Salvation from Self-Improvement: A Feminist Theology

One of the most significant problems facing the doctrine of salvation is that it's been tied to a word foreign to its very nature: self-improvement. The dissertation articulates an idea of change that is inherent to the idea of salvation that resists and that fortifies us against the idea of improvement rooted in patriarchal commitments. It is an attempt to critically analyze the doctrine of salvation by asking the most pressing question facing it at this moment: is salvation good for women? It’s a constructive re-thinking of what the doctrine means in light of women’s bodies and the fundamental problem of improvement and self-improvement. Within 20th century protestant American contexts, the doctrine of salvation has often been structured in ways that equate self-improvement with salvation. Furthermore, the expectation for this salvific “work” plays out differently across different kinds of bodies, aligning itself with oppressive hierarchies. This kind of improvement is different from both the change initially experienced in salvation and improvements made as the believer enters into the communal reality of being a Christian. The idea of self-improvement as a salvific act presupposes an isolated self that will be cleaned up. This self becomes the white masculine. I argue in this project that the performance of redeemed masculinity (a saved man) is articulated by means of ideas of self-improvement and in turn ideas of self-improvement articulate a redeemed femininity (a saved woman) calibrated to masculinist longings for control and power. Evangelical theology articulates ideas of masculinity within a doctrine of salvation as the outworking of the effects of salvation, or being saved. That is, Christians demonstrate faithfulness by approximating, perpetuating and defending a particular vision of masculinity that depends upon self-improvement. This conflation of self-improvement with the work of salvation depends on the existing (and continuing) inadequacy of the believer. This refracts through existing hierarchies of oppression such that those who are oppressed require more improvement. Thus, the doctrine of salvation has become unrecognizably entangled with social mechanisms that validate and perpetuate cultural hierarchies of oppression.

As a theological quandary, the questions theologians have struggled over are threefold: 1. Who enacts self-improvement, God or the human, or some combination of both? 2. What does an improved Christian look like and who must see the performative embodiment of this improvement? 3. What defines the content that people should approximate in their improvement? The problem emerges at the place of the surface for women, in terms of the formation of a loss of optic control whereby men are positioned as the fundamental observer/approver of the faithful self. If regimes of improvement constitute agency (Foucault), and if such regimes have been seized by women, especially women of color for emancipatory possibilities, then what are we to make of the idea of improvement for doing political, social, economic, and theological work? My project explores the problems and possibilities of salvation and improvement in their theological and related registers. The dissertation ultimately pivots on the question: can the doctrine of salvation itself be saved from its entanglement with self-improvement or its patriarchal commitments?

The practical outworking of a doctrine of salvation enmeshed with self-improvement affects people differently. The way women are taught to imagine faithfulness forms them in obedience to a masculine gaze and masculinist forms of self-evaluation. That is, Christian obedience has been articulated from the site of men who determine the content of women’s obedience and position themselves as the evaluators of it. In this instantiation of masculine-determined obedience, women’s faithfulness is understood in reference to male desires. The dissertation suspects that not only do these practices of improvement get translated as the work of salvation (i.e., faithfulness), but that they are internalized into the subject’s own identity. Thus, women’s obedience is equated with a certain kind of gender performativity that is coded theologically. Further, because this obedience-as-improvement registers as a salvific operation, women not only willingly participate within it on occasion, but often perpetuate it amongst themselves (e.g., mothers teaching daughters). The entanglement of this kind of improvement with Christianity’s notions of salvation and the biblical exhortation to “work out of your salvation” (Phil. 2:12) severely complicates notions of agency for those participating within it. This proves especially problematic for feminist, queer and black thought.

When biology becomes theology in this way (faithfulness is determined by gender performance), it over-determines all humans into racially gendered categories that define faithfulness according to these categories. That is, faithfulness takes on the tone of improving oneself into one particular kind of man or woman, an ideal. Theologically, the question of the ideal human is often answered Christologically, interpreting Jesus Christ as Savior and ideal man. Rosemary Radford Ruether has analyzed the way sexism infiltrated Christology and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza extended this analysis to include how Christology used and legitimized other forms of oppression. How has this entanglement with an oppressive ideal affected women’s bodies, how they understand their faith and how they practice faithfulness? Further, how do Schüssler Fiorenza and Radford Ruether’s analyses of Christology and oppression play across other registers of subject identity (e.g., race, sex, orientation, etc.)?

