Perhaps two of the most important theological movements that exist outside of (or on the margins of) the dominant, Occidental theo-philosophical project are the radical feminist and liberation theological schools of thought. The importance and impact of liberation and feminist theologies can hardly be denied. On the surface, these two theological viewpoints appear to have entirely different foci. The spiritual concerns of women and the emancipation of biblical hermeneutical tools from “phallogocentric” language provide the impetus for the feminist theological project. Conversely, liberation theologies emphasize religious praxis, social justice and a reading of the biblical text infused with a consciousness of concrete political and economic realities; or to borrow a phrase from a title of a tome by Jose Miranda, liberation theologies are concerned with the development of a biblical “critique of the philosophy of oppression.”[1] Indeed, upon initial inspection feminist and liberation theologies have the appearance of being entirely different animals. Irrespective of appearances, however, feminist and liberation theologies share a central concern: the dynamic interaction between the concepts of liberation and salvation. To put it in clarified terms, feminist and liberation theologies hold a similar view of salvation that is centered on concrete socio-political praxis and a desire to “liberate” marginalized persons within the present social and economic spheres. To better understand the nature of this ideological “hinge” that bisects these two viewpoints it is necessary to look at the work of their main proponents.
Gustavo Gutierrez is perhaps one of the strongest proponents of the terrestrial element of the salvific action of Christ. For Gutierrez, the presence of the kingdom of God is revealed in the establishment of just economic and political structures and the renewal, or liberation of humankind from the cyclical trap of exploitation and oppression. Indeed, it is difficult to find a more clarified expression of the concept of “salvation as earthly liberation” than that which is presented in his famous/infamous text, A Theology of Liberation:
…salvation embraces all men and the whole man; the liberating action of Christ – made man in this history and not in a history marginal to the real life of man – is at the heart of the historical current of humanity; the struggle for a just society is in its own right very much a part of salvation history.[2]
Though feminist theologies avoids terminology that expresses the same androcentric focus as other theological schools of thought, there is a latent expression of the aforementioned interest in a materialist, or partial-materialist view of the salvific process. Though feminist theologians use terminology such as, “anti-dualistic” and “embodied” in their description of the process of salvation, the concepts of salvation presented in feminist theology are roughly synonymous with those in liberation theology. As Mary Grey asserts:
[t]he method of feminist theology is twofold: a critique (Mary Daly’s term is castration) of the patriarchal dualist categories of classical theology, and an alternative constructive movement built on anti-dualist, liberating, justice-making categories, which express the key notions of revelation in embodied terms, directly relating to the diverse experiences of women, as the poorest of the poor, and therefore the direct focus of the ministry of Jesus and the justice of the Kingdom of God.[3]
It should be readily apparent that liberation theology and feminist theology share a similar concern for the present historical context as it relates to the concept of salvation. Both of these schools of theological thought find historicity, and the establishment of a “just order” of primary importance.
Generally, consensus apropos the need for a terrestrial, “liberated” understanding of salvation can be attributed to a shared (communal) interest in the Marxist econo-political critique of capitalist modernity. This critique is centered on the ontic division between mind/soul/Geist and existential bodily presence at work within the Occidental modernist worldview and its protogenetic offshoot, Western Capitalism proper. For example, in his book Doing Theology in a Revolutionary Situation, Jose Miguez Bonino comments that “…the Marxist righting of the idealist inversion has allowed Christians to recover the biblical view of man,” and that the Christian “will, therefore, understand and fully join the Marxist protest against the capitalist demonic circle of work-commodity-salary.[4] In a similar manner, the feminist theologian Yayori Matsui locates the genesis of the societal “sin” of violence against women within capitalist cash-commodity nexus:
In the First World, competitive money-oriented economic systems, new technology, consumerism, and other inhuman social structures that result from a lifestyle of overdevelopment, all contribute to and converge in increasing violence against women at home, at the workplace, and in faraway places. On the other hand, in the Third World where three out of four human beings on the earth live, people suffer from debilitating poverty because of underdevelopment. Here in this part of the world women are victimized by men who are so poor, and frustrated because of it, that they tend to express their feelings in cruel ways.[5]
It should take little more than a cursory glance to recognize the shared Marxist/socialist analysis that permeates the perspectives of liberation and feminist theologies.
