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Conversations on Christian Feminism
This is simply an overview of the different understandings of the role of women in the different Christian traditions.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
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December 2, 2024
TWO CHRISTIAN WOMEN DISCUSS A VARIETY OF ISSUES
Authors Margaret Hebblethwaite [MH] and Elaine Storkey [ES] wrote in the Introduction to this 1999 book, “This… is not a written book pretending to be a conversation, but a real conversation---in fact, sixteen real conversations---which we have taped and edited and put on to the printed page. Why? Because it is both more interesting and more revealing to listen in to a living conversation than to read a dead slab of text. And this is particularly true when the speakers are genuinely searching together and bouncing ideas off each other. Feminist theology … is a new subject, a pioneering venture… We both believe profoundly that traditional Christian faith must be united with contemporary insights on the equality of women, for the health of both.
“We have talked through the issues … in a way that will make the book a useful introduction to the subject for non-theologians, as well as a contribution to the ongoing debates of theologians. We do not have all the answers, but we do have a sense of today’s questions and we also have some fairly strong convictions. All the way through we have shown how our own experiences have shaped our thinking. We may come from quite opposite church backgrounds but we have much in common. We are both laywomen, wives and mothers, who work in the field of Christian communication. And as we have talked our way through this book, we have become great friends.” The conversation begins:
ES: “I was quite slow in waking up to feminism… when I was sixteen I had a conversion experience which changed my life. I’ve been a committed Christian ever since… I went off to Canada where I was a graduate student in philosophy… the lecturers were all men… I would inevitably be in the lounge with the men, discussing the great issues of God, life, the universe and the Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd, while the women would be busying around in the kitchen getting food to feed us. It never occurred to me to be in the kitchen with the women…” (Pg. 1-2)
MH: “I thought that monks were better than nuns---more interesting and better educated… After university … I became involved in a church run by a male religious order… I did feel oppressed, not because I was a woman but because I was a layperson… [I was] a bit anti-feminist theology … [because] in the early days it was rather militant and negative. I could agree 100% with the aim of bringing in the women’s dimension: it is so obvious that the whole of history has been slanted towards men… but I didn’t like the way [feminists] did it. Feminist theology … seemed to be identified with … attacking what was called patriarchy… I found the whole language abstract and pretentious, as though trying to play the men’s game without having their skills.” (Pg. 4-5)
ES: “[W]hen my book [‘What’s Right with Feminism’] was launched, [it] identified a lot of issues for women from an evangelical constituency that nobody had named before. About 500 women turned up for our first conference… Evangelicals thought they didn’t have the range of problems that feminist theology addressed. We didn’t a problem with the Virgin Mary, with the over-clericalism of the church… Now we were admitting that there were problems here… which we wanted to address… so many evangelical women … had been used to … sermons which largely ignored the women’s stories in the Gospels, or interpreted them in a patronizing way.” (Pg. 13-14)
ES: “I always worried when people protested, ‘Of course we don’t believe in a male God,’ but then almost in the next breath signified that, even if not male, this God was still patriarchal. What was the point of having a neutered, patriarchal God?... When relinquishing a God who is male, we need to be more careful about ways we speak.” (Pg. 28-29)
ES: “One of the earliest feminist ways of resolving the so-called maleness of the Trinity was to see the Holy Spirit as neuter or feminine… but that left an equation of two to one, which resolved nothing. It wasn’t helped either by throwing in Mary as an extra feminine voice!” (Pg. 34)
MH: “do women and men have the same sort of relationship with Jesus? I would want to assert that they have an equal relationship, but is it equal in the same way or is it equal in a different way?... When I pray I don’t feel that Jesus being a man is a barrier. And yet at the same time I am asking myself, ‘Why isn’t it a barrier? Ought it to be a barrier?’ But the fact is that I don’t feel it as one.” (Pg. 47)
ES: “Another thing many feminists don’t like is the way the church has used Christ’s death to reinforce women’s guilt. Atonement is necessary because women are guilty: the Church fathers implied that women have a particular responsibility for sin… feminists have some justification for their allegation that women have been treated differently over the issue of sin. Men are forgiven their sins more easily than women.” (Pg. 76)
