[7]and Monique Dumais[8].
In Europe, feminist theologies took root in several stages. Between 1960 and 1975, theological thinking around women's status was first powered by the Second Vatican Council along with diverse post-68 youth mobilisation setups (France, Germany , Italy...). Between 1975 and 1986 a nascent feminist theology was still heavily indebted to North-American thought. As of 1968 and the creation of the European Society of Women in Theological Research ESWTR[9], it gradually attained its own, less radical stance. It essentially spread throughout the Germanic, Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian cultural realm, very little in the French-speaking space, not at all in Central and Eastern Europe.
In the eighties, feminist theologies also spread to other continents and within ethnic minorities in North America. The diversity of their backgrounds brought forth Latino-American, African and Asian feminist theologies and a “womanist” African-American theology that seeks to conjugate the consciousness of race and gender oppressions – the former being overshadowed by feminist theology and the latter by “black” theology – along with its “mujerista” Hispano-American counterpart.
