And God Was Not a Man... A Look at Feminist Theology

The second half of the twentieth century witnessed the formation and emergence of new branches of theology (Christian, to some extent Jewish, and to a lesser degree Islamic). Liberation theology was one of these newly emerging theological branches in Christianity, which first took shape in the Catholic Church of Latin America and was concerned with the economically deprived and the struggle against the rich-poor divide. Another of these newly emerging theological branches is feminist theology, which was formed under the influence of liberation theology.

Feminist theology, as its name suggests, is a branch of feminism. Feminism can more or less be defined—whether as an intellectual activity or as a political and social movement—as the pursuit of justice for women and the effort to end all forms of sexism. Although feminism largely began to take shape from the beginning of the nineteenth century, feminist theology specifically emerged from 1970 onwards, following the second wave of feminism, as a distinct branch of theology within theology and religious studies departments in the West.

Some of the goals pursued by feminist theology include: efforts to improve the status of women in religious groups (the authorization of women to become bishops in the Anglican Church of Wales, recently approved, is the fruit of one such effort), a critical re-reading of the androcentric and masculine-centered image, thought, and language about God in traditional theology, and a feminist reading of religious texts and the rulings concerning women in religious texts.

For example, many feminist theologians believe that non-gendered or multi-gendered pronouns should be used for linguistic reference to God. For instance, instead of using the pronoun 'He' to refer to God in English, 'S/He' should be used, or God/ess should be used instead of God.۱ In the view of many feminists, de-discriminating language, especially theological language, is one of the most important ways to universalize gender equality and eradicate discriminatory mindsets in gender matters, because mind and language are tightly interconnected, and changing linguistic habits leads to intellectual transformations, and vice versa.

Feminist theology today has various branches or forms۲, one of the important and growing branches of which is feminist philosophy of religion. In the following, we will take a brief look at this important branch of feminist theology.

Philosophy of religion is a branch of philosophy that deals with the rational evaluation of religious beliefs, and feminist philosophy of religion seeks to introduce neglected elements such as gender, the body, and sexual orientation into the evaluation of religious beliefs. In the view of feminist theologians, religion, as well as the philosophy of religion, even to this day, has been full of gender bias, patriarchy, masculinity, and androcentrism.۳ In this short article, it is not possible to provide even a cursory list of the major discussions and issues generally raised in feminist philosophy of religion. Instead, we will cast a brief glance at just one of the most important topics discussed in feminist philosophy of religion: the critique of the common image of God.

According to feminist philosophers of religion, God in the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), although theoretically depicted as trans-gendered, is, in the text and core of these religions, a repressive man. The male God turns woman into an inferior other and provides the grounds for her repression. Accordingly, these philosophers see their work as a theoretical effort to feminize God, or to make God dual-gendered (mother God and father God), or to de-gender God. To achieve this goal, they revise some of the attributes ascribed to God in the Abrahamic religions. One of the most important divine attributes in these religions is omnipotence: إِنَّ اللَّـهَ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَيْءٍ قَدِيرٌ (Al-Baqarah: 20 and numerous other instances). Omnipotence here means having unconditional dominion over all, which has historically been considered a masculine attribute. God's omnipotence, on this basis, is formulated in such a way that God becomes a powerful heavenly man, and this is the root of gender discrimination and the promoter of patriarchy and androcentrism in religion (for the difference between patriarchy and androcentrism, see footnote 3).

Hence, feminist theology and process theology are in agreement in their critique of the image of God as omnipotent. Both process and feminist theologians believe that God, like humans, changes and evolves. According to this view, God is mutable, which fundamentally differs from the traditional image of God, which says that "that which does not change" is God. This idea that God is mutable has very important consequences for depicting the relationship between humans and God. In the traditional conception, God is omnipotent, dominant, and sovereign, and the relationship between God and humans is like that of master and slave, top-down. But in the feminist-process conception, the relationship between God and humans is dialogical, reciprocal, and side-by-side. In this conception, it is not only humans or the world in general that depend on God, but God also depends on humans and the world. This view revises the duality of the superior God-inferior human (especially the inferior woman) and speaks of the companionship of God and humans and their mutual interaction.۴

Alfred North Whitehead, the English mathematician, philosopher, and process theologian, expresses the interdependence of humans and God in this conception in a famous phrase: "It is as true to say that God is transcendent of the World, as that the World is transcendent of God. It is as true to say that God creates the World, as that the World creates God."۵

Through this approach, feminist philosophers and theologians have sought to bring the heavenly man and father down to earth and sit God face-to-face with humans, so that they can thereby dethrone the earthly man and father as well. This different conception opens the way for humanizing the image of God and, consequently, for de-discrimination and gender egalitarianism.