MH: “I have never so far joined the group called CWO (Catholic Women’s Ordination)… because when it was started I thought it was strategically a mistake and likely to call out a counter-reaction from Rome. Now that has happened with this so-called infallible teaching. So maybe I should join CWO now, because the damage has been done.” (Pg. 106)
MH: “even in the ten commandments you get that kind of attitude reflected: ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s property, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.’ Nothing about ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s husband.’” (Pg. 131)
ES: “[About] the women at the cross… it is interesting how the twelve who were men actually come over rather shabbily in a range of ways. But the women, who were not part of the twelve but were very much there all the way through, come over as incredibly different, even when the story is told by men.” (Pg. 138)
ES: “everybody talks about ‘headship.’ Suddenly… a whole theological construct emerges …that is used to keep women in place… I think those who see this as instructions on keeping universal authority structures are hopelessly out of date. They can’t be universal, because we now don’t have slavery and we know it was a bad thing. So what Paul was saying in that case was a temporary expedient. It’s much more keeping the church together in difference.” (Pg. 143)
ES: “Womanism probably first marked the splintering of the single feminist voice. It marked the first demarcation away from a universal idea of women’s oppression. Womanist Christian writing challenges the idea that women experience the same kind of oppression within the church throughout different cultures and communities. The womanist voice says the struggles of black Christian feminists within the church are very different from those of white Christian feminists. There are different layers and areas of oppression, and ‘white’ concepts of liberation are inadequate.” (Pg. 184-185)
MH: “And Mary Daly is so provocative. I just wonder what is wrong with the woman. Her way of writing is utterly extraordinary…"
ES: “what she is doing, of course, is changing the whole nature of patriarchal writing, so she is not even buying into the thought-forms or the expressions that you get in patriarchy.” (Pg. 223)
ES: “I enjoy them [women-only liturgies]. It is a time when women can experience their womanliness in relation to each other, and there is a lot of sharing. I find them quite emotional.” (Pg. 245)
This book will be of keen interest to Christians dealing with woman/church issues.
Authors Margaret Hebblethwaite [MH] and Elaine Storkey [ES] wrote in the Introduction to this 1999 book, “This… is not a written book pretending to be a conversation, but a real conversation---in fact, sixteen real conversations---which we have taped and edited and put on to the printed page. Why? Because it is both more interesting and more revealing to listen in to a living conversation than to read a dead slab of text. And this is particularly true when the speakers are genuinely searching together and bouncing ideas off each other. Feminist theology … is a new subject, a pioneering venture… We both believe profoundly that traditional Christian faith must be united with contemporary insights on the equality of women, for the health of both.
“We have talked through the issues … in a way that will make the book a useful introduction to the subject for non-theologians, as well as a contribution to the ongoing debates of theologians. We do not have all the answers, but we do have a sense of today’s questions and we also have some fairly strong convictions. All the way through we have shown how our own experiences have shaped our thinking. We may come from quite opposite church backgrounds but we have much in common. We are both laywomen, wives and mothers, who work in the field of Christian communication. And as we have talked our way through this book, we have become great friends.” The conversation begins:
ES: “I was quite slow in waking up to feminism… when I was sixteen I had a conversion experience which changed my life. I’ve been a committed Christian ever since… I went off to Canada where I was a graduate student in philosophy… the lecturers were all men… I would inevitably be in the lounge with the men, discussing the great issues of God, life, the universe and the Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd, while the women would be busying around in the kitchen getting food to feed us. It never occurred to me to be in the kitchen with the women…” (Pg. 1-2)
