CAMP Spirit

Last issue, in an effort to show that religion does not have to be traditional and conservative, I began a series of columns highlighting the achievements of important women religious thinkers. The presentation of a feminist systematic theology which Mary Daly had begun in Beyond God the Father came to fruition in the work of Rosemary Radford Ruether (b. 1936), who has rightly been included among the most important theologians of the twentieth century (feminist or non-feminist). Unlike Daly, Ruether has remained within Christianity and is one of the most prolific and diverse scholars of the feminist movement, perhaps because her academic background differs from that of other feminist theologians: Her master’s degree is in classics and Roman history, while her Ph.D. is in classics and patristics. A second-generation feminist, her interest in classical antiquity and patristics was a result of her questioning of Christian origins, which had begun at home. Her liberal political consciousness originated in the context of the civil rights movement during her first teaching assignment at Howard University (1965-1976), a predominately African-American institution where she was exposed to black theology and the peace movement. The initial context for her work against sexism was in the Catholic anti-contraception movement, while her feminist theological consciousness was broadened while guest lecturing at Harvard and Yale.

Ruether’s major contribution to feminist studies in religion has been her contextualizing in history of the problem of patriarchy articulated by Daly. Ruether was the first to compile an anthology about sexism in religion and in her own work has demonstrated the basic androcentrism of the Judeo-Christian tradition, the insidiousness of dualism, and the realization that patriarchy can be found as the source of any pattern of domination and subjugation. Her many criticisms of Christianity (which have earned her the everlasting enmity of conservative Christians) include her insistence that there can be no such thing as universal objective theology, thus necessitating a listening to the experience of the oppressed and a bringing forth of voices which have been previously silenced. Her theological method is a dialectical one consisting of three interrelated parts: (a) the critical engagement of history to reveal patriarchy; (b) the recovery of alternative traditions; and (c) the recasting of traditional categories.

In 1975, after several mainstream publications, Ruether threw down the gauntlet, by publishing New Woman/New Earth: Sexist Ideologies and Human Liberation (1975), in which she began to incorporate her new feminist consciousness into her critique of religion and society. She followed this up eight years later with her magnum opus, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (1983), a thorough-going systematic theology from a feminist perspective. Ruether here takes as her starting-point the proposition that women’s experience is foundational to a feminist theology, just as male experience was the basis for all theology up to this point. She thus advocates a reclaiming of women’s history, including female images of the Divine (which she names "God/ess" due to the irredeemably sexist nature of the word "God"), the reclaiming of the prophetic and wisdom traditions, and the incorporating of strands of Christian tradition heretofore deemed heretical, such as gnosticism. Her conclusion regarding sin and grace is that the "-isms" in our current world result from the basic sin of hierarchy, domination and subjugation. Salvation comes through the undoing of social categories of oppression. Thus, a true savior saves women (and men) from oppression; a male savior like Jesus can only be meaningful to women if he honors their experience as women and undoes the sexism of the world which keeps them in bondage. Feminism can be revelatory for the Church as it pushes it toward reconciliation between peoples, a respect for the earth, and an insistence upon the recognition that we must make this world a better place now rather than postpone liberation to some end-times scenario (à la the "Left Behind" series).

Most recently, Ruether has been active in the ecofeminism movement, pointing out that patriarchal domination and dualism are manifested in how humans treat the earth and its creatures. She advocates a return to the initial goodness of creation, when everything was seen as blessed by the Divine and not simply a means to some human end. She has been a powerful voice for the inclusion of Third World Women in the theological and spiritual task, editing anthologies that give a platform to women of color who often have difficulty getting their work published. Moreover, she has taken on the United States’ role as a colonial power and has demonstrated that no one is served by a patriotic spirituality that involves lauding a bloodthirsty God who wills the American Empire to exert its control over the rest of the world.

A Few of the Many Books by Rosemary Radford Ruether:
• Disputed Questions: On Being a Christian (Orbis Books, 1989)
• Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing (HarperCollins, 1992)
• Liberation Theology: Human Hope Confronts Christian History and American Power (Paulist Press, 1972)
• Women Healing Earth: Third World Women on Ecology, Feminism, and Religion (Orbis, 1996)