Feminist theology is a movement found in several religions, including Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Sikhism, Jainism, Neopaganism, Baháʼí Faith, Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and New Thought, to reconsider the traditions, practices, scriptures, and theologies of those religions from a feminist perspective. Some of the goals of feminist theology include increasing the role of women among clergy and religious authorities, reinterpreting patriarchal (male-dominated) imagery and language about God, determining women's place in relation to career and motherhood, studying images of women in the religions' sacred texts, and matriarchal religion.
Methodology
Development of feminist theology While there is no specific date to pinpoint the beginning of this movement, its origins can be traced back to the 1960s article, "The Human Situation: A Feminine View", written by Valerie Saiving (Goldstein). Her piece of work questioned theologies written by men for men in a modern perspective to then dismantle what it had created over the years: patriarchal systems that oppress women. After Saiving's work was published, many scholars took up her ideas and elaborated upon them, which built the feminist theology movement further. Grenz and Olson view the steps of feminist theology in threes: first, feminist theologians critique the treatment of women in the past, second, they determine alternative biblical/religious texts that support feminist ideologies, and third, they claim the theology that adheres to such standards, through reclamation, abolishment, and/or revision.Grenz and Olson, p. 227. Grenz and Olson also mention that while all feminists agree there is a flaw in the system, there is disagreement over how far outside of the Bible and the Christian tradition women are willing to go to seek support for their ideals.Grenz and Olson, p. 229. This concept is also important when feminist theology is relating to other religions or spiritual connections outside of Christianity.
Prehistoric religion and archaeology
The primacy of a monotheistic or near-monotheistic "Great Goddess" is advocated by some modern matriarchists as a female version of, preceding, or analogue to, the Abrahamic God associated with the historical rise of monotheism in the Mediterranean Axis Age.
Mother Nature (sometimes known as Mother Earth) is a common representation of nature that focuses on the life-giving and nurturing features of nature by embodying it in the form of the mother. Images of women representing mother earth, and mother nature, are timeless. In prehistoric times, goddesses were worshipped for their association with fertility, fecundity, and agricultural bounty. Priestesses held dominion over aspects of Incan, Assyrian, Babylonian, Slavonic, Roman, Greek, Indian, and Iroquoian religions in the millennia prior to the inception of patriarchy.
Gender and God
Others who practice feminist spirituality may instead adhere to a feminist re-interpretation of Western monotheistic traditions. In those cases, the notion of God as having a male gender is rejected, and God is not referred to using male pronouns. 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.
Carol P. Christ is the author of the widely reprinted essay "Why Women Need the Goddess", which argues in favor of the concept of there having been an ancient religion of a supreme goddess. This essay was presented as the keynote address to an audience of over 500 at the "Great Goddess Re-emerging" conference at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the spring of 1978, and was first published in Heresies: The Great Goddess Issue (1978), pgs. 8–13. Carol P. Christ also co-edited the classic feminist religion anthologies Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality (1989) and Womanspirit Rising (1979/1989); the latter included her essay Why Women Need the Goddess.
The Latter-Day Saint movement is unique among denominations in that it affirms the existence of a Divine Feminine as a part of its core doctrine. The Latter-Day Saint Divine Feminine is called "Heavenly Mother". While Latter-day Saints do not pray to Heavenly Mother, she is considered to be the wife of Heavenly Father and therefore His equal in heaven, according to "The Family: A Proclamation to the World"'s description of husbands and wives as equal partners.
New Thought movement
New Thought as a movement had no single origin, but was rather propelled along by a number of spiritual thinkers and philosophers and emerged through a variety of religious denominations and churches, particularly the Unity Church, Religious Science, and Church of Divine Science. It was a feminist movement in that most of its teachers and students were women; notable among the founders of the movement were Emma Curtis Hopkins, known as the "teacher of teachers" Myrtle Fillmore, Malinda Cramer, and Nona L. Brooks; with its churches and community centers mostly led by women, from the 1880s to today.
Within specific religions
Baháʼí Faith
Judaism
Jewish feminism is a movement that seeks to make the religious, political, and social status of Jewish women equal to that of Jewish men. Feminist movements, with varying approaches and successes, have opened up within all major denominations of Judaism.
There are different approaches and versions of feminist theology that exist within the Jewish community.
Some of these theologies promote the idea that it is important to have a feminine characterization of God within the siddur (Jewish prayerbook) and service. They challenge the male rabbi teachings that only emphasize God as a man with masculine traits only.