MH: “I thought that monks were better than nuns---more interesting and better educated… After university … I became involved in a church run by a male religious order… I did feel oppressed, not because I was a woman but because I was a layperson… [I was] a bit anti-feminist theology … [because] in the early days it was rather militant and negative. I could agree 100% with the aim of bringing in the women’s dimension: it is so obvious that the whole of history has been slanted towards men… but I didn’t like the way [feminists] did it. Feminist theology … seemed to be identified with … attacking what was called patriarchy… I found the whole language abstract and pretentious, as though trying to play the men’s game without having their skills.” (Pg. 4-5)
ES: “[W]hen my book [‘What’s Right with Feminism’] was launched, [it] identified a lot of issues for women from an evangelical constituency that nobody had named before. About 500 women turned up for our first conference… Evangelicals thought they didn’t have the range of problems that feminist theology addressed. We didn’t a problem with the Virgin Mary, with the over-clericalism of the church… Now we were admitting that there were problems here… which we wanted to address… so many evangelical women … had been used to … sermons which largely ignored the women’s stories in the Gospels, or interpreted them in a patronizing way.” (Pg. 13-14)
ES: “I always worried when people protested, ‘Of course we don’t believe in a male God,’ but then almost in the next breath signified that, even if not male, this God was still patriarchal. What was the point of having a neutered, patriarchal God?... When relinquishing a God who is male, we need to be more careful about ways we speak.” (Pg. 28-29)
ES: “One of the earliest feminist ways of resolving the so-called maleness of the Trinity was to see the Holy Spirit as neuter or feminine… but that left an equation of two to one, which resolved nothing. It wasn’t helped either by throwing in Mary as an extra feminine voice!” (Pg. 34)
MH: “do women and men have the same sort of relationship with Jesus? I would want to assert that they have an equal relationship, but is it equal in the same way or is it equal in a different way?... When I pray I don’t feel that Jesus being a man is a barrier. And yet at the same time I am asking myself, ‘Why isn’t it a barrier? Ought it to be a barrier?’ But the fact is that I don’t feel it as one.” (Pg. 47)
ES: “Another thing many feminists don’t like is the way the church has used Christ’s death to reinforce women’s guilt. Atonement is necessary because women are guilty: the Church fathers implied that women have a particular responsibility for sin… feminists have some justification for their allegation that women have been treated differently over the issue of sin. Men are forgiven their sins more easily than women.” (Pg. 76)
MH: “I have never so far joined the group called CWO (Catholic Women’s Ordination)… because when it was started I thought it was strategically a mistake and likely to call out a counter-reaction from Rome. Now that has happened with this so-called infallible teaching. So maybe I should join CWO now, because the damage has been done.” (Pg. 106)
MH: “even in the ten commandments you get that kind of attitude reflected: ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s property, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.’ Nothing about ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s husband.’” (Pg. 131)
ES: “[About] the women at the cross… it is interesting how the twelve who were men actually come over rather shabbily in a range of ways. But the women, who were not part of the twelve but were very much there all the way through, come over as incredibly different, even when the story is told by men.” (Pg. 138)
ES: “everybody talks about ‘headship.’ Suddenly… a whole theological construct emerges …that is used to keep women in place… I think those who see this as instructions on keeping universal authority structures are hopelessly out of date. They can’t be universal, because we now don’t have slavery and we know it was a bad thing. So what Paul was saying in that case was a temporary expedient. It’s much more keeping the church together in difference.” (Pg. 143)
ES: “Womanism probably first marked the splintering of the single feminist voice. It marked the first demarcation away from a universal idea of women’s oppression. Womanist Christian writing challenges the idea that women experience the same kind of oppression within the church throughout different cultures and communities. The womanist voice says the struggles of black Christian feminists within the church are very different from those of white Christian feminists. There are different layers and areas of oppression, and ‘white’ concepts of liberation are inadequate.” (Pg. 184-185)
MH: “And Mary Daly is so provocative. I just wonder what is wrong with the woman. Her way of writing is utterly extraordinary…"
ES: “what she is doing, of course, is changing the whole nature of patriarchal writing, so she is not even buying into the thought-forms or the expressions that you get in patriarchy.” (Pg. 223)
ES: “I enjoy them [women-only liturgies]. It is a time when women can experience their womanliness in relation to each other, and there is a lot of sharing. I find them quite emotional.” (Pg. 245)
This book will be of keen interest to Christians dealing with woman/church issues.
Displaying 1 of 1 review