Liberation Theologies | Bibliography | Women’s Pt. 4
Chapter 9: Women’s Theology, Part 4
Women’s Theology in the Global North
1200. Andolsen, Barbara Hilkert, Christine E. Gudorf, and Mary D. Pellauer, eds. Women’s Consciousness, Women’s Conscience. A Reader in Feminist Ethics. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987.
Essays, mainly on ethics, from a feminist perspective. Includes articles by Schüssler Fiorenza (“Discipleship and Patriarchy: Early Christian Ethos and Christian Ethics in a Feminist Theological Perspective”), Starhawk (“Ethics and Justice in Goddess Religion”), and Margaret A. Ferley (“Feminist Theology and Bioethics”).
1201. Avis, Paul D. Eros and the Sacred. London: SPCK, 1989.
A self-consciously male attempt to examine the androgynous “eros” of the divine: the spark of creativity and life that is inherent in divinity and in humanity as images of God, and which women have been denied through Christian tradition.
Avis sees the progress of women toward full equality of status within the church as the only hope for this last bastion of sexism, patriarchy and hierarchical domination in Western society.
Examines the feminist challenge to Christianity, patriarchy, sex and gender, androgyny, an androgynous Christology, patriarchal images of God, the church as a therapeutic community where the “erotic” (the life-giving) is dominant, sacred and profane sexuality in the Old and New Testaments, eros and a theology of embodiment, God’s eros, the ethical and profoundly human nature of eros – with the exception of homosexuality – which Avis takes great pains to distance himself from.
1202. Bennett, Anne M. From Woman Pain to WomanVision. Writings in Feminist Theology. Mary E. Hunt, ed. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1989.
A posthumous collection of essays by this noted feminist theologian. Topics include theological implications of the women’s movement; feminist criticism of traditional theology; women’s hidden heritage; feminist approaches to scripture; the connection between feminist theology, peace, and liberation; and the need for mutuality in personal and public life. Contains a bibliography of her writings.
1203. Bianchi, Eugene C., and Rosemary Radford Ruether. From Machismo to Mutuality. Essays on Sexism and Women-Man Liberation. New York: Paulist Press, 1976.
A collection of essays by the two authors on the historical experience of sexism in Western tradition, on the experience of growing up male, images of woman in industrial society, and institutionalized male violence. They also discuss the process of healing and wholeness in a sexuality that removes the old polarities between body and spirit; mutuality, women’s liberation from forms of sexism, and of men away from machismo to mutuality. Ruether also gives concluding remarks on the work that remains to be done.
1204. Boff, Leonardo, O.F.M. The Maternal Face of God. The Feminine and its Religious Expressions. Robert R. Barr and John W. Diercksmeier, trans. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987.
Boff’s approach is tentative and in full recognition of the problems inherent in attempting to cast Christianity in light of feminist revelations of the past decades. His task is to interpret Mary as the reflection of divinity and to analyze the feminine in all its religious aspects.
Part 1 discusses the principles of Mariology; Part 2, the epistemological, psychological, philosophical and theological approaches to the feminine; Part 3, the historical evidence for Miriam of Nazareth; 4, the Catholic theology of Mary, her immaculate conception, virginity, human and divine motherhood, her assumption, and role as queen.
Boff then examines Mary’s role as “woman of liberation” and model of the oppressed. Part 5 then ventures into the area of myth, archetype and symbol for some implications and future developments of our understanding and interpretation of Mary.
1205. Brock, Rita Nakashima. Journeys By Heart. A Christology of Erotic Power. New York: Crossroad, 1989.
The erotic is central to the human religious experience, for it is the very act of creation by which we participate in the work of divinity. This is a feminist reinterpretation of Christ, his mission, and the erotic power that the Gospels portray as the feminist hermeneutic of love and redemption.
Christology, however, has long been a stumbling block of feminist theology: the male cradled by the male trinity. Brock therefore sets out to examine the patriarchal ideologies of human and divine love: in everything from the male nature of the Father to the exclusive obsession of the churches on Jesus’ maleness as his chief distinguishing human characteristic, thus making the male normative.
Brock then examines the traditional model of salvation – life through death – and finds it senseless from a feminist and women’s point of view: life derives from life and life force.
Examining the Holy Ghost, she calls up the dualistic tendencies in Christianity that see the body, and the female, as corrupt and polluted. She then discusses the forces of feminist theology that can liberate the Gospels, most especially of liberating Jesus from the “unholy trinity.” She sees him again as a broken and “brokenhearted” male in Mark’s Gospel who represents both the male and female of the divine and the male’s inability to come face to face with the divine father and with the oppressive and destructive forces of patriarchy.
Here “heart,” the erotic or the power for intimacy, becomes the central image of understanding Jesus. Yet this heart is not a naive hopefulness, but a full recognition of the power of violence to destroy. Yet it is also a clear-headed, and hearted, option for love. This understanding derives equally from the new feminist spirituality, the tradition of the Goddess, and from Asian sensibilities.
1206. Bruns, J. Edgar. God As Woman. Woman As God. New York: Paulist Press, 1973.
See Carson (991), item 85.
1207. Cannon, Katie G. Black Womanist Ethics. Atlanta, GA: Scholar’s Press, 1988.
See 834.
1208. Carmody, Denise Lardner. Seizing the Apple. A Feminist Spirituality of Personal Growth. New York: Crossroad, 1984.
Not seen.