In 1976, Rita Gross published the article "Female God Language in a Jewish Context" (Davka Magazine 17), which Jewish scholar and feminist Judith Plaskow considers "probably the first article to deal theoretically with the issue of female God-language in a Jewish context". Gross was Jewish herself at this time.
Reconstructionist Rabbi Rebecca Alpert (Reform Judaism, Winter 1991) comments:
In 1990 Rabbi Margaret Wenig wrote the sermon, "God Is a Woman and She Is Growing Older", which as of 2011 has been published ten times (three times in German) and preached by rabbis from Australia to California.
Rabbi Paula Reimers ("Feminism, Judaism, and God the Mother", Conservative Judaism 46 (1993)) comments:
Ahuva Zache affirms that using both masculine and feminine language for God can be a positive thing, but reminds her Reform Jewish readership that God is beyond gender (Is God male, female, both or neither? How should we phrase our prayers in response to God's gender?, in the Union for Reform Judaism's iTorah, ):
These views are highly controversial even within liberal Jewish movements."This gender less God also represents a profound betrayal of the Torah narrative." Matthew Berke, "God and Gender in Judaism", in Copyright (c) 1996 First Things 64 (June/July 1996): 33–38 Orthodox Jews and many Conservative Jews hold that it is wrong to use English female pronouns for God, viewing such usage as an intrusion of modern, western feminist ideology into Jewish tradition. Liberal prayer books tend increasingly to also avoid male-specific words and pronouns, seeking that all references to God in translations be made in gender-neutral language. For example, the UK Liberal movement's Siddur Lev Chadash (1995) does so, as does the UK Reform Movement's Forms of Prayer (2008). In Mishkan T'filah, the American Reform Jewish prayer book released in 2007, references to God as "He" have been removed, and whenever Jewish patriarchs are named (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), so also are the matriarchs (Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah.) In 2015 the Reform Jewish High Holy Days prayer book Mishkan HaNefesh was released; it is intended as a companion to Mishkan T'filah. It includes a version of the High Holy Days prayer Avinu Malkeinu that refers to God as both "Loving Father" and "Compassionate Mother". Other notable changes are replacing a line from the Reform movement's earlier prayerbook, "Gates of Repentance", that mentioned the joy of a bride and groom specifically, with the line "rejoicing with couples under the chuppah [wedding canopy]", and adding a third, non-gendered option to the way worshippers are called to the Torah, offering "mibeit", Hebrew for "from the house of", in addition to the traditional "son of" or "daughter of".
In 2003 The Female Face of God in Auschwitz: A Jewish Feminist Theology of the Holocaust, the first full-length feminist theology of the Holocaust, written by Melissa Raphael, was published. Judith Plaskow's Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective (1991), and Rachel Adler's Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics (1999) are the only two full-length Jewish feminist works to focus entirely on theology in general (rather than specific aspects such as Holocaust theology.) This work of feminist theology in regards to Judaism, also contextualizes the other goals of this movement, to re frame historical texts and how they are being taught. It is in addition to how God is being viewed but also the role of women historically and how they are being treated today in a new feminist light. While there is some opposition faced, Jewish communities believing feminism is too Western and does not validate Judaism, there is also the approval of an insider feminist perspective that takes into consideration traditions and modern thought.
Christianity
Christian feminism is an aspect of feminist theology which seeks to advance and understand the equality of men and women morally, socially, spiritually, and in leadership from a Christian perspective. This is through reformation to be along the lines of feminist thought in regards to their religion. Christian feminists argue that contributions by women in that direction are necessary for a complete understanding of Christianity.
These theologians believe that God does not discriminate on the basis of biologically determined characteristics, such as sex and race. Their major issues include the ordination of women, male dominance in Christian marriage, recognition of equal spiritual and moral abilities, reproductive rights, and the search for a feminine or gender-transcendent divine. Christian feminists often draw on the teachings of more historical texts that reinforce that feminism does not go against Christianity but has always been in its texts.
Mary Daly grew up an Irish Catholic and all of her education was received through Catholic schools. She has three doctorate degrees, one from St. Mary's College in sacred theology then two from University of Fribourg, Switzerland in theology and philosophy. While in her early works Daly expressed a desire to reform Christianity from the inside, she would later come to the conclusion that Christianity is not able to enact the necessary changes as it is. According to Ford's The Modern Theologians, "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." Daly is a prime example of how some feminist theologians come to the conclusion that reclamation and reform are no longer a viable option, that condemnation is the only way out.