Poststructural Feminist Theology and Christian Education

Abstract

In church tradition, cultural misappropriation has often legitimized unjust hierarchy rather than to challenge it. Under the rubric of culturalism, Christian Education has served to justify the oppressive system and maintain status quo as well. A feminist theologian, Rebecca Chopp argues that the contemporary Western culture has intensified narcissistic individualism and self-referentiality and has supported the powerful, while forced the marginalized to be silent. Chopp insists that the role, nature, and mission of Christianity is to provide Word and words of emancipatory transformation. She advocates poststructural feminist theology and aims at renewal of the socio-symbolic order in society by criticizing assumptions underneath language, culture and politics. In this study, we will review the interview with an Asian-American couple and disclose the underlying assumptions and hegemony which have contributed to maintain the male domineering system. I suggest that Christian education for emancipatory transformation should encourage the oppressed women to reflect critically the existing order and to restore their own voice through constructive intervention facilitating “plurivociy” and “problem-posing” dialogue. Proclaimation of transformative Word can empower the marginalized people to revision the world alternatives to monotheistic patriarchal modernism.