Body Theology
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Bleeding and Bold: A Womanist Theology of Reproductive Justice and Dangerous Epistemology
Introduction The Gospel narrative of the hemorrhaging woman (Mark 5:25-34) has long been interpreted as a story of individual healing and faith. Yet when read through a womanist theological lens, her twelve-year struggle with medical exploitation and her clandestine act of self-healing reveals significant insights for contemporary reproductive justice discourse. This woman’s embodied resistance—knowing in her body that she is healed (v. 29) yet fearing discovery—represents what I term covert bodily reclamation through embodied knowledge. Her touch becomes a form of “silent sass,” a dangerous act of knowledge production that challenges medical authority and patriarchal control over women’s reproductive capacity. For Black women in 19th Century America, reproductive discourse was…
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‘To belong, you need to be missed’: how the experience of being unseen acts as a barrier to belonging
‘To be included, you just need to be present. To belong, you need to be missed’ [1] Belonging is a fundamental human need[2]. Churches and other religious groups can nourish the need for belonging by providing community and a place where relationships can flourish[3] [4]. However, some marginalised groups face what Krysia Waldock and Precious Sango[5] describe as ‘barriers to belonging in church’[6]. Theologies can shape how we ‘do church’, and therefore what we may perceive as correct in church spaces. We will explore how people’s operant theology (what they do – their theology in practice) can differ significantly from the normative theology of their churches (the authoritative teachings, such…
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When the System Cuts Deep: Black Maternal Trauma and the Theology That Listens Back
“I kept saying ‘I’m in pain, I’m in pain,’ but I was completely dismissed and fobbed off – no one looked at me,” recalled Tinuke Awe, a Black mother and campaigner, describing her near-death experience during childbirth in a Guardian article that sparked national concern.[1] Hers is not an isolated story. Black women in the UK are nearly three times more likely to die during childbirth than their white counterparts.[2] Behind this statistic are not just numbers, but stories of pain being ignored, symptoms dismissed, and trauma normalised. While public discourse treats this disparity as a health crisis, it is also a theological one. This article argues that the intersection…
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Theory That Can Be Lived: In Conversation about (with) Lived Experience
Heather Walton’s recent Practical Theology Beyond the Empirical Turn presses practical theology to rethink what counts as theory.[1] Rather than treating theory as an abstract system or a critical tool applied from outside, she invites us to see it as something that condenses and circulates through shared stories, images, practices, and felt worlds. She argues that practical theology has overlooked the way that theory functions as “collective sentiment” and “shared narrative”.[2] Taking that provocation seriously, we place our research projects into conversation. One of us (Chris) works on liturgy and symbolic action. The other (Giorgio) studies LGBTQ+ Catholic identity. In both contexts, lived experience is treated not as illustrative material…
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Ten Commitments Of A Feminist Theologian
I was sitting opposite one of my PhD supervisors, having just attempted to dismiss the entire genre of feminist theology as not relevant to my project when my radicalisation began. I had grown up in a particular kind of evangelical church with a theology of complementarity that had impressed up on me that of course I was equal to my husband, but that my role was distinctly different from his. The kind of church where husbands were considered to be the leaders of their wives (and, of course, their children) and where only men could be elders of the church or preach in a service. Whilst I had started to…
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The Blessed Virgin, the Theotokos: The Bodily Autonomy of Women and a Post-Christian World
The rising cultural tide of a post-Christian world pushes against the shoreline of history. People once forced into the small inlets and coves eventually find themselves along the wide beaches of the peninsula. The wind carries their once silenced stories, and they crash loudly against the shore. Through strife and struggle, women have propitiated the Fates, having now been granted the gift of witness for their skill and wisdom no longer limited to the home. The maintenance of women’s domestication in Western countries stood the test of millennia, through limitations in career opportunity, education, political engagement, healthcare, and religious moralisation, women have been forced to experience a world that objectifies…
