Marcella Althaus-Reid

Marcella Maria Althaus-Reid (11 May 1952 – 20 February 2009) was an Argentine-Scottish Professor of Contextual Theology at New College, the University of Edinburgh. When appointed, she was the only female professor of theology at a Scottish university and the first female professor of theology at New College in its 160-year history. She was a speaker and author on liberation theology, feminist theology and queer theology. She studied with liberation theologians including Jose Miguez Bonino and Jose Severino Croatto. She graduated with a BA in Theology.

She completed her doctorate in 1993 at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, writing her doctoral thesis on the influence of Paul Ricoeur in the methodology of liberation theology. In 1994, she was appointed as a lecturer in Christian Ethics and Practical Theology and to direct a masters in theology and development at New College, University of Edinburgh. She was promoted to senior lecturer, reader, then in 2006, professor of Contextual Theology. in which she challenged feminists in her use of sexual and explicit language. She argued sex has been constructed by a patriarchal worldview which underpins many of the great atrocities of the world. Hence, the virginity of the Virgin Mary needs to be "indecented" as it hides the lives of many poor women who, she describes, as rarely being virgins.

She also speaks about an "indecent Christ," whereby a kenotic Christology speaks of God self-emptying and being embodied in Christ and human sexuality. She explains that "[Jesus] has been dressed theologically as a heterosexually oriented (celibate) man. Jesus with erased genitalia; Jesus minus erotic body." Instead, she speaks about the bi-sexuality of Christ as an inclusive understanding of the incarnation. She wants to argue for a larger Christology which recasts Jesus in postmodern sexualities, genders, and economic locations. This is a critique she had against Latin American liberation theology, which she understood as failing to address questions of gender and sexuality alongside the question of conquest and colonization of the Americas.

Works

Later life and death In the last years of her life, Althaus-Reid worked with the Argentine theologian Ivan Petrella to publicize liberation theology in the English-speaking world. She was also associate editor of the journal Studies in World Christianity and a member of the editorial board of the journal Concilium. She was Director of the International Association for Queer Theology, Director of the Queer Theology Project at the University of Edinburgh, and a member of the Metropolitan Community Church.

Althaus-Reid died on 20 February 2009 in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she had lived since 1986.