gender and theology !!!

The golden thread

• Reuther describes this golden thread as the ‘prophetic-liberating tradition’. It includes: WOMEN

  1. Jesus’ treatment of marginalised people (including the poor and women)..

  2. Jesus’ moral teachings like the golden rule.

• Reuther’s golden thread argument depends on her claim that a plausible reading of Jesus’ actions is that they were aimed at liberating of women from the unjust social order

• The woman at the well.- Christian feminists interpret this story as showing Jesus’ willingness to challenge the discriminatory culture of the time

• The adulterous woman (John 8)

• bleeding women (unclean)- mark

• Jesus said to Martha (Luke 10) that she should not prepare food in the kitchen but join everyone else to listen to his sermon

• Galatians. Probably the most significant pro-liberation & feminist Bible verse is from St Paul:

  “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ”. Galatians 3:28.

counter

• unclean doesnt justify women liberation

• This story at most shows that Jesus was against capital punishment for adultery

• Jesus was arguably just saying that his teachings/sermon was more important than preparations in the kitchen

• The non-political reading of Jesus & the Bible

• should pay an unjust tax, Jesus said yes: ‘give unto Caesar what is Caesers’

• hese passages aren’t explicitly patriarchal or pro-oppression passages. They are only suggesting that Jesus is not concerned with political or social engagement.

Mulieris Dignitatum argument 1

• Motherhood is a woman’s telos; natural purpose

• women are ‘naturally disposed to motherhood’

• motherhood creates a ‘special openness’

• fulfilment and purpose of the female personality, especially that of compassion, comes from virginity and motherhood

• based on Natural law reasoning about telos

counter

• feminists point to anthropological study of different human civilisations, where it is found that there is a large degree of variation regarding gender roles between different cultures

• motherhood is just a cultural invention by men

• so men can be active in the world- overrepresentation in important roles of power in our society (e.g. politics, business, etc).

• women are made not born

• Simone de Beauvoir also rejects the idea that motherhood is a woman’s telos- radical feminist who was an existentialist like Sartre

• no objective purpose/telos because “existence precedes essence”

• people cling to fabricated notions of objective purpose like telos because they are afraid of the intensity of the freedom involved in having to create their own purpose

Mulieris Dignitatum argument

• There are important and valued women in Christian history/theology

• many female European saints and that Jesus coming to earth was only possible because of a woman

• claim is that Christianity can’t be sexist since there are women it holds in high regard

counter

• Simone de Beauvoir argues that the Christian valuing of Mary shows that it is only through being a man’s “docile servant that she will be also a blessed saint” in Christianity

• Mary Daly- Mary is portrayed as a passive empty ‘void waiting to be made by the male’

• ‘rape victim’

• Jesus’ mother Mary is indeed put on a pedestal by Christianity, but only to encourage women to become passive, submissive and obedient so that women would all the better become the sexual property of men.

• slave owner saying they like and respect the subservient obedient slaves

Mary Daly: The maleness of God

• God being male gave people the concept that power was a male thing

• invention of a patriarchal mindset trying to justify its having power

• “If God is male, then the male is God”

• Daly further argued that this association between masculinity and divinity had the function of making male supremacy seem like a fact- beyond challeneg

• Daly’s solution: “God” as a verb. Daly claimed the concept of God needed to be castrated by referring to God as a ‘she’

• God as ‘be-ing’ force in world rather than ‘a being’ transcendent

• God as a verb introduces the flexibility required for a person to see that the unjust state of being is not fixed but may be changed

Daly: the misogynistic teachings of the Bible and Church

• 1 Corinthians 14:34 “The women should keep silent in the churches

• 1 Timothy 2:12 “I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man

• Ephesians 5:22-33 ‘Wives, submit to your own husbands as you do the Lord

• Eve as the source of sin- oppress women by portraying them as the source of sin- internalised feelings of guilt and inferiority

• The unholy trinity of rape, genocide and war

• Deuteronomy 21 it states that after a victory in war, soldiers are free to take one of the defeated enemy’s women as a wife.

• “So kill all the male children. Kill also the women who have slept with a man. Spare the lives only of the young girls who have not slept with a man, and take them for yourselves.” (Numbers 31:17-18)

AO2 DALY

• Liberal christians & Symbolic view of the bible

• we should take a more symbolic view of the bible

• literal relevance for the time it was produced- human authors, and thereby patriarchy, had a role in writing the bible, not just God

• Christianity is redeemable, if it is reinterpreted

• re-write the bible with gender-neutral languae, for example

counter

• Daly would respond that while much fewer people take the bible literally, Christians are still influenced to view women as inferior by it

• Daphne Hampson agrees with Daly- they all “read the bible as scripture”- cannot just ignore it- subconscious level, the sexist paradigms and themes of the bible will affect them so long as they continue to read it

Sisterhood & The superiority of female spirituality

• Church was irredeemably patriarchal and sexist against women

• isterhood of Feminism can take its place and fulfil many of the traditional spiritual functions of religion without being patriarchal

• protestant women and catholic women and realising their unity as a ‘sexual caste’ in order to ‘live in the future that we are fighting for’.

• Women need a sacred space to escape from patriarchy in order to heal

• Daly argues that men need to reject the old sexist ways- feeding on the bodies and minds of women, sapping energy at the expense of female death’

• Women should therefore have power over men as society- Patriarchal oppression of women has prevented their growth

counter

• Some argue that Daly is advocating female supremacy, which is just as sexist as male supremacy

• Her advocation of separation between men and women is also seen as radical, impractical and too similar to segregationism

Rosemary Radford Reuther

• Jesus and the Bible can be interpreted in a feminist way and therefore Christianity has the potential to be compatible with feminism

• However currently it is sexist because it has undergone patriarchalization

• In Christianity, men and women are both equally created with the imagio dei, which should be a basis for equality.

• In ancient times and in the Bible, divine wisdom is mentioned in female terms. ‘Sophia

• Hebrew Bible God is called Yahweh which means ‘no name’. God is beyond gender

• early Christian sect Montanists had women leaders and prophets but they were violently persecuted into non-existence- Miriam- Deborah

• It is speculated that female prophets in Corinth- priscilla

• establishment of the Christian Church as the imperial religion of the Roman Empire was a ‘decisive step in the patriarchalization of Christology’

• psychological aspects to the patriarchalization. There is a tendency to associate men with the higher part of human nature

Reuther’s Christology

• Women can be saved by Christ but it requires a re-evaluation of the view of Christ

• Jesus was very different to the expected male warrior type of Messiah. Instead, Jesus was a servant King

• Ruether argues that Jesus is better understood as a self-sacrificing non-warrior Messiah, invoking female wisdom

• more gender-inclusive understanding of Jesus which could therefore be the basis for a redeemed Christianity

• ncorporates the female in the concept of God

counter

• Daly argues that a male figure like Jesus cannot provide genuine spiritual salvation to women under conditions of patriarchy:

• “exclusively masculine symbols for the ideal of ‘incarnation’ or for the ideal of the human search for fulfilment will not do.”

• “The idea of a unique male savior may be seen as one more legitimation of male superiority.”

• Daly is arguing that it is simply irrelevant whether Jesus could be seen as being gender-inclusive

eval

• f Jesus is properly understood as embodying female wisdom, as Reuther argued he did, then although he is technically male in appearance, nonetheless spiritually he is more inclusive

• Jesus was a gender inclusive figure which was corrupted by patriarchal reinterpretation. So Christianity can be reformed by this understanding of Jesus.