Download Feminist Theology www.AssignmentPoint.com Feminist theology is

Feminist Theology
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Feminist theology is a movement found in several religions, including
Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, and New Thought, to reconsider the
traditions, practices, scriptures, and theologies of those religions from a feminist
perspective. Some of the goals of feminist theology include increasing the role
of women among the clergy and religious authorities, reinterpreting maledominated imagery and language about God, determining women's place in
relation to career and motherhood, and studying images of women in the
religion's sacred texts and matriarchal religion.
Methodology
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Feminist theology attempts to consider every aspect of religious practice and
thought. Some of the questions feminist theologians ask are:
 How do we do theology? The basic question of how theologians may go
about creating systems of thought is currently being reinterpreted by
feminist theologians. Many feminist theologians assert that personal
experience can be an important component of insight into the divine,
along with the more traditional sources of holy books or received
tradition. (The relevance of personal experience to the policies of groups
of people is a familiar notion to veterans of the feminist movement.)
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 Who is God? Feminist theologians have supported the use of non- or
multi-gendered language for God, arguing that language powerfully
impacts belief about the behavior and essence of God.
 Where are women in religious history? Feminist historical theologians
study the roles of women in periods throughout history that have
impacted religion: the Biblical period, the early Christian era, medieval
Europe, and any period of import to a particular religion. They study
individual women who influenced their religion or whose religious faith
led them to impact their culture. The work of these scholars has helped
feminist theologians claim historical figures as their predecessors in
feminist theology. For example, Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?"
speech pointed out, "And how came Jesus into the world? Through God
who created him and the woman who bore him. Man, where was your
part?" Elizabeth Cady Stanton produced The Woman's Bible, excising the
traditional Christian text of all references she thought contradicted the
positions of women's rights.
Development of theology
According to Grenz and Olson in their review of Feminist Theology, "it was
developed in three distinct steps. They begin with a critique of the past” such
that they review the ways women have been oppressed; “they seek alternative
biblical and extrabiblical traditions that support” the ideals Feminists are trying
to advance; and finally “feminists set forth their own unique method of
theology, which includes the revisioning of Christian categories.” Grenz and
Olson also mention, however, while all feminists agree there is a flaw in the
system, there is disagreement over how far outside of the Bible and the
Christian tradition women are willing to go to seek support for their ideals.
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It has frequently been said that feminist theology draws on women's experience
as a basic source of content as well as a criterion of truth. There has been a
tendency to treat this principle of "experience" as unique to feminist theology
(or, perhaps to liberation theologies) and to see it as distant from "objective"
source of truth of classical theologies. This seems to be a misunderstanding of
the experimental base of all theological reflection. What have been called the
objective sources of theology; Scripture and tradition, are themselves codified
collective human experience.
Prehistoric religion and archaeology
The primacy of a monotheistic or near-monotheistic "Great Goddess" is
advocated by some modern matriarchists as a female version of, preceding, or
analogue to, the Abrahamic God associated with the historical rise of
monotheism in the Mediterranean Axis Age.
Mother Nature (sometimes known as Mother Earth) is a common representation
of nature that focuses on the life-giving and nurturing features of nature by
embodying it in the form of the mother. Images of women representing mother
earth, and mother nature, are timeless. In prehistoric times, goddesses were
worshipped for their association with fertility, fecundity, and agricultural
bounty. Priestesses held dominion over aspects of Incan, Assyrian, Babylonian,
Slavonic, Roman, Greek, Indian, and Iroquoian religions in the millennia prior
to the inception of Patriarchal religion.
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Gender and God
Others who practice feminist spirituality may instead adhere to a feminist reinterpretation of Western monotheistic traditions. In those cases, the notion of
God as having a male gender is rejected, and God is not referred to using male
pronouns. Feminist spirituality may also object to images of God that they
perceive as authoritarian, parental, or disciplinarian, instead emphasizing
"maternal" attributes such as nurturing, acceptance, and creativity.
Carol P. Christ is the author of the widely reprinted essay "Why Women Need
the Goddess,",[4] which argues in favor of the concept of there having been an
ancient religion of a supreme goddess. This essay was presented as the keynote
address to an audience of over 500 at the "Great Goddess Re-emerging"
conference at the University of Santa Cruz in the spring of 1978, and was first
published in Heresies: The Great Goddess Issue (1978), pgs. 8-13. Carol P.
