Feminist Theology

This article aims to analyze the rise of fundamentalism in Latin America in recent decades and reflect on how reclaiming the roots of the region’s liberation ecumenism can serve as a crucial tool in combating this phenomenon. First, it examines how religious fundamentalism has been employed as a strategy of neocolonialism in the region. Next, the article explores how Liberation Ecumenism—an alliance between Christian churches and social movements—played a vital role in resisting dictatorships across Latin America. Through concrete examples, it demonstrates how this approach facilitated both the articulation and mobilization of social and political forces to fight authoritarian regimes, promote social justice, and defend human rights. The article then highlights recent initiatives by the Abya Yala Articulation, a movement that unites popular groups such as Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement with ecumenical centers like the Martin Luther King Center in Cuba and the Center for Education, Training, and Research for Peasants in Argentina. The Abya Yala Articulation seeks to propose concrete and collective actions to confront fundamentalisms, deepen the theoretical understanding of this phenomenon, and consolidate a group focused on international political and ecumenical coordination. Based on these reflections, the article aims to stimulate debate on the significance of Liberation Ecumenism in combating fundamentalism in Latin America and how this approach can contribute to the construction of a more just and equitable society in the region.

The current study, titled “Bleed and Blood—An Indian Anathema,” gives an Indian perspective on the stigma faced by women in the feminist geography of India. It discusses menstrual activism, menstruation, and periods’ religious and cultural significance. The history of why and when menstruation became a stigma and why it is shunned in India is also discussed. It also focuses on the theory of shame and isolation and menstrual equity from a menstruation point of view. The research amalgamates within its fold a survey covering educated professionals, both women and men of their changed perspectives. The survey for men indicates that though they do not think of menstruation as a taboo but as a mere biological process, they still believe in some practices. The survey conducted for women includes 21 questions based on the three principles of stigma proposed by Erving Goffman, namely the interpersonal, sociocultural, and individual stigma. The survey gives a direction that though the women are coming out of their trauma and now talk more freely about menstruation, stereotypes and taboos related to menstruation are prevalent. It is observed that menstrual equity is gradually emerging among Indian women. The survey responses emphasize the need for social media to be more proactive in helping women fight against taboos and trauma.

I will examine a central doctrine of Christianity, incarnation, in the light of Catherine Keller’s theology of entanglement. I will argue that joining these two concepts together moves Christian theology beyond the idea of universal love. It grounds incarnation in the flesh and blood of all creation through the dunamis of which Jesus spoke which he said was the birthright of all. Dunamis draws us out towards others, while the notion of entanglement based in Paul’s idea of God being all in all, leads to a more personal enfleshed encounter with all that lives-human and nonhuman. Entanglement is the very ground of our being and the article will argue that by becoming more aware of this through touch and an open heart we can stop destroying our home and may even aid its renewed flourishing.

This article analyzes sociological underpinnings and implications of Luke’s parable of the widow and judge (Lk. 18.2-5) by reading it through the lens of norm theory. It uses the predicament of modern women politicians as norm violators within masculinized political spaces to shed light on the interaction between the widow and the judge. The judge, like male politicians interested in maintaining their privilege within normative structures, responds negatively to the widow’s display of agency. The widow, like today’s female politicians, is a “trendsetter,” a person who defies convention to spearhead new behavior. Her resistance to social sanctions models successful deviance and serves as an example to the parable’s audience of how to actively resist maladaptive social norms in order to shift society toward greater justice.

This article aims to analyze nineteenth and twentieth-century travel writing by a Muslim woman writer, Nur Begum, who embarked on a 3-month journey to perform Hajj (pilgrimage). We aim to unravel her deliberate choice of poetic form as travel writing, which we argue consciously manifests her resistance against the prevailing patriarchal norms set by the Muslim culture. The study draws on Bakhtin’s dialogic framework of the human “self” as an agent engaged in constant negotiation of meanings as he emphasizes the link between human struggle for voice and their activity and growth. Within this theoretical framework, we decipher how Nur Begum authors her “feminist self” in a struggle to articulate her voice against patriarchy that denies her individuality. Moreover, we use insights from Muslim feminist scholarship (e.g. post-patriarchal reading of Islam and feminist theology) to explain how selected verses from Nur Begum’s travel writing deconstruct the myths emerging from the patriarchal interpretation of Islam and social practices in Muslim societies.

The cultural changes of the twenty-first century invite us to rethink the notion of the human person in light of the concerns of contemporary societies. The criticism directed at the dual and patriarchal anthropological paradigm calls for a dialogue with other theological formulations that envision the human being through other theoretical and practical lenses. In this article, I will first describe the anthropological turn of the last two decades. I will then discuss this turn from the standpoint of some emerging anthropological categories suggested by feminist and postcolonial approaches. Finally, I will relate the categories under discussion to theological anthropology, delving into the notion of imago trinitatis as a key concept for contemporary understandings of the human person.