Glossary

Question 1

Both/And

Answer 1

Rather than an either/or approach to theology, a both/and approach, described by Vivian May, encourages an embrace of nuance, interconnections, complicated relationships, fluidity, and even contradiction.

Question 2

Bracket

Answer 2

To set aside one’s own beliefs and assumptions in order to enter into the logics of other claims.

Question 3

Colonialism

Answer 3

When a group or nation seeks control of another people or nation. In most cases to exploit the land, resources, people, and her- itage.

Question 4

Difference

Answer 4

Socially constructed binaries that confer dominance or sub- ordination on group members (gender, race, social class, ability, sexual identity, age, religion, country of origin). In other words, difference is those identities that get assigned to us in such a way that they affect how others interact with us and how we interact with the world. Based on which identity is assigned to us, we are put in a place in the social hier- archy. That place is complicated by the way differences intersect.

Question 5

Feminism

Answer 5

bell hooks defines feminism as a movement to end sexist oppression.

Question 6

Gender:

Answer 6

The ways people perform socially constructed masculine or feminine behaviors/identities.

Question 7

Gender-First:

Answer 7

An analytical approach that gives priority to gender over other intersecting facets of identity, such as race or sexuality.

Question 8

Gender Identity:

Answer 8

An individual’s own sense of gender, which may or may not match the gender assigned at birth.

Question 9

Han:

Answer 9

A Korean term that is often translated as “unjust suffering.” Every- one suffers, but oppressive systems such as sexism and racism create “unjust suffering.” The pain experienced in han is often described as “piercing of the heart” and “deep woundedness in the heart.” Korean American theologians use the term “han” to describe the Asian American experience of racism, oppression, and marginalization.

Question 10

Hermeneutics of Indeterminacy:

Answer 10

An interpretive approach that fosters multiple and sometimes conflicting readings of a text.

Question 11

Hybridity:

Answer 11

Hybridity is about mixture, and, according to Robert Young, hybridity brings together and fuses but also maintains sepa- ration. Hybridity tries to create new spaces and places of discourse. Hybridity makes difference into sameness and sameness into difference, but in a way that makes the same no longer the same, the different no longer simply different.2

Question 12

Imperialism:

Answer 12

The political and economic dominance of one nation over another. Imperialism tries to create an empire by conquering another’s land and state. There is some similarity between imperialism and colo- nialism. Imperialism involves the practice of one dominating group over a distant land while colonialism is about establishing settlements on a distant land. Imperialism includes colonialism, but colonialism does not always include imperialism.

Question 13

Indecent Theology:

Answer 13

A form of liberation theology that includes the critical approaches of gender, queer, and postcolonial theories. It seeks to work toward liberating sexuality from heterosexual norms.

Question 14

Intercultural Theology:

Answer 14

A theology that pays attention to the identity of non-European Christianity in dialogue with Western forms. It uses insights from sociocultural, interfaith dialogue, and history to understand the interaction of people across ethnicities and nationalities and God’s presence in their lives.

Question 15

Intersectionality:

Answer 15

Coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, a tool for analysis and a problem-solving approach, biased toward justice, that holds multi- faceted identities and systems of oppression in mind as simultaneous and mutually shaping forces that situate people differently within the matrix of domination.

Question 16

Liberation Theology:

Answer 16

Liberation theology arose in the 1960s with a focus on the poor and the political liberation of oppressed people. The father of liberation theology is usually understood as Gustavo Gutiérrez of Peru, who understands poverty as a condition and emphasizes a “pref- erential option for the poor.”

Question 17

Matrix of Domination:

Answer 17

Coined by Patricia Hill Collins, the organiza- tion of power, the means by which intersecting oppressions are regulated through social institutions such as the family, government, education, and religion.
Minjung Theology: A theology that emerged in the 1970s in Korea due to the oppressed experiences of South Korean Christians. The word min- jung means “people,” and minjung theology is a theology that seeks to liberate. Most recently, minjung theology focuses on the reunification of North and South Korea.

Question 18

Mujerista Theology:

Answer 18

A US Latina theology that focuses on liberating Latina women from sexism, racism, and economic oppression. It is a the- ology that describes Latinas’ role in their struggle for liberation and free- dom and works to enable Latinas to gain economic, social, and political freedom.

