Gender and Theology

Post-Christian Theology

Religious thinking that abandons traditional Christian thought

Reform Feminist Theology

Religious thinking that seeks to change traditional Christian thought

Davidic Messiah

A Messiah figure based on the kingly military images of the Hebrew scriptures (the Old Testament).

Servant King

An understanding of the Messiah that focuses on service rather than overlordship.

Sophia

Greek word for wisdom, personified in female form in the ancient world.

Thealogy

Studying God based around the goddess (Thea is Greek for goddess)

Daphne Hampson

'Feminism represents a revolution.

Mary Daly

- Thinks Christianity is so corrupted by patriarchy that women should completely abandon Christianity and create a female-affirming religion using elements from some religions that include a Goddess.
- Female oppression is the product of the cultural and historical impact of Christianity's unholy trinity of rape, genocide and war.

God is male then male is God

- The symbol of 'God the Father' has spawned the mechanisms for the oppression of women.
- The husband dominating his wife represents God himself.
- This fundamentally distorts the spirituality of nature, where the divine is not limited to maleness.
- Patriarchal religion perpetuates these sexual role delusions, calls them natural and bestows supernatural blessings on them.

Tertullian

Early Church father, saw women a 'the devil's gateway'.

Martin Luther

God created Adam lord of all and Eve spoilt this.

Jerome

Linked Mary Magdalene with another story in the gospels which suggested she was a prostitute.

Daly on 'God the Father'

- 'God the Father' is an inadequate symbol.
- The maleness of God should be removed: God should be castrated.
- Women need to use language in a new way because the old language is androcentric (male-centred).

Rape

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* The mentality of rape creates a pervasive culture of violence that is difficult to break out of.
* Women have forgotten the reality of the gross inequality (gynocide) and become divided against each other.

Judges 19:24

"Look, here is my virgin daughter, and his concubine. I will bring them out to you now, and you can use them and do to them whatever you wish. But as for this man, don't do such an outrageous thing."

Numbers 31:17-18

"Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man."

Genocide

* Daly believed there was a link between rape and genocide.
* Male sexual violence forms the basis of military interests.
* Rape objectifies all those who can be cast into the roles of victims of violence.
* Rape makes the raped person the objective victim of the rapist; the raped person stops being an individual and becomes part of the raped people.
* Rape is a primordial act of violation, but it is an act by one group against another, not just between two individuals.
* It is an expression of the thinking of the dominant group that is perpetrating the rape.
* Daly controversially traced this back to the Jewish idea of the chosen people of God.

War

- War is the inevitable outcome of the male dominate politics of the 19th and 20th Centuries.
- The horrors of war are associated with manly and adventurous virtue, with men doing courageous and or powerful acts of violence in order to defeat the enemy.
- Daly believed that language has been corrupted when the killing of born humans in war is 'just' and the killing of unborn humans in the womb is 'unjust'.
- War is defended by what Daly called 'phallic morality' and a 'phallic mentality'.
- Women need to seek liberation from moral hypocrisy.
- This requires radical deviation from patriarchal expectation.

Spirituality Through Nature

* Daly argued the maleness of God needs to be overturned.
* The fact that the religious experience of women is controlled by men in positions of religious authority has locked women into an Eden, which must be shattered.
* Traditional holy places are not suitable as centres of spirituality.

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Quintessence (highest spirit)

* Daly uses the word 'quintessence' to describe the being in which we live, love and create.
* It can be blocked by violence, pornography and poverty but can be rediscovered in nature.
* Daly said we should move away from the maleness of God and the fixed nature of sacred places towards quintessence, which is found in the whole universe in nature.
* Women should engage with their wild side and embrace paganism and eco-feminist witchcraft.

Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza

- Argues that Mary Daly's reading of the scriptures is narrow and selective.
- She does not deny the problematic narratives.
- However, she states that there is alternative approach to the texts and the sexism they contain.
- She argues that the Bible supports women's struggle against the patriarchy.
- Verses such as Jesus preventing the stoning of the adulterous woman is a direct challenge to patriarchal norms of the time.

Simon Chan's Criticisms of Mary Daly

- The idea of Trinity is one of multiple dynamic relationships, it is a much more complex idea than simply God is male.
- 'God the Father' is not an oppressive concept, it can be seen as God and creator of all.
- Male language can encompass both traditionally male and traditionally female qualities of God.
- "The term father, then, excludes not feminine qualities, but rather the idea of a distant impersonal deity."

Rosemary Radford Ruether

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* Christianity has become distorted by patriarchal traditions. As a consequence it is in need of reform.

Jesus' Challenge to Male Warrior-Messiah Expectation

- Reuther argues that Jesus did not fulfil the warrior image that was expected.
- The Messiah as predicted was not anticipated to have a human and divine nature.
- He was also expected to win and restore Israel, not die as self sacrifice for the sins of his people.
- Jesus rejects the nationalist-revenge mythology.
- Jesus envisions a time on earth when basic human needs are met and all people dwell in harmony with each other before God.
- His mission focused on the dispossessed not those in the ruling classes.

Matthew 21:12

"Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves."

Matthew 6:5

"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full."

John 19:11

"Jesus answered, "You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin."

Jesus as Servant King

- Although Christianity has a male symbol for the idea of Messiah, she claims that the Messiah should not contain the Davidic military Messiah idea.
- The Messiah should be represented a self-sacrificing redeeming, servant Messiah.
- This Messiah is connected to the female notion of wisdom.
- Christianity should not bundle the maleness of the historical Jesus and the maleness of the Davidic Messiah into the Christian concept of Messiah.
- To do so displaces the female from the concept of God.

Jesus as the Female Wisdom Principle

-Sophia is the Greek word for 'wisdom'.
-In ancient cultures it was personified as a goddess.
-Reuther claims that early Christians continued to refer to divine wisdom as 'Sophia'.
-Proverbs 9:1 'Wisdom has built her house; she has set up its seven pillars.'
-God is associated with wisdom and wisdom is female.
- For Reuther, divine wisdom is closely linked to Jesus Christ and wisdom is referred to in female terms.
-The Messiah is not simply the male part of God, but also the incarnation of wisdom which is female.

Simon Chan' Criticisms of Reuther

- Key parts of Christian services and central tenants of theology rely on male identity language i.e. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. To rewrite central theology and prayers to downplay 'maleness' would be wrong.
- You cannot rewrite the story of Christianity just to give more prominence to women. The story is central to shaping Christianity and the Christian worldview.
- God is never called mother in the Bible, despite feminine imagery, and this is unique as all other religious systems at this time had female deities alongside male.
- The worship of female deities or the recognition of the feminine aspect of the divine has not stopped oppression of women. Nor has the use of male language for God led to oppression.