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14 Movement Struggles, Wisdom Places, Dreaming Spaces First, I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to Professor Irmtraud Fischer for the invitation to the twentieth anniversary of the European Society of Women in Theological Research (ESWTR), and to express my special gratitude to her and to the president of the ESWTR, Adriana Valerio, together with their colleagues, for not only dreaming of, but also organizing this magnificent birthday celebration.1 Birthdays are milestones, opportunities not only for celebrating and remembering beginnings but also for critical reflection and taking a stand, for thinking ahead and moving forward in hope. Therefore, at this celebration I want to recall the struggles in which the ESWTR engaged, in order to name the Wisdom spaces of thought as the the*logical future spaces of the ekklēsia of wo/men in the open, cosmic house of Divine Wisdom. As I have done so often, I also begin today with the song attributed to Dom Helder Camara, which I first learned fifteen years ago here in Austria: When someone dreams alone, it is only a dream. When many dream together, this is the beginning, the beginning of a new reality. Dream our dream. 1. The following address was given on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the European Society of Women in Theological Research. First published as “Anfangswege, Weisheitsorte, Zukunfts(t)räume: Feministich-the*logische Überlegungen zum 20-jährigen Gründungsjubiläum der ESWTR,” in Theologie von Frauen für Frauen: Chancen und Probleme der Rückbindung feministischer Theologie an die Praxis, edited by Irmtraud Fischer, 32–53. Münster: Lit, 2007. I want to thank Rev. Dr. Linda Maloney for a basic translation. 223 The dream of which this song speaks is that of a world freed from kyriarchy and oppression, a dream that inspires all religions. Through the actions of sociopolitical-religious movements for liberation, this dream becomes again and again realized in the here and now. Feminism, in my understanding, is such a social and political movement and theory engaged on behalf of a world free from dehumanizing kyriarchy and inspired by the dream of a renewed and entirely different reality free from kyriarchal domination. Religious and Christian feminisms in turn are driven by the hope that such a world of wellbeing will become reality in the power of Divine Wisdom. Feminist religious studies and the*logy seek to spell out this dream theoretically by naming the reality of wo/men’s oppression, encouraging action for liberation and seeking to articulate again and again in new ways the vision of a world free from domination. Feminist the*logy and research place wo/men of all persuasions and colors as subjects at the center of our theoretical work. They understand themselves neither as contributions to research of woman2 nor as research on “woman”3 nor as academic gender/sex studies,4 nor do they limit themselves to the socalled woman question. Instead, they seek to imagine in feminist terms a social, religious, and ekklesial reality free from kyriarchy. They insist that both the struggles for survival of multiply exploited wo/men and the social-religious visions and dreams of the future of many different wo/men’s movements must remain at the center of the*logical attention and work. In short, feminist the*logies of all colors make critical contributions to a political feminist praxis, theoretical renaming, and the*logical vision for all those who are “underway with critical eyes.”5 They want to spell out anew the fundamental questions and visions for those who still—or once again—believe that feminism and all types of feminist the*logies are outdated or have long since 2. Margit Eckholt and Marianne Heimbach-Steins, eds., Im Aufbruch: Frauen erforschen die Zukunft der Theologie (Ostfildern: Schwabenverlag, 2003). 3. See especially the Vatican’s utterances, for example, the document of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on “The Cooperation of Man and Woman in Church and World” (2004). See Marianne Heimbach-Steins, “Ein Dokument der Defensive: Kirche und Theologie vor der Provokation durch die Genderdebatte,” Herder Korrespondenz 58, no. 9 (2004): 443–47. 4. Regina Ammicht Quinn, “Die Rezeption und Diskussion der Genus-Kategorie in der theologischen Wissenschaft,” in Genus: Zur Geschlechterdifferenz in den Kulturwissenschaften (ed. Hadumod Bussmann and Renate Hof; Stuttgart: Kröner, 1995), 60–113. 5. I have borrowed this expression from Regula Strobel, who in April 2003 announced a conference with me in Biehl under this title. Many thanks! 224...

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