1209. Casey, Juliana M. Where Is God Now? Nuclear Terror, Feminism and the Search for God. Kansas City, MO: Sheed & Ward, 1987.
Combines a scriptural and feminist theology with an activist approach to peacemaking to derive a theology for a nuclear age, for reconciliation and conversion.
1210. Chopp, Rebecca S. The Power to Speak. Feminism, Language, God. New York: Crossroad, 1989.
This is an attempt to examine and redefine both the language and the politics of discourse about and by women, specifically, theological discourse. Topics include the place of modern Protestant theologies and the Word’s loss of power in them; the discourses of feminist theologies; the place of woman’s “otherness” as a positive value in the church and world; the role of proclamation as a theology and in relation to the Scriptures; the hermeneutics of “restlessness,” taking the contexts of both reader and text as a dynamic dialog; and the hermeneutics of “marginality.” The author discusses building a new ecclesia; and the place of Christian witness within the world.
1211. Christ, Carol P. Diving Deep and Surfacing. Women Writers on Spiritual Quest. 2d ed. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1986.
Uses the writings of five women: Kate Chopin, Margaret Atwood, Doris Lessing, Adrienne Rich, and Ntozake Shange, to demonstrate that women’s own revelations of power and spirit are adequate to replace worn-out forms of patriarchal religious texts. In this quest not only the individual but the society as a whole is renewed and made whole by the courage to reach out and to touch.
1212. Clanton, Jann Aldredge. In Whose Image? God and Gender. New York: Crossroad, 1990.
Not seen.
1213. Clark, Elizabeth, and Herbert Richardson, eds. Women and Religion. A Feminist Sourcebook of Christian Thought. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.
This is a survey of religious thought about women, not by women. Julian of Norwich, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Mary Daly are the exceptions.
1214. Collins, Sheila. A Different Heaven and Earth. A Feminist Perspective on Religion. Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1974.
See Carson (991), item 129.
1215. Condren, Mary, ed. For the Banished Children of Eve. An Introduction to Feminist Theology. Bristol, England: SCM, 1976.
Not seen.
1216. Conn, Joann Wolski. Spirituality and Personal Maturity. New York: Paulist Press, 1989.
Not seen.
1217. —. Women’s Spirituality. Resources for Christian Development. New York: Paulist Press, 1986.
This is an excellent collection of essays on the issues of women’s spirituality, psychological and religious development, and forming a new vision of Christian spirituality. It contains readings from Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Ignatius Loyola, and essays by Conn, Sandra Schneiders, Anne Carr, Carol Gilligan, Jean Baker Miller, Luise Eichenbaum and Susie Orbach, Naomi Goldenberg, Elisabeth Tetlow, Rosemary Haughton, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, and others.
1218. Cornwall Collective. Your Daughters Shall Prophesy. Feminist Alternatives in Theological Education. New York: Pilgrim Press, 1980.
Topics discussed include feminist understanding of theological education, learning and communities of learning, racism, marginality and alternative structures, power and institutional change. Appendixes include case histories of women’s programs at major theological seminaries in the United States.
1219. Cypser, Cora E. Taking Off the Patriarchal Glasses. New York: Vantage, 1987.
The “patriarchal glasses” are the hermeneutics of a male-dominated church and society that have misread God’s essential message in the Bible. This book discusses feminist interpretation of key biblical texts, reinterpretations of the theology of others, and questions about the male authorship of books in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. The latter include the woman author of the Jahwist texts, and possible female authorship of the Gospels. Cypser also discusses the role of women in the Bible: from Zipporah and her role in the Exodus, and the women in the Jesus movement and in the early church.
Mary Daly
1220. Daly, Mary. Beyond God the Father. Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation. Boston: Beacon Press, 1974.
So much of Daly’s discourse and categories have become central to feminist theory and the critique of established orthodoxies that the reader must pause to realize the originality and the wide impact of this book.
The goal of feminist theology and philosophy is “diarchy”: the true androgyny that comes about when male and female realize the commonality of their human nature and the complexity of their psychic makeup. This does not mean that feminist theology sets out to replace a male god with a female god who acts in the same authoritarian and life-denying way: the Goddess, whom Daly calls upon religiously motivated men and women to recapture, is one aspect of the divinity within each of us, but one that more truly reflects the nature of divinity: the process of becoming human that must proceed within each of us.
Patriarchy – the imposed order of male, violent, authoritarian human structures and their divine projections upon a Yahweh or God the father – produces nothing but negation: power in the hands of a male elite, and nothingness in the majority of the world’s population: the women who either accept or have been forced to accept a psychology and spiritual vision defined by males and their structures. In this sense sexism is more than a “parallel oppression” to racism, nationalism, class structures, and capitalism; for it underlies the ontological grounding of us all and shows itself through other forms of oppression.
Daly’s work is truly in the forefront of liberation theology. Her discussions touch on all the categories of what was later to emerge as a full theology: born out of the context of oppression, its focus on action as the basis of theology, or “God-talk,” the image of a god who liberates from oppressive structures, the need for conscientization among the oppressed, the responsibility for liberation by the oppressed themselves and not from even well-intended do-gooders, the pinpointing of various idolatries, be they patriarchal authority or Jesus himself, that have replaced God in discourse and life.
