Asian feminist theology in The Future of Theology discourse

Feb 27, 2025

By Jean D’Cunha
At the International Congress on the Future of Theology convened in Rome in December 2024, Pope Francis, joined by numerous theologians, called for theology to reflect and ensure the transformative light and power of Christ and the Gospels.

It must be contextual, inclusive, ecumenical, interreligious, intercultural, transdisciplinary, political and address lived realities, theologians asserted.

Far from affirming and renewing life in its totality to liberate us from socio-economic, political, environmental and religious injustice and bondage, traditional Catholic theology does otherwise.

Shaped and chiseled by clericalism in its construct, methodology and practice, it is Western-centric, academic, and replete with dogma that engenders incontrovertible universal truths. It is dualistic, religio-centric, male-centered, top-down, exclusive, elitist, and status quoist.

In Asia, for instance, women survivors of enduring domestic violence are often spiritually counselled by male pastors — who understand little of marriage and women’s experience — to continue the marital relationship in the spirit of Christian forgiveness and preservation of a ‘sacramental’ marriage.

Rape survivors are often doubly victimized for inviting rape and silenced into preserving the pristine purity of family honor, or that of the institutional Church in cases of clerical sexual abuse (CSA). Further reprehensible, is the well-catalogued harassment by Church and congregational authorities of survivors who publicly challenge CSA.

Persons with different sexual orientations and gender identities are deemed “sinners” for transgressing heterosexuality and its normative association with marriage and procreation.

Indigenous women (and men) practicing syncretism, and those of other faiths are often believed to risk damnation as “non-believers”.

Catholic women are excluded from ordination, leadership and decision-making because they do not mirror the physical image and likeness of the male Christ.

Women want to encounter the living Gospel of Love, Justice and Equality in church and secular settings that liberates us, among other things, from the sole responsibility of unpaid care work, gender pay gaps, and the low value of paid work, and to be recognized as productive workers in our own right and on equal terms with men.

Women want freedom from all forms of violence in private and public spaces and autonomy over our bodies, sexualities and gender identities without judgment and discrimination; acknowledgment of our intellect and freedom to tread non-traditional educational and employment pathways; respect for our different Christian denominations, creeds, indigenous religious-cultural practices and robust support to nurture and sustain our ecosystems; recognition of our leadership capabilities and promotion of gender-equality in leadership and decision-making in the Church and society.

To do this, the Church must listen to women’s experiences in their fullness and diversity, especially those marginalized on the basis of age, religion, race/ethnicity, economic, nationality and migration status, health/well-being. This listening must embrace non-traditional theological articulations of women’s experiences such as poems, songs, stories, music, drama, dance, paintings, sculpture etc.

The Church must reflect on these diversely-expressed narratives and act to liberate women. Asian women want a theology that in its vision, construct, methodology, and practice has feminist sensibilities that guarantees gender equality and the full human rights of all Asian women, as articulated by them, in the Church and wider society.

Asian feminist theology — inspired by liberation theology, feminism, and a critique of Western feminist theology — has since the 1970s, largely been doing this, its variations notwithstanding.

Asian feminist theologians — academics, writers, activists — have, among other things, critiqued the “colonial” biblical idiom of Christ as “Lord” that reinforces servility to colonial authorities, and women’s servility to “lords” in all spheres. They contrast this with the Jesus of Asian women who accompanied marginalized women in their liberation and engaged with diverse religions, cultures, spiritualities to reaffirm life.

Highlighting Asia’s cultural and religious pluralism and notions of holism and interconnectedness of life, they envision a holistic and ecological God who is life-creating-and-sustaining, and present in all life forms, thus affirming a relationship between humans, other life-forms and God.

They assert the significance of community in Asian women’s theologies through which humanity reflects and fulfills the image of God. They highlight the interconnectedness of mind, soul and body in Asian spiritualities and the balance of male and female principles in God.

They recognize traditional healing practices led by women that empower, heal and affirm women in indigenous communities and recognize and celebrate women’s active expression of sexuality and eroticism in Asian cultures as life-giving rather than sinful.

Some 60 percent of the world’s women live in Asia and Asian women are 48.7 percent of the Asian population (based on data for 47 Asian countries). However, the voices of Asian feminist theologians are relatively marginal to mainstream Catholic theology and perhaps even to liberation and feminist theological enterprises.

Barring a handful of recognized names predominantly of Korean, Chinese (Hong Kong SAR), Filipino and Malaysian origin, and names and publications of a hundred-odd more writers, it was difficult to find a comprehensive record of the total number of Asian feminist theologians (even if just confined to academic theologians).

Again, at the 500-strong Future of Theology Congress, the number of Asian feminist theologians was reportedly abysmally low — in single digits.

According to Virginia Saldanha, an Indian woman theologian who was present, the few Asian women were invited because they belonged to organizations that are members of the International Network of Societies of Catholic Theology (INSeCT) that worked with the Dicastery of Education and Culture, the Congress’s key organizer, to stage the Congress.

A web of factors drives this restricted space and invisibility of Asian feminist theologians — clericalism, the need for heightened gender sensitivity even among liberation theologians, Western-centricism including in feminist theological circles, a lack of resources including finances, networks, mentorship to study, publish writings, to be invited to participate, speak at theological conferences, and shape the Future of Theology.

To enhance their visibility and impact, Asian feminist theologians must forge greater co-ordination and collaboration among themselves, work closely with a strong cohort of champion cardinals, bishops and priests nationally, regionally and globally and develop a robust base among daily church-going Catholic women and men.--ucanews.com