No Sense of Entitlement

How might we keep alive the interests and concerns of protest theologies and the constructive contributions they make? Feminist, liberation, and postcolonial theologies offer guiding questions for this task: "What is the purpose of theology?" "Whose interests are being served?" "What might be the public effects of this theology?" This book attends to these questions through a collection of publications over the lifetime of one feminist theologian. Growing up in Australia as these new protest theologies were emerging, Thomson recalls the influences that went into forming her as the theologian she became. She specialized in hermeneutics, looking for stars and compasses that might guide her theology into these new territories, with a willingness to listen to the Christian tradition for its life-giving words, and a willingness to critique it for the ideologies it carried. This double hermeneutic can be seen throughout her work. The chapters in this book are divided thematically into five parts: Theology and Teaching, Public Theology, The Church, The Atonement, and Being Human. Her interests in feminist and liberation theologies inform each theme, so that she might pass on theology better than she received it.