Talk:Feminist theology

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Women as theological figures

Contributions to Women as theological figures welcome.

There are many other "troubling" passages, certainly closer to the center of the Holy Bible. Categorizing women as temptresses seems to be a theme in the Proverbs... Psalm 31 ascribes a set of behaviors to the desirable woman, which might trouble feminist theory... And once I know I've seen a verse in which someone could barely find one righteous man, but he was certain he could not find any righteous women. I do not know for sure the context, but if anyone is interested in pursuing this topic, those are my feelings.

Thealogy?

How does this article compare with thealogy? Should they be merged? —Ashley Y 01:02, 2005 Jan 18 (UTC)

Non-ordination / Scholarship of Women

Changed around the third paragraph slightly; in particular, I removed the statement, "All these denominations forbid women from being recognized as religious clergy and scholars in the same way that men are accepted." While the first half of the statement may be accurate, the second half is definitely not. While I can only speak to the Roman Catholic Church, the failure to ordain women does not extend to a prohibition on female scholars, and many of the best feminist scholars in academia are Roman Catholic sisters or laywomen. Makrina 02:03, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Lydia

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I was raised Southern Baptist where women are not to be clergy. I have since joined the United Methodist Church and like a lot of it's stuff a lot more. As that I'm male, female ordination has never really been an issue (it doesn't directly affect me). However, I have a number of friends who are very much into feminist theology. I like the passage about Phebe but can't find a translation that refers to Lydia as a deacon or even a servant. Help would be much appreciated.  :)

I'm pretty sure that Lydia's significance was that she was that she sold purple dye. This could indicate that she was a business woman of some importance, considering that (good quality) purple dye was expensive. She was also important when it came to spreading the Gospel message into new areas. I don't know if this helps, but significant Gospel women that are referred to for womens ordination are Phoebe, Prisca and Junia - all which are found in Romans 16, also Chloe from 1 Corinthians. So after that lengthy discourse, I think you are right about Lydia. Yes, she's significant but not listed as a servant or deacon.CapHammer (talk) 12:34, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Name

Hi everyone,

Shirahadasha's excellent explanation notwithstanding, I’d like to remove the redirect to Religious feminism and copy the contents to Feminist Theology, for the following reasons:

1. The first two words of the article are “Feminist theology”, implying that the original author was thinking of feminist theology, not religious feminism.

2. In common parlance, “religious” frequently means “fanatical” – so the title of this article could have a pejorative connotation; viz, “Fanatical Feminism”.

3. “Religious Feminism” does not exist as a Library of Congress subject; “Feminist Theology” does.

4. Setting aside colloquial connotations of the word “religious”, the terms “Religious Feminism” and “Feminist Theology” mean two very different things: “Religious Feminism” seems to indicate something like scholarship in women’s studies or gender studies that is focused on religion, whereas “Feminist Theology” is theology through a feminist hermeneutic. “Religious Feminists” might include such scholars as Mieke Bal, Minoo Moallem, and perhaps even Simone de Beauvoir, although the term would quite likely be rejected by such scholars. Theologians who use a feminist hermeneutic would include: Rosemary Radford Ruether, Catherine Keller, Carter Heyward, and Maria Pilar Aquino.

So if people feel that there is a need for an article for Religious Feminism, it should be a separate article.

5. Many theologians are not necessarily religious—a few are even atheists—and would take offense at being lumped under a religious rubric.

6. Feminist Theology is actively studied at many seminaries, whereas Religious Feminism would most likely be studied in the Women’s Studies department of a university, if it is recognized at all.

7. Blu Greenberg (see Shirahadasha’s comments above) is referenced in the entry for Jewish Feminist Theology in the Women’s Studies Encyclopedia, and she is listed under Theology on www.myjewishlearning.com, so I think it may be a bit of a stretch to say that she doesn’t do theology.

I think that if neither Religious feminism nor Feminist Theology redirect, you will probably observe a decline in the number of edits to Religious feminism and an increase in the number of edits to Feminist Theology. I don't know if Wikipedia has a method for tracking views of articles, but it would be interesting to compare these as well.