Among the feminist philosophers and theologians working to cultivate a woman-centered image of God, Luce Irigaray (b. 1930), the Belgian-French philosopher, linguist, psychoanalyst, and feminist theorist, is particularly noteworthy. Instead of trying to de-gender God, which in her view results in re-masculinizing God, Irigaray seeks to cultivate a feminine image of God, and the key concept for her in this endeavor is sensitizing God. She transforms God from a transcendent being depicted as also transcending human sensitivities, into a being that is transcendent in a sensitive manner. She calls this God "the sensible transcendental." In her famous book, An Ethics of Sexual Difference, she asks: "Why should we assume that God must always remain an unattainable transcendent, rather than having a realization—here and now—in and through the body?"۶

The sensitivity of such a God means that the body, as the center of sensitivity, becomes a central matter in theology, and even God's transcendence cannot be explained without corporeality. Centering the body in the depiction of the transcendent replaces being with becoming. God, who in the common conception is depicted as a transcendent, incorporeal being, is explained by "being" rather than "becoming," because change deals with matter and the body, and God is not portrayed as corporeal and therefore material. But in this conception, where God is corporeal and consequently sensitive, becoming and process become among God's primary attributes.

Making God corporeal and sensitive is to feminize God. If a male God leads to a God-man, a female God—insofar as she is sensitive, corporeal, and in the process of becoming—leads to a sensitive human being in the process of becoming.۷

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۱       - This problem, of course, does not exist in the Persian language—where there is no gendered pronoun and both men and women are referred to with "او" (u) and "تو" (to) and the like, and the word for God (خدا) can apply to both a masculine and feminine deity; however, in the Arabic language, this problem exists profoundly, and for instance, in the Quran and Islamic tradition, God is always referred to with the masculine pronoun "هو" (huwa) or "انتَ" (anta), or is referred to by the masculine name "الله" (Allah). On this basis, one can imagine—though it is a not very likely imagination—that with the spread of feminist Islamic theology, a day might come when a feminist edition of the Quran is presented, in which the masculine pronouns for referring to God and various groups of people are transformed into non-gendered or multi-gendered pronouns, and a gender-free word is used to refer to God's name. Nevertheless, in at least one verse of the Quran, when discussing Muslims, all references, except the last one, come with linguistic gender equality, although the masculine pronoun is always mentioned first: إِنَّ الْمُسْلِمِينَ وَالْمُسْلِمَاتِ وَالْمُؤْمِنِينَ وَالْمُؤْمِنَاتِ وَالْقَانِتِينَ وَالْقَانِتَاتِ وَالصَّادِقِينَ وَالصَّادِقَاتِ وَالصَّابِرِينَ وَالصَّابِرَاتِ وَالْخَاشِعِينَ وَالْخَاشِعَاتِ وَالْمُتَصَدِّقِينَ وَالْمُتَصَدِّقَاتِ وَالصَّائِمِينَ وَالصَّائِمَاتِ وَالْحَافِظِينَ فُرُوجَهُمْ وَالْحَافِظَاتِ وَالذَّاكِرِينَ اللَّـهَ كَثِيرًا وَالذَّاكِرَاتِ أَعَدَّ اللَّـهُ لَهُم مَّغْفِرَةً وَأَجْرًا عَظِيمًا (Al-Ahzab: 35). Regarding the occasion of revelation (the reason for the formation) of this verse, commentators mention a story to the effect that one of the Muslim women, named Asma, asked other women whether anything concerning women had been mentioned in the Quran. The answer was no. That woman went to Muhammad the Prophet and said: "O Messenger of God, is the female sex afflicted with loss and detriment?" The Prophet said, why? Asma replied: Because no virtue concerning them, like that for men, has been mentioned in Islam and the Quran. Then this verse was revealed. See: Naser Makarem Shirazi, Tafsir-e Nemuneh, vol. 17, p. 308. However, whatever the occasion of revelation for this verse may be, in the view of feminists, another verse of the Quran (the beating verse), which among other things commands men, under certain conditions, to beat their wives (An-Nisa: 34), is widely considered anti-woman. Although Muslim commentators today have made many efforts for a non-anti-woman reading of the beating verse, each of these efforts has faced criticisms, such that it can be claimed the problem of the beating verse remains unresolved in contemporary Islam.

۲  - Branches such as: intercultural feminist theology, feminist philosophy of religion, feminist theology of religion, post-traditional feminist theology,

     feminist biblical hermeneutics, and dogmatic feminist theology. For a detailed account of these branches, see the second part of this work:

Susan Frank Parsons, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002).

۳  - Patriarchy and androcentrism, though they overlap in some respects, are not identical. In patriarchy, the “male sex” is considered superior, such that no woman, so long as she has not changed her sex (and perhaps even after that), has access to that superiority. But in androcentrism, “masculine traits” are considered superior, such that if a woman, despite her sex, internalizes these “masculine traits” (type of dress, gestures, physical strength, dominance, specific language, etc.), she can gain access to that superiority. On this basis, as I will explain a little later, God in the Semitic religions is depicted as “masculine” (and not male). And wherever there is talk of a male God or God the Father, what is meant is a God with masculine and paternal attributes.

۴  - For a detailed feminist view of God and the transcendent, see the third and fourth parts of this entry:

Nancy Frankenberry, “Feminist Philosophy of Religion,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2011.

۵  -

Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (New York: The

Free Press, 1978), 348

۶ -

Luce Irigaray, An Ethics of Sexual Difference (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993), 148.

۷ - For an account of the story of the idea of God in feminist philosophy, see this article:

Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki, “The Idea of God in Feminist Philosophy,” Hypatia 9, no. 4 (Fall 1994): 57-68.

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And God Was Not a Man ...

A Look at Feminist Theology

Yaser Mirdamadi

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