To conclude this essay, it is appropriate to discuss the effect(s) that the abovementioned “terrestrial/earthy” perspective relating to the salvific endeavor of Christ has with respect to both liberation and feminist theologies. Succinctly put, salvation is not relegated to a mystical, transcendent space outside human history. In recognition of the fact that “sin” is always the product of historic, econo-political structures, salvation proper consists of liberating oppressed/marginalized sectors of society through socio-economically conscious praxis. This is apparent when one reads some of the important texts from both perspectives. Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza makes this point in her essay, “For Women in Men’s World: A Critical Feminist Theology of Liberation.” For Fiorenza, “feminist theology does not begin with statements about God and revelation but with the experience of women struggling for liberation from patriarchal oppression.”[6] This view is also articulated by Pablo Richard in his book Apocalypse: A People’s Commentary on the Book of Revelation:
The central message of Revelation, what constitutes its main axis, is the eschatological reality, here and now, of the resurrection of Jesus. It is eschatology already realized in the resurrection of Jesus…Revelation is having a decisive influence especially in the so-called Third World (the poor countries and the poor within those countries) in the reconstruction of liberating theologies…Revelation is playing an important role in the rebuilding of civil society in general and of hope and spirituality in particular. The book of Revelation is helping to create a new historical and liberating language. And for all of these reasons Revelation is coming to be the preferred book of the Base Christian Communities and of all the ecclesial movements that hope to transform the present situation and reform the church, movements that are born among the poor, the oppressed, and the excluded (both men and women).[7]
Even the elements of traditional eschatology are turned and “placed upon their head” (or they have been made to stand up-right if one holds the principles of liberation and feminist theologies to be true). The “Kingdom of God” is not awaiting a divine signal in some transcendent future, and the disciples of Jesus need not exist in a state of anxious alienation, suspended between two worlds. According to the liberation and feminist theological frameworks, the Kingdom is present insomuch as the disciples of Jesus actively challenge the structures of injustice and work to change the global socio-economic order, liberating the poor and oppressed; liberating the marginal.
Sources Cited
Bonino, Jose Miguez Doing Theology in a Revolutionary Situation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975)
Fiorenza, Elizabeth Schüssler “For Women in Men’s World: A Critical Feminist Theology of Liberation,” in The Power of Naming: A Concilium Reader in Feminist Liberation Theology, Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (Editor) (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1996)
Grey, Mary “Feminist Theology: A Critical Theology of Liberation,” in The Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology, Christopher Rowland (Editor) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)
Gutierrez, Gustavo A Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1973)
Matsui, Yayori “Violence Against Women in Development, Militarism, and Culture,” in Feminist Theology from the Third World, Ursula King (Editor) (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1994)
Miranda, José Marx and the Bible: A Critique of the Philosophy of Oppression (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1974)
[1] José Miranda, Marx and the Bible: A Critique of the Philosophy of Oppression (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1974)
[2] Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1973), 168.
[3] Mary Grey, “Feminist Theology: A Critical Theology of Liberation,” in The Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology, Christopher Rowland (Editor) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 113.
[4] Jose Miguez Bonino, Doing Theology in a Revolutionary Situation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), 110-11.
[5] Yayori Matsui, “Violence Against Women in Development, Militarism, and Culture,” in Feminist Theology from the Third World, Ursula King (Editor) (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1994), 128.
[6] Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, “For Women in Men’s World: A Critical Feminist Theology of Liberation,” in The Power of Naming: A Concilium Reader in Feminist Liberation Theology, Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (Editor) (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1996), 7.
[7] Pablo Richard, Apocalypse: A People’s Commentary on the Book of Revelation (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1995), 170-73.
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