Webbbbbbber (talk) 20:46, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

NPOV Tag

I'm doing NPOV tag cleanup. Whenever an NPOV tag is placed, it is necessary to also post a message in the discussion section stating clearly why it is thought the article does not comply with POV guidelines, and suggestions for how to improve it. This permits discussion and consensus among editors. This is a drive-by tag, which is discouraged in WP, and it shall be removed. Future tags should have discussion posted as to why the tag was placed, and how the topic might be improved. Better yet, edit the topic yourself with the improvements.Jjdon (talk) 20:30, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Things like this are NPOV or weasel words. "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." A diciplinarian is always a man? only women are creative? Feminists upholding sexist and oppresive stereotypes of women is nothing new, but wikipedia should not be stating such things with attributing them to a source. Only extremely politicised rabid feminists would be stupid enough to claim God was a woman instead of saying applying gender sterotypes to non-coproreal omnipotent beings is senseless.Dillypickle (talk) 09:55, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Feminist baptisms

The should maybe be information somewhere about reports that certain feminist theologians had been practicing feminist baptisms, baptisms involving a theological modalism that effectively replaces the names of the trinitarian persons with gender-neutral terms such Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier. These unusual baptisms were subsequently deemed invalid by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which felt obligated to re-affirm that only the words Father, Son and Holy Spirit were in conformity with Christ's apostolic mandate. [1] [2] ADM (talk) 09:50, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Removed from the Feminist movement page

The following was all taken from the above page. I do not know exactly how to incorporate it here, but it's far too long for the general overview page. Zujine (talk) 14:54, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

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In the view of Ruether, ‘the recovery of female qualities, along with the use of appropriate female language for God, would help correct the improper hierarchical social structure of male over female". William P. Alston asks the question, in his article "Speaking Literally of God", of whether it is possible to form subject-predicate sentences to be asserted truly of God conceived as an incorporeal being. His analysis is important to the area of feminist God-talk, because it questions whether inclusiveness is even possible when talking about an incorporeal God. Alston concludes that further work remains to include analysis of timelessness, immutability, and other classical divine attributes to see if they constitute a bar to speaking literally of God.

Ruether continued her argument with the idea that male monotheism perpetuates the social stratification of patriarchal rule, particularly in the Judeo-Christian tradition, as demonstrated by the portrayal of males as positive-neutral figures and females as negative. Men are seen as representatives of God and "responsible partners of the covenant with him" Yet, women do not traditionally have a direct connection with the Divine; theirs is derived from marriage to men. "Thus the hierarchy of God-male-female does not merely make woman secondary in relation to God, it also gives her a negative identity in relation to the divine. Whereas the male is essentially seen as the image of the male transcendent ego or God, woman is seen as the image of the lower, material nature" Christian feminists identify these connections as problematic in creating inclusive religious language because they not only deprive women of a place to involve themselves in religion, but also support the notion that males are the only ones in touch with surrounding reality.

The prominence of patriarchy in male monotheism indicated a certain systematic depreciation of femininity in relation to religion. There is no God and Goddess power dynamic in traditional Judeo-Christian male monotheism as it existed in older Greek religious traditions. Further, the Judeo-Christian tradition does not represent a true male-female duality. Male monotheism maintains that God is essentially male and that men represent his image. Through marriage women are supposedly able to have a positive connection to the Divine, but this relationship implies that women must remain subservient to and subordinate to their male husbands and male God. "Yahweh is depicted as the angry and threatening husband who will punish his unfaithful bride with summary divorce. But he is also described as winning her back and making her faithful to him by drawing her out into the desert wildness."

