Women and Redemption: A Theological History

Description

Rosemary Radford Ruether's authoritative, award-winning critique of women's unequal standing in the church, which explored the complex history of redemption in evaluating conflict over the fundamental meaning of the Christian gospel for gender relations, is now in an updated and expanded edition. Ruether highlights women theologians' work to challenge the patriarchal paradigm of historical theology and to present redemption linked to the liberation of women. Ruether turns her attention to the situation of women globally and how the growing plurality of women's voices from multicultural and multireligious contexts articulates feminist liberation theology today. Illustrations xi Acknowledgments xiii Preface: Second Edition xv Introduction 1 1. I n Christ No More Male and Female? T he Question of Gender and Redemption in the New Testament 11 Gender Equality in the First Jesus Movement 12 From Reassembled Jesus Movement to Early Hellenistic Mission 17 Jewish and Early Christian Readings of Genesis 19 Redemption and Gender in Conflict in Pauline Churches 24 Gender and Redemption in Two Forms of Pauline Churches 31 2. Gender and Redemption in the Patristic Era: Conflicting Perspectives 37 Trajectories of Early Christianity 37 Gender and Redemption in Some Second-Century Christianities 42 Two Late Patristic Syntheses: Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine 50 3. male Scholastics and Women mystics in medieval theology 65 Hildegard of Bingen 67 Thomas Aquinas 76 Mechthild of Magdeburg 79 Julian of Norwich 84 4. male Reformers, Feminist humanists, and Quakers in the Reformation 93 Gender in the Theological Anthropology of Luther and Calvin 96 Renaissance Feminism and the Debate about Women 103 Women in Radical Protestantism: Civil War Prophets and Quakers 111 5. Shakers and Feminist abolitionists in nineteenth-Century north america 121 The Shaker Tradition: From England to North America 122 Abolitionist Feminists 131 6. Feminist theologies in twentieth-Century Western europe 149 Feminist Theology and German Protestantism 149 Feminist Theology and Catholicism 158 Kari Elisabeth Børresen 158 Catharina Halkes 161 Mary Grey 164 European Feminist Theology in the 1990s 168 7. Feminist, Womanist, and mujerista theologies in twentieth-Century north america 175 Letty Russell 177 Mary Daly 180 Rosemary Ruether 186 Carter Heyward 188 Delores Williams 192 Ada María Isasi-Díaz 195 8. Feminist theologies in latin america, africa, and asia 203 Feminist Theology in Latin America 206 African Feminist Theology 213 Asian Feminist Theologies 220 9. emerging Feminist theologies: post-Coloniality and the Voices of the Fourth World 231 Postcolonialism and Theology 232 Fourth World Feminist Theologies 239 Conclusions 251 notes 259 index 325