Feminist Theology and The Global Imagination

Feminist Theology and the Global Imagination
Oxford Handbooks Online

Serene Jones
The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theology
Edited by Sheila Briggs and Mary McClintock Fulkerson
Print Publication Date: Nov 2011 Subject: Religion, Religious Identity, Theology and Philosophy of
Religion, Global Religions
Online Publication Date: Jan DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199273881.003.0002
2012
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter presents an account of what feminist theology is and how it might help us understand and engage with our
globalizing world. The first section provides a non-faith-specific definition of feminist theology as an intracultural activist
enterprise aimed at exploring the landscape of religious imagination from a feminist perspective, and also lays out a few
of feminist theology's most distinctive plays of imagination. The second section turns to faith-informed, Christian feminist
theology, describing it as a more narrowly focused activist enterprise that explores the landscape of the distinctly
Christian theological imagination from a feminist perspective. Its distinctive plays of mind are delineated as well. The
third section turns to the topic of globalization and maps out the central features of the global imagination, describing
the ways in which globalization has impacted and shifted our thinking processes in recent decades, particularly in the
global North. The final section returns to Christian feminist theology (and to pluralistic feminist theology as well),
suggesting ways its faith imaginationits theological plays of mindmight productively engage the global imagination with
the aim of improving, in new and creative ways, the lives of women everywhere.
Keywords: globalization, intracultural activism, feminists, religious imagination, Christian feminist theology, global imagination, faith
When the editors began pulling together this volume, they asked a number of feminist theologians to travel to Durham,
North Carolina, to discuss our work. It was an exciting gathering. Sitting at the table were women from around the world.
We all had strong academic backgrounds but hailed from different religious communities, regions, races, and ages, a
very global group. In light of these differences, some of them obvious, some more surprising and harder to see, I am
certain that if someone had asked us to come up with definitions of our topicsfeminism, theology, globalizationwe
would have failed to reach any kind of consensus.
With respect to feminism, we would no doubt have had lively debates spurred on by generational differences about
what it means to be feminists and whether it's an outdated term. In terms of theology, we would have argued about
whether the word applies to anything other than Christian theologyhighlighting its character as a historically Western
endeavor. And when it came to globalization, the historians would have said one thing, the social scientists another, and
the humanities-trained critics yet another. Our failure would, of course, have said a great deal about our shared project
feminism, theology, and globalization are not singular entities; they are multifaceted, multidefined realities.
It would have been a mistake, however, to assume that our lack of consensus meant we held nothing in common. From
the moment our conversation began, it was clear that we agreed on a lot. We all studied theology, we did so as feminist
activists, and we saw our work unfolding on an increasingly global stage. Moreover, we all showed up in Durham
because we felt this confluence of interests matteredin fact, it matters enormously. Why? Because it's impossible to
address critical global issues of our dayglobal warming, economic justice, communal conflict, immigration equity,
sexual commodification, technological imperialism, international health crises, transnational violence, and massive global
militarizationwithout considering the place that religion holds in (p. 24) the lives of so many people and without taking
into account the roles that women play on the stage of world politics. Our shared hope was that our scholarly work,
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standing as it does at the intersection of these realities, might contribute to such understanding.
As to exactly what our scholarly work might have to offer, that's where our most interesting conversations happened
each of us giving different accounts of how these three realities interact in various places and at multiple levels. Running
through all our accounts, however, were a number of shared convictions that again and again revealed our orientation as
globally aware feminist theologians and scholars of religion. In this essay, I explore those shared commitments and use
them as the basis for my own account of what feminist theology is and how it might help us understand and engage our
globalizing world.
In the first section, I offer a non-faith-specific definition of feminist theology as an intracultural activist enterprise aimed at
exploring the landscape of religious imagination from a feminist perspective. I also lay out a few of feminist theology's
most distinctive plays of imagination. In the second section, I turn to faith-informed, Christian feminist theology, my area
of work, and describe it as a more narrowly focused activist enterprise that explores the landscape of the distinctly
Christian theological imagination from a feminist perspective. Its distinctive plays of mind are delineated as well. In the
third section, I turn to the topic of globalization and map out what I consider to be central features of the global
imaginationdescribing the ways in which globalization has impacted and shifted our thinking processes in recent
decades, particularly in the global North. Then, in the last section, I return to Christian feminist theology (and to pluralistic
feminist theology, as well) and suggest ways its faith imaginationits theological plays of mindmight productively
engage the global imagination with the aim of improving, in new and creative ways, the lives of women everywhere.
Defining Feminist Theology
An activist, imaginative endeavor
What is feminist theology? The most obvious answer to this question is also the most important. Feminist theology is first
and foremost an endeavor undertaken by women who understand themselves to be part of a broad social movement
devoted to improving the lives of women everywhere.1 In this regard, feminist theology has, since its inception, been an
activist endeavor with very practical goals and strategies. At its heart stands a shared commitment to creating a world
where women (and all people) flourish. This is its driving aim. This is what makes it feminist. This is why it exists.
As to what women's flourishing consists of, feminist descriptions vary from one religious tradition and cultural context to
another, but running through them are several (p. 25) almost universally held beliefs. The type of world in which women
flourish is one where women have political, social, and religious power to participate fully in decision-making processes;
where women's bodies are valued, respected, and protected from demeaning forms of exploitation, abuse, and violence;
where women's labor, particularly the care they provide to children, the elderly, and the sick, is shared by all and honored
as economically and socially valuable work; where the natural environment is engaged with respect; where education is
open to all; and where the basic material resources that it takes for communities to be healthy and thrive are ensured.
This view of flourishing also includes celebrating forms of beauty that women cherish and spiritual practices that women
treasure, both of which point to the fact that flourishing involves not just the absence of oppression and injustice but also
the positive presence of things that make women happy and fulfilled. It is also a vision where women are understood not
just as victims of harms but as social agents, as capable of harming others as they are of working toward the betterment
of all.
Tied to this vision of women's flourishing is feminist theology's strong sense that creating this kind of community requires
not just an abstract or merely principled commitment to building it; it demands that we invest our lives in ongoing,
concrete actions designed to actually make it happen. In other words, pursuing the flourishing of women requires hard,
pragmatically taxing, communal work. It includes not only obvious forms of activism such as lobbying Congress, marching
in the streets, or fighting in the courts and in church councils to change laws and policies (things that feminists in liberal
democracies associate with activism but that feminists in other political economies might view very differently); it also
includes working for social change in local, everyday wayshow we cook, what we wear, who we are friends with, how
we raise children, what we expect our homes to look like and our jobs, if we have them, to include, and, of course, how
we worship and practice our faith. In this regard, feminist theology thinks of its activist practices as being as intimately
personal as they are widely political, a belief that may now be commonplace but which nonetheless holds within it a
philosophical claim about the nature of human social engagement and transformation.
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Closely tied to this view of practical transformation is feminist theology's contention that changing society requires both
changing laws and practices and challenging the categories and processes we use to think about life and to make sense
of our world. I find it useful to think of this dimension of transformative practice as the recrafting of imagination, using
the term not just to refer to our fantasies or dream livesthings imagined but not realbut also and more broadly to that
vast interior landscape of thought within which our experiences are crafted and receive order and significance. This
definition of imagination is closer to what is sometimes called ideology or culture or even discursive worldsit
includes the rich collection of beliefs, attitudes, images, stories, and memories that compose our collective and individual
mental universes and hence frame our ongoing activities of meaning-making.
Central components of our present-day mental landscapes are, of course, our individual or communal sensibilities about
the three intersecting topics of this volumereligion/spirituality, gender/women, globalization/socialityeach of which
profoundly (p. 26) shapes how we understand and engage the world. Recrafting each of these, as both distinct and
interrelated realities, forms the unique work of global feminist theology. Insofar as it is a feminist enterprise, it explores
how gender is constructed and deployed in the cultural imagination. Insofar as it is theology, it explores the complex
ways communities of faith understand (and hence imagine) the Divine and its relation to the human experience and
worldly existence. Insofar as it is global, it takes seriously the global stage upon which each unfolds.
Helping to reshape our religious, global imagination, to recontour its landscape, making it more just and nourishing for