Salvation from Self-Improvement: A Feminist Theology enters this conversation by giving unprecedented attention to the role of self-improvement within the doctrine of salvation. These representations also reveal the content of who should improve and how and establish who will be evaluating this improvement. It connects this alignment to women’s experience of their body. Ultimately, the dissertation contributes to the budding field of theology of bodies, utilizing feminist and womanist scholarship to develop ideas of faithfulness and identity not rooted in self-improvement.The purpose of this dissertation is to expose how self-improvement became entangled with Christian notions of salvation, such that faithfulness looks like self-improvement calibrated to masculine visions of the human. The dissertation looks toward the constructive turn for conceiving of a doctrine of salvation not entrenched in self-improvement, but it is also conscientious of “saving” the doctrine via the same problematic technology of improvement.

Description of Methodology and MaterialsThe dissertation is primarily a textual analysis with some elements of historical archival research. Largely following the methodology of systematic theology, this dissertation engages a variety of texts analyzing their theory, historical location, the author’s biography, and how the text engages or reflects its cultural setting. The dissertation pays special attention to the subject location of the theologians it engages as a performance of its methodological argument that patriarchy attempts to present certain texts as objective or universal truths. By situating theological texts within the author’s broader socio-political existence, the dissertation attempts to undermine this patriarchal tendency. Beyond this, the dissertation largely functions as a theory driven analysis of the cultural manifestation of patriarchy and offers explorations of its practical manifestations.

The materials used are all texts and include feminist, queer, theological, womanist, philosophical, and exegetical. Non-theological philosophy informs much of the theoretical analysis of patriarchy and how it functions culturally. These texts are incorporated into the standing theological framework and then analyzed for how these systems became incorporated within theology and theological doctrine.

Conclusions DrawnThe dissertation finds that patriarchy has infiltrated the Christian doctrine of salvation such that it requires self-improvement calibrated to patriarchal interests. It terms the product of this infiltration patriarchal soteriology. Patriarchy has accomplished this by conflating two things: conversion with approximation and Christ with the masculine ideal. When Christians confuse conversion with approximation, then both their freedom and theological orientation shift away from Christian values. While conversion signals the possibility of transformation and change, approximation (as described in this dissertation) indicates work toward change as a requirement. Approximation indicates lack that must be corrected and functions as a mechanism that communicates the work must always continue. This continuous work simultaneously reinforces the subject’s continued inadequacy. Approximation also indicates a goal to which Christians attempt to move toward. While this sounds reminiscent of the Christian value to be like Christ, approximation is predicated on inadequacy that must be corrected rather than the relational freedom proclaimed in Christianity. In this sense, approximation establishes a hierarchical system where Christians can be evaluated on the extent of their lack. Within the patriarchal system, this lack gets read through many registers including race, gender, ableism, intellectualism, etc. The dissertation narrows this analysis of patriarchy’s ordering of bodies to consider how this emerges in race and gender. The second conflation describes the content of what Christians are approximating under patriarchal soteriology.

By conflating Christ with the masculine ideal, patriarchy establishes a theological foundation for its arrangement of bodies and teaches Christians that confirmation to this system is an act of faithfulness. Christ as a masculine idea equates Christ’s masculine qualities with holiness. Thus, patriarchy depicts Christ as a young, white, strong, male. This is the shift of biology becoming theology and it informs how certain bodies should improve in order to become more holy. When the masculine ideal is actually what Christians are approximating, however, what is actually happening is the patriarchal ordering of bodies (e.g., women submit to men, men lead, whiteness rules, etc.). Both of these conflations provide a theological justification for patriarchy’s existence and perpetuation.

Against patriarchy’s infiltration into the Christian imagination, the dissertation conceives of three strategies theology can use: anti-patriarchal christology, fugitive theology, and interrelationality. Anti-patriarchal christology uses a lens informed by patriarchy as a system to analyze biblical texts. It operates on the assumption that God is invested in deconstructing systems of oppression (like patriarchy) and as such Christ demonstrates clear actions to this end. Fugitive theology invites reinterpretation, expansion, imagination into the work of theology in order to resist patriarchy’s ever-expanding colonial grasp. Lastly, interrelationality emphasizes the commonality between all creatures, thereby challenging the legitimacy of an ideal figure or the sovereign self.

To this end, Salvation from Self-Improvement: A Feminist Theology contributes to the emerging fields of theology of bodies, theology of entanglement and critical whiteness studies. It deconstructs Christianity’s entanglement with patriarchy and offers a constructive turn for how Christians can imagine a doctrine of salvation that does not reproduce patriarchal oppression.