Settler Feminist Theology: The Potential for Postcoloniality

Abstract

Feminist theologians working on stolen land within colonial or settler contexts have a responsibility to engage with questions of their relationship to coloniality and their role in the decolonization of the theological and feminist epistemologies within which they operate. This article considers – with specific reference to the colonial context of Aotearoa New Zealand – the growth of interest in ‘settler’ theology alongside persistent critiques of white feminist theology’s failure to engage with questions of race and coloniality. Through engagement with Kwok Pui-lan’s description of postcolonial feminist theology, this work seeks to offer some suggestions for settler feminist theologians to develop a settler postcolonial feminist theology which seeks to address questions of post- and decolonization from the positionality of the inheritors, and perpetuators, of colonial structures.