women: this, then, is the job of feminist theology. As a multifaceted endeavor, it includes the critical task of uncovering
deeply misogynistic impulses embedded in the world's various religious traditions and in the form and processes of
globalization. It includes as well the creative, innovative work of fashioning new forms of spiritual belief and practice in
contexts where old forms have failed and harmful beliefs no longer hold power. Running through it all is feminist
theologians profound sense that for faith to be truly life-giving, no matter its specific form, it must encourage the well-
being of women in serious and substantive waysa task of no small proportions, to say the least.
Feminist theology's imaginative landscape: Eight plays of mind
Over the years, feminist theologians from many walks of life and different religions have taken up this task of exploring,
critiquing, and creatively remaking our religious imaginative landscapes. Out of this work has emerged a collection of
habits of thought or intellectual dispositions that the writers of this book (we discovered) and feminist theologians in
general share.2 When we look at the landscape of a given religion's worldview and its gender assumptions, there are
similar directions in which our thinking tends to move, things we have grown accustomed to focusing on, plays of mind
that structure the questions we ask and the answers we seek. These shared habits constitute what I think of as feminist
theology's imagination.
The first of these plays of mind is our tendency, when exploring a religious tradition or reflecting on global life, to
privilege the experiences and lives of women as a source of our reflectionour preferential option for women. This
does not mean that we think women all share the same experience or have all the answers or even decidedly unique
ones. It means, more simply, that when our eyes travel across the terrain we are exploring, we tend to slow down and
pay careful attention to what women are saying and doing or, sadly, what they are not saying and doing in cases where
they have been rendered invisible or trivialized. Granting this kind of epistemological privilege to women means attending
not only to what actual women may or may not be doing but also to what a given culture is saying about womenits view
of proper (or improper) womanhood and ideal (or failed) femininity.
A second play of mind is the constant, indeed relentless, acknowledgement that how we see thingsincluding womenis
profoundly affected by where we stand as we look. (p. 27) We know that knowing is a deeply embedded and
contextually freighted endeavor and that it never happens in a pure, unmediated manner. Our background, language,
history, geography, education, personal experiences, and even our unconscious but powerfully present assumptions
about the world form the lens through which we engage it. In practice, these concepts translate into a strong tendency
for feminist theologians to locate their claims (to indicate whence they speak) and state up front that their work is always
situated work (Jaggar and Bordo 1989; Sedgewick 1992; Alcoff and Potter 1993).
This insight about the contextual character of knowledge is connected to a third habit of thoughtan ever-increasing
awareness on the part of feminist theologians that not all women see things the same way and that this includes our often
vastly different understandings of what a woman is. The sheer diversity of women's religious, social lives makes this
apparent: the definition of womanhood assumed in a Moroccan market may be quite different from that assumed in a
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meeting of the Japanese Parliament or on a soccer field in Atlanta, Georgia. Our awareness of this reality is evident in
feminist theologians frequent use of the term gender instead of sex to refer to localized constructions of woman.3
Invoking gender points to the fact that what we often think of as natural, given, or universal featureswhat's usually
referred to as the sexed basisof women's experience are, in reality, socially constructed gender stories about
masculinity and femininity that have been mapped onto human bodies as if they were self-evident descriptions of
universal, biologically stable phenomena.4
Fourth, in addition to recognizing the constructed character of our views of women, feminist theologians appreciate the
degree to which the category religion is also such a construct, one shot through with the contradictions and conflicts of
the communal discourse that engenders it, and not, as has been previously assumed, a universal dimension of a stable
phenomenon called religious experience. What this means in very concrete terms is that feminist theologians are
disinclined to look, for example, at a Christian and a Buddhist account of divinity and to assume that underneath both is a
shared set of convictions about God, just as they would not assume a shared view of womanhood. Instead of making such
assumptions, their inclination is to listen carefully to these accounts and be open to the possibility that they are
significantly different and perhaps even incommensurable. The same holds true when listening to different accounts of
belief within the same religion: incommensurability may exist not only between a particular Buddhist practice and Christian
belief statement, for example, but also between different Christian beliefs as well as between various Buddhists on the
same issue of practice.5
Overall, this appreciation for the contextual and constructed character of knowledgeand in particular religious and
gender knowledgemakes feminist theologians unusually adept at the tasks of critiquing and deconstructing
constructions that have proved problematic for womena fifth habit of thought. Not surprisingly, this encourages
feminist theology to be a restless and suspicious enterprise, one that constantly interrogates not only others but also its
own assumptions about gender and faith. This deconstructive disposition, I might add, makes conversations such as the
one we had in North Carolina about this book lively, rigorously critical, and, at times, disorientingly (p. 28) chaotic. In
such conversations, the challenge, of course, is to value the disorientation while also remaining committed to (and
articulate about) those beliefs that warrant serious discussion and even substantive disagreement. This requires a
willingness to interrogate one's own beliefs, to let them go or change them if it seems appropriate while also being
willing to defend and strengthen them when it doesnt.
This is particularly true when it comes to our deepest convictions about what it means to be a human beingour
theological anthropology. Running through feminist theology's discussions of the self are a number of such convictions
our sixth play of mind. I listed a few of these in my account of basic conditions necessary for the flourishing of women
the belief that human beings inherently deserve respect, safety, just compensation, access to education and health care,
shelter, food, participation in decision-making, and the opportunity to pursue and enjoy desired forms of beauty and
happiness. In addition to these, feminist theologians make a series of other deep claims about the structure or form of
humanity in general, claims that undergird this account of flourishing.
First, we tend to see human beings as radically relational creatures, a term that highlights not only our interpersonal but
also our interspecies and planetary interconnectedness. I am who I am only in and through the relationships that
constitute me. Second, we are reflective, rational beings, capable of thinking about our world but also our thoughts
about our world. Third, we are meaning-making, linguistic beings who experience the world in and through language.
Fourth, we are also responsible agents capable of intentionally engaging our environment and hence affecting the
character of our relationships and experience. Fifth, we are beings whose feelings, emotions, desires, and memories
play a significant role in shaping our everyday experiences of meaning and the character of our actions. Sixth, we also
insist that our thoughts and actions are affected by unconscious as well as conscious desires, emotions, and so onthat
we may indeed not always know who we are or what we do and why. Seventh, we are embodied creaturesour bodies
are not just lumps of matter that we inhabit and upon which we impose our stories, but complex, biological entities that
determine, to a larger extent than we often imagine, who we are and what we become (Fausto-Sterling 2000). Eighth,
feminist theologians are highly conscious of the role power plays in determining the character of our relationships, the
shape of our embodiment, and the form of our emotions and desires. This means that when we think about a particular
social construal of something such as gender, religion, or women and the relationships and embodied realities that
compose it, we always ask the question, what are the forces at work in their construction? The notion of force here
refers not just to obvious forms of political power and interest but also to the more subtle pressures exerted on us
through culture, language, and habituated bodily practices.
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Relationality, agency, linguistic facility, embodiment, desire, the unconscious, powerall these dimensions of our
humanity, feminist theologians insist, never exist in the abstract but are located in particular lives, events, and situations.
This highlights a seventh play of mind, our commitment to particularizing and localizing our accounts of things such as
gender, religion, and globalization. For the feminist theologians who gathered to talk about the book, this was most
evident in the careful attention that scholar after scholar paid to the stories (narratives) women tell about their livesand
(p. 29) the stories, particularly the religious ones, that our cultures tell about women. It happened, for example, in our
gathering when someone described initiation rituals for young girls in Navaho communities, or when another told the
story of how Mori women are considered to be more powerful and beautiful as they age rather than the reverse, as is
assumed in much of mainstream North American culture. It happened as well when we listened to an account of early
American missionary women's stories, and when we heard tales about the relationships between North American
professional women and the immigrant women from the global South who clean their houses and care for their children.
When each of these tellings unfolded, the room grew silent and everyone's attention was focused intensely on the tale
at hand. At the end, of course, excited conversation broke out among us as we asked questions about the tale and
began to analyze it in terms of our shared commitments and our lively differences.
Given the wide range of topics that feminist theologians take up, we tend not to limit this narrative focus to things that we
would normally think of as stories but include an array of cultural, linguistic productions that carry within them strong
assumptions about gender and women, particularly when they have to do with spirituality or religionthings such as
songs, myths, works of art, everyday practices, forms of speech, rituals, novels and poetry, historical documents, movies,