Question 19

Mythical Norm:

Answer 19

The accumulation of dominant identities to which accrues social, political, and economic power. Audre Lorde identifies this norm in US culture as “white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, Christ- ian, and financially secure.”3

Question 20

Oppression:

Answer 20

Marilyn Frye traces the meaning of oppression to its root word, to press, to be caught between systematically related and interlock- ing barriers that constrain or prevent mobility.4 Suzanne Pharr explains that oppressions (sexism, racism, heterosexism, etc.) share a number of common elements: defined norms, institutional power, economic power, threats of violence, lack of prior claim, othering, invisibility, stereotyping, victim-blaming, horizontal hostility, isolation, assimila- tion, tokenism, and individual solutions.5

Question 21

Postcolonial Feminism:

Answer 21

Postcolonial feminism emerged in the 1980s as a critique of the universalization of Western feminism and the misrep- resentation of women in non-Western countries. Postcolonial feminism understands that racism, politics, socioeconomic context, and culture all have an effect on nonwhite women in the postcolonial world.

Question 22

Power:

Answer 22

Typically defined as “power-over,” the ability to coerce another’s behavior. Power also includes access to social, political, and economic resources. In systems of oppression, power accrues to those who most closely approximate the mythical norm—(in the United States) male, white, heterosexual, financially stable, young-middle adult, able-bodied, Christian. Social institutions (family, education, religion, media, govern- ment) reproduce hierarchy and ensure the maintenance of power in the hands of members of the dominant culture by normalizing the dominant culture so that hierarchical orderings based on gender, race, social class, and so forth appear natural and inevitable.

Question 23

Praxis:

Answer 23

An action-reflection model that engages participants in an ongo- ing loop of active participation in making social change and reflection/ theorizing based on that experience that leads to more effective action.

Question 24

Privilege:

Answer 24

Peggy McIntosh defines privilege as “an invisible package of unearned assets.” Privilege is those social goods we receive, not through work or merit, but through our membership in dominant groups. For example, white privilege means white people can go shopping alone and move about the store fairly well assured that they will not be followed by store detectives because of their race.

Question 25

Process Theology:

Answer 25

Process theology arose from process philosophy, which was developed by Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947). John Cobb, a noted process theologian, states that “process theology may refer to all forms of theology that emphasize event, occurrence, or becoming over against substance.”6

Question 26

Queer Theology:

Answer 26

Queer theology tries to erase and deconstruct boundaries on sexual and gender identity by reclaiming gender noncon- formity and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer sexuality as part of human history. Queer theology questions social and cultural norms regarding gender and sexuality, especially as they are assumed and applied within theology.

Question 27

Race:

Answer 27

A socially constructed category by which people perceive them- selves and are perceived by others as sharing distinctive biological and hereditary traits.

Question 28

Racism:

Answer 28

A system of oppression (as opposed to an individual attitude of bigotry) that confers differential social, economic, and political advan- tage based on perceptions of biological differences among so-called racial groups.

Question 29

Resistance:

Answer 29

The refusal to be complicit with oppression. People resist through consciousness-raising, nonviolent protest, noncooperation, interrupting oppressive behavior, activism, art, humor, music, survival, and other modes of challenge to dominant systems.

Question 30

Single-Axis Thinking:

Answer 30

Using only one axis of identity (gender or race or class) for analysis.
Slippages: Movements from intersectional thinking back to single-axis thinking.

Question 31

Social Justice:

Answer 31

A structuring of institutions and relationships so that peo- ple’s basic needs are met, people are treated with equity and fairness, dif- ferences are welcomed and valued, and economic, social, political, and religious equality is achieved.
Social Location: An individual’s place in relation to social, political, and economic power based on interlocking categories of identity such as gender, race, class, sexual identity, religion, nation of origin, age, and ability.

Question 32

Sexism:

Answer 32

The system of oppression (as opposed to individual attitudes of bigotry) that assigns people to one of two gender categories, ranks men/ maleness/masculinity over women/femaleness/femininity, and then con- fers social, political, and economic advantage on men.

Question 33

Systems of Oppression:

Answer 33

Mutually constitutive and interlocking arrangements of social, economic, and political power rooted in gender, race, social class, ability, age, nation of origin, sexual identity, and reli- gion.
Transgender: Gender identity/expression that crosses traditional expec- tations of the gender assigned at birth.

Question 34

Transnational Feminism:

Answer 34

Feminist theory and practice that recognizes the interconnecting impacts of colonialism, globalism, and capitalism on the lives of women, particularly women of color and other marginalized people around the world.

Question 35

Two-Thirds World:

Answer 35

In contrast to the First World, or developed world, Two-Thirds World recognizes that the majority of the world’s people still live in conditions of poverty, conflict, and colonial legacy.

Question 36

Womanism:

Answer 36

Coined by Alice Walker, theories and practices of libera- tion informed by black women’s experiences and thought.

Question 37

Xenophobia:

Answer 37

Fear of the stranger or an attitude of hostility toward peo- ple who are not natives in a particular situation, usually foreigners.