Book Chapter
The contributions in this volume originally appeared in Union Seminary Quarterly Review (USQR). This publication is among a handful of scholarly journals edited entirely by doctoral students. Although USQR has a Faculty Advisory Board of distinguished scholars representing many aspects of biblical and theological endeavor, the editorial policies, subject matter of each issue, and editing …
Article
BOOK REVIEW: Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing.By Rosemary Radford Ruether, HarperCollins, 310 pp., $22.00 The field of ecological ethics is fast becoming a morass of positions among which only specialists distinguish: creation spirituality, deep ecofeminism and the animal rights movement. Thus the title of Rosemary Radford Ruether’s latest volume is apt …
Article
I teach a survey course in contemporary theology that covers the 20th century. When I took a similar course as a divinity student at Yale in the late ’50s, it had considerable unity. We studied the great German theologians whose names began with “B” (seemingly a prerequisite for theological luminosity) — Barth, Bultmann, Brunner, Bonhoeffer …
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. . . In the beginning exists the Virgin Her word in Her world bears the breath of life, Her seed in the wind blows It seeks and it carries The blessing of precious women’s love. . . . Glory to Her for the joy in living and praise for Her power, Her tender …
Continue reading “An Evangelical Feminist Confronts the Goddess”
Article
Reflecting on one’s intellectual development prematurely may be a mistake. A relatively young scholar may easily confuse fragmentary and tentative ventures with significant and formative patterns of thought and action. Nevertheless, as I look back over a journey of approximately 25 years, since I was first catapulted into intense intellectual activity at the beginning of …
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Just as Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, first published in 1792, challenged the structures of 18th century society, so does contemporary feminist theology call into question the structures of traditional Christian thought and practice. Wollstonecraft’s conviction that the position of women in society should be improved led her finally to a …
Continue reading “Authority or Idolatry? Feminine Theology and the Church”
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The acceptance of women at West Point, Annapolis and the Air Force Academy has been hailed as a victory by many feminists, as well as by people who are concerned about the quality and quantity of career military personnel. If the maintenance of a strong military is a necessity, then why not recruit the best …
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Feminism may well be the most radical challenge ever to arise within the church. For while previous challenges pronounced judgment upon doctrines or practices by recourse to the original tradition, many feminists pronounce judgment upon the tradition itself. Many in the modern church find this radical posture institutionally and personally threatening. Psychological and sociological criteria …
Continue reading “Beyond the Feminist Critique: A Shaking of the Foundations”
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The two most important expressions of liberation theology to emerge from the American experience in the late 1960s are black theology and feminist theology. Unfortunately, an undeclared war is brewing between them. First white male-dominated seminaries across the country adjusted their self-absolutizing perspective slightly to find a few crumbs for black studies More recently they …
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The invitation to write about “how my mind has changed” is at once challenging and troubling. It challenges one to construct a narrative that can capture change that has not only private but also public significance. Yet a woman writer lacks narrative models for recording the public significance of her thought and work. This lack …
Book Chapter
A poetic longing for acknowledgment of the place of women in Jesus’ life as reported in the Gospels.
Book Chapter
The author first reviews the struggle of Protestant feminists with their own special problems, particularly with the androcentric conviction of “sola scriptura”, the fragmented diversity of various denominations that marginalize women even farther from each other, and the emphasis on the individual rather than the community. She then outlines some major feminist responses in the service of liberation.
Book Chapter
Proceeding from the thesis that there can be no neutral reading of a biblical text and that everyone reads subjectively, particularly with male-authored texts, Alice Bach explores the story of the three women in King David’s life – Abigail, Michal and Bathsheba – from a feminist viewpoint.
Book Chapter
The author addresses the gender ideology of biblical texts in the stories of Jephthah’s sacrifice of his daughter and David’s rejection of his wife Michal by deconstructing the “phallogocentric voice” of the narratives in order to reconstruct a feminist version.
Book Chapter
Relying mainly on scholarly conjecture, feminist scholars have attempted to probe ancient texts about the relationship between the status of women and the presence of goddesses in a given culture based on a model of variable verisimilitude in the texts.
Book Chapter
Arguing for the centrality of the image of God theme in contemporary feminist theology Ross traces the positive influences of two medieval theologians as seen in the work of Rosemarie Radford Ruether and Dorothee Soelle, and offers genderless language and imagery to express our intimacy with God and the world.
Book Chapter
As a feminist historian Reineke challenges the scholarly explanations of the witch hunts between 1450 and 1750 C.E., and documents her thesis that witch hunting was an expression of scapegoating for social control that relied heavily on inquisitorial religion.
