III. Rethinking Feminist Theologies of Sin in Light of White Women's Racist Violence

In 1960, Valerie Saiving published a groundbreaking essay, “The Human Situation: a Feminine View,” in which she pointed to the failures of classical sin-talk to account for the ways that women sin. As an early work of feminist theology, the article pointed to the androcentrism of theology: classical notions of sin were rooted in the failures and temptations of men. It also set the stage for feminist treatment of sin going forward. For Saiving, it was theologically inaccurate to identify women's experience of sinfulness with pride and will-to-power. Instead, she argues, the “feminine forms of sin … are better suggested by such items as triviality, distractibility, and diffuseness … in short, underdevelopment or negation of the self.”