and the list could go on. When we analyze such cultural products, we also tend to treat their gender story and their
religious features not as if they were straightforward entities that have single meanings. Rather, we explore the
performative character of the stories, an eighth feature of feminist theology.6 We ask, what is this story trying to do or to
perform in our social worlds? What kind of social roles is it attempting to script for us? What are the relations of power it
is trying to promote? What kind of imaginative landscape is it attempting (and often succeeding) to render?
A core feminist story about gender, religion, and globalization
Keeping track of all these questions and angles of analysis is, of course, a complex enterprise, and many different
interpretations of feminist theology follow from them. That's why conversations such as the one represented in this book
are so engaging. Running through these interpretations of gender, religion, and globalization, however, is something like
a core globalization story about women in today's world that loosely frames, at least at this moment in history, our
collective work. I end this section with that story not to neatly sum up our disparate projects into one totalizing structure,
but rather to surface the often unacknowledged but ever-present political, social narrative that undergirds much of what
we do.
That story, roughly told, goes something like this:
We currently live in a world where, at a massive global level, women's lives are increasingly at risk, threatened by
violence, and burdened by the weight of growing poverty and powerlessness. In most of the world's cultures, the
dominant view of what women should be and do (their view of proper womanhood) is determined by elite (p. 30) men
in power and by religious/cultural traditions that have within them strongly misogynist strands. In many cases, women are
defined in a manner that promotes their status as a source of cheap, unorganized (and often unrecognized) labor, be it
in the domestic sphere, the sexual market, or in underpaid service and productive industries. Women's bodies are
therefore regulatedpolitically, economically, sexually, and culturallyin ways that are harmful to them and over which
they have little say. This is as true in the workings of the nation-state as it is in the movement of global capital.
It is also the case in the sphere of religion. Here, men continue to be, at a broad global level, the most important
religious leaders and thinkers; and as such, they have more control over religious stories and meanings than women, and
the stories they promote often configure women in destructive ways. As far as change is concerned, we are aware that,
as globalization itself shows us, not all women share the same vision of flourishing or the same understanding of what it
means to be woman. This does not mean, however, that we have no common concerns or that collective and coalitional
work is impossible. In fact, we remain hopeful that women can be locally and globally organized to better represent their
interests and express their religious convictions, and we feel that this is true not only at an institutional level, but at a
cultural level where, in the nitty-gritty play of the religious imagination, there are vast resources available for constructing
visions of a world where the well-being of all is held up as a worthy goal.
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And that is where our work as feminist theologians begins.
Christian Feminist Theology
Diverse perspectives, common convictions
Having just defined feminist theology as an intracultural, multifaith, activist endeavor, let me now narrow the discussion
and explore my own particular subfield within this movementfeminist theology done from a self-confessed Christian
perspective.
Like feminist theology in general, Christian feminist theology is marked as much by internal diversity as it is by consensus.7
In terms of differences, our theologies vary significantly from one Christian faith-community to another. For example,
Roman Catholic feminism has a different flavor to it from Reformed feminism or Anglican feminism.8 Similarly, our
theologies vary depending on the social location of the writer: womanist theologians focus on different topics than do
mujerista theologians who, in turn, touch on different themes from women working on Korean spirituality or lesbian
ethics.9 Our theologies also differ depending on the methods we use. Among us, there are liberal feminist theologians,
postmodern feminist theologians, process feminist thinkers, liberation feminist theologians, psychoanalytic feminists, and
so forth.10 The shape of our work also differs depending on the social issues we address, issues that include sexual
violence, mothering, care, health issues, the environment, (p. 31) economic justice, postcolonialism, empire, and racial
conflict, to name only a few.11 Our theologies look quite different, as well, depending on the institutional status of the
feminist theologian doing it. For example, theology written by a Protestant woman teaching at Yale Divinity School sounds
quite different from theology written by a feminist working in a Dalit neighborhood outside of Madurai, South India.12
In the midst of all these differences, there are also issues around which there is loose but pervasive consensus among
us. Like feminist theologians in general, Christian feminists see our work as integrally connected to concrete social
movements committed to the flourishing of womenand all people. We see ourselves as activists devoted to changing
society, not just explaining it, and understand our principal contribution to that process to be an innovative work of
reshaping religious imaginations and the practices they engender. In the context of that reshaping, Christian feminists also
share the feminist plays of mind just listed: we focus on women's experiences, think about gender, recognize
knowledge as constructed, attend to power relations, have a relational, embodied, performative understanding of
persons, and find the insights of a variety of cultural productions useful for our work. In this regard, our work is from
beginning to end a feminist religious enterprise.
There are several things that distinguish our work from the broader feminist movement, however. The first and most
obvious is the fact that we speak out of the Christian tradition and usually do so as practicing Christians. This means, at a
very concrete level, that the principal (although not exclusive) audiences we address are ecclesial; we do our work in
churches and in conversation with church-related bodies that are both local and global in their reach and history. Second,
when it comes to our work on the religious imaginationthe work that, as theologians, we specialize inwe are
primarily interested in recrafting the Christian theological imaginative landscapes that have grown out of these
communities and their many traditions. While feminist theologians acknowledge that these theological traditions are vast
and complex in charactertoo complex and diverse to be easily defined or summarizedrunning through them all is a
core story that, when broadly conceived, constitutes the central features of the landscape of faith we share. This
Christian Story, in rough form, goes something like this:
We believe in a Triune God who creates the world, sustains it, and, in an ongoing way, seeks to be in relation with it to
encourage its well-being. In seeking relationship, this God offers to humanity the opportunity to know and respond to
God in faith and in practice. Although fundamentally good, the world is also plagued by sin, a reality that works against its
flourishing and hence leaves it in need of redemption. This redemption is offered, in a distinctive manner, through the
history of Israel and in the gospel of Jesus Christ, the savior who reveals the grace of God, in both the present and the
future. In response to this promise, Christians are called to participate in church communities that embody and witness to
God's creative and re-creative grace, and this call requires churches to be places where creation is celebrated, hope
abounds, God is worshipped, and, in faith, the flourishing of all humanity is held up as a shared desire.
Although this brief version of the story is admittedly simplistic (and can be interpreted to support wildly different
understandings of Christian beliefs and practices), it highlights (p. 32) the major themes or doctrines that feminist
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theologians analyze within tradition's imaginative landscapethe doctrines of God, creation, humanity, redemption,
Christology, sin, faith, eschatology (the future), and ecclesiology (the church). When we look at these themes, we ask
questions designed to surface their imaginative, life-shaping quality, particularly with respect to the lives of women and
in terms of gender, power, performativity, and so forth. What does it mean, we ask, for Christians to live in the space of
these doctrines? How does this landscape shape women's interior worlds as well as the external conditions of their lives?
How do they configure our views of gender? Are they life-giving, and if so, how have these doctrines shaped our
conception of what life-giving means? And if they are not, how might we reconfigure the terrain to make them so?
In asking such questions, we show that when women become the subjects of doctrines imaginative construction, the
world can look different from when men are its central figures. Consider, for example, what happens when activities such
as cooking dinner, cleaning toilets, and the relentless work of childcare, as well as bodily events such as pregnancy, rape,
menopause, sex between women, sex-trafficking, and breast cancer become theologically important. New possibilities
for imagining God and ourselves immediately appear and, with them, a wealth of new questions. What might divine action
and power look like if modeled after patterns of domestic labor instead of imperialistic or militaristic models of power?
How might we pray differently if we imagined God as a large, aging woman with diabetes and wearing a head scarf? What
if sin were defined not primarily in terms of sex but as a social reality such as the commodity form or the devastating
consequences of global warming? What if, when we thought of church, our imagination drifted toward social spaces
such as kitchens or brush chapels or even sand dunes instead of grand cathedrals or white steeples on village greens?
When it comes to preaching, what if we thought of it flowing through Internet blogs or over a backyard fence instead of
across the bow of a high pulpit? And when it comes to salvation, what if we imagined Jesus on the cross looking down
upon the body of a battered woman? A Cherokee woman celebrating her sixteenth birthday? A transgendered, immigrant
domestic worker riding the subway in New York? How does his death save her?
Major themes in Christian feminist theology: Reconceiving doctrines
Over the course of the past three decades, questions such as these have led feminist theologians to explore and re-
imagine almost every doctrine in the Christian tradition. Although it is impossible to summarize all their work hereits
scope and depth are too vast and diverse to do sothere are several themes that stand out. Taking a brief look at them
