Feminist Theology and the New Imperialism

Teologi Keagamaan Kwok Pui-lan: Dari Hermeneutika Asia Menuju Keadilan Gender (Sebuah Peta Pemikiran Teologi Kontekstual Asia)

“…Pui-lan berpendapat bahwa sejarah seksualitas, ras dan kolonialisme saling terkait, sehingga menelusuri satu dengan yang lain tidak bisa mengabaikan yang lain, karena dapat menyebabkan relasi yang rumit. 37 Pui-lan menggarisbawahi bahwa perlunya membangkitkan kembali seksualitas dapat mengacaukan kontruksi biner dalam gender, kita bisa melihat politik identitas berdasarkan -gay‖ dan -lesbian‖ (relasi sesama jenis) melalui perspektif performativitas. 38 Yang ketiga adalah melakukan teologi kembali (redoing theology).…”

The Trouble with White Feminist Theologians? Decentring White Normativity in Feminist Theology

“…This essentialism is not only a problem for secular feminism, but also a problem for feminist theological thinking. As Cady Stanton and Mary Daly have demonstrated, such a reductionist analysis of oppression serves to afford white women a ‘victim status’ under patriarchy, while remaining ‘oblivious’ to their own ‘class and racial privileges’ (Pui-lan, 2007: 146). Schuller notes that such feminisms rely on ‘a single axis of power in which sexism is the basic, underlying, most fundamental social inequality.…”

“…Irrespective of whether the feminist positions articulated by Schuller’s white protagonists can be evidenced as theologically based, they share a particular ontological context which is deeply interwoven with practices of objectivism, colonialism and Christianity. Pui-Lan (2007) notes thatWorking out of a liberal paradigm, many Western feminist theologians subscribe to the Enlightenment ideals of the liberty and equality of human beings, without being aware that such values were espoused by the middle class during their ascendancy in Europe, and were not applied either to the lower classes, the minorities or the colonized. (p. 146)…”

“…I propose that both in Schuller’s history, and the current feminisms she frames this history within, assertions of Christian moral authority are in fact foundational to the social and political perspectives presented. Writing from a post-colonial perspective which troubles the hegemony of western empiricism in theology, feminist theologian Kwok Pui-Lan (2007) asserts that ‘we can point to the enormous influences of the Christian Right in conservative politics and in shaping the agenda for the nation’, and the ‘critical role’ feminist theologians have in responding to this (p. 152). This leads to an uncomfortable question: is it white feminism, as Schuller claims, which is problematic?…”