Article
One week during our usual Thursday chapel hour at United Theological Seminary, the women’s caucus organized and led a well-constructed and skillfully enacted worship service for the seminary community. Most of the imagery, the visual symbols and the language expressed the spooking, sparking and spinning which Mary Daly in her recent book Gyn/Ecology proposes to …
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Reflections on another view of Luther Tracing one’s intellectual or theological ancestry is a worthwhile and honorable pastime. But there are hazards. Chief among them is that, as much as we may come to understand the world within which our historical forbears functioned, we must make all our judgments about them and about the past …
Continue reading “Cross Talk: A Feminist Appreciation of Luther’s Theology”
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Feminist scholars are divided over strategies for defining women and women’s experience. Radicals like Monique Wittig, who see the present systems as categorically exclusive, advocate inventing new ways of speaking and even new categories of experience. Liberals, on the other hand, aim to increase women’s power and expression by working within traditional contexts, rereading, redefining …
Continue reading “Digging in the Gardens of Feminist Theology”
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Feminist theologies are among the most promising of contemporary theological options. As these theologies often make clear, the ways of thinking that have led to a destruction of the earth and an exploitation of animals are often the very ways of thinking that have led to an exploitation of women. To overcome male-centeredness is also …
Continue reading “Ecofeminism, Reverence for Life, and Feminist Theological Ethics”
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One of the early peace groups to draw a connection between feminism and peace was the Garrisonian wing, of the New England Non-Resistance Society in the 1830s, including among its members such prominent early abolitionist-feminists as Maria Weston Chapman, Lucretia Mott and William Lloyd Garrison himself. The group was also responsible for arranging the New …
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Born and bred in a land of patriarchy, the Bible abounds in male imagery and language. For centuries interpreters have explored and exploited this male language to articulate theology; to shape the contours and content of the church, synagogue and academy; and to instinct human beings — female and male — in who they are, …
Continue reading “Feminist Hermeneutics and Biblical Studies”
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Ten years ago Rebecca Chopp described how women’s voices and feminist practices were transforming theological education and the church. Women, she said, were "doing saving work." Doing saving work signified something more than redressing gender injustices or adding women’s stories to the church’s story. It pointed to the distinctive practices that women were undertaking, practices …
Article
The women’s movement and feminist theology have frequently been castigated for their preoccupation with the concerns of white; middleclass North American women. In some cases, the criticism is voiced by adamant opponents who seek to discredit feminist efforts; in other cases, it comes from those sympathetic to women’s rights. Both kinds of critics argue that …
Continue reading “Feminist Theology in a Global Perspective”
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Western social movements have a tendency to "trifurcate" into three trends: liberal reformist, socialist and countercultural romanticist. This division was evident in the movements of the 1960s and it is not surprising to find similar trends in feminism. Liberal reformers are basically concerned to achieve greater democratic participation and access of all persons to the …
Continue reading “Goddesses and Witches: Liberation and Countercultural Feminism”
Book Chapter
Following the introduction of the various chapter contributors in this volume, the author sketches her theme of a search for nonhierarchical articulation of sexual differences in language in the furtherance of feminism, especially in scholarly publications.
Article
Twice I have experienced the immediate presence of God: at the age of 19, when I met Jesus on the cross, and last October 27, at about three in the afternoon. At that moment, I’m ashamed to admit, I was feeling an upsurge of lust in the presence of a young woman. As I was …
Article
On January 26, 1979, at 1:31 A.M., I gave birth to my first child, a daughter. My pregnancy had been a very healthy and happy one. The labor and delivery were nothing out of the ordinary. Everything went exactly as the doctors and the books had said it would. I had done nothing that millions …
Continue reading “Pregnancy and Childbirth: A Theological Event”
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"The Pope is fully justified in saying that he has no authority to change the tradition on his own initiative. The proper forum for a decision in a matter of this kind is a council………If Jesus acted in accord with the culture of his day, then we can ask whether faithfulness to him does not …
Continue reading “Refining the Question About Women’s Ordination”
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Christians are accustomed to thinking of Jesus Christ as the second Adam and the new Moses, and of John the Baptist as Elijah redivivus. Preachers and theologians are adept at tracing literary images: linking Old and New Testament figures whose lives reflect eternal patterns and renew the ancient message. Some still think in terms of …
Continue reading “Ruth and the New Abraham, Esther the New Moses”
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Sarah Coakley came to Harvard in 1993, hired as part of then-dean Ronald Thiemann’s plan to bring more religiously committed faculty to liar-yard Divinity School. (Jon Levenson, an Orthodox Jew, was hired at about the same time.) If Thiemann wanted someone who embodied the soul of Anglicanism — both its theological commitments and its style …
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Embracing Travail: Retrieving the Cross Today, by Cynthia S. W. Crysdale. Continuum, 208 pp. $24.95 "In midlife I found myself lost in a dark wood." This, the opening sentence of Dante’s Divine Comedy, marks out a journey many of us know well. The suffering we must endure and see others endure is a mystery at …
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Galatians 3:28 has been receiving a great deal of passing recognition, these days. It is indeed hardly possible to address the subject of liberation in the cause of any oppressed group without reciting, “There are no more distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, but all of you are one in …
Book
(ENTIRE BOOK) A selection of writings by a varied group of feminist scholars that reveals many of the central issues being addressed in feminist theology.
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Charles Moulton, who did his most creative work under the pseudonym of William Molton Marstan, will never be canonized as a saint of the church. Yet when the judgment of history is in, I suspect that Charles Moulton will be credited with having done more to bring about the emancipation of women than did that …
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The role of women in the church is as old as the Christian movement itself. In recent years, however, we have witnessed some new developments. Women are claiming new roles in congregational life. They are challenging some of the old patriarchal habits. And they are asking all Christians to expand their understanding of the human …
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Introduction One of the central themes of the Bible is equality. In biblical times, depending on the station in life a woman occupied, whether she was single or married, childless or widowed, her social significance varied considerably; and this is reflected in the use of the words dealt with. Gune, which can stand for mistress, …
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DAUGHTER: Mama, why are we brown, pink, and yellow, and our cousins are white, beige, and black? MOTHER: Well, you know the colored race is just like a flower garden, with every color flower represented. DAUGHTER: Mama, I’m walking to Canada and I’m taking you and a bunch of slaves with me. MOTHER: It wouldn’t be …
