General editor's preface

Summary

This is the eighth book in the series New Studies in Christian Ethics. It seeks to analyse in detail the increasingly complex relationship of feminism to Christian ethics. There can be little doubt that such an analysis is much needed.

The complexity is caused in large measure by the development of different, and sometimes opposing, approaches within feminism. A decade ago it might have been possible to ignore differences amongst feminists – although even then this would probably have been a mistake. Today such differences will be obvious to many. They are differences that divide both secular and religious feminists. If those on the fringe of feminist debates within theology once tended to regard them monolithically, today and especially after the publication of Ann Loades' very helpful Feminist Theology: A Reader (SPCK, 1990), they have less excuse. Simplifications in this area are manifestly inappropriate.

The great merit of Susan Parsons' work is that it brings real philosophical clarity to this complex subject without over-simplifying it. Her main focus is upon women writers who identify themselves as feminist – some of them secular or humanist and others explicitly Christian. She argues that they can be analysed in terms of three broad paradigms. The first of these paradigms, which she terms ‘liberalism’, is the one most obviously derived from the Enlightenment.