North-American feminist theologies: a short epistemology
For the most part, feminist theologians rely on scientific methodologies current in traditional religious sciences, such as psychoanalytical, literary, historical-critical exegesis[1] ... . They do, however, part ways with traditional religious sciences in a number of critical aspects.
A theology that is ‘sited', contextual and inductive
Feminist theologies are theologies by women for women: influenced by feminism, they are founded in women's experience of oppression, discrimination and marginalisation. Much in the way of Liberation Theology these theologies thus declare themselves ‘contextual', meaning that they avowedly rely on the historicity of living conditions and propose to expose traditional academic theology's presumption in presenting itself as universal, objective and neutral. Focused on experience, these theologies are inductive (unlike the deductive theology of women[2] ) .
This sited starting point creates a tension between objectivity and partiality. Feminist sciences call on an interrelation between the researchers and the realities they study with a view to reordering the world, to which end new comprehension templates that embrace intuition, mind-sets, reason and emotion must be invented. Contrary to ethical distanciation, most of these studies adopt a principle of interconnectedness[3]
A practical theology
Feminist theologies were developed with the affirmed intention of re-founding the place of women in Christianity. Feminist theologians seek to pave the way towards new forms of “Christianhood” for women, which would lead to their full participation in the Church without referring to models conceived by men.
So, this critical outlook is not only theoretical: the object is to transform scholarship as much as religious and socio-cultural institutions. Religious traditions are scrutinised through the lens of their transformation potential. However some of these studies conclude in a total incompatibility between religious traditions and the religious feminist project (viz. Daly, Carol P. Christ[4] or Naomi Goldberg[5] ) and go on to seek other religious paths.
Their commitment to the transformation of the religious and social status quo show feminist religious sciences at their most vulnerable but also at their most threatening towards the institutional seats of religion and academic scholarship. They often find themselves suspected of subjectivism, ideological militantism or reductive intellectual circularity
A global theology
Feminist theologians are not content with forming a subdivision of the theological field: they mean to represent a critique, a reframing of the Christian tradition as a whole. Where the “theology of women” develops an anthropological discourse that does not affect the other branches of theology, feminist theologies set themselves up as a new way to do theology, a deconstruction-reconstruction methodology tackling Biblical exegesis, dogmatics, Christology, morals, liturgy, symbolics, language... Unlike traditional disciplines broken down into specialisms, Feminist religious sciences mean to be interdisciplinary.
The deconstruction and reconstruction of theology
Two phases are proposed, which rely on different heuristic concepts: first the deconstruction of traditional religious scholarship, then the reconstruction of a different kind of scholarship. In the deconstruction phase, feminist studies rely on a hermeneutics of suspicion to analyse the theories, data and methods of traditional scholarship. Starting in the late sixties, this questioning hinges on three heuristic concepts.
Patriarchy, that is the idea that the socio-political system, under the control of men as a human group, is chronically oppressive for women.
Androcentrism, or the viewpoint according to which the male sex is essential and the female sex peripheral, that all things flow from a masculine perspective.
Sexism, that is the presence of discrimination on a gender basis.
The 80s witnessed the stage of reconstruction of religious scholarship that replaced the hermeneutics of suspicion with the heuristic categories of human community, wherein women and men share in an egalitarian partnership and blossoming of both man and woman as sexed beings.
