Volume 10, Number 3 (2003)

Addressing the Silences
On Gender and Sexuality

In this issue of the Journal of Hispanic / Latino Theology, we continue to set before our readers the rich fare of the June 2002 ACHTUS Colloquium, where participants focused their attention and energies on the theme of “U.S. Latino/a Theologies and the Questions Raised for it by Postmodernity, Postcolonialism and Globalization.” In her essay, “‘One Is Not Born a Latina, One Becomes One’: The Construction of the Latina Feminist Theologian in Latino/a Theology,” Dr. Michelle González transposes Simone de Beauvoir’s well-known expression — “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” — into a theological key. She tackles the thorny question of essentialisrn in a critical examination of the construction of discourse within Latino/a theology. Focusing specifically on the terms “Latina,” “feminist,” and “theologian,” she brings an incisive hermeneutics of suspicion to bear on Latino/a theological discourse. The essays by Dr. James B. Nickoloff and Dr. Carmen Marie Nanko, developed collaboratively, stretch the boundaries of theological discourse to address different dimensions of the politics of exclusion — challenging exclusionary practices even within the craft of U.S. Hispanic theologies. In “Sexuality: A Queer Omission in US. Latino/a Theology,” Dr. Nickoloff takes on the fact that US. Latino/a theologians have thus far failed to engage in a “sustained examination of the consequences for theology of a serious consideration of sexuality or sex.” In her contribution to this issue of the Journal of Hispanic / Latino Theology, “Elbows on the Table: The Ethics of Doing Theology. Reflections from a US. Hispanic Perspective,” Dr. Nanko reconceives the horizons of popular culture and popular religion to set an emphatically postmodern table, one at which U.S. Hispanic theologians are called to “be open to inclusion, open to invitations to other tables, particularly those that stretch our comfort zones, and we must be hospitable to those we invite to our tables especially when it is most difficult and uncomfortable.”