Feminism and the gospel May 1, 2006
Posted by mwj as feminism, history, religion. trackback.I went to Nexus tonight and had the chance to hear Dr. Robynne Healey talk about Christian feminism. It was an interesting topic, and a good precursor to the feminist philosophy course I am taking in the fall.
Dr. Healey stressed that she donned the label of a feminist very intentionally, “with all the baggage that comes with it.” In her experience, her faith had always been tied to a very strong conviction that women and men should be treated equally.
In the course of her talk, Dr. Healey used her background as a historian to examine the roll that women had played in the church throughout history. She focused particularly on the early church from the time of Jesus until all the council’s started happening, around 100ish? AD. She called this era the “ancient gospel,” the time before the church had really formed under pressure from the Romans and the Jews.
The crux of her address was that women in this era were able to take a much more active role in spreading the gospel because there were as of yet no patriarchal barriers to prevent them from doing so. These barriers were blown away when Christ came on the scene. His actions radically contradicted social norms: he talked to the Samaritan woman, healed a bleeding woman, forgave the adulteress, hung out with prostitutes, and before any of those, was born of a virgin.
She argued that this radical alteration of the social climate cleared the way for new forms of social behavior to emerge, and the early followers of “The Way” show this clearly. The sudden appearance of a socialist structure in the midst of Palestine, the active role of women within these circles and the writings of Paul are all evidence of a new paradigm being articulated. However, as the church was challenged on its doctrines and heresies arose, the flexibility of the early gospel gave way to the stiffening of dogma and doctrine. Women became associated with sins of the flesh, men became celibate priests, and women submerged beneath the theocracy.
Dr. Healey’s argument is that we need to undo these dualisms we’ve created by spinning the clock backwards, or at least gleaning what we can from this early period and re-interpreting it for our world today.
My question to her was simple, and it is a question that I most certainly will be bringing into my philosophy class next fall: Christianity, with its male deity and male priests, seems to be by its very nature patriarchal, and any attempt to separate the “true religion” from what is practised creates another dualism. How is it possible to reconcile what seems to be an essentially patriarchal religion with a desire to give women an equal voice and opportunity, both in the explicitly religious sphere, and in the general sphere of everyday living that is affected by religious commitments?
I think we either have to turn to pagan fertility religion, or else start venerating Mary again.
Comments»
I wonder if the root of the problem is the idea of God as a He. That’s obviously how the Bible refers to God, but what if this is merely a product of a patriarchal society that wrote the Bible instead of actually the religion itself? (That argument has a lot of problems, but stick with me for a minute.. there’s a legitimate point here I think…)
What I mean is this.. Adam and Eve are both created in the image of God. It seems to me that if we can learn anything from the creation story, its that from the beginning God intended Man and Woman to be equal, both as reflections of different sides of God.. (Now, I guess this is sort of dualistic.. but abstractdly, if God just is Man and Woman then maybe not quite as much..)
I don’t know much about how other religions view God, but I’d be interested to know if some more Eastern religions are as sold on the idea of God as He as we are. Maybe the problem is just that language itself doesn’t really give us the chance to see God any other way… He can either be a He or a She (though the dudes writing the Book probably wouldn’t be cool with that) or I guess maybe an It. But thats too impersonal.
But then, pagan fertility religion sounds pretty cool too..
listen to some loreena mckennitt, and you’ll get more sold on the idea…
Our God “YHWH” or “Elohim” shouldn’t be construed as being of either gender. True, these Hebrew terms are in masculine forms but these are merely default terms since there is no neuter form in Hebrew. God’s characteristics in the OT range from a strong virile God to a God giving birth to creation and humankind. An argument could be made that God embodies forms characteristic of what we call male and female though is not restricted to either. I do agree though that it does seem as though Christianity and Judaism are inherently partiarchal and male-dominated, but only because men have made it so. The pure form of either religion does not necessarily call for a male God. I think assigning God a gender would be a grave mistake, I believe the authors of the Primeval History avoided this because of it’s similarities with the pagan gods and their sexual activities.
Also, I know you mentioned the creation of another dualism when discussing the divide between practiced religion and pure religion, but there is no reason why there cannot be reconciliation and abolition of this dualism.
Logan, I think Matt may be right, and I don’t think you can get out of pronouns and gender forms that easily. It could be argued that the images of the Old Testament deity have masculine and feminine shades to them at different times and in different places, but I don’t think there is any point in the OT where a) the names of God are constructed in a feminine form, or b) he is called a she.
As such, I think it is quite difficult to make the argument that YHWH was conceived in any serious way as a female throughout most (all?) of the various iterations of Israelite religion.
I think the problem compounds itself with Christ appearing as a man, or at least being interacted with as such. It seems that in all heterodox texts and traditions, Christian doctrine depends on the construction of God as He.
However, there is some interesting gender play in the first few verses of John. I discovered these this semester when I was wading through the task of translating the first 18 verses from the Latin Vulgate into English.
The nouns “light” and “life” are both feminine. Verse 4 reads “In him was life, and life was the light of the world.” This is fairly normal construction, and the feminine gender doesn’t really matter here. However, I translated the next verse as “and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not understand her.” I did this because not only are the nouns feminine, but the pronoun, as if thrown in for additional emphasis, is actually “her.”
Now, this is probably just common practice, and the pronoun is simply agreeing with the noun. However, I like the idea of “life” and “light” being feminine (although “darkness” is too). And without too much of a stretch we could say these represent the Holy Spirit, who has at times been construed as a female (Hopkins’ God’s Grandeur).
However, the pronouns are still in the way. God is just not a she in the Bible, and any attempt I’ve seen to feminize the God(s) of the Old Testament and New has taken a few more hermeneutical leaps than I am comfortable with.
Concepts such as “light” and “life” are abstract concepts and as such will almost always be feminine, this is true in both Hebrew and Greek. I’m at work right now, but I’ll follow up this post with some responses to your concerns about the language and hermeneutical issues. I still assert that the designation of God as masculine is no reason to read God as a male God, more to follow.
listen to you boys, trying to figure out girls… even when it comes to God.
Apologies for my slowness. But check out the Wikipedia entry for God and Gender (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_of_God), i’ve been doing some reading about God’s characteristics in Judaism and there is a very strong reservation against ascribing gender to God throughout Jewish history. I don’t know if you read OT Theology: Israel’s Gospel by John Goldingay while we were in Israelite Religion, but that book has some interested things to say on this matter.