in their doctrinal context provides a good overview of general plays of mind that mark our work.13
Christian feminist theologians are concerned about the nature of our basic Trinitarian views of God (Biezeveld and
Mulder 2001). While some argue that the doctrine of the Trinity is irretrievably sexist and arcane, others attempt to re-
interpret it in feminist terms. (p. 33) These attempts focus primarily on the relational view of God implied in the claim
that God is three interrelated yet distinct persons. For some, God's relational identity is used as the basis for claims about
the inherently relational quality of all reality (LaCugna 1991). For others, divine relationality is best understood as a model
of community in God, moving us toward a better understanding of human sociality marked by reciprocity and mutuality.
For still others, this theme promises to rejuvenate our appreciation for the Holy Spirit, the most traditionally relational of
the Trinitarian persons (in fact, sometimes understood as pure relation; Pritchard 1999). In addition, this theme has
pushed us to reconsider the place of Sophia, a figure from the wisdom traditions, in our theology, as well as the
possibilities related to seeing God in process-oriented terms (Johnson 1992).
Feminists have also given considerable attention to the doctrine of revelation, bringing to bear upon it the insights of
feminist epistemology. Among some of the issues raised is the question of the form of our knowledge of God. In many of
our traditions most prominent texts, there has been an insistence that knowledge of God comes to humanity as an
external reality that overwhelms and often ruptures our normal perceptions of things.14 Feminists have asked whether this
image makes sense when we consider, for example, persons who have undergone traumatic experiences such as rape
or torture and for whom overwhelming and rupturing describe how they felt being violated and threatened (Jones
2000). In such a context, rupture or in-breaking becomes a problematic model for conceiving of God's mode of
relating to us. Christian feminist theologians seek new images of revelation, perhaps as a safe form of touch or an
immanent knowing. They have also asked questions such as, what might it mean to think of our knowledge of God in
aesthetic terms rather than in a strictly propositional or reductively cognitive manner (Chopp 1989)? As conversations
such as these move into the area of biblical interpretation, the resulting feminist positions have been equally intriguing
and diverse with respect to issues of textual meaning and the elasticity of exegesis (see Russell 1985; and Sch ssler
Fiorenza 2001).15
Exploring the doctrine of creation has prompted feminists to explore the ways we imagine the character of God's
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originating and providential relationship to humanity and the environment. They ask us to imagine the world not only as a
distant Other to God, but as God's body, as intimately connected to the Divine (see especially McFague 1993). Similarly,
feminists question the long-held assumption that in creating the world, God imposed order on chaos, making it appear
that order is the divine mandate and, conversely, that chaos is a problematic mess that needs to be contained. They ask,
what if chaosall that is fluid, open, indeterminate, and unfinishedwere given positive value in our accounts of divine
creation (cf. Baker-Fletcher 1998; Keller 2003; and Ross 2006)? If this were to happen, they argue, we could better
appreciate dimensions of life classically associated with the feminine (see Schneider 2004; Baker-Fletcher, 2006). As an
example, feminist theologians have asked us to imagine creation as an activity more like giving birth or delighting in
beauty than giving rules or struggling against death (Jantzen 1999).
As feminists grapple with the doctrine of humanity, they suggest that we think of persons not as isolated actors but as
relationally complex creatures whose borders are as (p. 34) fluid as they are open (cf. Brock 1988; Grey 1989; Graff
1995; and LaCugna 1995). With respect to sin, they have suggested that instead of defining it only as bad or harmful
things that we do, we should also think of it as something that happens to us, as the harms that befall us (cf. Plaskow
1990; Rigby 1997). Relatedly, there is an ongoing insistence on women's agency with respect to sinwomen are not just
victims of sin but its enactors as well (see Armour 1999; and Coakley 2002). Feminists push us to see, additionally, that
sin resides as much in social structures and in cultural patterns as it does in individual intentions and actions. With respect
to the individual, they have also urged us to consider a more positive role for sexual desire and the erotic than
traditionally assumed (Althaus-Reid 2000).
Christology is also an important topic for feminist reflection, giving rise to a number of new insights into the meaning of
Christ's life and work. One of the most interesting conversations centers on the relationship between incarnational and
cross-centered Christology.16 Some feminists argue that the historical focus on the self-sacrificing work of Christ on the
cross can lead to theologies that encourage women, disproportionately, to accept destructive social roles as those who
sacrifice themselves to the broader social good (cf. Williams 1991; and Cullinan 2004). Instead, feminist theologians
suggest, we should look to Christhis birth and subsequent lifeas the mediator of a grace that celebrates embodiment
and lauds the resilience of human life, not its diminishment (cf. Johnson 1990; Baker-Fletcher and Baker-Fletcher 1997;
Ruether 1998; and Tanner 2001). For feminist theologians who continue to focus on the cross, there has been an
ongoing attempt to see Christ's violent death not as an act of divine retribution, but as a devastating result of human
violence and sin (see Brock 1988; Solberg 1997; and Thompson 2004). They argue that on the cross we meet a God
who understands the plight of victims and who embraces them while also demanding that the violent structures of our
world be challenged and dismantled (see Terrell 1998; and Keshgegian 2000).
On the topics of redemption and salvation, feminists have also made a number of interesting proposals (cf. Grau 2004).
They have asked, what if we were to imagine grace as a form of adornment, drawing on women's experiences and using
the language of clothing and beauty to describe it (cf. Chopp 1989; and Grau 2004)? Perhaps, then, aesthetic,
spatialized terms like glory, splendor, embrace, and envelopment would serve as the frame for conceiving of atonement.
For some feminist theologians, rather than juridically announcing divine forgiveness, God's gracious mercy is envisioned
as enveloping and womb-like. Employing this new imagery helps us, they argue, expand our understanding of who God is
and how she relates to us, perhaps as mother, lover, and friend. Feminist theologians have also explored the character of
the closely related doctrines of justification and sanctificationtwo terms used to describe the shape of the redeemed
lifeasking us to imagine God's grace falling upon us not only as a divine verdict that, at a distance, forgives our sin but
also as a gift that provides for women a bounded identity with agency and a strong sense of self (cf.Solberg 1997; and
Jones 2000).
The doctrine of the church has also undergone considerable revision in the hands of feminist theologians. In answer to
the question, What is a church?, feminists have suggested that we imagine it as an open, round banquet table set with a
feast that all are (p. 35) invited to share (cf. Russell 1993). They have also imagined it not just as a building or an
institution but as a cultural space that includes activities typically associated with womengossip, care, food preparation,
and so on (cf. Isasi-Daz 1996). Similarly, feminists have paid attention to the bodily gestures and ritual practices that
constitute the church, highlighting the ways in which actions such as passing the peace, preparing a potluck meal, and
taking care of the sick are central to its identity (cf. Fulkerson 2001).17 Feminist theologians have also explored what
church might look like if it were conceived of as a community of equals rather than a hierarchical institution (Sch ssler
Fiorenza 1995; and with Douglass and Kay 1997; and Hring 1999). Running like a common thread through all these
accounts of church is an attempt to rethink the borders we put around ecclesial communities and their models of
Christian leadership, making them more porous, gender-inclusive, and less prone to repressive modes of authority and
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unconscious exclusionary practices.
Finally, as Christian feminist theologians, we also reflect on the topics of Christian hope and eschatology. In these
discussions, there is a strong critique of the classical Christian views of heaven and the end of time that weaken our
commitment to seeking fullness of life in the here-and-now, and instead support patriarchal visions of a divine kingdom
yet-to-come (cf. Russell 1974; Keller 1996; and Amy Plantinga Pauw, Some Last Words about Eschatology, in Pauw and
Jones 2006). Feminists ask us to reconsider the character of the hoping self in light of women's experiences of
embodiment and agency, drawing attention to circumstances that present theological challenges such as infertility,
miscarriage, and rape (cf. Sands 1994; Adams and Fortune 1995; Frantz and Stimming 2005). At the center of many of
these discussions is also an insistence that the ecological world in which we liveour environmentnot be treated as a
mere stopping place on our way to another, more glorious kingdom beyond this world, but rather as the blessed, graced
site of our unfolding lives before the God who lives with us, in the present, and calls us to an ecologically responsible
future (cf. Warren 1994; Ruether 1996, 1992; and Gebara 1999).
Globalization
Against the backdrop of these descriptions of feminist theology, let me turn now to globalization, another diversely
defined topic, and explore the challenges it raises for feminist theological reflection. When discussed in feminist contexts
such as the Durham meeting, the term globalization refers to at least five different features of contemporary social life
(cf. Jameson and Miyoshi 1998; Sen 1999; Appadurai 2001; Stiglitz 2003; and Young 2003).18
Its first and most common use is economic; it refers to the network of processes that fuel and fund the ever-expanding
capitalist marketplace. The word globalization was coined in an advertisement by American Express, in which the world
is characterized as a place where, for the adventuresome shopper, a single credit card can buy whatever one (p. 36)
desiresa car, a trip, a can of sodaand can do so wherever in the world one might beNepal, South Africa, Canada.
What the advertisement so well depicts is the worldwide reach of these interconnected processes (cf. Harvey 2000). At
the level of production and consumption, they can be seen, for example, in the making and selling of a pair of athletic
shoes. It's likely that the cotton used in their production is grown in China and the rubber soles processed at a plant in
Brazil, which in turn relies on oil from Argentina; the factory where workers assemble them is in the Philippines; the ships