One point of discussion that Daly emphasizes here is the unique nature of sexism, often criticizing peace and justice and black theology for their continued sexism. This is a point that has opened many eyes to the various forms of oppression that do exist but also one that has resulted in a dialog that has begun to form a “ecumenism of the margins.” The influence of class and race have also begun to enter strongly into later discussions.
1221. —. Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism. Boston: Beacon Press, 1978.
See Carson (991), item 156.
1222. —. Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy. Boston: Beacon Press, 1984.
As opposed to phallic lust, this is lust of the double-axed labryses, “that which is most intimate and most ultimate, for depth and transcendence, for recalling original wholeness” in a decade and a world grown mad with the ravings and rapes of the “fathers, sons and holy ghosts,” the demons of aggression and obsession that beset the earth.
In contrast, women must take up “wanderlust,” that is moving away from the fixed points of dead structures and definitions in church, state, language, and human relationships. Much of this can be accomplished through an understanding of the metaphor of the Goddess, the force that will overcome patriarchy and death, that will bring women back to connection with the elemental forces of the universe.
Daly not only outlines a fundamental feminist philosophy, but she does so with a new feminist lexicology, which she provides as she proceeds, to replace old patriarchal meanings of terms long associated with the sexual stereotyping of women, with a new liberating sense. Her style as well takes on a new intuitiveness and multi-dimensional logic. Theology and philosophy, literature, anthropology, and etymology all provide food for thought and for new definitions.
Solidarity, shared memory, new consciousness, contextuality, metamorphoses are among the liberation themes of this remarkable work.
*
1223. Dematrakopoulos, Stephanie A. Listening to Our Bodies. The Rebirth of Feminine Wisdom. Boston: Beacon Press, 1982.
See Carson (991), item 165.
1224. Diamond, Irene, and Lee Quincy, eds. Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on Resistance. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1989.
Includes the essay by Sharon Welch, “The Truth of Liberation Theology: Particulars of a Relative Sublime.”
1225. Dunne, Carrin. Behold Woman. A Jungian Approach to Feminist Theology. Wilmette, IL: Chiron Publications, 1988.
The title is, of course, the feminization of the “ecce homo” of Christ’s passion and is meant as a parallel to the passion of women in a society that denies them their own soul: substituting the stereotype of inferior man for the archetype of the female.
Beginning with the insights of her own dreaming subconscious, Dunne examines linguistics, comparative mythology from East and West and from native American tradition, including biblical creation stories, to conclude that the Western Christian insistence on the triad must give way to Jung’s more complete four to include the figure of the woman.
1226. Engelsman, Joan Chamberlain. The Feminine Dimension of the Divine. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1979.
See Carson (991), item 201.
1227. Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler. Bread Not Stone. Boston: Beacon Press, 1983.
This book attempts to create a feminist biblical hermeneutics, first from their own experience, then to develop a “hermeneutics of suspicion” against the layers of patriarchal interpretation, then in terms of political struggle, which is the natural context and result of this hermeneutic as right-wing, patriarchal interpretations of religion and society rise again.
The key to such an approach is the “women-church” that will restore women to their role as actors, away from the margins, exploitation, and alienation. “Relinquishment” for men and self-affirmation for women are keys to this new feminist theology. The experiences not only of women but of women in struggle against patriarchy are the foundations of the women-church. The Bible, those texts that support this process, are the basis for transformation. It is a “structuring prototype,” rather than a timeless archetype.
Topics include the definition of the women-church; biblical interpretation as the basis for a community of faith; feminist hermeneutics of scripture and liberation theology; feminist analysis of patriarchy. In an excellent section on historians and historiography, the author discusses regaining the feminist past through a sound understanding of the nature of historical discourse, its “objectivity,” its audience and goals, thus cannot be “value-free” but must speak by and for a community.
Such insights apply not only to historical writing but to biblical scholarship, where self-awareness is a duty, as the theologian and scholar attempt to unravel their own relationships to God and the “facts” of revelation as they unravel the texts themselves. In this feminist context this points to the need to abandon an “objective” view of biblical revelation and to instead realize its context and meaning as deriving from a social group, time, and place: revelation as the result of changing process, not eternal verity.
This book is deliberately technical in a theological sense, since Schüssler Fiorenza opposes feminist anti-intellectualism as an abandonment of a vital source of power.
1228. Garcia, Jo, and Sara Maitland, eds. Walking on the Water. London: Virago, 1985.
Essays and art on feminist spirituality. See Carson (991), item 239.
1229. Giles, Mary E., ed. The Feminist Mystic and Other Essays on Women and Spirituality. New York: Crossroad, 1982.
A collection of essays exploring the role of historical women mystics for new women’s spirituality. Includes essays by Meinrad Craighead, Margaret Miles, Dorothy H. Donnelly, Wendy Wright, and Kathryn Hohlwein. See Carson (991), item 253.
1230. Goodison, Lucy. Moving Heaven and Earth. Sexuality, Spirituality and Social Change. Toronto: The Women’s Press, 1990.
Using the study of symbolism and imagery, and historical precedent, such as that of Cretan civilization, the author argues that recent, patriarchal systems have imposed a series of debilitating dualities: spirit/matter, male/female, white/black, active/passive, superior/inferior that must be overcome if an integral view of human nature, human activity, and society is to be restored. An emphasis on the feminine nature of the divine is essential to this process.
