Introducing the Feminist Theology

Feminist Theology is a difficult topic to overview, since it encompasses everything that feminists have had to say about God. Given the broad nature of feminist theology, then, I was thoroughly impressed by Clifford's book. It is well organised and classroom friendly. Her chapters build up the overall picture of the subject. She gives biographical highlight sections of major feminists, as well as info boxes and stimulus questions. Not only is the book sumptuously presented, by the writing style is concise, and admirably puts the concepts into a broad context that includes historical and social factors. \\r\\n\\r\\nI was impressed by the way she would take key examples (such as Trible's commentary on the fall) and explore them at length. This has the effect of giving you some depth and 'meat' of illustrative aspects of feminist history and approaches, rather than just rapidly summarising a great number of things. \\r\\n\\r\\nHaving said that, one minor criticism would be the cursory attention paid to 'world views', such as Asian and African feminism. Usually, these sections would be little more than a paragraph, and seemed 'tacked on'. It is commendable that Clifford seeks to indicate the international breadth of feminism, but the result was the impression that these contributions were derivative. Nonetheless, I was really glad to have read this book, and there's no doubt that it serves as a brilliant starting point for a fuller investigation of feminist theology. This is…