“Inspired” by Alice Walker’s eccentric endorsement of Obama yesterday (invoking her “inner goddess of the three directions”), I tried to explain a bit about the “womanist” theology Walker invented, and the related concept of “thealogy” (the feminine form of theology, for feminists/womanists/mujeristas who worship or at least “celebrate” goddesses). Believe it or not, this is what goes on at the divinity schools at some of America’s most prestigious universities, alongside the “black liberation theology” that inspired Jeremiah Wright and his mentors.

In the course of searching for an “in context” use of the feminist/womanist/mujerista locution, I stumbled across what just may be the most politically correct article I have ever read (and that’s saying something). I’ve certainly seen articles more difficult to understand than this one, but few that were so thoroughly “PC” at every point along the way. (This article is not exactly crystal clear, but believe me, I’ve seen worse jargon than this.) I’ll provide some excerpts in a follow-up post, but no extract does justice to the entire article.

I warn visitors to The Corner that you read the full text entirely at your own risk. The article is by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Krister Stendahl Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School. It will give you a sense of how politicized some prestigious divinity schools have become. This is the atmosphere that helps produce and support Jeremiah Wright and his theological mentor, James Cone.

To prepare you, however, I must first supply the definition of a word Fiorenza coined herself: “kyriarchal.” Kyriarchal means “emperor, lord, slave-master, father, elite male domination.” Fiorenza coined this term “to articulate the intersecting structures of domination: gender, race, class, and imperialism/colonialism.” Note also that, in contrast to my discussion yesterday of “theology/thealogy,” Fiorenza prefers to simply replace the offending male “o” in theology with an asterisk. So, the title of what just may be the most politically correct article I have ever read is: “Feminist Studies in Religion and “The*logy In-Between Nationalism and Globalization.”

The most interesting thing in this article is how Fiorenza gets caught in her own identity politics. Although she advocates feminist/womanist/mujerista the*logy, Fiorenza is uncomfortable labeling her own work, “white German feminist the*logy.” See how she avoids the need to do that at the very end of the piece.

You might think of political bias in academia as subtle slanting in a study of some historical or sociological question. But here the political bias “is” the article itself. The piece amounts to saying: “We feminist/womanist/mujerista the*logians need to say more in our the*logies about our hatred of America and the American right. Here are my political views, dressed up in jargon. Thanks for the Harvard professorship.” Again, for those with the stomach to read the entire article, I’ve provided a link. But I’ll follow up with a post containing some choice excerpts.