that transport them to market are Dutch or German; the marketing strategy used to sell them is formulated in Seattle but
implemented through a complex online process housed in India; the stores where they are sold range from a boutique in
Los Angeles to a mall in Santiago or a street vendor in Delhi; and the financial body funding and profiting from the
process has corporate headquarters in Tokyo and London.19 An important feature of this process is the absence of
unified regulations governing these activities, which are themselves widely dispersed and shift quickly to follow market
demand, the fluctuating cost of labor, the ups and downs of the financial markets, and the varying cost and availability of
natural resources. Almost needless to say, the distribution of the profits produced through this network of exchange is
also dramatically uneven, with most of the profits flowing to the financial and marketing sectors of global capital.
Parallel to this economic description is a second account of globalization that focuses on patterns of population migration
and immigration.20 Never before have such vast numbers of persons moved as quickly and as often as they do today. It's
not hard to imagine that standing in the security line in a Miami airport, one might find a young Indonesian woman who is
moving to Canada to join her family, a Brazilian businessman who manages a jewelry business and has an apartment in
Tampa, and a Congolese teenager who hopes to find his brother in Boston and is saving money to buy an online teaching
degree. On ships, in buses, on small boats, in trucks, and by foot, people are moving across national borders to new
homes and communities. For some, these migrations are chosen and happen with relative ease; for others, moving is
difficult and often exploitative and dangerous. Some move for economic or familial reasons; others are displaced by
political conflict or violence. Whatever the case, the people no less than the goods of our world are in motion; the
borders that divide us are being constantly crossed and transgressed. And again, the relations of power that either
provoke or hinder this movement are dramatically uneven.
The issue of borders brings us to a third dimension of globalization: the shifting character of nation-states, those national
entities that determine the shape of the geographical and political maps of the world. It is now commonplace to refer to
the increasingly transnational character of our global interactionsa term that highlights the degree to which the flow of
capital, the movement of people, and the mechanisms of communication that span the globe are less and less confined
by the regulatory interests of discretely defined national bodies. There is considerable debate over whether the
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importance of national governmental institutions is declining or simply being redefined to serve better the interests of
global capital. Some theorists have speculated that in place of national sovereignty, a vast empire based on global capital
pervades all global interac (p. 37) tions wherein nations are themselves servants to the larger, less wieldy forces of the
global market (see especially Hardt and Negri 2000). Regardless of where one comes down on this debate, the
profoundly interconnected and interdependent character of the world's nations is beyond dispute. Yet again, an important
feature of these interconnections is the obviously unequal power these national bodies wield, a fact evidenced in their
disparate economic conditions and, perhaps even more importantly, in the uneven size and strength of their military.
A fourth popular definition of globalization centers on the issue of culture. A quick glance at the variety of foods stocked
on the shelves of any grocery store in North America attests that we live in a world marked by a diversity of tongues and
tastes. Aided by technology that now makes it possible to interact with people around the globe only a few seconds after
weve opened an Internet connection, we no longer experience the networks of our knowledge and our relationships as
being locally constrained. One way of viewing this proliferation of cross-cultural interactions is to see it as a harbinger of
an increasingly multicultural world, one where no single culture can claim dominance but where a variety of voices and
traditions constantly interact. Another way of assessing this interplay, however, is to see it as moving toward a more
unified, less pluralized worldwide culture, one where everyone who can afford a TV can choose who to cheer for as they
watch the World Cup competition while drinking a Coke and munching on McDonald's fries.21 From this perspective,
globalization is not multiplying our worldviews but narrowing them. Here again, economic and political relations of power
determine in large part which forms of cultural production dominate and who has access to them.
Let me add finally to this list of features of globalization a comment about globalization and religion. Like so many other
aspects of contemporary life, our world cannot be mapped according to stable religious geographies. Whether it be at a
meeting of the UN or on a street corner in Cairo, adherents of different faith traditions constantly interact with one
another as they are drawn into the web of interrelations I have just described. In this regard, the religious Other is an
ever present feature of our global lives. Sometimes these encounters are by choice; sometimes they are not. Sometimes
they take place in peaceful settings; at other times, however, they are occasioned by social conflict and violence. These
encounters sometimes lead people to harden the borders of their religious identity; sometimes, however, they lead to
radical conversions from one faith tradition to another or to a more general openness toward religious difference. These
encounters can also create hybrid religious experiences, as in the case of the Methodist minister who practices Yoga,
uses Buddhist chants when she prays, and sometimes admits her attraction to the idea of reincarnation. It is also the case
that religion can, at times, easily accommodate its beliefs and practices to match the interests of global markets or of
nation-states. At other times, however, its resistance to the dominant, unifying forces of globalization is clear. In all these
ways, religionhowever one might define itis not only a reality shaped by the dynamics of globalization; it is also a
complex social phenomenon with which globalization must reckon.22
(p. 38) Feminist Teology and the Globalization of Imagination
Nowhere can we see this mutually informing interaction between globalization and religion more clearly than in the
changing face of feminist theology. For example, our gathering in North Carolina would have been almost unimaginable
fifty years ago, both with respect to the modes of transportation, systems of communication, and economic resources
that brought us there and with respect to the types of conversations we had. In that regard, globalization is the space
within which this book itself is located. Our task as feminist theologians, however, is not just to describe these dynamics
but to generate an evaluative response to them. This requires analyzing the particular role that women and gender play
in these complex global processes and exploring whether it contributes to women's flourishing. Given that we are
specifically interested in the imaginative landscapes of faith, our task also includes exploring how our religious
landscapes comport with those of globalization, and in cases where they dont, formulating resistant responses to it.
At one level, carrying out this evaluative task is not exceedingly difficult. For example, when globalization is considered
from an economic perspective, it quickly becomes apparent that the vast majority of women around the world work in
low-wage service sector jobs designed to enable the production and consumption of market goods, be it in the kitchens
they staff, the houses and hotels they clean, or in the labor they devote quite literally to reproducing the market's future
workers and consumers. From a feminist theological perspective, it is not hard to identify the basic injustices of this
system and to envision political and economic programs that might address them. We can carry out a similar analysis of
the disparate impact of migration and immigration on the lives of women, or on the place of gender in the ever-changing
face of nation-states, global militarism, neocolonial domination, and so on. It is also the case, however, that the impact of
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globalization on the lives of women has not been only negative. Today more than ever, women have constantly expanding
choices about where they will live, what their jobs will be, how they will practice their religion, and how their families will
be arranged.
At another level, however, the task is more complicated. When analyzing and evaluating our imaginative landscapes, it's
difficult to determine exactly how globalization affects our thought processes and thus how it interacts with the
theological worldviews that nurture our religious beliefs and actions, particularly with respect to women and gender. This
level of analysis is difficult because globalization isnt something that can easily be identified and pinned down, and its
effects on our imaginations are not only diverse but indeterminate and often hidden from us. For the purpose of
comparison with theological imaginations, however, it is useful to map out some of the habits of thought these global
systems seem to encourage. In keeping with my earlier discussions, I think of these features as the lines of flight that our
thoughts are trained to follow or, better, imaginative landscapes that the dynamics of globalization entice us to enter, be
it through a seductive (p. 39) advertising campaign or new forms of technology (see Deleuze and Guattari 1977; Kintz
1977; Jameson 1991; Deleuze 1994; Miller 2005; and Sassen 2006).
Let me briefly list several of these plays of mind.
First, the global imagination is trained to appreciate difference and multiplicity and to feel uneasy with assertions of
sameness or unitary oneness; in this regard, it enjoys the pleasures of proliferation. The market consumer is taught to
always desire more choices, more colors, more sounds, more things.
Second, this predisposition for the proliferative is tied to a tendency to distrust order and conclusive definition and to be
drawn, instead, toward notions of indeterminacy and indecipherability, a tendency grounded in the constant interaction of
different cultural systems, moral economies, and linguistic frameworks. In this regard, it is a deeply democratic mindset,
populist in orientation and often relativistic in terms of normative judgment.
Third, if there is an ontology that fits globalizationa theory of what it means to beit is an ontology of radical
relationality. Applied to everything from patterns of food production to the nature of the human self, the global
imagination sees the interconnections and the varied modes of exchange that shape all existence.
Fourth, an imagination shaped by globalization considers boundariesthose borders that give definitional edge to
