Gender and Theology Flashcards
Define the term Post Christian Theology
Religious thinking that abandons traditional Christain thought
Define the term reform feminist theology
religious thinking that seeks to change traditional christian thought
Define the term servant king
an understandng of the messiah that focuses on service rather than overlordship
Define the term thealogy
Studying God based around the goddness
What are Mary Darys ideas on religion and womens oppression?
- Religion is used to reinforce the oppression of women
- Female oppression is a result of cultural and historical impact of Christianity’s rape, genocide and war
What has the idea of a male God lead to?
- The spawn/caused the mechanism for the oppression of women
- “God is men= men are God” concept
- Patriarchal religion perpetuates these sexual role delusions, calls them natural and bestows supernatural blessings on them
How does Daly critique Priests or fathers?
She critics them for being anti feminist. E.g. Tertullian saw women as “the devils gateway” responsible for the fall and the reason God needed Jesus to salvate us. Aquinas-women are misbegotten men
Augustine-women weren’t made in the image of God
What does Daly believe we should do in order to improve the problem of giving God a gender?
Gods maleness should be removed and they should be castrated: women need to use language in a new way because the old language is androcentric (male centred)- women need a new spirit
How does Daly critique Bonhoeffer?
he insists women should be subordinate to their husbands
How does Daly critique Pope Pius XII?
He suggests women’s true liberation does not come from formalistic equality with men but in the recognition of the vocation of a woman to become a mother.
How does Daly critique Situation ethics?
It is male made theory and part of the thinking of patriarchy’s dominating elite. It takes a personalist, individual approach to ethics, denying the communal dimension required for the liberation of women.
What does the term “rapism” mean according to Daly?
A culture of rape. A symbol of all violent oppression which builds and connects a society that encompasses e.g. nuclear arms race and racism
How is female power prevented according to Daly?
Soverign of sudo-society (leaders of society) use culture, religion, policitcs and themedia to erase female power and imprison them.
Complete the phrase “There is a connection between the _________ __ _____ and ____ ______ __ ___. For example, 100 Bengali women were raped by Pakistani men”
There is a connection between the mentality of rape and the phenomenon of war.
How does Moses show a hatred for women in the Bible?
Moses was mad the lives of all women were spared
“Kill every women who has slept with a man but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man”
Define the term “arm chair rapist”
those who enjoy stories of rape through pornography
Daly states that rape is the cultural manifestation of a sexual caste system. What is the “sexual cast system”.
The idea that we are socialised into a class system according to our sex with men being the dominating class and women being the victim class. This socialisation takes place from birth through processes such as gender regimes and gender specific expectations or even labels.
Daly states that thee is a deep link between rape and genocide. How does she support this?
Give a historical example she gives
- male sexual violence forms the basis of military interest
- A raped person stops being a individual and becomes part of a large group of raped people
- Rape is the act of one group against another- male against female and therefore an expression of thinking of the dominant group
She makes a link between the Nazis group thinking against Jews and the disabled people and the Catholic Church’s group thinking where there is a collective focus on sameness against those who are different
What is war an inevitable result of according to Daly?
Male dominated policies
How is language of violence covered up according to Daly?
With technical language e.g. collateral damage is another way of covering up the fact that the lives of innocent people are at risk
How is war defended according to Daly?
War is defended by male morality and mentality
What do women need to do to defend themselves against war defences?
Women need to seek liberation from this moral hypocrisy
this liberation requires women to be “radically deviant” - reject all moral standards because they have been created and used by men to subjugate women
What importance does Christianity have in the male dominated society we live in according to Daly?
- Christianity is a key concept in sustaining and shaping men’s created moral and social standards
- Christians incarnation is the “symbolic legitimation of the rape of all women and matter”
- Rape, genocide and war is impregnated in Christianity and changing the culture means leaving Christianity
What does Daly believe about the spirituality?
- The maleness of God needs to be overturned (abolished)
- Priests- who control the spiritual moments of life- have locked women into an Eden (place) which needs to be broken
- Traditional religious places (built and managed by men) aren’t suitable as centres of spirituality
- we should turn away from the maleness of God and sacred places to spirit of quintessence which is found in the whole universe in nature