1231. Gross, Rita, ed. Beyond Anthrocentrism. Missoula, MT: Scholar’s Press, 1976.
See Carson (991), item 281.
1232. Grey, Mary. Redeeming the Dream. Feminism, Redemption and Christian Tradition. London: SPCK, 1989.
A feminist approach to the Christian doctrine of redemption. Discusses the spiritual need to retouch roots and sources, to rekindle links to the primal reality, new hermeneutics, insights drawn from nature, the path to renewal both in traditional spirituality and new feminist forms, a critique of traditional patriarchal views of redemption, and new “right relations” as a key to redemption and its theology.
1233. Haddad, Yvonne Yazbeck, and Ellison Banks Findly, eds. Women, Religion and Social Change. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1985.
The elements within all great religious traditions that support the struggle for justice and liberation.
1234. Haddon, Genia Pauli. Body Metaphors. Releasing the God-Feminine in All of Us. New York: Crossroad, 1988.
Drawing insights on male-female differences from various disciplines, the author calls for a rethinking of theological categories about divinity that affect all aspects of faith from ethics to liturgy.
1235. Hammett, Jenny Yates. Woman’s Transformations. A Psychological Theology. New York: Edwin Mellen, 1982.
Topics include the use of metaphor when we talk about God, the female-male dichotomy in creation, sin and the image of the feminine, feminine transformation and Christian salvation, the Goddess as symbol of feminine consciousness, Sophia, the place of the dream and the image symbol, psychic transformation, and the use of myth and symbolic language to embody divinity.
1236. Hampson, Daphne. Theology and Feminism. Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1990.
Hampson, and her work, reflect the shift of many feminists from the struggle for equality within the structure of the church to a “post-Christian” feminist theology. She believes that Christianity and feminism are incompatible; and that the Christian myth is untrue both in its image of God and of woman.
The need remains, however, to find a way of talking about God that fits the Western spiritual and cultural tradition. This book attempts to do this by analyzing the nature of Christianity, the “post-Christian” position, the limits of Christology, feminism and Christ; the concretion of God found in biblical religion, and the need to break free from its bonds, a feminist anthropology and feminist theology of sin, salvation, creation, angst, death, and eternal life (all classic elements of a liberation theology). She concludes with sections on the need for a new theology, and a new image of God. Good, select, bibliography by topic. An important milestone in the path to a new Western theology of liberation.
1237. Harris, Maria. Dance of the Spirit. The Seven Steps of Women’s Spirituality. New York: Bantam Books, 1989.
Not seen.
1238. Heine, Susanne. Matriarchs, Goddesses and Images of God. A Critique of Feminist Theology. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1989.
A feminist committed to the issues confronting women in their struggle for liberation, Heine, nevertheless, believes that intellectual self-criticism is a path to self-awareness and therefore to greater flexibility and strength. Part of this criticism must be aimed at feminist theology and its admitted achievements, but also its failings to really change structures and attitudes profoundly, aside from a fashionable and skin-deep acceptance of slogans and causes of the moment.
Heine’s purpose is therefore to carefully, and logically, critique (mostly German) feminist theologies of God as mother, the Goddess, matriarchy and androgyny, Jesa Christa (the feminine Jesus as manifestation of the feminine divine), and the entire question of feminine hermeneutics. She does so through a use of “systematics,” which she realizes is a word fraught with theological dangers but which is, nevertheless, necessary if feminist thought is to free itself from self-deceiving ideologies, assertions, moral imperatives, and cliché.
1239. —. Christianity and the Goddesses. Systematic Criticism of a Feminist Theology. London: SCM, 1988.
The same as above.
1240. Heyward, (Isabel) Carter. Our Passion for Justice. Images of Power, Sexuality and Liberation. New York: Pilgrim Press, 1984.
See Loeb (1001), item 953.
1241. —. The Redemption of God: A Theology of Mutual Redemption. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1982.
Not seen.
1242. —. Speaking of Christ. A Lesbian Feminist Voice. Ellen C. Davis, ed. New York: Pilgrim Press, 1989.
Not seen.
1243. —. Touching Our Strength. The Erotic as Power and the Love of God. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990.
Women’s spirituality, as embodied by the women Western mystics, has always carried with it an integralist message and form: that God is felt and loved intimately and physically in both divine revelation and in forms of discourse. For women mystics the erotic has always been part and parcel to religious language. Male spirituality, especially in the monastic tradition, has tended to emphasize dualities: the fleeing of the body and the unity of the soul with God as if the mind (the soul) has finally been freed from the evil of the body. Male eroticism, at the same time, has often been tied to the will to power and domination, removed from love.
A growing number of theologians, from the liberation theologians of Latin America to the creation theologians of North America, have begun asserting the essential unity of life, the artificiality and Manichaeism of the body-mind dichotomy, and the essential goodness of the body and bodily experience. Thus erotic love, which is the love of God’s creative power, is the fitting expression of religious love: the Song of Songs aptly used the sexual union of true lovers to describe human relationship with divinity. At the same time, human sexual love in and of itself reaches to the intimate core of the other person, ennobles and empowers both partners, and opens the human to experience the creative force of God.
1244. Hunt, Mary E. Making Connections. Feminist Liberation Theology and Spirituality. Kansas City, KS: National Catholic Reporter (Credence Cassettes), 1985.
See Carson (991), item 316.
