c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Rosemary Radford Ruether is a feminist theologian teaching at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Ill.)

UNDATED _ There is no question that the women’s movement suffered an anti-feminist backlash during the 1980s and 1990s. Nor is there any doubt the backlash was mirrored in churches at the time.

Even so, feminist theology has continued to grow and diversify. And as women from a wide array of ethnic communities join the ranks of theologians, theological thought is expanding.

This growth reflects the expansion of women in ordained ministry and in theological education. Women now make up 30 to 60 percent of theological students, and most seminaries have women faculty in several fields. This increased presence of women in churches and seminaries has created a basis for feminist theological critique and revision of all the major fields of seminary education _ biblical studies, church history, theology and ethics, pastoral psychology and liturgics.

Creative feminist work in all these areas is growing so expansively that it is hardly possible to keep up with the work in any one field, let alone all of them.

It is worth examining one strand of this feminist theological cloth more closely. For me, the most interesting development in feminist theology is the growing ethnic diversity in the context of different communities of women.

Often this means giving new names to feminist theology to signal its meaning in distinct communities. African-American women have called their theological and ethical work”womanism.”Hispanic women in North America have chosen the term”mujerista,”a Spanish equivalent of the word”womanism.” Womanist theologians are expanding in numbers, and their published works are increasing. Jacquelyn Grant, author of”White Women’s Christ and Black Women’s Jesus,”has been a pioneer in womanist theology at the Interdenominational Theology Center in Atlanta. Delores Williams and Emilie Townes, both at Union Theological Seminary in New York, are among its leaders.

Karen Baker-Fletcher at Claremont School of Theology, Katie Cannon at Temple University and Linda Thomas at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary are among the expanding circle of this movement.

In”mujerista”theology, the leading figure is Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz at Drew Theological School in New Jersey. There is also a major growth of Hispanic feminist theology in Latin America. Ivone Gebara in Brazil has focused on the relationship of feminism and ecology, adopting the term”ecofeminism”for her theology. Elsa Tamez, dean at the Latin American Biblical Seminary in Costa Rica, is a New Testament scholar and has made major contributions to the integration of Christian and indigenous religious thought in theological reflection. Maria Pilar Aquino at the University of San Diego pursues theology and economics from a feminist liberation theology perspective. These four women are the best known figures in this movement.

Feminist theologians are also very active in Africa and Asia. Mercy Amba Oduyoye in Ghana is the leading figure for African women and is part of a growing”Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians.”In Asia women theologians have been doing feminist work for 20 years; the journal In God’s Image has been a major expression of Asian women’s theology.

Many Asian countries now have their own distinct groups of feminist theologians, including Korean Chung Hyun Kyung, who teaches at Union Seminary in New York; Mary John Mananzan in the Philippines; and, from India, Aruna Gnanadason, head of the women’s desk at the World Council of Churches.

Feminist theology in the 1990s is strong and growing. It is clearly global, and it is scarcely possible to speak of it without taking a global perspective.

DEA END RUETHER