Christian Feminist Theology: A Constructive Interpretation

This introductory text constructs a Christian feminist theology, and lays out a view of the world indebted to both traditional Christian faith and recent feminist thought critical of that faith. It will be suitable for undergraduate college or university students, and presupposes no background in theology.

Professor Carmody moves through such established topics of Christian theology as revelation and ecclesiology, but from the perspective of contemporary dissatisfactions with many of the overtones that such arguments have carried for women. The allegiance held in the book is twofold: the author wishes to be a good citizen of both cities, the traditional Christian and the current feminist. The allegiance, she suggests, need not be divisive. Christian Feminist Theology offers a moderate, intermediate point of view, exposition, and set of conclusions.

Throughout the book, Professor Carmody weaves back and forth, developing a conversation stimulating for both partners. Christians, she suggests, need to reconsider their traditional categories for dealing with God, nature, the self, and human community, under the challenge of feminists who find such categories inadequate and even destructive. And feminists need to stay in touch with the perennial questions of being, sin, grace, sacramentality, and the like, which have found some truly profound answers in the history of Christian theological speculation.