1245. Hurcombe, Linda, ed. Sex and God. Some Varieties of Women’s Religious Experience. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987.
Poetry and prose selections from Hurcombe, Starhawk, Aileen La Tourette, Mary E. Hunt, Hannah Ward, C.S.F., Polly Blue, Elaine Willis, Leonie Caldecott, Mykel Johnson, Susan Dowell, Ruether, Sheila Briggs, and Susan Griffin. Topics include the Goddess, a women’s activism that combines the erotic with the political, and the personal, celibacy, body theology, feminist theology, asceticism, birthing, and feminist monogamy.
1246. Iglehart, Hallie. Womanspirit. A Guide to Women’s Wisdom. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983.
See Carson (991), item 320; Loeb (1001), item 955.
1247. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion.
Launched in 1986, this is edited by Judith Plaskow and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza. Semi-annual.
1248. Journal of Women and Religion.
Its first issue was in 1981. Biennial.
1249. Kalven, Janet, and Mary Buckley, eds. Women’s Spirit Bonding. New York: Pilgrim Press, 1984.
Addresses and essays from the Grailville, Ohio Center on women and poverty, women and nature, racism, pluralism and bonding, women and literature, war and peace, lesbianism and homophobia, the varieties of religious tradition, and envisioning an alternative future. The three dozen contributors are among the most prominent feminist thinkers and writers today.
1250. King, Ursula. Women and Spirituality. Voices of Protest and Promise. Houndmills, England: Macmillan, 1989.
Examines the role of feminism and its ties with traditional spirituality in ways that transform both. Begins with the realities of women’s oppression and anger, then surveys women in religious tradition, in theological language, in institutions and in religious experience. King then examines the meaning of women’s experience: physical, intellectual, social, and spiritual before discussing the tradition of women’s own spiritual history. She uses the cult of the Goddess in the past and its meaning for today and discusses the meaning of androgyny as a religious concept.
In final chapters the author marks out the path of a new feminist theology, the controversies within theological contexts and within the life of the churches; concluding with the prophetic role of women in the redefinition of power, of peace, nonviolence, and reverence for the earth. Contains both an excellent bibliography and a guide for further reading arranged by topic.
1251. Massey, Marilyn Chapin. Feminine Soul. The Fate of An Ideal. Boston: Beacon Press, 1985.
See Loeb (1001), item 961.
1252. Merchant, Carolyn. The Death of Nature. Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980.
This is a fundamental feminist text and a great influence of interpretations of women’s spirituality. Merchant’s central point is that the scientific revolution and the rationalism of the Enlightenment have alienated us from our psychic connection to the feminine in both nature and ourselves. It has objectified nature as a great machine, annihilating its image and reality as a living and nurturing organism. At the same time this male rationalism has subjected the feminine, and women, in our culture as inferior, largely out of a profound fear of female power and sexuality. See also Carson (991), item 440.
1253. Miles, Margaret Ruth. Carnal Knowing. Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian West. Boston: Beacon Press, 1989.
Not seen.
1254. Mollenkott, Virginia Ramey. The Naming of God. Granit Falls, WA: Marvel, 1982.
An audio cassette on language and image for divinity.
1255. —, and Catherine Barry. Views from the Intersection. Poems and Meditations. New York: Crossroad/ Continuum, 1984.
Poems by Barry, a Catholic; and essays by Mollenkott, the Protestant evangelical.
1256. Morton, Nelle. The Journey Is Home. Boston: Beacon Press, 1986.
The subtitle reads, “The Distinguished Feminist Theologian Traces the Development of Her Personal and Theoretical Vision.” This is a spiritual autobiography that follows a journey over ten years through the essays collected here. Topics include women’s activism, new forms of feminist language to match new realities, a whole theology that speaks of women’s experience, preaching, the meaning of “spirit,” new forms of education, the new image of the woman’s body and the work of Emily Culpepper, Adrienne Rich, Mary Daly, and Judy Chicago, the metaphor of the Goddess, and unfinished business and new issues.
1257. Mud Flower Collective. God’s Fierce Whimsy. Christian Feminism and Theological Education. New York: Pilgrim Press, 1985.
Leading feminist theologians and educators contend with the problems of seminary education, structures, and possibilities for engendering social justice. Bibliography.
1258. O’Brien, Theresa K., ed. The Spiral Path. Essays and Interviews on Women’s Spirituality. St. Paul, MN: Yes International, 1988.
Essays by Sivananda Radha, Dorothy Hale, Chandra Patel, Anne Lamb, Qahiri Qalbi, Brooke Medicine Eagle, Keiju Okada, Tessa Bielecki, Erminie Huntress Lantero, Mary E. Giles, Lynn Gottlieb and others on feminist spirituality from all religious traditions.
1259. Ochs, Carol. Behind the Sex of God. Boston: Beacon Press, 1977.
The subtitle reads, “Toward a New Consciousness. Transcending Matriarchy and Patriarchy.” See Carson (991), item 490.
1260. —. Women and Spirituality. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, 1983.
See Carson (991), item 491.
1261. Plaskow, Judith. Sex, Sin and Grace. Women’s Experience and the Theologies of Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich. Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1980.
Essentially her 1975 Yale dissertation. Topics include women’s experience, the theology of Reinhold Niebuhr, that of Paul Tillich, and concluding remarks on theology and women’s experience.
