Gender And Theology Flashcards
MARY DALY MAIN QUOTE
‘If God is male then male is God. The divine patriarch castrates women as long as he is allowed to live on in the human imagination’
MARY DALY VS GOD
3 HEADED MONSTER
- Men thought history sought to oppress women
- Religion/Christianity used as tool to enforce this oppression with one patriarch divine who combines sexism, racism and classism to create three headed monster
MARY DALY VS GOD
BEYOND RELIGION
- Women need to get beyond religion
- The biblical and popular image of God (patriarch) as Heavenly Father who rewards or punishes has spawned the oppression of women
MARY DALY
EARLY THEOLOGIANS ON WOMEN
TERTILLIAN
Saw women as ‘devil’s gateway’ - responsible for fall and reason why Jesus had to die for everyone
MARY DALY
EARLY THEOLOGIANS ON WOMEN
AUGUSTINE
Suggests women were not made in the image of God
MARY DALY
EAELY THEOLOGIANS ON WOMEN
AQUINAS
Saw women as ill-conceived males
MARY DALY
EARLY THEOLOGIANS ON WOMEN
MARTIN LUTHER
Suggests Adam was Lord of all and Eve spoiled this
MARY DALY
GOD SHOULD BE CASTRATED
LANGUAGE
-Need to remove the old and andocentric (male centred) language - remove God as ‘father’ and maleness of God
MARY DALY
MODERN DAY THEOLOGIANS
BONHOEFFER
Is accused of insisting that women are subject to their husbands
MARY DALY
MODERN DAY THEOLOGIANS
BARTH
Accused of claiming women are subordinate to men
MARY DALY
MODERN DAY THEOLOGIANS
POPE PIUS XII
Accused of linking women to role of mother nor formalistic or materialistic equality with men
MARY DALY
MODERN DAY THEOLOGIANS
JOSEPH FLETCHER
Accused of making a male made theory focusing on individualism rather than liberation of women
MARY DALY
GOD SHOULD BE CASTRATED
CONCLUSION ON ENTIRE SYSTEM
Entire system of ethics and theology is product of males preserving a sexist patriarchal society that explicitly oppressed women
MARY DALY
UNHOLY TRINITY: RAPE
‘RAPISM’
- ‘Rapism’ - culture of rape, symbol of all violent oppression of society
- Nuclear arms, man made poverty
- Leaders of society use religion, politics, etc. To erase female power and oppress them in a state of ‘grateful dead’
- Not just theoretical rape but also acrid of physical violence against women, e.g. Genital mutilation
MARY DALY
UNHOLY TRINITY: WAR
Corrupt
- Connection between mentality of rape and phenomenon of war
- War inheritable result of male-dominated politics
- Language corrupt when eat is just but abortion isn’t
- war is defended by ‘phallic morality’ (penis driven morals)
MARY DALY
UNHOLY TRINITY: WAR
BIBLE EXAMPLE
‘Now kill all the boys and kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every woman who has not slept with a man’
Numbers
MARY DALY
UNHOLY TRINITY: GENOCIDE
QUOTE
‘Patriarchally possessed women.. lulled into the sleeping death (from God) such women have forgotten the gross inequality that Daly called genocide’
MARY DALY
UNHOLY TRINITY: GENOCIDE
No longer individual
- Deep link between rape and genocide
- Raped person no longer individual but instead part of group of ‘raped people’
- Not just action of individual but of male against female
- Genocide happens because of need of men for violence killing individualism
MARY DALY
RAPE AND BIBLE
JUDGES - scoundrel
- Scoundrels arrive at house demanding to abuse guest, host offers Virginias daughter and concubine
- Leave daughter but rape concubine to death
MARY DALY
SPIRITUALITY EXPERIENCED THROUGH NATURE
- Maleness of God needs to be overturned so no more priests and traditional holy places
- Instead we should go on ‘quintessence’ - highest essence of being which lives,loves,creates
- Spirit that permeates all nature, giving life and vitality to whole universe
MARY DALY
SPIRITUALITY CONCLUSION
- Should be turning away from maleness of God and towards spirit of quintessence found through nature
- In 1970s there was renewed interest in pagan spirituality which is reflected in Daly’s work
MARY DALY
LIBERATION OF WOMEN
- Women need a o seek moral lib. From this hypocrisy
- By becoming radically deviant in face of patriarchal expectation
- Includes rejecting all moral standards created by men
- Inequalities are bound up in these morals
MARY DALY
LIBERATION OF WOMEN
QUOTE
‘To be female is to be deviant by definition in the prevailing culture’
MARY DALY
CONCLUSION ON JESUS
- Jesus is symbolic legitimation of rape of all women
- Underlying culture impregnated within Christianity
- So fundamental that leaving this culture means leaving Christianity
CHALLENGE TO DALY
SIMON CHAN
Embodied in trinity
-Not as simple as saying ‘God is male’
Christian idea of fatherhood, as embodied in Trinity, is unique
-Daly apparently glosses over focus that God is Heavenly Father and creator of all which means universal fatherhood
-Male language doesn’t create masculine qualities
-E.g Isiah: God as husband with ‘deep compassion’
CHALLENGES TO DALY
FIORENZA
Help sexism?
