When Feminist Theology Corrupts

This may be the 'summer of my discontent' with the progressive churches movement. Today, I'm going to write about being a young woman in seminary in an age of feminist theology:

Feminist theology is bankrupt if the women who rise to power and renown in the field end up becoming oppressive to their young women students out of fear of losing their bitterly-won status positions in the theological establishment. Call me third-wave, or whatever, but I’ve seen too many women administrators nailing down planks over that glass ceiling they broke through, rather than offering encouragement to a ‘daughter’ or a ‘sister.’ If anything, they privilege the young men in their tutelage—perhaps flattering themselves in denial of the advance of age and death, or merely enjoying their exercise of power over the young of the ‘adversarial’ gender.

I’ve heard classmates in three seminaries talk about similar oppressive, even hazing-like behavior from the faculty members who look most like them: women students/women faculty; black students/black faculty; Latino/a students/Latino/a faculty, and on, and on.

Does power change you?

Do the best revolutionaries make the worst statesmen?

Must it always be justified as ‘I’m doing this for your own good?’

And when this generation becomes the leaders, how do we prevent it in ourselves?

Are we doomed?

Call me a young disillusioned woman seminarian if you must. Although, I do see some hope in the theological gender wars. The two (and we only have two where I study) straight older white male faculty on my campus are my best listeners and encouragers and advisors. And I am grateful for this. In fact, as I look back over the past three years, it has been mainly this pattern, at the four seminaries where I've actually taken classes. And it's male faculty of a particular generation; those just a bit older are still rather cantankerous and I had to finally give up and say they were products of their times, or go batty. But yes, for those professors who have proven themselves to care about my future, even if they're not perfect--this is hope. This is progress in the world.