everything from nation-states to individual identitiesto be more fluid than solid, and it subsequently celebrates things
transgressive, nomadic, or hybrid. Nothing is singular or monolithic in shape and form, be it hip hop rock from India or the
Zen-informed communion service in a New England congregation.
Fifth, with respect to explanatory frames, it is more interested in tracking the synchronic play of forces that converge in a
given event or entity than it is in tracking the temporal sequences of cause and effect that produce it. In other words, it
explains a thing by drawing spatialized, horizontal maps of the elements that form it rather than drawing temporal, vertical
maps that trace its origins and delineate the causal processes of its production, much like the map of interconnected
sites one imagines springing to life when something like US Civil War or the history of burritos is Googled on the
Internet.
Sixth, it is fascinated by aesthetic form and remains highly conscious of the role played by compulsion and attraction in the
production of desires. It measures something by how appealing or repellant it is, a tendency nurtured in part by the
predominance of the commodity form. In other words, it's an I want it, so there play of mind.
Seventh, such an imagination tends also to use pragmatic standards of evaluation that focus on utility and function. So, for
instance, it tells stories that highlight the use-value of things as they are deployed in its networks of exchange. That one
might evaluate the quality of something based on a standard of inherent value, in such a context, becomes not only
illogical but unimaginable.
How might feminist theologians evaluate the modes of thought that inform the globalized imagination, particularly with
respect to the flourishing of women and logic of gender? The answer is complex and, at heart, deeply ambiguous. On
the one hand, many of these features are displayed vividly in the feminist imaginative landscape I previously (p. 40)
outlined. We espouse an appreciation for difference and for the proliferation of voices. We are suspicious of unitary
accounts of meaning, and we chafe against rigid or hierarchical instances of order. We espouse an ontology of radical
relationality, be it in reference to persons, the environment, or God, and when it comes to definitional boundaries, we like
things fluid, transgressive, and hybrid, as seen in our accounts of human nature, creation, and divine identity. Although we
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value historical explanations of women's oppressions, much of our recent work has focused on lateral accounts of
gender constructions that highlight the place of desire and the aesthetic, particularly in our accounts of sin, church, and
eschatology. With respect to our commitments to social change, we also tend to value the pragmatic over the
metaphysical, the functional over the transcendent, a trend displayed well in our deeply functionalist accounts of the
church as justice-seeking communities.
While these globalized dimensions of feminist theology's imaginative landscape are not inherently problematic, when
viewed from the perspective of the potentially harmful aspects of globalizationespecially the inherent imbalances of
power discussed aboveit appears more ambiguous, particularly with respect to its capacity to promote the flourishing
of women. In this regard, globalization confronts feminist theologians with challenges that complicate and potentially
threaten some of their most treasured plays of mind. Consider difference. While it is surely a good thing that feminist
theologians appreciate the plurality of women's religious experiences, the dynamics of globalization are creating a world
culture in which we often share more than we might expect, particularly when it comes to the common forms of
exploitation we experience and the similar struggles with bodies, aging, and so forth that we share. As we seek to
understand the way we are connected in a globalized economy, we need to pay attention to these new forms of
similarity.
When it comes to our celebration of difference, we would also do well to consider that the marketing strategies of
global capital often include an exuberant celebration of difference as something exotic that entices and excites
consumers to buy new products, a dynamic that we should most certainly view with suspicion. Similarly, nation-states
often exploit a rhetoric of differenceshoring up an identity of us against themto secure geographic boundaries and
to justify economic domination and military domination, and not to encourage democratic conversation and open up
hardened political interests. In all these ways, feminist theologians must navigate these choppy waters of layered
meanings as we consider how to positively value difference without succumbing to the pitfalls of easy commodification or
domination offered by aspects of globalization.
Consider also the themes of indeterminacy and order. For many women who suffer from the disorienting effects of
migratory displacement or the disorders of mind that follow events of overwhelming violence, a feminist theological
promotion of the chaotic nature of creation can often feel more damaging than liberating. What they need is a sense of
greater security and stability, not constant dislocation and fragmentation. The same holds true for a relational ontology, be
it in our view of the self or of the Trinity. While no one wants to dispute that our lives are profoundly interconnected, (p.
41) this connectivity can be experienced as a threat rather than a hope-filled promise when it is used to justify the
exploitation of labor and the extraction of resources. In such situations, autonomy and self-regulation might be the
greater prize.
Similarly, transgression might be attractive when applied to established boundaries surrounding women's gendered
identities, giving us permission to occupy social roles and perform public identities previously unimaginable, be it as a
Japanese corporate executive or a cross-dressed cab driver in Mexico City. When transgression is enacted by an
invading military force, however, its appeal for women is less apparent, particularly when we consider the violation of
borders that happens in rape or torture or when a community literally disintegrates under the pressures of an external,
occupying force.
As another example, consider the possibility that while hybridity may effectively describe the character of postcolonial
identity and hence encourage us to appreciate the fluidity of cultural boundaries, allowing women to be new creations,
when the logic of hybridity is used to mask the deleterious effects of the loss of language and culture of indigenous
communities around the world (and their distinctive accounts of gender performativity), its creative possibilities are harder
to see.
With respect to feminist theology's recent penchant for synchronic description, as seen in our views of God, church, and
eschatology, the sense of timelessness that it invokes can pacify our capacity for resistance when it encourages us to
avoid the hard work of historical analysis and social critique. In terms of our privileging of the aesthetic, as in our
adornment accounts of grace and salvation, it may well be that our accounts of desire concede too much to be
trivialized, market-driven construals of the erotic and that our construals of sexual desire owe more to the structure of
the commodity form (and hence, the commodification of women's bodies) than to sustaining accounts of passion and
compassion. And finally, our continued insistence on the strategically pragmatic grounding of theological claims holds a
continued risk that our work might too easily play into the aggressively utilitarian logic of the marketplace, a site where
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value is determined by profitability and not by any sense of intrinsic worth.
I raise these possibilities not because I think the imaginative proclivities of feminist theology are always (or even
necessarily) implicated in the more devastating dramas of our ever globalizing world. That would be too strong a claim. I
offer them, instead, as a cautionary notewe must not let our earnest desire to find evermore interesting and
provocative modes of analysis lead us to uncritically adopt potentially damaging forms of discourse. Remaining cognizant
of the pragmatic, eschatological goal of our reflectionthe future flourishing of womenwill help to anchor our varied
plays of mind in the real situations women experience. In so doing, we can keep our discursive strategies grounded in
concrete assessments of how these strategies impact the lives of women.
In the case of Christian feminist theology, our awareness of how the global imagination functions as well as the particular
plight of women in the present-day global economy may well lead us to shift the kind of doctrinal work we do. For
example, in the doctrine of God, it seems to me that more work needs to be done on the nature of divine desire and the
character of the erotic as it resides in the Trinitarian life of God, particularly because an engagement with the logic of
global imagination may well occur in terms of aesthetics (p. 42) and desire, two dimensions of human experience that
the market understands so well and manipulates so effectively. In terms of theological anthropology, it may be time to
offer accounts of the human person that emphasize not only the unstable, overdetermined character of our identity
constructs but also those features of the self that are stable, perduring, and perhaps even universal. With respect to sin,
we may need to explore, in careful and nuanced ways, the sins of our overzealous celebrations of difference,
indeterminacy, relationality, and hybridity, and the ways such celebrations can make us complicit with unjust economic
practices. On the topic of church, we need to reconsider our grounding assumptions about community to take into
account emergent modes of social relating made possible by the Internet and other new forms of global connectivity.
In addition to rethinking our formulation of doctrines, there are other directions that the reality of globalization may well
push Christian feminist theologians to take in the years ahead. For interfaith dialogue, it may be useful to take practices
rather than doctrines as a starting point for our conversations, asking women to discuss their theology by identifying the
religious significance of things such as their cooking practices, their childcare habits, or their clothing choices. We must
also continue to deepen our appreciation for the effects of violence on women's sense of self and then steer clear of
theological claims that uncritically reproduce traumatic disintegration. It is also crucial that we continue to value the place
of stories in our understanding of women's diverse lives; as a procedural strategy, narrative seems to travel well across
cultural divides. Telling stories allows us to hold together an appreciation for difference and indeterminacy (effective
storytelling requires an element of the unexpected) with a desire for coherence and temporal order (narratives, after all,
seem to require at least a modicum of both). Perhaps most importantly, we will have to reformulate our understanding of
what a political action is and what a social movement looks like if we want to keep up with ever-shifting social forms
