Womanist Theology

I'd never heard of the term before listing to a "Beyond Belief" on Black Theology.

It was developed by author Alice Walker, and applies to all women, but against feminism, sees also race AND feminism as important issues for women. Interesting quote from her:

"A Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender. A Womanist desires healing and wholeness for entire communities, male and female. A Womanist is not heterosexist but loves men and women sexually and non-sexually. Appreciates and prefers women's culture, women's emotional flexibility (values tears as natural counterbalance of laughter), and women's strength. She loves food, the moon and roundness. She loves the spirit. Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female. Not a separatist, except periodically, for health. Traditionally universalist... Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself. Regardless."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Womanist

Here is another interesting quote from Toinette M. Eugene (in Feminist Theological Ethics: A Reader). Note that the womanist way of thinking is plurarist. Eugene is a Christian thinker, so draws upon inspiration from the idea of dreaming as encountering truth in myth, but the narratives she considers are also dreams - like those of Martin Luther King - which apply to the real world as well, and call for a changed society; she also clearly does not exclude non-Christians, because fundamentally, the important matters transcend labels, and we need to follow the dreams, rather than bicker over whether we are right.

I subscribe to the verse in Genesis that invites us all to mirror the prophetic lifestyle and serve as change agents in religion and society. I am ultimately one who is willing to walk and to work with a dream announced of old in the words of Genesis, and brought to bear in the poetry and prose of people of color the world over: "Behold, the Dreamer cometh" ( Gn. 37:19). I have a dream that womanists, mujeristas, and feminists can appropriate one another's work with integrity, and with true reciprocity. I do not believe that the dream needs to be deferred or that it need explode or dry up in the days to come.

I cherish the dream work that allows shamans and heroes and sisters of every race and class and culture to sit down with one another around the table of professionalism in the world of academe and around the table of solidarity with all the oppressed. I have a dream that the tables can overlap, that they must overlap--that the table of professionalism and the nourishment of academe must serve and become a table of solidarity and community for all those who are oppressed through lack of knowledge, or lack of empowerment in mind and in body.

In dealing honestly with the problem of difference and the dream of pluralist feminism, I trust that we can be together where the Holy Spirit, our Divine Wisdom, our Sancta Sophia is both Hostess and Guest. With this hope I advocate the vision and the perspective which encompasses our "coming to believe in the possibility of a variety of experiences, a variety of ways of understanding the world, a variety of frameworks of operation, without imposing consciously or unconsciously a notion of the norm."

Another from Hispanic writer Ada María Isasi-Díaz, again on the subject of difference, and how we need to be able to recognise difference, not just as a matter of respect, but engaging with people who are different:

To recognize difference not as a problem but as something good we have to be very intentional about how we relate to others. For difference to be positive we must allow the person who is different to be herself, and not require or demand that she be or act or present herself in a way that is intelligible to us. We need to enter into each other's world view as much as we can and help others open up to new perspectives. Unless we are willing to do this, the self we present to people who are different from us is a "pretend self." We will hide our real selves in order to protect ourselves from others' projections of us

Respectful engagement and interaction require honesty, a willingness to see ourselves for who we are instead of who we would like to be and try to project. It also requires that we recognize and embrace difference but not because we want to avoid guilt or accusations of being noninclusive or of being falsely inclusive. In other words, true engagement and interaction are not matters of being politically correct but of accepting that "self requires self-conscious interaction."

Engagement is a matter of realizing that those who are different

are mirrors in which you can see yourselves as no other mirror shows you. . . . It is not that we are the only faithful mirrors, but I think we are faithful mirrors. Not that we show you as you really are; we just show you as one of the people who you are. What we reveal to you is that you are many--something that may in itself be frightening to you. But the self we reveal to you is also one that you are not eager to know for reasons that one may conjecture.