Plaskow discusses the impacts of cultural myth and reality on women’s experience, life within patriarchy, the essential concern with men’s identity in traditional theologies, such as that of Niebuhr (despite his positive concerns for justice and for women’s situations), the contributions of Tillich’s theology of sin, estrangement, and the development of self.
Plaskow concludes that while traditional theology may be useful in understanding the women’s experience, the identification of human with male experience remains problematical. Instead, she attempts a women’s theology from her own experience as a white, middle-class Westerner.
1262. —. Standing Again At Sinai. Judaism from a Feminist Perspective. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990.
As women take their place in the writing and shaping of theology, our views of God and revelation begin to reflect this neglected insight. Plaskow surveys the field of Jewish theology and tradition to demonstrate how concepts of community, God, creation, sexuality, social justice, peace, and Judaism are being reshaped by women.
1263. —, and Joan Arnold Romero. Women and Religion. Rev. ed. Missoula, MT: AAR and Scholar’s Press, 1974.
See Carson (991), item 530.
1264. Rabuzzi, Kathryn Allen. The Sacred and the Feminine. Toward a Theology of Housework. New York: Seabury Press, 1982.
As a liberation theology that derives from the context of people’s lives, this work addresses itself to the reality of most women the world over, and to many men as well: that of domestic life, devoid of all its mythology yet infused with so many cultural values that it is difficult to separate it out from the very ground of being.
It is a theology of the every day, and an attempt to outline the immanence of divinity in it. This is not the divine as feminine, or vice-versa, but the divine for a world of women that while largely replaced by work and other activities among the upper middle classes in North America and Europe, still strongly shapes most lives for women there. More than that, it is an attempt to explain how daily life is infused with a mystic element of divinity.
Rabuzzi is a clear-cut feminist who does not recommend an acceptance of exploitative relationships or roles but attempts to underscore the inherent dignity of many women’s lives. It is this consciousness that will make them the subjects of their lives, not the objects of someone else’s. She examines the theology of the home: as sacred space, symbol, and myth; of housework as ritual enactment, of its cosmic nature, and of the analogous role as caretaker for creation. Finally, she examines the theological implications of women’s traditional roles including the patient woman, waiting – Penelope or Griselda – the role of fact and imagination in shaping male views of women in narrative, and the mystical possibilities of transcendence.
Rosemary Radford Ruether
1265. Ruether, Rosemary Radford. Disputed Questions on Being a Christian. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989.
These questions include those of faith and modern consciousness, Jewish-Christian relations, politics and religion, including liberation theology, and feminism in religion and in the Catholic church.
1266. —. Liberation Theology. Human Hope Confronts Christian History and American Power. New York: Paulist Press, 1972.
See 730.
1267. —. New Woman/New Earth. Sexist Ideologies and Human Liberation. New York: Seabury Press, 1975.
See Carson (991), item 584.
1268. —. Sexism and God Talk. Toward a Feminist Theology. London: SCM, Boston: Beacon Press, 1983.
See Carson (991), item 587.
1269. —, ed. Religion and Sexism. Images of Women in Jewish and Christian Traditions. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974.
See Ruud (1003), item 656.
1270. —, ed. Womanguides. Readings Toward a Feminist Theology. Boston: Beacon Press, 1985.
See Carson (991), item 590.
1271. —, and Rosemary Skinner Keller, eds. Women and Religion in America. 3 vols. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990.
This is the basic and fundamental sourcebook for women religious thought in the U.S. As such it is important background for feminist theology.
1272. —, and Eleanor McLaughlin, eds., Women of Spirit. Female Leadership in the Jewish and Christian Traditions. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979.
This is an excellent collection of essays that traces the history of women in the Judeo-Christian tradition from biblical times through the Middle Ages, Reformation, and American history to the present.
Authors include the editors, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Ruth P. Liebowitz, Elaine C. Huber, Catherine F. Smith, Barbara Brown Zikmund, Nancy Hardesty, Lucille Sider Dayton and Donald W. Dayton, Mary Ewens, O.P., Dorothy C. Bass, V. L. Brereton and C. R. Klein, E. M. Umansky, and Norene Carter.
1273. Snyder, Mary Hembrow. The Christology of Rosemary Radford Ruether. A Critical Introduction. Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 1988.
This is a book born out of the author’s experience of deep pain: the death of relatives, illness, the martyrdom of the four American churchwomen in El Salvador, the death of her mother, her departure from a religious order, her experience of Christian feminists in Peru. Her readings of Rosemary Radford Ruether, and that theologian’s understanding of suffering in its socio-political context, led to this book.
Topics include a review of Ruether’s life, her intellectual foundations, and the elements of her Christology; the contributions of liberation theology in its Latin American, ecological, and feminist forms; as well as alternative Christologies.
Concluding chapters deal with Ruether’s work in ecumenism and her Christology in terms of the Third World, women, ecology, and tradition. She concludes with some implications of this Christology. Includes a complete chronological bibliography of Ruether’s works up to 1987.
Letty M. Russell
1274. Russell, Letty M. The Future of Partnership. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1979.
While the term “partnership” is used so much as to be a meaningless cliché, often disguising exploitation and gross inequality, Russell takes it to mean commitment to responsibility, vulnerability, equality and trust; common struggle that transcends the defining limits of the partners; and contextuality, a dynamic process that also goes beyond the immediate partnership. Thus it is “a new focus of relationship in which there is continuing commitment and common struggle in interaction with a wider community context.” In this her theology is at the core of feminist thought: mutuality as opposed to hierarchy, love over authority.
