CAMP Spirit

As conservatism continues to spread its tentacles in both religion and society, It is important to remember that this was not always the case. I want to discuss the work of some of the women who have changed the face of religion because of their boldness in daring to challenge the patriarchal mindset of theology and spirituality. This, in turn, has birthed the queer theology movement. Most of these pioneering women originated in Christianity; some have stayed to reform this tradition from within, while others have left to explore woman-centered and (sometimes) Goddess-centered spiritualities.

Mary Daly (b. 1928) is both the earliest and most controversial of the feminist theologians. She began her quest for theological and philosophical degrees as a Catholic high school student. After obtaining bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Catholic colleges, Daly enrolled in the doctoral program at St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana. Her studies there left her ultimately dissatisfied. She wished to be a philosopher, a career field closed to American Catholic women at the time. Her persistence led her to the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, where women were allowed to pursue doctorates alongside men; and so Daly emerged with dual doctorates in sacred theology and philosophy. In discussing her classes there, Daly has noted wryly that she was the only woman, that classes were conducted in Latin, and that the male students would not sit next to her, apparently to avoid the temptations that would result from such proximity to a woman!

During this time, however, Daly’s feminist consciousness was born, as a result of what she calls "one great carnival of an event, the Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church," which due to her geographical proximity she was able to attend in the fall of 1965. Still trying at that point to remain within Catholicism, Daly says she felt "an ebullient sense of hope" for the church because of the changes that were proposed at the Council. After the fact, however, she would rethink her original opinion and conclude that there should have been no real hope by women at Vatican II, for "all male-controlled revolutions are essentially movements in circles within the same senescent patriarchal system."

Nevertheless, in the immediate aftermath of the Council, Daly was inspired to begin critiquing the status of women vis-à-vis the Roman Catholic Church (with the intent of changing it), and the result was her landmark book The Church and the Second Sex, which after more than thirty years is still used as a basic text for religious feminism.

The Church and the Second Sex seems tame now, in light of the feminist criticisms of Christianity that have appeared since its publication. At the time, however, it was a warning shot fired by one woman scholar at her church. The result of its publication was that Jesuit-run Boston College attempted to fire Daly, whom it had hired as an assistant professor in the theology department, by giving her a terminal contract without possibility of tenure. After demonstrations and student sit-ins, however, the administration relented, and Daly was granted tenure and promotion "without congratulations"—a move Boston College has regretted ever since, in light of Daly’s ever-increasing radicality and separatist post Christian stance. Because of the controversial nature of her teaching and her refusal to back down from her convictions, Daly was never permitted to advance to the status of full professor, but remained an associate professor until her (forced) retirement several years ago.

Daly’s primary contribution to the field of feminist theology was in articulating the major problem: "Catholic teaching has prolonged a traditional view of woman which at the same time idealizes and humiliates her....Made to feel guilty or unnatural if they rebel, many have been condemned to a restricted or mutilated existence in the name of religion." Utilizing her training as theologian and philosopher, Daly examined church history and traditional theology from a woman’s vantage point, and concluded that all of the Church’s systems and structures were tainted with sexism and with a misguided view of "the eternal feminine" which is buttressed by church teachings, doctrines, and directives.

By the time Daly published Beyond God the Father in 1973, however, her hope of reforming the Christian Church had worn thin. Her growing disillusionment with the Catholic Church (and with all of patriarchal religion), nourished by her tenure problems and the negative reception of her first book, culminated in her staged "exodus" from the Church. On November 14, 1971, Daly was invited to be the first woman to preach the Sunday morning sermon at Harvard Memorial Church. She utilized this opportunity to cut her ties with organized religion, calling for other women to join her in removing themselves from an institution which did not want them. She tangibly demonstrated this by walking out of Harvard Church (and the Christian Church itself) at the conclusion to her sermon. Perhaps because she had freed herself from the constraints of a Christian identity, Daly was able to go much further in Beyond God the Father than she had in The Church and the Second Sex. In a thorough examination of theological categories, Daly calls for the "castration" of God—indeed the "death" of God the Father—if women are to survive, making her famous statement, "if God is male, then the male is God." Any anthropomorphizing of God, whether as Father or as Mother, is not only unnecessary but downright dangerous; rather, she asserts that God must become a verb of dynamic energy so that our human becoming may continue. Daly demythologizes the story of the Fall, calling it an exercise in "false naming," because woman’s destiny has been forever associated with the scapegoating of Eve; rather, Daly calls women to "fall into freedom." In approaching the figure of Jesus, she warns against "christolatry," noting that a potentially liberating symbol has been ruined, for most christology actually "functions to glorify maleness." Instead, she calls for women to become both the Anti-Christ and the Anti-Church by self-empowerment through the women’s liberation movement, demanding an end to "phallic morality."