Like a network of bus lanes leaves its marks on the map of Münster with its routes meeting and crossing each other, categories of social difference are imprinted in biographies, their contexts, and finally, in theology itself. Over the last decades, feminist theology and theological gender studies have contributed to the inclusion of gender as a category into theological reflection. However, they increasingly realize that questions of gender cannot capture experiences of discrimination as well as power structures completely. For doing so, the complex network of social differences in its multifaceted interconnectedness of social categories such as race, class, gender, (dis)ability, religion and many more needs to be considered.
The Centre for Theological Gender Studies of the Catholic-Theological Faculty at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster invites you to our attempt to broaden the horizon towards intersectionality. International experts of theological gender studies with different biographical backgrounds and from various theological disciplines focus on examples of intersections in this network. They discuss, how categories of social difference are intersectionally connected in their biography and influence their theology. In interactive formats based on these reflections, we want to work on the following questions: How can the claim of a gender-sensitive theology be fulfilled when intersectionality is taken into account? How can an intersectional perspective complement and enrich theological gender studies? In other words: For what and how should theology in general, but also theological gender studies in particular, adapt an intersectional approach?
Categories of social difference are imprinted in biographies, their contexts, and finally, in theology itself. At its international conference “Theology: Biographical – Contextual – Intersectional” at Academy Franz-Hitze-Haus in Münster on the 20th/21st of October 2022, the Centre for Theological Gender Studies, led by Prof. Judith Könemann and Prof. Marianne Heimbach-Steins, discussed the importance of biography, contextuality and intersectionality for theology with nearly fifty participants. To do so, the organizers of the conference asked the guiding questions: How can the claim of a gender-sensitive theology be fulfilled when intersectionality is taken into account? How can an intersectional perspective complement and enrich theological gender studies? In other words: For what and how should theology in general, but also theological gender studies in particular, adapt an intersectional approach?
Two ideas shaped the conference and structured the two days: the wish to listen to different perspectives from various cultural, national and other contexts and the collaborative and procedural elaboration of links between themes, analytical tools and fundamental questions.
The first day was reserved for listening to the different contributions by international experts: Dr. Jadranka Rebeka Anić and Prof. Tina Beattie worked out, how the history and present of the Croatian context and – in comparison to that – the experience of moving from Africa to England can shape one’s own as well as societal perspectives on questions of gender and theology. Prof. Dina El Omari and Dr. Ma. Maricel S. Ibita chose the interpretation of Quran and Bible as reference points for their reflections. While El Omari reflected on Islamic Feminism, Ibita outlined criteria for an exegesis that is societally engaged. Prof. Judith Gruber asked on a meta-level how one’s own stories and the story of Christianity can be told and how questions of power and privileges are significant for them. Dr. Ini Dorcas Dah described her own experiences between social engagement for young women in Burkina Faso and her commitment to gender equality in her theological research. Prof. Adriaan van Klinken showed how categories like sexuality and race can produce surprising constellations of inclusions and exclusions. The day ended with city tours to also become aware of the city of Münster as a context of the conference.
At the second day of the conference, the participants worked out shared topics and important aspects. To do so, they were guided by three observations to the conference made by Carolin Hohmann, Dr. Aurica Jax and Prof. Marie-Theres Wacker. Some topics and ideas were for example,
the experience that especially in personal biographical stories the political dimension of one’s own biography and theology becomes apparent;
the importance of the body as the place of processes of negations between categories of difference;
and the power of stories that – at the same time – stay highly individual and partially incommunicable and that can only be told as petite histoires.
The conference facilitated networking and communication – between different disciplines of theology as well as colleagues of various denominational and cultural backgrounds – and included interreligious questions. Moreover, the promotion of and networking between young scholars was an important focus. Next to experienced researchers, PhD-students could present their qualification projects at a poster presentation and the forum for young scholars gave opportunities for further networking.
