Empowering Memory and Movement: Thinking and Working across Borders

10. Beginnings: Articulating Feminist The*logy and Biblical Scholarship

10 Beginnings Articulating Feminist The*logy and Biblical Scholarship I am often asked after lectures, “With whom did you study feminist the*logy?”1 And my response usually is: when I was a student, feminist the*logy or studies in religion did not exist. That is why a new field of study needed to be invented. This question from students, however, does not just reveal how far we have come in the past thirty years; it also bespeaks historical forgetfulness. Such a forgetfulness can be dangerous if it assumes that the feminist struggle for wo/men’s the*logical authority is over and won. An e-mail I recently received from a student tells us otherwise: I am having a really hard time in school—not with the work or anything, just being a feminist every day, reminding people of basic stuff (things like “man” is not inclusive) and having people roll their eyes, or having professors refer to my critique as “violent” and “aggressive.” I come home exhausted and frustrated, and I often cry. Such an experience of alienation is fueled by both the allegedly valueneutral antifeminist rhetoric of liberal institutions and by the strident antifeminist rhetoric of the Christian Right. For instance, in her book entitled Ungodly Rage, Donna Steichen calls Catholic feminists “enemies of God, of life, 1. First published as “Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza: Feminist Biblical Scholar,” in Transforming the Faith of Our Fathers: Women Who Changed American Religion, edited by Anne Braude, 135–56. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. 165 of nature, of the normal” and concludes her antifeminist diatribe in a prophetic mode, threatening: In its ultimate manifestation, religious feminism is an anarchic madness. Most secular society has moved past it to different enthusiasms. . . . Even Gloria Steinem is talking more about the New Age “journey within” than about feminism these days. But in the Church, feminism is still at a fever peak. Catholic feminists are like Gadarene swine, plunging off a cliff into the sea. Eventually, like all religious revolutionaries, they will dash themselves to destruction against the rock of the Church.2 Steichen calls her attempts to sort out the different Catholic feminist groups and to track the major leaders of the movement “a task unworthy of the efforts involved” and likens it to “untangling a knot of vipers.” This is one way of writing the history of religious feminism. Another way of conceptualizing the history of feminist thelogy and religious studies is that of sketching the “family tree.” In the context of the European Society of Women in Theological Research (ESWTR), feminist scholars have attempted to do so by initiating a “history of feminist the*logy project” in several European countries. But to my knowledge such an initiative has been lacking in North America until now, although feminist the*logy in my view has its birthplace here. Thus, I am grateful to my colleague Professor Ann Braude, who has taken up my suggestion and initiated with this conference such a historiographical project. While we have several Right-wing accounts of the history of feminist the*logy, to my knowledge there has yet to be written a critical and comprehensive history of feminist movements in the fields of the*logy and religion. I hope this conference will not only begin such historiographical work but also celebrate the anniversary of two originary events of feminist the*logy and religious wo/men’s studies in 1972: the conference entitled “Women Doing Theology” at Grailville, and the inauguration of the “Women and Religion” section at the AAR.3 We also commemorate in this year the centenary of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s death. 2. Donna Steichen, Ungodly Rage: The Hidden Face of Catholic Feminism (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991), 398. For biblical studies, see the attempt of Cullen Murphy, The Word according to Eve: Women and the Bible in Ancient Times and Our Own (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998). 3. A similar section in the SBL, “Women in the Biblical World,” was introduced only in the early 1980s. 166 | Empowering Memory and Movement Feminist historians tell us that it is part and parcel of the power of patriarchy (or, as I would say, kyriarchy) to eradicate wo/men’s historical accomplishments, to trivialize our theoretical visions, or to co-opt our revolutionary work for “elite-malestream” ends so that every other generation not only has to reinvent the wheel but also becomes tempted to collaborate in...