Indecent Theology

Context:
Dr. Marcella Altaus-Reid, born in 1952, grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She studied Liberation Theology during the political conflict in that part of South America in the 1970s as she earned a Bachelor of Theology degree at Instituto Superior Evangelico de Estudios Teologicos (ISEDET) seminary. She also worked in “deprived communities” in Latin America and Britain (4-5). She completed a Ph.D. at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland in 1994 where she continued focusing on Liberation Theology, Feminist Theology, and Queer Theology. Indecent Theology was her first book, published in 2000. At that time she was a Lecturer in Christian Ethics and Practical Theology at the University of Edinburgh.

Intended audience:
Altaus-Reid must have intended her audience to be fellow academics or graduate students who are extremely well-educated and well-read, not only in theology in general but in “Sexual Theory (Butler; Sedgwick; Garber), Postcolonial criticism (Fanon, Cabral, Said), Queer studies and theologies (Stuart; Goss; Weeks; Daly), Marxist studies (Laclau and Mouffe; Dussel), Continental Philosophy (Derrida; Deleuze and Guattari; Baudrillard) and Systematic Theology” (7). I have studied literary theory, some philosophy, and lots of theology for many years, and I still struggled to understand everything she was saying!

The main argument:
Altaus-Reid calls this “a book on Sexual Political Theology” and argues that we need to go beyond where the previous Liberation theologies and Feminist theologies had gone, to what she calls “Indecent Theology” (7). She defines Indecent Theology as “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” (2). She sees traditional norms of “decency and order” as propping up multiple structures of life in her country and continent. She names those structures as “ecclesiological, theological, political and amatory” (2). She says her purpose is not to completely demolish Liberation Theology but to apply the contextual hermeneutical circle of suspicion in-depth, stating that it needs to be a “continuing process of re-contextualisation, a permanent exercise of serious doubting in theology” (5). Therefore she sees her work as a continuation and disruption of Liberation Theology (5). She wants readers to understand that “sexual constructions” are all tied up in political and economic (and theological) agendas so in order to disrupt the hegemonization of theology, we must question what has been considered “sexual normative ideology” (7).

Rating?
I'm not sure what rating to give this on here. I certainly do not agree with her all the time. But this is an important book to read if you are interested in queer theology. So I'm going to rate it more on its importance in the field than on how much I personally liked it. And I'm knocking it down one star because it is so incredibly dense and full of jargon and references that are not usually explained very well, if at all.