The Centre for Theological Gender Studies will further pursue the insights of the conference. This is not least possible because Dr. Maricel Ibita as well as Dr. Ini Dorcas Dah will stay at the Centre for Theological Gender Studies and the Faculty for some time to do research and contribute with their research interests to different discussions. Moreover, a publication of the contributions to the conference is planned in the series “Münsterische Beiträge zur Theologie”.
Jadranka Rebeka Anić works at the Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar– Regional Centre Split, as a Scientific Advisor. She taught Religion and Gender as part of the MA Religious Studies program at the University of Sarajevo. As a visiting professor, she taught a course at the Department of Sociology, University of Zadar, at the Faculty of Theology Matija Vlačić Ilirik and the Catholic Faculty of Theology, University of Split. Her main fields of interest are: feministic theology, anti-gender movement and homelessness. She has published a number of papers and books including How to understand gender? The history of discussions and different understandings in the Church (2011).
Ini Dorcas Dah is a lay preacher of l’Eglise Protestante Evangélique du Burkina Faso. She is the founder and president of l’Association Evangélique Sowtaa (Association Evangélique pour la Joie et le Développement de la Femme, Burkina Faso). She is also a Professeur Associée (Visiteur) of l’Institut Pastoral Hébron (IPH), Bouaflé, Côte d’Ivoire and an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission and Culture (ACI), Akropong-Akuapem, Ghana from where she received a PhD. She has published Women Do More Work Than Men: Birifor Women as Change Agents in the Mission and Expansion of the Church in West Africa [Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana] (2017 and 2018), and articles on women in Christian mission, theology, human need and environment, and spirituality and hope in Africa. Her research interests are Christian history, Gospel and Culture, Gender Study, and Holistic Mission and Development.
Tina Beattie left her post as Professor of Catholic Studies at the University of Roehampton in 2020, to focus on independent research and writing. Her research interests include sacramental theology and art, psychoanalytic and gender theories, and women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights. Her book Theology After Postmodernity: Divining the Void – a Lacanian Reading of Thomas Aquinas (2013), addresses questions of desire, gender and embodiment. She is now working on a book focusing on language, gender and desire in relation to environmental theology. She has published two novels, The Good Priest (2019) and Between Two Rivers (2022).
Dina El Omari is professor of Interkulturelle Religionspädagogik (Intercultural Religious Pedagogy) at the Centre for Islamic Theology in Münster. In addition, since October of 2019, she is the head of the project “The Ambiguity of Islamic-Emancipatory Discourses in Past and Present” at the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. In May 2021 she finished her habilitation with her postdoctoral thesis Das koranische Menschenpaar in Schöpfung und Eschatologie – Versuch einer historisch-literaturwissenschaftlichen Kommentierung (The Quranic Human Couple in Creation and Eschatology – An Attempt at a Historical-Literary Commentary). It was published in Winter of 2021 by Herder Verlag. Her main research interests are: Islamic feminism, gender, interreligious and intercultural learning, feminist Quran exegesis, Quran and exegesis.
Judith Gruber is professor of Systematic Theology and director of the Centre for Liberation Theologies at KU Leuven, Belgium. She received her PhD in Systematic Theology from Salzburg University, Austria. From 2012-2017, she was assistant professor of Systematic Theology at Loyola University, New Orleans. Her research is situated at the intersection of theology and critical cultural studies, with a particular focus on Intercultural Theology and Postcolonial Theology. Relevant publications include, for example, Intercultural Theology. Exploring World Christianity after the Cultural Turn (2017) or her recent article, “White Innocence/White Supremacy. Exploring the Theo-political Intersections of Race and Salvation” (JRAT 2022 7/2, p. 515-538).
Marianne Heimbach-Steins is professor of Christian Social Sciences and Director of the Institute for Christian Social Sciences at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. Together with Prof. Dr. Judith Könemann, she is director of the Center for Theological Gender Studies. Her research focuses on the foundations of contextual Christian social ethics, political ethics, especially human rights ethics, the ethics of international migration, and social-ethical women’s and gender studies. In this context, she is currently leading the projects “Zukunftsfähige Altenpflege” (“Viable and Sustainable Care for the Elderly”), “Genderfragen im Horizont rechts-populistischer Anti-Gender-Diskurse” (“Gender Issues in the Horizon of Right-Wing Populist Anti-Gender Discourses”) and “Geschlecht, Anerkennung und Recht” (“Gender, Recognition and Law”), among others, at the Institute for Christian Social Sciences.
