Theology as sociology can be applied in two senses. The first meaning considers the parallelism of theology and sociology in the semantic core of liberation. This means that feminist theology as the theology of liberation from oppression, class, patriarchy and discrimination is considered a type of critical sociology with a liberating mission, which seeks the liberation of society as well as its rejected part, i.e. women, through the lens of theology.
The second meaning refers to the critical approach of feminist theology regarding classical theology by criticizing its mechanism and emergence. Feminist theology in this critique points to the contextuality of classical theology and investigates the effect of the epistemological context and historical structure in the formation of singular issue. It indicates that how by distancing from contexts and backgrounds, the historical issue is forgotten, but the abstract issue still remains. Feminist theology seeks to prove that this process has occurred for many religious beliefs and teachings therefore it applies this outlook for the field of gender. Understanding a theology and criticizing it based on its context is regarded as a kind of turning point from theology to sociology
Reuther introduces her theology as a kind of sociology applying the second meaning. She aims to obtain the mechanisms of exclusion of women in theology by analyzing and extracting the mechanism of power construction in society. Unlike Mary Daly, a radical post-Christian theologian, Reuther considers the text and narrated Christian history to be authentic but subject to history and context. Pointing to the historical and social context in the emergence of Christian tradition and explaining their role in the formation of understanding and belief, Reuther states that although these foresaid issues have been effective in the construction of classical theology, they are not original and can be modified and reconstructed. Hence, to accomplish the reconstruction, she points to evidences of intact Christianity and tries to purify the divine will and the prophetic spirit of Christ from these deviations with emphasizing the distinction between “early Christianity" and "Christianity of the followers of Jesus"..