presented by the global economy and its technologies. While the days of street marches might not be completely behind
us, the future demands new eyes to see new forms of social resistance and emancipatory engagement.
Let me also conclude by saying that feminist theologians, in all their variety, may well be better situated for these tasks
than most intellectuals and activists. Our organic ties to religious communities around the world ground us in the real life
experiences of women from all walks of life. Our access to ecclesial institutions with worldwide reach can, if understood
and used critically and constructively, allow us to have a great impact on how those institutions promote the flourishing of
women and all people. Because our work is so clearly focused on the shape of the imagination, we are practiced in
modes of analysis that can engage directly and creatively the cultural dimensions of globalization. The interdisciplinary
character of feminist theology helps enormously in this regardat our best, we are trained to be as comfortable
interpreting novels and CDs as we are digging through archives, reading quantitative studies, and sorting the central
claims of a dense philosophical treatise. And finally, because we speak about things divineabout the deepest
commitments that shape us and the most significant truths that claim uswe have our hands in a realm of discourse and
practice that, when mobilized for emancipatory ends, truly has the power to remake the world.
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Notes:
(1.) For broad definitions of feminism as an activist endeavor, see Grewal and Kaplan (1994); Donaldson and Pui-lan
(2002); and Farley (2006). Also see Weedon (1987); OGrady et al. (1998); Mitchem (2002); and McCann and Kim
(2003).
(2.) Thanks to the Durham gathering, I had the opportunity to share these reflections with many of this book's authors and
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was surprised by their relative lack of disagreement with respect to the habits I list. This does not imply, however, that
all feminists everywhere would agree with me. (How boring would that be!)
(3.) See Butler (1992). Although this book has now become a classic in feminist theory, its strongly constructivist position
has been the subject of much critique, particularly with respect to her underappreciation for the constitutive force the
body plays. See Armour and St. Ville (2006).
(4.) This does not imply, necessarily, a biologically reductionistic position. The social constructivism most widely
embraced by feminists today is of the weak constructivist variety. See Benhabib (1992, 1995) containing essays by Seyla
Benhabib, Judith Butler, Nancy Fraser, and Drucilla Cornell. For a theological discussion of these and related issues, see
Isherwood (2000).
(5.) There remains much to be done on the question of the category of religion in general and in its more particular use
in feminist thought. On the construction of religion, see Masuzawa (1993, 2005). On the relation between religion and
woman, see Jones (2008).
(6.) To describe how narrative and performative modes of analysis interact, let me use the example of a popular songit
could be almost any song on the radio that deals with men and women and the relationship between them. With respect
to a narrative analysis, I first ask, What does the world of the song look like, what sorts of pictures does it evoke, who are
the major actors, and what kinds of interactions are being described? In short, what story is the song telling, not only with
respect to its obvious tale-like quality (after all, many songs dont tell a straightforward, narrative story) but more
importantly with respect to the dramatic actions it implies? As a feminist, I am, of course, particularly interested in how it
constructs a picture of what a woman is and how she is positioned with respect to her male counterparts. What kinds of
power relations exist between them? How are bodies depicted? What sort of desires does the song assume exist
between men and women?
Having asked these questions, I then ask about the effects the song is trying to produce in its listeners. This means
analyzing its performative quality, not simply with respect to how the song is actually being performed in a music studio
or on the radio, but more importantly, with respect to the kind of gender relations the song itself is trying to get its
listeners to adopt (and hence, to perform). To determine this, I ask questions such as, when I enter the world of the
song, who do I identify with, how does it make me feel, what sort of social scripts do I take on as I listen, and what am I
likely to do as a result? For example, is the song trying to get me to buy beer, or to be a better wife and have a cleaner
house and look sexier, or is it, perhaps, designed to strengthen a sense of my power to resist mainstream conceptions of
femininity? As with any performance, the performative aims of a song are going to vary depending on its audience. It may
sound different to (and hence have a different performative effect on) a twenty-year-old man driving to his job at the cable
company than it would to a forty-six-year-old woman sitting in her university office writing an article on feminist theology.
As a theologian, I also listen to the song with an ear to its theological character. I analyze the relationship between the
narrative, performative world of the song and a given theological worldwith its own narratives and its varied
performative agendasand compare the imaginative landscapes of each, asking do they comport, or are they at odds, or
perhaps somewhere in between? To complicate matters even more, I evaluate the song normatively. I think about not
just my experience of it but about its broader social significance and the politics of its performative force, and I step
back and consider whether it contributes to the flourishing of women and whether its view of the world is theologically
tenable.
(7.) Christian feminist theology has a long history, it has been explicitly named as such only since the early seventies when
works like Mary Daly's Beyond God the Father (1973) first appeared on bookshelves around the world. Since that time,
numerous articles and books have continued to appear, some of them to great acclaim, others to more considered,
localized applause (and at times, harsh critique).
(8.) For Roman Catholic feminist perspectives, see LaCugna (1993) and Schussler Fiorenza (1996). Within the Reformed
tradition, see Pauw and Jones (2006). For an Anglican perspective, see Hampson (1996).
(9.) Some of the women writing theology out of these social locations are the womanist theologians Williams (1993);
Cannon (1995); Cummings (1995); McDowell (1996); Mitchem (1996); Gilkes (2001); Thomas (2004); Douglas (2005);
and Townes (2006). Mujerista theologians include Aquino (1993); Rodrigues (1994); Garcia (2001); Machado (2003);
and Isasi-Daz (2004). Asian women theologians include Park (1989); Chung (1990); Kinukawa (1994); and Pui-lan
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(2005). African women theologians include Dube (2000) and (2006) and Oduyoye (2003). Native American woman
theologians include Kidwell (2001).
(10.) Keller (2005) represents a process theological perspective, as does Suchocki (2003). For a postmodernist
perspective, see Armour (1999); Fulkerson (2001); and Townes (2006). For a liberal approach, see Davaney (2006).
For liberationist models, see Russell (1993); and Tamez (1993). For theology influenced by psychoanalysis, see Jantzen
(1999).
(11.) On the topic of sexual violence, see Boonprasat-Lewis and Fortune (1999). On mothering, see Bunge (1994). On
care, see DeMarinis (1993). On health related themes, see Townes (1998). On postcolonialism, see Pui-lan (2005); and
on empire, see Keller et al. (2004).
(12.) In this regard, our theologies (like all theologies) carry with them long histories of inequalities and profound social
harms. This is most acutely evident in North America where feminist theology done from a white, mainstream Protestant
perspective still receives the broadest hearing. While one would be hard-pressed to find feminists in this group who
openly sanction such privilege, white Protestant women continue to hold most of the high-status positions teaching
feminist theology, and the work they do continues to garner the most academic attention and acclaim, often to the
exclusion of other voices.
(13.) In the following overview of each doctrine, I make no claim to have represented all the issues feminist theologians
have wrestled with or even the most creative or the most convincing of our proposals. I am only trying to signal for
people who are not familiar with the inner workings of feminist discussion some of the most notable themes surfaced by
our work.
(14.) Here I am primarily interested in Protestant views of God-knowledge found in works ranging from John Calvin and
Jonathan Edwards to Karl Barth and Reinhold Niebuhr.
(15.) See Russell (1985); and Sch ssler Fiorenza (2001). For the intersection between the doctrine of creation,
anthropology, and Scripture, see Kvam et al. (1999).
(16.) For voices in this debate, see Kathryn Tanner's Pitt lecture, Incarnation, Cross, and Sacrifice: A Feminist-Inspired
Re-appraisal, delivered at Yale Divinity School on 15 October 2003 (Tanner 2004); and Tanner (2001); as well as Grant
(1989); and Njoroge and Askola (1998).
(17.) Also see Fulkerson's book, Places of Redemption. Tracy Swan Tuite also works on the theme of passing the
peace and touch in her 2007 dissertation, Yale University.
(18.) Although I refer frequently to the new character of global networks, many of these processes have been in play
for not only decades but centuries and thus are hardly new phenomena.
(19.) For an excellent discussion of the rise of global cities as centers of global capital, see Sassen (2001).
(20.) For different accounts of these patterns and their implications for identity, see Brettell and Hollifield (2000); Arnold
(2004); and Long and Oxfeld (2004).
(21.) This phenomenon is sometimes referred to, half tongue-in-cheek, as the Cocacolonization or McDonaldizing of
the world. Cf. Watson (1997).
(22.) A longer discussion of religion and globalization would no doubt focus on the processes by which the globalizing
dynamics I have just outlined historically participated in the construction of the category of religion in early modern
Europe.
Serene Jones
Serene Jones became the first woman president of Union Theological Seminary, New York, in 2008, where she is also the Roosevelt
Professor of Systematic Theology. She studied at Yale University and is an ordained minister in both the Christian Church (Disciples of
Christ) and the United Church of Christ. Prior to her current appointment, she was Titus Street Professor of Theology and Chair of
Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale Divinity School. Her books include Feminist Theory and Theology: Cartographies of
Grace (2000) and Calvin and the Rhetoric of Piety (1995), and she has co-edited Feminist and Womanist Essays in Reformed
Dogmatics (2006), Constructive Theology: A Contemporary Engagement with Classical Themes (2005), Liberating Eschatology:
Page 20 of 21
Essays in Honor of Letty Russell (1999), and Setting the Table: Women in Theological Conversation (1995).
Page 21 of 21