Maricel S. Ibita is associate professor at the Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines. Her 2015 dissertation at the KU Leuven, Micah 6:1–8: Rereading the Metaphors for YHWH, Israel and Non-Human Creation and her article “The Great Flood in Genesis 6–9: An Ecological Reading of the J and P Traditions” (BTB 50/2, 2020, p. 68-76), show her work on narrative, poetry and metaphor studies; feminist, liberation, social science and sustainability hermeneutics; and Jewish-Christian sources. As “Global Minds projects” promoter from 2018, with her twin sister, she will publish #ChooseToChallenge: COVID-19, Community Research and the Canaanite Woman, their presentation at the 10th Ecclesia of Women in Asia Conference on February 25, 2022 with the theme Toward Life-Giving Communities in a Time of Pandemic: Asian Feminist Theological Perspectives.
Judith Könemann is professor of Religionspädagogik, Bildungs- und Genderforschung (Religious Pedagogy, Education and Gender Studies) at the Institute for Religious Education and Pastoral Theology at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. Together with Prof. Dr. Marianne Heimbach-Steins, she is also director of the Center for Theological Gender Studies. Her research interests include the theoretical foundation of religious education, intersectionality and education with a special focus on the category of gender and educational justice, intercultural and interreligious education, and ethical learning. Recent publications on issues of gender and interreligious dialogue include, for example, Gender (Studies) in der Theologie. Begründungen und Perspektiven (Gender (Studies) in Theology. Foundations and Perspectives) (2021) together with Marianne Heimbach-Steins and Verena Suchhart-Kroll as well as Wandel als Thema religiöser Selbstdeutung. Perspektiven aus Judentum, Christentum und Islam (Change as a Topic of Religious Self-Interpretation. Perspectives from Judaism, Christianity and Islam) (2021) together with Michael Seewald.
Damaris Parsitau is senior lecturer of Religion and Gender Studies at Egerton University in Kenya and the current president of the African Association for the Study of Religion in Africa and the African Diaspora (AASR). She is also professor extraordinary at the Desmond Tutu Centre for Religion and Social Justice at the University of Western Cape and the University of South Africa (UNISA), Institute of Gender Studies (IGS) respectively. Damaris Parsitau has also been a research associate and visiting professor at Harvard’s Divinity School (HDS) at the “Women Studies in Religion Programme” (WSRP). Further, Damaris Parsitau is an Echidna Global Scholar alumna at the Brookings Institutions, Washington DC. She has also served as the director of the Institute of Women, Gender and Development Studies (IWGDS) at Egerton University for seven years. Damaris Parsitau has published over 70 articles and book chapters and other entries and is co-author of two forthcoming books. Besides her academic work, she is an advocate for social justice and gender equality, a community mobilizer, career educationalist, mentor and the founder of the “Let Maasai Girls Learn” Foundation in Kenya.
Adriaan van Klinken (PhD, Utrecht University, 2011) is professor of Religion and African Studies at the University of Leeds (UK), and extraordinary professor in the Desmond Tutu Centre for Religion and Social Justice at the University of the Western Cape (South Africa). His research focuses on religion, gender and sexuality in contemporary African contexts. His latest books are Kenyan, Christian, Queer: Religion, LGBT Activism, and Arts of Resistance in Africa (2019); with Ezra Chitando: Reimagining Christianity and Sexual Diversity in Africa (2021); and with Johanna Stiebert, Sebyala Brian, and Fredrick Hudson: Sacred Queer Stories: Ugandan LGBTQ+ Refugee Lives and the Bible (2021). Adriaan van Klinken also was co-producer of the documentary film Kenyan, Christian, Queer (2020).
