Feminist Theology

            Feminist theology has had its primary development in the USA.  Much of Feminist Theological thought has been associated with the period after1968.  Feminist theology takes as its first agenda the criticism of the masculinist bias of Christian theology.  This bias has excluded women both from ordained ministry and from higher theological education throughout much of the church history.  Feminists therefore see Christian theology as having been done in exclusion of women’s experience.  The second agenda of feminist theology aims at the discovery of alternative historical traditions supportive of the personhood of woman and her inclusion in leadership roles in church and society.  Many feminist theologians have expressed discomfort with the ‘maleness’ of Jesus, since maleness is often used to justify oppression.  Colored women around the world doing Christology is called Femenist/Womanist Christology.

            There are diverse approaches to Christology among women doing Christology. “Women of color have sought to differentiate their theological thinking from that of white, middle-class feminists,” says Bohache.  Women’s movements since 1970s have argued that their voices too to be included in any theorizing. There was an increasing demand to include the voices and views of women from the Two –Third World.  The Third World is a cross-ridden universe of economic, political, and religio-cultural oppressions within which women are doubly or triply burdened.  For our purpose, we take the Asian context.  Asian context is very unique: it is the context of diversity, colonial past, poverty, multi-religiosity, caste and culture.  Christ is one among the many christs in Asia.  Therefore, Asian Women’s Christology emerges out of the creative tension between religious-cultural and Western imperialism.  Feminist Christology in the Asian context takes into accounts the patriarchal, racial, casteist, and economic oppression along with cruelty of sex tourism.  Thus it is a stand against every demeaning and oppressive structure that refuses to acknowledge the equal participation of men and women in all aspects of life and religiosity.  These women use an epistemology of the ‘broken body’ to understand the nature of God, the nature of humanity and the nature of Christ; their brokenness, pain and suffering cannot be extracted from their theological pursuits because it is such an integral part of their social location, which is the major element of their life experience. In short, liberation of all men and women from whatever binds them, both internally and externally is the focus and goal of Feminist Christology.