Russell discusses partnership in relation to God, the human role in creation, divine history and Christian community, human sexuality, church structures and communities, Christian eschatology, new forms and definitions of ministry, liberation communities, and a revolution of consciousness in our thinking about present and future community.
1275. —. Growth in Partnership. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1981.
Not seen.
1276. —. Household of Freedom. Authority in Feminist Theology. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1987.
On the essential problem of authority in the Reformed tradition and for feminist theology today, the need to change from paradigms of domination to those of partnership, shifts already underway in liberation, feminist and creation theology, the power of words in constructing our images of the world, ourselves, and our relationships, and the need for a new theology that will speak of God in terms of “Sophia,” the Goddess,” and “housekeeper” from the wisdom literature, and family rather than father ruler, the authority of those at the bottom, the shift from forms of kingdom to household in discussing Jesus’ life and his retention of power even in weakness, and means through which the church can be mended to more reflect the household of mutuality rather than the kingdom of power.
1277. —. Human Liberation in a Feminist Perspective. A Theology. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1974.
Russell rejects any attempt to develop a “feminine theology,” that is, one that sees differences between masculine and feminine tendencies or attributes, and instead one that seeks liberation for women as women and as equal human beings. This is the root direction of feminist theology.
In this sense it is a theology of liberation; and like all theologies of liberation, it can also trace its formal roots to the theologies of hope and political theologies. Yet it is also written out of women’s particular experience of oppression. In this it not only reexamines the traditional categories of theology but seeks new ground and expresses itself in a new language that leaves patriarchal forms, and assumptions and aspirations, behind.
Themes discussed include the realities of oppression and the process of liberation; the elements of a theology of liberation; reinterpreting tradition, language and history; the issues of salvation vs. liberation, conscientization, and conversion; new definitions of humanity and the female; and new forms of ecclesiology that must match new realities and aspirations.
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1278. Schmidt, Alvin J. Veiled and Silenced. How Culture Shaped Sexist Theology. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1989.
Not seen.
1279. Smith, Christine M. Weaving the Sermon. Preaching in a Feminist Perspective. Louisville, KY: John Knox, 1989.
Not seen.
Dorothee Sölle
1280. Sölle, Dorothee. Choosing Life. London: SCM; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981.
A series of lectures first delivered in Argentina in 1979 that focus on our lives from the viewpoint of the victim, as was Jesus. The context for these, however, is our affluent First-World lives of luxury and cynicism to suffering and death. Instead, she opts for the message of Deut. 30. 19ff, to “chose life” through adherence to a religious way of life away from consumerism, violence, oppression, the structures of sin and estrangement.
Sölle speaks of taking up the cross of solidarity, compassion and liberation, but most of all of abandoning an idolization of Christ the risen and instead sharing in that resurrection with him: making that event not a once-in-history salvation for our complacency but understanding its true meaning: each of us must share with Christ and change dead lives for life.
1281. —. Of War and Love. Rita and Robert Kimber, trans. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1983.
Essays and poems on peacemaking, human rights, the draft, Ita Ford, native Americans, El Salvador and other topics.
1282. —. Revolutionary Patience. Rita and Robert Kimber, trans. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1977.
This is a collection of poems on Jesus, woman’s liberation, peace and war, the poor and oppressed, Christians and leftists, of hope and fulfillment.
1283. —. The Strength of the Weak. Toward a Christian Feminist Identity. Robert Kimber and Rita Kimber, trans. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984.
Sölle takes as her context the godless post-war world that ironically clings to bourgeois correctness and the promises of materialist utopias. Such an empty vision oppresses both men and women, but in recent years there have been signs of hope, not the least of which is the emergence of liberation theology.
Combining the insights of a socio-political critique, Christian mysticism, and feminism, Sölle points to the strengths of a feminist theology to free both women and men and to open us to compassion and self-revelation amid a world that fears rebellion and liberation.
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1284. Spretnak, Charlene, ed. The Politics of Women’s Spirituality. New York: Doubleday Image, 1982.
The subtitle reads: “Essays on the Rise of Spiritual Power Within the Women’s Movement.” Includes essays by Starhawk, and others. See Carson (991), item 636.
1285. Thistlethwaite, Susan Brooks. Sex, Race, and God. Christian Feminism in Black and White. New York: Crossroad, 1989.
This is a fascinating attempt by a white feminist to reject all the props of her race and class when talking of oppression and liberation. It is an attempt to strip away the masks of intellectualizing discourse and theology when discussing the role of women and their place – in solidarity with and in domination over women of the Third World and of the marginalized Fourth World.
Liberalism, the author contends, is the ideology behind a racist feminism: a feminism that allows women to attend conferences on oppression while black and Hispanic maids take care of home. She therefore concentrates on the experience of black women for insights into a liberating theology that is based on experience. At the same time she is painfully aware that any critique of feminist theology will be used as a weapon against feminism and women’s struggles.
From a foundation in the thought and lives of black women, she then goes on to discuss the role of anger; the historical place of slavery in white feminism in issues of race, sex and class; and of solidarity in the face of the liberal myth of the “individual.” Thistlethwaite then discusses some points of divergence between black and white feminist theology, and one of convergence: violence against women.