Christ also co-edited the classic feminist religion anthologies Weaving the
Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality (1989) and Womanspirit Rising
(1979/1989); the latter included her essay Why Women Need the Goddess.
New Thought movement
New Thought as a movement had no single origin, but was rather propelled
along by a number of spiritual thinkers and philosophers and emerged through a
variety of religious denominations and churches, particularly the Unity Church,
Religious Science, and Church of Divine Science. It was a feminist movement
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in that most of its teachers and students were women; notable among the
founders of the movement were Emma Curtis Hopkins, known as the "teacher
of teachers" Myrtle Fillmore, Malinda Cramer, and Nona L. Brooks; with its
churches and community centers mostly led by women, from the 1880s to
today.
Within specific religions
Judaism
Jewish feminism is a movement that seeks to make the religious, legal, and
social status of Jewish women equal to that of Jewish men. Feminist
movements, with varying approaches and successes, have opened up within all
major branches of Judaism.
Various versions of feminist theology exist within the Jewish community.
Some of these theologies promote the idea that it is important to have a
feminine characterisation of God within the siddur (Jewish prayerbook) and
service.
In 1976, Rita Gross published the article "Female God Language in a Jewish
Context" (Davka Magazine 17), which Jewish scholar and feminist Judith
Plaskow considers "probably the first article to deal theoretically with the issue
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of female God-language in a Jewish context". Gross was Jewish herself at this
time.
Reconstructionist Rabbi Rebecca Alpert (Reform Judaism, Winter 1991)
comments:
The experience of praying with Siddur Nashim [the first Sabbath prayer book to
refer to God using female pronouns and imagery] ... transformed my
relationship with God. For the first time, I understood what it meant to be made
in God's image. To think of God as a woman like myself, to see Her as both
powerful and nurturing, to see Her imaged with a woman's body, with womb,
with breasts – this was an experience of ultimate significance. Was this the
relationship that men have had with God for all these millennia? How
wonderful to gain access to those feelings and perceptions.
Siddur Nashim was self-published in 1976 by Naomi Janowitz and Margaret
Wenig.
In 1990 Rabbi Margaret Wenig wrote the sermon, "God is a Woman and She is
Growing Older," which as of 2011 has been published ten times (three times in
German) and preached by rabbis from Australia to California.
Rabbi Paula Reimers ("Feminism, Judaism, and God the Mother", Conservative
Judaism 46 (1993)) comments:
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Those who want to use God/She language want to affirm womanhood and the
feminine aspect of the deity. They do this by emphasizing that which most
clearly distinguishes the female experience from the male. A male or female
deity can create through speech or through action, but the metaphor for creation
which is uniquely feminine is birth. Once God is called female, then, the
metaphor of birth and the identification of the deity with nature and its
processes become inevitable
Ahuva Zache affirms that using both masculine and feminine language for God
can be a positive thing, but reminds her Reform Jewish readership that God is
beyond gender (Is God male, female, both or neither? How should we phrase
our prayers in response to God’s gender?, in the Union for Reform Judaism's
iTorah,):
Feminine imagery of God does not in any way threaten Judaism. On the
contrary, it enhances the Jewish understanding of God, which should not be
limited to masculine metaphors. All language that humans use to describe God
is only a metaphor. Using masculine and feminine metaphors for God is one
way to remind ourselves that gendered descriptions of God are just metaphors.
God is beyond gender.
These views are highly controversial even within liberal Jewish movements.