- Alternative reading to Biblical texts and the sexism present in them
- Bible supports women’s struggles against patriarch
RUETHER
INTRODUCTION
- God is not a ‘being’ removed from creation, ruling it from outside in manner of patriarchal leader
- God is source of being that underlies creation and grounds its nature and future potential for continual transformative renewal
RUETHER
MALENESS OF CHRIST
- Argues Christianity has become distorted by patriarchal tradition and is in need of reform
- Catholic church’s teachings on women’s ordination and abortion have been influenced by patriarchy
- Patriarchy had Shane Christian thought about God which needs to be challenged
RUETHER
GOD AS FEMALE WISDOM PRINCIPLE
- Although male symbol of messiah in Christianity, not a Davidic Messiah but a self-sacrificing redeeming messiah who is linked to female notion of wisdom
- To call him male displaces the female concept of God
RUETHER
‘SOPHIA’
- ‘Sophia’ - Greek for wisdom, personified in ancient world as female form - goddess
- Early Christians continue to refer to ‘Sophia’ as divine wisdom
- in scripture, divine wisdom referred to in female terms
- God associated with wisdom
RUETHER
DIVINE WIDOM
HOWEVER…
- Christianity has merged notion of divine wisdom to notion of messianic king
- In process idea of female wisdom has become obscured behind a patriarchal veil of the male Messiah - Jesus
RUETHER
JESUS AS THE INCARNATION OF WISDOM
- Divine wisdom closely linked to Jesus and female terms
- Messiah therefore isn’t simply a male version of God but the incarnation of wisdom - female
- Goes as far as to refer to God as ‘Gaia’ Ancient Greek Goddess of the earth
- Balancing male and female in our nature of God ‘imago dei’
RUETHER
DAVIDIC MESSIAH
- Hebrew scripture
- Future king in new kingdom
- Son of David
- Restorer of Israel and autonomous power
- Conquering warrior
- Due to relationship with God his favour will shine, chosen by God and representative of people
RUETHER
SEXISM AND GOD TALK QUOTE
‘The Messiah can only be imagined as a male’
RUETHER
JESUS
- Jesus not traditional warrior as expected
- ‘He is expected to win not suffer and die’
- Attended to the poor, critical of Jewish authorities, warned disciples of lord in over others
- ‘By becoming a servant of God, one of frees from bondage of human masters’
RUETHER CHALLENGES
SIMON CHAN
Rewriting history
- You can’t rewrite history to give more prominence to women because story shapes Christian identity
- ‘almighty father’ ingrained in Eucharistic prayer
- Feminine images are used to describe God ‘protecting,comforting’
RUETHER CHALLENGES
PATRIARCH TO WOMEN
-Unique to Christianity as most ancient religions had goddess at centre
-Many of these were also patriarchal
-Using female language does not make it less patriarchal
‘Devotion to the goddess Kali in Hinduism has never resulted in better treatment of women’ (Why call God father?)
DALY VS RUETHER
PATRIARCH
- Daly: Christianity irrevocably patriarchal and misogynistic, must be abandoned
- Ruether: Christianity not intrinsically patriarchal and can be ‘saved’ from patriarchy
DALY VS RUETHER
EXAMPLES OF PATRIARCHY
Daly: Some churches prohibit women to enter altar, exclusively male priesthood, male authority within church, male messiah
Ruether: Divine wisdom female, Jesus spent time with women, women amongst his followers, first to see him rise from dead, CofE ordain women