Though some made the argument that males can also be subject to the punishment of an angry God, others saw this language as something that reduces women to roles as wives to be subservient instead of independent and subordinate instead of dominant like their male counterparts. "By patriarchy we mean not only the subordination of females to males, but the whole structure of Father-ruled society: aristocracy over serfs, masters over slaves, king over subjects, racial overlords over colonized people. Religions that reinforce hierarchical stratification use the Divine as the apex of this system of privilege and control"

Modern Judeo-Christian theists proclaim that their tradition is against oppressions of all kinds. However, many of their teachings cannot simply be interpreted as being against all systems of oppression, while in most of the language a certain degree of patriarchy remains. "The Davidic monarchy… established at the heart of Biblical religion a motif or protest against the status quo of ruling-class privilege and deprivation of the poor. God is seen as a critic of this society, a champion of the social victims" . While the Judeo-Christian tradition is seen as a movement of revolution, it has not traditionally been opposed to gender oppression. "Although Yahwism dissents against class hierarchy, it issues no similar protest against gender discrimination"

One question answered in feminist theology is the following, "Is tradition, here, a roadblock in making (male) monotheism inclusive and free of gender discrimination?" "Is religious text sexist in the Judeo-Christian tradition primarily may be the result of the tunnel-vision of those prophets in power, or in direct connection with God. While male prophets may have been aware of the class oppression they might have been experiencing it might have been difficult for them to also realize the conditions of many women on their side. Fighting for gender equality might have been incredibly uninteresting or unimportant to those male prophets. The class hierarchy male prophets contended themselves with protesting cannot be equalized with a protest against gender oppression, because an anti-class structure reality need not also be an anti-gender subjugation reality. "Those male prophets who were aware of oppression by rich urbanites or dominating empires were not similarly conscious of their own oppression of dependents – women and slaves – in the patriarchal family"

Feminists argued that knowing that fighting single systems of oppressions alone cannot possibly end all oppressions is important, because it recognizes the ways in which these systems interpenetrate each other to maintain male patriarchy.

Feminists also questioned "Why does there seem to be a lack of anti-patriarchal use of God-language in the Judeo-Christian tradition?" Reuther suggests that it may be due to the infusion of some women into roles of power. It would have been difficult to identify the oppression of women as systematic problem and address it in relation to religious language, because some women did not need liberation and were in fact also oppressors. "… In its protest against Canaanite urban society it would have known powerful females, queens, priestesses, and wealthy landowners who functioned as oppressors. It would have been difficult to recognize women as an oppressed gender group when the primary social stratification integrated some women into roles of power"

They would next question how can gender discrimination be tackled by religious language, if women themselves were involved in oppressing namely members of their own gender social group. One suggestion was to totally deny and revolt against the totality of structures that maintain oppressions of all kinds. However, they deemed this as difficult, and recognized that by examining individual relationships within these systems of oppressions may position a person in one or more potentially privileged groups. Feminist theists recognized that no one of these structures is more essential than another and that each work to maintain another is important, because it calls them to create of a multi-faceted front of resistance.

References

Kali

Shouldn't the Hindu deity Kali be mentioned in here somewhere? Hokie Tech (talk) 19:15, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

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About Mary Daly citation not in source

There no sentence “Mary Daly has done more than anyone to clarify the problems women have concerning the central core symbolism of Christianity, and its effects on their self-understanding and their relationship to God.” at Ford, David F., ed. (1997). The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian theology in the twentieth century (2nd ed.). Malden, MA: B. Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-631-19592-4.. Not at page 242 nor at another page. Alexander Roumega (talk) 07:57, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

This sentence appears in Ford, D (Ed). 1989. "The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology in the Twentieth Century". Volume 2, page 242. Author Ann Loades. Basil Blackwell Ltd, Oxford, UK 105.184.165.156 (talk) 12:51, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Grenz and Olson

There is no specific book/article that is listed for the citations from "Grenz and Olson" though there needs to be. My best guess is "Who Needs Theology: An Invitation to the Study of God" but I was unable to verify this article's quotations using Google Books. Ciacg (talk)

Wiki Education assignment: CMN2160B

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 8 September 2022 and 15 December 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Oalli008 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Tori.anne101.

— Assignment last updated by Xinyue Hu (talk) 13:29, 23 December 2022 (UTC)