Orthodox Jews and many Conservative Jews hold that it is wrong to use English
female pronouns for God, viewing such usage as an intrusion of modern
feminist ideology into Jewish tradition. Liberal prayerbooks tend increasingly to
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also avoid male-specific words and pronouns, seeking that all references to God
in translations be made in gender-neutral language. For example, the UK
Liberal movement's Siddur Lev Chadash (1995) does so, as does the UK
Reform Movement's Forms of Prayer (2008). In Mishkan T'filah, the American
Reform Jewish prayer book released in 2007, references to God as “He” have
been removed, and whenever Jewish patriarchs are named (Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob), so also are the matriarchs (Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah.) In 2015
the Reform Jewish High Holy Days prayer book Mishkan HaNefesh was
released; it is intended as a companion to Mishkan T'filah. It includes a version
of the High Holy Days prayer Avinu Malkeinu that refers to God as both
"Loving Father" and "Compassionate Mother.” Other notable changes are
replacing a line from the Reform movement’s earlier prayerbook, "Gates of
Repentance," that mentioned the joy of a bride and groom specifically, with the
line "rejoicing with couples under the chuppah [wedding canopy]", and adding a
third, non-gendered option to the way worshippers are called to the Torah,
offering “mibeit,” Hebrew for “from the house of,” in addition to the traditional
“son of” or “daughter of.”
In 2003 The Female Face of God in Auschwitz: A Jewish Feminist Theology of
the Holocaust, the first full-length feminist theology of the Holocaust, written
by Melissa Raphael, was published. Judith Plaskow’s Standing Again at Sinai:
Judaism from a Feminist Perspective (1991), and Rachel Adler’s Engendering
Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics (1999) are the only two full-length
Jewish feminist works to focus entirely on theology in general (rather than
specific aspects such as Holocaust theology.) Thus, Standing Again at Sinai:
Judaism from a Feminist Perspective (1991) is the first book of Jewish feminist
theology ever written.
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Christianity
Christian feminism is an aspect of feminist theology which seeks to advance
and understand the equality of men and women morally, socially, spiritually,
and in leadership from a Christian perspective. Christian feminists argue that
contributions by women in that direction are necessary for a complete
understanding of Christianity. Christian feminists believe that God does not
discriminate on the basis of biologically determined characteristics such as sex
and race. Their major issues include the ordination of women, male dominance
in Christian marriage, recognition of equal spiritual and moral abilities,
reproductive rights, and the search for a feminine or gender-transcendent divine.
Christian feminists often draw on the teachings of other religions and ideologies
in addition to biblical evidence.
Two authors whose works are vital to an understanding of feminist theology are
Mary Daly and Rosemary Radford Ruether.
Mary Daly grew up an Irish Catholic and all of her education was received
through Catholic schools. She has three doctorate degrees. One from St. Mary’s
College in sacred theology, and two from University of Fribourg, Switzerland in
theology and philosophy. From 1966 till the end of her career she taught at
Boston College. While in her early works Daly expressed a desire to reform
Christianity from the inside, she would later come to the same point as several
other feminists, that Christianity is not able to enact the necessary changes as it
is. (Prologue Daly). “On November 14, 1971, when she was invited to be the
first woman to preach at Harvard Memorial Chapel. She used the opportunity to
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denounce Christianity as irredeemable for women and to call for women (and
men) to make an exodus from the Church. Almost all the women who attended
this service walked out with her, as well as a few men.” Her works include: The
Church and the Second Sex (1968), Beyond God the Father (1973),
Gyn/ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (1978), Pure Lust:
Elemental Feminist Philosophy (1984), Webster’s First Intergalactic Wickedary
of the English Language (1987), and Outercourse: The Be-Dazzling Voyage
(1992). According to Ford’s The Modern Theologians, “Mary Daly has done
more than anyone to clarify the problems women have concerning the central
core symbolism of Chrisianity, and its effects on their self-understanding and
their relationship to God.”
Rosemary Radford Ruether grew up Roman Catholic and attended Catholic
schools through her sophomore year of high school. She was a classics major at
Scripps College, worked for the Delta Ministry in 1965 and taught at Howard
University School of Religion from 1966 to 1976. She has also “been
responsible for the production of some twenty-two books…and at least five
hundred articles.” “Rosemary Ruether has written on the question of Christian
credibility, with particular attention to ecclesiology and its engagement with
church-world conflicts; Jewish-Christian relations…; politics and religion in
America; and Feminism".
The term Christian egalitarianism is sometimes preferred by those advocating
gender equality and equity among Christians who do not wish to associate
themselves with the feminist movement. Women apologists have become more
visible in Christian academia. Their defense of the faith is differentiated by a
more personal, cultural and listening approach "driven by love".