Feminist Theology and The Global Imagination

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Feminist Theology and the Global Imagination

Abstract and Keywords

Defining Feminist Theology

An activist, imaginative endeavor

Feminist theology's imaginative landscape: Eight plays of mind

A core feminist story about gender, religion, and globalization

That story, roughly told, goes something like this:

And that is where our work as feminist theologians begins.

Christian Feminist Theology

Diverse perspectives, common convictions

Major themes in Christian feminist theology: Reconceiving doctrines

unconscious exclusionary practices.

(p. 38) Feminist Teology and the Globalization of Imagination

Let me briefly list several of these plays of mind.

value is determined by profitability and not by any sense of intrinsic worth.

Sourcebook. New York: Continuum.

APPADURAI, ARJUN (2001). Globalization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

NY: Orbis Books.

Divide. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

University of New York Press.

(Ed.) (1995) . Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange. New York: Routledge.

Subjectivity, Religion, and Values. New York: P. Lang.

on Religion, Colonization, and Sexual Violence. Binghamton, NY: Haworth Pastoral.

Westminster John Knox.

Church and Community. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.

Atlanta: Scholars Press.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

HARVEY, DAVID (2000). Spaces of Hope. Berkeley: University of California Press.

(2004). La Lucha Continues: Mujerista Theology. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.

Knowing. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

(2005). God and Power: Counter-Apocalyptic Journeys. Minneapolis: Fortress.

Duke University Press.

on Genesis and Gender. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Academy Series. New York: Oxford University Press.

Cross-Cultural Theology. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Westminster John Knox.

University of Texas Press.

(1998). Introducing Redemption in Christian Feminism. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic.

(Ed.) (1985). Feminist Interpretation of the Bible. Philadelphia: Westminster.

Culture. New York: Oxford University Press.

edn. London: SCM.

SEN, AMARTYA (1999). Development as Freedom. New York: Knopf.

University of New York Press.

Ringe. Nashville, TN: Abingdon.

WARREN, KAREN (Ed.) (1994). Ecological Feminism. New York: Routledge.

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