A Map of the New Country/Sexism and God-Talk/In Memory of Her
Swidler, Arlene
Sexism in the church A MAP OF THE NEW COUNTRY WOMEN AND CHRISTIANITY Sara Maitland Routledge & Kegan Paul, $12.95, 235 pp. SEXISM AND GOD-TALK Rosemary Radford Ruether Beacon, $16.95, 300...
...Already in the second century Church Fathers were teaching that what was not assumed by the Word in the Incarnation could not be saved...
...In 1976 the Vatican Declaration argued against women in orders because "Christ himself was and remains a man...
...But details remain, and by a "critical reconstruction" of the narrative we can begin to see how women are an integral part of the history of Christian origins...
...The woman remains unnamed in Mark's story, and though the roles of the two other disciples important in Mark's passion story-Judas and Peter-remain vid, this female disciple has slipped out for memory...
...Except for a fruitful interview with Rosemary Radford Ruether, Maitland's American Catholic sources seem to have been mainly upper-echelon sisters...
...The writers of the canonical New Testament have often neglected to write down this part of the story...
...Does the very seminary process result in co-optation...
...is a serious question...
...The biblical texts are clearly theologically androcentric and culturally patriarchal...
...Even an androgynous Christ, she points out, remains at base androcentric if it is identified with the male Jesus...
...In the "Jesus movement" within Israel women are discovered to be neither peripheral nor trivial, but part of a "discipleship of equals...
...Should women press for ordination, knowing that ordained women, though having greater influence and visibility, may mute their criticism...
...This tension is relevant to Maitland's other themes...
...They must be "evaluated historically in terms of their own time and culture and assessed theologically in terms of a feminist scale of values," a huge and complicated task, here undertaken courageously...
...What stance does a feminist scholar take addressing them...
...is not to be encapsulated 'once-for-all' in the historical Jesus...
...In-depth conversations with the leadership of the Women's Ordination Conference or St...
...Though sympathetic to their goals, she has accused members of the goddess-movement of a "simplistic" reading of the Bible "through a screen of hostile caricature," and of reversing roles in a way that would do psychic harm to men...
...Here too Schussler-Fiorenza "record acts" the large and varied role of women...
...According to Ruether's synthesis-evaluation, a fresh reading of the synoptic Gospels reveals a prophetic Jesus proclaiming a new social order in which all are sister-brothers to one another...
...SEXISM AND GOD-TALK Rosemary Radford Ruether Beacon, $16.95, 300 pp...
...Methodology, God, creation, anthropology, ministry, eschatology: all these and more are focuses of chapters...
...If, despite this, lay women and nuns today can forge and maintain unity, there is hope that women entering either the priesthood or the bureaucracy tomorrow can also resist aligning themselves with the old-style clerical and hierarchical point of view...
...Rosemary Radford Ruether's Sexism and God-Talk is firmly Christian theology...
...Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza has been so much in the forefront of the Catholic feminist movement-both as scholar and as strategist-that it is hard to believe that In Memory of Her is her first book-length contribution on the subject in English...
...Arlene Swidler MUCH of the appeal in Sara Maitland's A Map of the New Country lies in her perspective...
...In a good chapter on "Women in the Bureaucracies" Maitland notes that although collegiality, lay participation, and ecumenism have all enlarged our bureaucracies, we have not developed a theology of institutions...
...IN MEMORY OF HER Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorienza Crossroad, $19.50, 376 pp...
...During the past few years Ruether has been a leader in defending the possibilities of Christian feminism...
...Like so many non-Catholics, she is fascinated by Catholic nuns...
...It is not only within Roman Catholicism that clericalism and sexism flourish...
...she is an Englishwoman, an Anglican married to a priest, and she gives us an overview which is both international - at least British-American - and interreligious...
...Most of us would not pick up the reference in Schussleriza's title without an explanation...
...Examples from both British and American churches show women massed in the lower echelons of the bureaucracy and pay scale, typing, answering phones, and cleaning...
...Maitland's perspective does, unfortunately, have one weakness...
...In Mark's account Jesus says, "And truly I say to you, wherever the gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her" (14:9...
...metaphor pretty well sums up the thru of the book...
...Ruether, in her treatment, investigates the androgynous and spirit Christologies which run parallel through history to the dominant patriarchal Christology...
...And have women perhaps overin-vested in the whole ordination issue...
...And a German dissertation published this year argues that the Y or male chromosome is clearly "the symbol of transcendence...
...Nuns, whether or not they like it, are really semi-clerics...
...Those who have been liberated then themselves become liberators...
...That, of course, has not happened...
...Christ...
...In spirit Christology, female as well as male prophets may be exemplars of the Risen Christ, but a wedge is driven between the historical Jesus and the ongoing Spirit...
...These are questions Catholics sometimes get rather dogmatic and righteous over, and it is helpful to read of the honest, intelligent disagreement among women of other churches...
...Women were important actors in the life of Jesus and the early Christian church...
...Her Christology is probably of most interest today...
...In three of the Gospels the story is told of a woman who anointed the head of Jesus-a sign-action acknowledging him as the Christ and revealing the woman as the paradigmatic true disciple, says Schiassler-Fiorenza...
...In Memory of Her is an intense, scholarly study so chockfull of detail that the lack of an index can become quite infuriating...
...As liberator, Jesus speaks not as a male but as one who has renounced the system of domination, including the oppression of women...
...The importance of this book lies in its breadth: it is, as Harvey Cox puts it, "something like a summa...
...Joan's Alliance in this country would have revealed what is one of the two or three main issues today: the barriers between sisters and lay women...
...Following Anne Scheibner, Maitland argues that the church's institutional form should itself be used as an opportunity for special witness...
...It is striking to see how all the ordination issues facing Roman Catholic women today have already been confronted within other churches...
...In the records of the more urban "early Christian missionary movement" we find a curious dichotomy: the Acts of the Apostles shows women only in marginal roles, yet Paul refers to various women as co-worker, apostle, diakonos...
...Such criticism, though but a minor theme here, shows the reflective stance Ruether has adopted...
...The Bible itself thus provides the resources for her feminist critique of religion...
...The earlier, more methodological chapters are difficult but fascinating...
...Two forms of early Christianity are discussed here...
...Feminist theology, according to Ruether, is a rediscovery of the prophetic element in biblical faith...
...Can a male savior save women...
...Should women celebrate "illegal" Eucharists, or should they develop their own liturgies...
Vol. 110 • October 1983 • No. 17
