Re-membering Tutu’s liberation theology: Toward gender justice from theo-ethical feminist perspectives

Abstract

While Desmond Tutu and other church leaders played a significant role in challenging racism and white supremacy in apartheid South Africa, many churches, including the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, have been slow to recognize and acknowledge that they remain bound to male supremacy inherent in its pervasive patriarchal culture. In 2020, a group of Anglican lay and clergy women called the church to take action and consider the insidious links between gendered belief systems inherent in its patriarchal culture and gender-based violence. Given the reality of broken promises made in synodical resolutions, the absence, ignoring, or silencing of women’s voices in leadership, as well as the pushback to the recent “call to action,” the time has come for the church to repent of its historic patriarchy. In 2002, Tutu acknowledged that “Feminists have forced us to confront the patriarchal orientation of much of the biblical texts.” Thus, it seems fitting to reconsider Tutu’s liberation theology through feminist lenses as a tool to liberate the church from the shackles of patriarchy and transform previously male-dominated ecclesial spaces.