The author also stresses that this was a book of self-discovery, of unmasking her own immigrant, oppressed and working-class roots that the pursuit of American “middle-class” life had obliterated. Though she provides here a rich stock for self-criticism – and handles for others to beat feminists with – her work is a good example of feminist theology that seeks to strike at the roots of meaning and existence.
1286. Trible, Phyllis. God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978.
See Ruud (1003), item 767.
1287. Vorster, W. S., ed. Sexism and Feminism in Theological Perspective. Pretoria, SA: University of South Africa, 1984.
Essays by C. Landman, F. Edwards, D. M. Ackermann, L. Q. Baqwa, S. Viljoen, L. C. Gerdes, with responses, on feminist theology, God from a feminist perspective, the role of women in the church, and women in South African society.
1288. Welch, Sharon D. Communities of Resistance and Solidarity. A Feminist Theology of Liberation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1985.
This is an attempt to outline the connections between feminist theology and other forms of “liberating” theologies, including liberation theology and black theology. It is written forthrightly from the author’s ambiguous perspective of being both “oppressed” and “oppressor.” The book is written from a “liberal” Protestant perspective that has come to see the dead end of this tradition in accounting for both the doubts of faith and the injustices of life.
Nihilism/relativism and oppression are the two poles of doing Welch’s theology. Foucault’s deconstructionism is the primary inspiration for her methodology; and, in fact, Foucault is quoted or discussed on nearly every page of this book, while the Bible is hardly mentioned. This comes as no surprise since, unlike the liberation theologians whom she quotes (Gutiérrez, Sobrino, Cone) she dismisses any theology that seeks to legitimize itself through adherence to the Bible or the Christian tradition, in fact, criticizing these theologians for doing so.
Part and parcel of this is the book’s emphasis not on the suffering, the poor, the experience of real women as subjects of their own destiny but on the thought of other theologians, psychologists, and social scientists. In fact, this book’s emphasis upon the discourse of reason, of truth, of knowledge rejects the irrational, the transcendent, the primordial and the eternal.
At the same time, Welch’s emphasis on this social-scientific and rational discourse lies at the heart of the liberal Protestant tradition and not at all at that of the black or Third-World theologians she seeks to discuss here. Welch’s emphasis on liberation theology as a matter of “episteme” seems to miss the point. Her assertion that “Christianity has often been either repressive or quiescent” restates the basic Lutheran position of Niebuhr and the will to power of Nietzsche and seems to ignore the long history of the struggle for liberation and justice that is one of the hallmarks of the early, medieval and early-modern churches. Latin American theologians readily acknowledge this and draw hope and inspiration from it as evidence of God working within history; but Welch’s liberal tradition may have overlooked or have been ignorant of the historical value of tradition because of its inherent categories of historicized periods of decline and righteous reform essential to the Protestant psyche.
1289. —. A Feminist Ethic of Risk. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1989.
This book grows out of Welch’s concern with the nuclear arms race and the threat that it poses to the world and creation. Above and beyond that, however, her analysis offers an exploration of the evil effects of good intentions, of an ethic of control that has brought the world to the verge of necrophilic idolatry of death.
She counterpoises, instead, an ethic of risk that draws on the insights of African-American women who have created an ethic of resistance that is based not only on critical analysis but on an awareness of divine immanence found in the very active involvement with changing the world. In this reflective activism Welch finds a source of hope for the white, middle-class, and affluent North American reduced to despair by an ethic of tight control, of ever present annihilation, and of complacency.
Chapters include narratives of healing and transformation, the ethic of control, memory and accountability, the heritage of persistence, imagination and solidarity, the healing power of love, the ideology of cultured despair, an ethic of solidarity and difference, and a theology of resistance and hope.
1290. Winter, Miriam Therese. Woman Prayer. Woman Song. Resources for Ritual. Oak Park, IL: Meyer Stone Books, 1987.
A series of prayers, songs, liturgies that are divided into the rituals of: creation, liberation, and transformation. This collection seeks to uncover women’s connections to their past and their role in the church both as reflections of the divine feminine and as agents of change
1291. —. WomanWord. A Feminist Lectionary and Psalter. Woman of the New Testament. New York: Crossroad/Continuum, 1990.
Not seen.
1292. WomanSpirit.
The first of the magazines devoted to feminist spirituality.
1293. Wren, Brian. What Language Shall I Borrow? God-Talk in Worship. A Male Response to Feminist Theology. New York: Crossroad/Continuum, 1989.
Really a male’s appreciation of the work of Ruether, McFague and other feminist theologians to the issues of theology (“God-talk”) and the patriarchal forms in which this talk goes on in everything from formal theology to liturgy. Wren maintains that the names and metaphors we use to describe God can evolve to meet the new insights brought by feminist theology while they continue to enrich the religious tradition.
Wren himself is a hymn writer whose work focuses on the lives of the marginalized and the oppressed; and he publishes many of his new versions that speak of the need of liberation and that talk of God without sexist language.
1294. Young, Pamela Dickey. Feminist Theology. Christian Theology. In Search of Method. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1990.
Not seen.
1295. Zola, Elemire. The Androgyne. New York: Crossroad, 1989.
The mythological, artistic and historical roots of our gender-alienated forms of spirituality and the revolutions brought about by seeking a more androgynous definition of humanity and divinity.
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