Is Christianity Sexist? An Exploration of Gender-Based Discrimination in Christianity, Slides of Christianity

Download Is Christianity Sexist? An Exploration of Gender-Based Discrimination in Christianity and more Slides Christianity in PDF only on Docsity! Is Christianity irredeemably sexist? Dr Hannah Bacon Associate Professor in Feminist Theology Introducing you to Theology Why even ask the question?  Theology  Interesting and important question for Christians  Concerns Christian ethics and social justice  Important to assess the evidence for the claim in, for e.g. the Bible, Christian doctrines, Christian practice including the way the Church is organised  Feminist theology  Begins from a commitment to justice and gender justice specifically  Seeks to challenge and change modes of belief and practice that are exposed as sexist What we offer at TRSChester – www.chester.ac.uk/trs BA Theology BA Philosophy, Ethics and Religion BA Religious Studies BA Theology and Religious Studies Feminist Perspectives in Christian Theology Contemporary Challenges to Christian Thinking Gender and Religion Christology from the Margins What is sexism? Elizabeth Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse Sexism is the ‘persistent violation’ of women’s humanity and ‘an omnipresent paradigm of unjust relationships’ (2002, 8). Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology Sexism is SIN Sexism describes the ‘gender privilege of males over females’ (1983, 165) Sexism is gender-based oppression Everyday examples of sexism Take a look at the Everyday Sexism Project https://everydaysexism.com/ Attitudes, values and beliefs Behaviour/actions Social structures Lisa Isherwood, Introducing Feminist Christologies: ‘At each turn in the Christian narrative women are systematically excluded or defined as inferior. Indeed, much of the Christian story depends on the “truth” of women’s inferiority’ (2001, 17). Killing of Sarah Everard - https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/03/sarah-everard-london- murder-sexism-protest-notallmen.html Daphne Hampson  Swallowing a Fishbone: Feminist Theologians debate Christianity ‘For a feminist to be a Christian is indeed for her to swallow a fishbone. It must stick in her throat’ (1996, 1). Theology and Feminism (1990):  The overarching problem = Christianity is an historical religion: ‘This history is not dispensable’ (1990, 9).  3 interrelated issues: 1) The historical time which is indispensable to Christianity and normative in the here and now is a male dominated time 2) Christians believe God became flesh in the historical person of Jesus. The flesh that God chose was male 3) The collection of sacred texts called the Bible which tell the story of God’s intervention into human history are also androcentric (male centred) Virginia Fabella  Filipino theologian ‘Christology from an Asian Woman’s Perspective’. In Fabella, Virginia and Sun Ai Lee Park (eds). We Dare to Dream, ed.. New York: Orbis.  ‘Jesus’ liberating and humanizing message has meaning for all women struggling for full humanity and their rightful place in history, for Jesus’ message not only liberates but also empowers’ (3).  In his humanity, Jesus reveals God as caring for the weakest and lowliest.  ‘In his humanity Jesus has shown us what it means to be truly human, to have life abundantly, to be saved’ (3). Is Jesus’ maleness really that important? Rosemary Radford Ruether  (1983). Sexism and God-Talk  It is Jesus’ message and liberative praxis that are redemptive; Jesus’ maleness caries no ultimate significance.  Jesus’ ministry and praxis reveal a new humanity, a new and authentic way of being human (135).  The Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels (i.e. Matthew, Mark and Luke) is ‘remarkably compatible with feminism’ (135).  Jesus does not see himself as a political Messiah but as a SERVANT – To be a servant of God isn’t to consent to being dominated by others, it means that all people are servants equally.  Jesus’ interactions with women reveal God’s new order as counter to sexism: Jesus speaks at the well with a Samaritan woman; a Syro-Phoenician woman is the prophet seeker who forces Jesus to concede redemption of the Gentiles; The woman with the issue of blood exhorts healing for herself.  Jesus is a liberator who ‘calls for a renunciation, a dissolution, of the web of status relationships by which societies have defined privilege and deprivation.. His ability to speak as liberator does not reside in his maleness but in the fact that he has renounced this system of domination and seeks to embody in his person the new humanity of service and mutual empowerment’ (137).  Jesus is not the only representation of the new humanity. ‘Christ, the liberated humanity, is not confined to a static perfection of one person two thousand years ago’ (138). 1. Language of servanthood has ‘outlived its usefulness’ in Christian theology. ‘.. for women of colour, the sin is not the lack of service, but too much service’ (215).  Ruether aligns servanthood with mutuality and empowerment but for black women, servanthood has been neither  Ruether identifies servanthood with a new humanity – but reality of black women’s experience is that service often violated black women’s humanity rather than providing opportunities to be humanised and liberated.  (1993). The Sin of Servanthood. In Townes, Emile (ed). A Troubling in my Soul. Womanist Perspectives on Evil and Suffering. New York: Orbis. 2. Black women’s humanity is not only diminished by sexism, but by racism and classism  (1989). White Women’s Christ and Black Women’s Jesus: Feminist Christology and Womanist Response. Atlanta: Scholars’ Press Jacquelyn Grant