Mike's musings

Indecent Theology: Marcella Althaus-Reid

Surely our faith should be honest - and how can it be if we deny part of what we are? A-R is a strong proponent of Queer Theory, and believes that we should reject the Grand Narrative that underpins much of our theology - the heterosexual culture that is integral to our theology, our church, our government and our economic systems. Of course, for A-R, an Argentinian, Liberation Theology is all around her. She has problems with it, however, for a number of reasons. She relates a story of being a university student and brought into a "poor women's theology group" so that a visiting bishop from Europe could wonder at how the poor people were being liberated: she feels that it became commercialised. Worse than that it is that, for her, Liberation Theology often overlooks - even denies - the experiences of the poor. Especially the sexually marginalised: transvestites, transexuals, homosexuals, bisexuals, and simply poor women. Poor women, who are routinely abused, and sometimes turn to prostitution just to feed their families. How, she asks, can a truly liberating theology condemn the lives and experiences of people - who are Christians - just because they don't fit the stereotype of what that _particular_ theology wants to overthrow? It can't: it's bankrupt if it tries to.

She looks for a theology for women which can be more liberating - more indecent. She doesn't find it in Mariology - certainly not in the worship of the BVM that she sees as overturning Christ in Latin America. For her, the Virgin Mary is a non-person, a non-sexual being, who cannot even be impregnated by the normal route. There is nothing sexual about the Mary she sees reverenced - at least not in the "normal" ("straight") theology of the mainstream. The Mary of the poor transvestites - a drag queen Mary - offers some possibility, as does a queer Jesus. She quite admits that there is no evidence in the biblical record to suggest that Jesus was gay - but on the other hand, apart from his circumcision, there is not even anything to suggest that he had a penis, or was sexual at all. We need to deconstruct the theology of the Father, and of the Son, which can be heterocentrist theology, and look to other options.

A quick quote:

"In economic terms, women need to subert political systems whose systems of decency subvert political systems whose definitions of decency contravene their pleasure, because women's pleaseure is not linked to centralisation, state property or assignments based on reproductive planning." (p. 169)

# posted by MikeCamel @ 8:03 pm