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Islam
Islamic feminism is a form of feminism concerned with the role of women in
Islam. It aims for the full equality of all Muslims, regardless of gender, in public
and private life. Islamic feminists advocate women's rights, gender equality, and
social justice grounded in an Islamic framework. Although rooted in Islam, the
movement's pioneers have also utilised secular and European or non-Muslim
feminist discourses and recognise the role of Islamic feminism as part of an
integrated global feminist movement. Advocates of the movement seek to
highlight the deeply rooted teachings of equality in the Quran and encourage a
questioning of the patriarchal interpretation of Islamic teaching through the
Quran (holy book), hadith (sayings of Muhammad) and sharia (law) towards the
creation of a more equal and just society. Muslim majority countries have
produced more than seven female heads of state, including Benazir Bhutto of
Pakistan, Mame Madior Boye of Senegal, Tansu Çiller of Turkey, and
Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia. Bangladesh was the first country in the
world to have consecutive, elected, female heads of state: Khaleda Zia and
Sheikh Hasina.
Sikhism
In Sikhism women are equal to men, see the verse from the Sikh scripture the
Guru Granth Sahib
"From woman, man is born; within woman, man is conceived; to woman he is
engaged and married. Woman becomes his friend; through woman, the future
generations come. When his woman dies, he seeks another woman; to woman
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he is bound. So why call her bad? From her, kings are born. From woman,
woman is born; without woman, there would be no one at all."
— Guru Nanak
Hinduism
Within Ancient Hinduism, women have been held in equal honour as men.
Manusmriti for example states: The society that provides respect and dignity to
women flourishes with nobility and prosperity. And a society that does not put
women on such a high pedestal has to face miseries and failures regardless of
how so much noble deeds they perform otherwise. Manusmrithi Chapter 3
Verse 56.
Within the Vedas the Hindu holy texts, women were given the highest possible
respect and equality. The Vedic period was glorified by this tradition. Many
rishis were women. Indeed, several of them authored many of the slokas in the
Vedas. For instance, in the Rigveda there is a list of women rishis. Some of
them are: Ghosha, Godha, Gargi, Vishwawra, Apala, Upanishad, Brahmjaya,
Aditi, Indrani, Sarma, Romsha, Maitreyi, Kathyayini, Urvashi, Lopamudra,
Yami, Shashwati, Sri, Laksha and many others. In the Vedic period women
were free to enter into brahmacharya just like men, and attain salvation.
During Hindu marriage ceremonies the following slokas are uttered by the
grooms but, these days, their import little understood or ever attempted to
understand.
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"O bride! I accept your hand to enhance our joint good fortune. I pray to you to
accept me as your husband and live with me until our old age. …" Rigveda
Samhita Part -4, sukta 85, sloka 9702
"O bride! May you be like the empress of your mother-in-law, father-in-law,
sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law (sisters and brothers of the groom). May your
writ run in your house." Rigveda Samhita Part -4, sukta 85, sloka 9712
This beautifully lyrical sloka from the Atharvaveda clearly states that the
woman leads and the man follows: "The Sun God follows the first illuminated
and enlightened goddess Usha (dawn) in the same manner as men emulate and
follow women." Athravaveda Samhita, Part 2, Kanda 27, sukta 107, sloka 5705.
Women were considered to be the embodiment of great virtue and wisdom.
Thus we have: "O bride! May the knowledge of the Vedas be in front of you
and behind you, in your centre and in your ends. May you conduct your life
after attaining the knowledge of the Vedas. May you be benevolent, the
harbinger of good fortune and health and live in great dignity and indeed
illuminate your husband's home." Atharva Veda 14-1-64. Women were allowed
full freedom of worship. "The wife should do agnihotra (yagna), sandhya (puja)
and all other daily religious rituals. If, for some reason, her husband is not
present, the woman alone has full rights to do yagna". Rigveda Samhita, part 1,
sukta 79, sloka 872.
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Moving on towards the Monotheistic era of Hinduism when such ideals such as
Shaivism and Vaishnavism, a specific deity for feministic worship was bought
about under the Shaktism branch. From a Hinduism point of view women are
equal in all measures to men in comparison.
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