Marcella Althaus-Reid - Indecent Theology

The police cars arrived and the policemen started to criticise me for ( what I consider to be ) my right to dress without using underwear.

I am a sexy woman. What would you like me to do about it?

This is a lack of respect to morality said one of the policemen.

If you say so... Fine, I'll promise then never to leave my house again without my pants on.

( Estrada 1996: 19 )

[Ironic] Preach the Gospel!... How has the Gospel been preached, till now, I wonder? [Serious] As a missionary in Peru, I tell you that these ( Coya ) women were taught to pray to the saints but have not even been taught to dress themselves or behave in a moral way in the streets. They sit for a second and... Can you imagine? No underwear, the streets are their toilets.... [laughter].

( From a sermon heard in a radio programme, Radio Colonia, Uruguay, in the 1980s, referring to the fact that Coya women do not use underwear and perform their necessities by squatting in the streets without even lifting their long skirts. )

Should a woman keep her pants on in the streets or not? Shall she remove them, say, at the moment of going to church, for a more intimate reminder of her sexuality in relation to God? What difference does it make if that woman is a lemon vendor and sells you lemons in the streets without using underwear? Moreover, what difference would it make if she sits down to write theology without underwear? The Argentinian woman theologian and the lemon vendors may have some things in common and others not. In common, they have centuries of patriarchal oppression, in the Latin American mixture of clericalism, militarism and the authoritarianism of decency, that is, the sexual organisation of the public and private spaces of society. However, there may be differences too. The lemon vendor sitting in the street may be able to feel her sex; her musky smell may be confused with that of her basket of lemons, in a metaphor that brings together sexuality and economics. But the Argentinian theologian may be different. She may keep her underwear on at the moment of prayer, or whilst reflecting onsalvation; and maybe the smell of her sex doesn't get mixed with issues of theology and economy. Writing theology without underwear may be punishable by law, who knows. An act of gross indecency such as that of the prostitute woman described by the Mexican novelist Josefina Estrada seems to be, in the words of the policeman, an action against the moral order of the country. Yet, an Argentinian feminist theologian may want to do, precisely, that. Her task may be to deconstruct a moral order which is based on a heterosexual construction of reality, which organises not only categories of approved social and divine interactions but of economic ones too. The Argentinian theologian would like then to remove her underwear to write theology with feminist honesty, not forgetting what it is to be a woman when dealing with theological and political categories. I should call such a theologian, indecent, and her reflection, Indecent Theology. Indecent Theology is a theology which problematises and undresses the mythical layers of multiple oppression in Latin America, a theology which, finding its point of departure at the crossroads of Liberation Theology and Queer Thinking, will reflect on economic and theological oppression with passion and imprudence. An Indecent Theology will question the traditional Latin American field of decency and order as it permeates and supports the multiple ( ecclesiological, theological, political and amatory ) structures of life in my country, Argentina, and in my continent.