Ada María Isasi-Díaz > Quotes

“Humility is not a matter of self-effacement and self-negation but of being open always to new ways of being responsible.”
― Ada María Isasi-Díaz, En la Lucha / In the Struggle: A Hispanic Women's Liberation Theology

“To name oneself is one of the most powerful acts any person can do.”
― Ada María Isasi-Díaz, En la Lucha / In the Struggle: A Hispanic Women's Liberation Theology

“As the years have gone by, I have accepted that for me to strive to live to the fullest by struggling against injustice is to draw nearer and nearer to the divine. Drawing closer to God and struggling for justice have become for me one and the same thing. Struggling for my liberation and the liberation of Hispanic women is a liberative praxis. This means that it is an activity both intentional and reflective; it is a communal praxis that feeds on the realization that Christ is among us when we strive the live the gospel message of justice and peace.

Following the example of grassroots Hispanic women, I do not think in terms of “spirituality.” But I know myself as a person with a deep relationship with the divine, a relationship that finds expression in walking picket lines more than in kneeling, in being in solidarity with the poor and the oppressed more than in fasting and mortifying the flesh, in striving to be passionately involved with others more than in being detached, in attempting to be faithful to who I am and what I believe God wants of me more than in following prescriptions for holiness that require me to negate myself.”
― Ada María Isasi-Díaz, Mujerista Theology: A Theology for the Twenty-First Century

“The history of Christianity shows that orthodox objections to syncretism have less to do with the purity of faith, and more with who has the right to determine what is to be considered normative and official.”
― Ada María Isasi-Díaz, En la Lucha / In the Struggle: A Hispanic Women's Liberation Theology

“once I lived daily among people who suffered injustice and came to understand how much injustice is an all-pervading system, I realized that only grassroots people who have nothing to gain from this present system can conceive of a different one.”
― Ada María Isasi-Díaz, Mujerista Theology: A Theology for the Twenty-First Century

“... diversity is not a matter of different expressions of the same truth, but rather points to differences that touch the very core of who we are and what we believe.”
― Ada María Isasi-Díaz, En la Lucha / In the Struggle: A Hispanic Women's Liberation Theology

“Those of us who belong to marginalized, oppressed groups have come to understand that what is called "objective" is simply the understanding of a given group of people who have the power to impose that understanding as normative in society.”
― Ada María Isasi-Díaz, En la Lucha / In the Struggle: A Hispanic Women's Liberation Theology