Summary GENDER AND THEOLOGY NOTES AND EXEMPLAR PARAGRAPH STRUCTURES

GENDER AND THEOLOGY
PATRIARCHY AND CHRISTIANITY
 Bible is male-centric and regards women as the weaker sex and
causer of problems (Bathsheba and David)
 God enforces a master-slave dynamic on humanity, further
subjugating women below men
 Daphne Hampson: “As women come into their own, theology will
take a different shape”
 Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” depicting the extremes of
religiously defined hierarchy
 The Rape of Tamar: It suggests a misdeed against a woman should
be dealt with by men, for the men. The woman remains passive in
her own violation.
MARY DALY (Radical post-Christian theologian)
 Radical lesbian feminist, and later secular feminist commentary on
the Church
 “Woman asking for equality in the Church would be comparable to a
black person demanding equality in the KKK”
 “If God is male, then the male is God”
 Reclaim archaic language, like Hag and Spinster
 Referencing Nietzschean thought, Daly believes to transvalue God
one must “castrate” him and access a more fundamental
understanding of him- Be-ing (God the verb, rather than the
authoritative noun) (God must die for Be-Ing to come through)
 Final goal is an Amazonian age future where women recognise their
superiority, away from the institution of Church
Daly’s works and the progression of her radicalism
 Church and Second Sex (1968): Reformist outlook on the Church’s
approach to women
 Beyond God the Father (1973): Find the true equality in theology
and share it with men, away from the Church. Makes the Fall
“positive and healing”. Women should seek to establish an anti-
church and look back into Old Religion. Reclaim old phrases like
“hag” and “spinster” that patriarchal Apollonian norms have forced
upon her.
 Gyn/Ecology (1978): Subvert Christianity with modern Wicca beliefs.
Ruined female traditions of the past. Women should seek self-
actualisation

, Criticisms of Daly’s work
 Disregarding history and “herstory” to attack patriarchal aspects
and then deliberately engaging with the parts that are useful to your
narrow theory is hypocrisy
 The crimes listed that are perpetuated by the “Male Association” are
neither Christian nor from distinctly patriarchal cultures
 Rape as an example only perpetuates that a woman needs
to make herself less weak, rather than highlighting she was
never weak in the first place
Daly’s Unholy Trinity
 Christianity exists to destroy women and encourage men
 Virgin Mary encourages the perception of women’s passivity,
referring to her as the Total Rape Victim
 Rape: Assumed as normal in the Bible. (Genesis 19) Women are
raped both literally and metaphorically.
 Genocide: Underpinned by masculine urge to rape. Church supports
war and crusades.
Numbers 31:17->Virgin women are the only ones not worth killing in a
War
 War: Male violent act with phallic mentality. Male decision-making.
 Only by destroying the patriarchy and discovering the Be-ing can
the woman liberate herself
Positive depiction of women in the Bible (challenging Daly’s view)
 Deborah (Book of Judges): “Deborah was just a woman, but when
war came, she took up the reins of leadership” This was recognised
moreover as her work as a judge or advisor to the people.
 Mary Magdalene (Synoptic Gospels): Witness to the crucifixion of
Jesus
 Lydia (Acts): Wealthy woman who followed Paul’s teachings
Scholarly challenge to Daly
 God is not simply male; he embodies three aspects of the Trinity
and that cannot be assumed to be all bad. For example, fatherly
compassion is not intrinsically wrong (Chan)
 Jesus himself challenges sexist norms (Fiorenza)
ROSEMARY RUETHER (Roman Catholic liberation theologian)
 Christianity and the RC Church especially has been distorted by
Patriarchal values and must be reformed (suggests the two are
independent of each other)
 Male theologians have contributed to these Patriarchal values in the
modern church