The Theological Basis For Feminism? (Jesus, Earth, beliefs, bible)

[MaddLlama]

Originally Posted by Halcyon

Hairy bird department?

Tha's what you said, I just chose to use a nice euphemism, instead of clinical terms. The only way for God to be distinctly male or female is not defined by roles, because we as humans define those, but by phsyical gender. So, unless you're going to tell me god has one....

Proper social order - define it first. There polyandrous societies out there.

You defined it yourself - the man is the head of the household, and the woman is subservient to men.

[d.]

Originally Posted by Halcyon

An androgynous god certainly does away with the typical Father figure of deity, which in turn does away with the concept of the man being the head of the household etc.

from jewfaq.org :


G-d is Neither Male nor Female

This followed directly from the fact that G-d has no physical form. As one
rabbi explained it to me, G-d has no body, no
genitalia, therefore the very idea that G-d is male or female is patently
absurd. We refer to G-d using masculine terms simply for convenience's sake,
because Hebrew has no neutral gender; G-d is no more male than a table is.
Although we usually speak of G-d in masculine terms, there are times when
we refer to G-d using feminine terms. The Shechinah, the manifestation of
G-d's presence that fills the universe, is conceived of in feminine terms,
and the word Shechinah is a feminine word.


(emphasis mine)

Originally Posted by JamesThePersian

There is certainly a (Christian) theological basis for the equality (though not the homogeneity) of the sexes.

i would very much like to know what you base this claim on?

[Halcyon]

Originally Posted by MaddLlama

Why is an equal partnership such a bad thing? Why does a woman have to be subservient to a man? I know I certainly wear the pants in my home, and my home, marriage and life are in good order. I don't see what the benefit is to lowering myself.

Um, i think you're reading me wrong MaddLlama, i'm with you here.

I don't think women are subservient to men, i'm saying that placing the male gender onto God elevates the status of maleness so that in our societiy, particularly in the past, women may have felt an obligation to be subservient - which i don't agree with at all.

[Victor]

Originally Posted by Halcyon

Because, if God is male and is the Father figure, this naturally places maleness above femaleness. A male created the universe and runs all things, thus males should also be in charge of earthly affairs.

If God is androgynous, father and mother can play equal roles without the woman feeling she is under some kind of obligation to be subservient to her partner.

Well, that's just my theory anyway.

So in your mind an androgynous diety who would not intend for differential roles among men and women?

[MaddLlama]

Originally Posted by Halcyon

Um, i think you're reading me wrong MaddLlama, i'm with you here.

I don't think women are subservient to men, i'm saying that placing the male gender onto God elevates the status of maleness so that in our societiy, particularly in the past, women may have felt an obligation to be subservient - which i don't agree with at all.

This only occurs, IMO, if church leaders suggest that course of action. It has been this way in the past not because god commanded such, but because this was how men thought. Most people, men included don't think this way anymore, so it isn't hard to imagine a Christian woman who does not feel an obligation to be subservient to her husband, or lesser than a man.

[Halcyon]

Originally Posted by MaddLlama

This only occurs, IMO, if church leaders suggest that course of action. It has been this way in the past not because god commanded such, but because this was how men thought. Most people, men included don't think this way anymore, so it isn't hard to imagine a Christian woman who does not feel an obligation to be subservient to her husband, or lesser than a man.

Genesis 3:16: "Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee."

I agree with you, post-enlightenment things have come a long way.
However, the Judeo=Christian God did command that men should rule over women, and i believe this is why women in our society were treated as inferior for much of our past.

Originally Posted by Victor

So in your mind an androgynous diety who would not intend for differential roles among men and women?

Correct.

Although i personally don't believe such roles exist anyway. Male-female roles are wildly different in different forms of human society, just because we have certain gender roles in our culture does not make that the norm.

[Victor]

Originally Posted by Halcyon

Correct.

Although i personally don't believe such roles exist anyway. Male-female roles are wildly different in different forms of human society, just because we have certain gender roles in our culture does not make that the norm.

No doubt. But no matter how one slices it, there are real differences between the sexes.

"Maleness" and "femaleness" mean much more than mere possession of certain genitalia. Rather, they are complete roles and ontological realities created by God IMO.

It isn't orthodox, traditional Christians who are hung up on maleness either; rather it is the "gender radicals" who favor women's ordination. I'd be quite content to accept the fact that God came to earth as a Man and taught His disciples and recorded in His inspired Revelation that only men ought to be ordained, just as He gave Mary the unfathomable honor and privilege of bearing God and serving in a sublime way as a Co-Redemptrix and Spiritual Mother.

As I said before, some folks get confused with role differentiation vs. inequality. But I suppose if I wanted to milk my 3 month old real bad, the emotional response would be that of inequality, while not accepting the role differentiation.

It's just the way it is.

[Random]

There is no theological basis for Feminism in Patriarchal religions, which is to say most of them, but we cannot neglect to mention the Great Goddess.

Many feminist scholars have developed thea-logy, the study of the Divine feminine in terms of the one Goddess whom, it is believed, was the aboriginal diety of the human race before the written word in prehistoric times.

Mankind first worshipped the Sun Goddess in Her many and varied glorious forms almost universally, the world over in every tribal proto-culture. Gradually, over thousands of years, the peaceful agrarian Matrichate order in which women dominated was replaced by a more masculine, warlike hunter-gatherer one due to changes in ritual, technology (tools, weapons etc) and social conventions (exogamic marriage for instance). The Goddess in time acquired a son/lover who was at first Her consort but gradually attained a position almost equal to Her. Eventually, the god multiplied and there were many gods and deities, forming a pantheon of which the Goddess was initially viewed as Mother.

From this, Paganism developed in the years after about 5000BC until, once again gradually, the Goddess became a Trinity (Triple Goddess) and copulating with other male gods gave rise to many more gods and goddesses until at last the memory of Her original oneness was lost to almost all cultures, who were now firmly polytheistic.

Formalised Patriachy as we understand it today was born out of the Pharonic cult in Egypt, though nomadic desert-dwelling tribes, deprived of contact with wild nature, had been ruled through the male line for a long time previous. To cut a long story short, the ascension of male deities during this time to the status of Sun God coupled with the Aryan concept of the supreme Father-God (Zeus, Odin et al) all but consigned the Goddess and the divine feminine to the dust bin of history.

Marija Gimbutas and other feminists have dug up the original Goddess though (so to speak), and although her work and that of many other feminist scholars is not consider mainstream by the critics and debunkers, they are only following on from the consciouness of prehistoric matriarchy and the Goddess which Karl Marx and Frederich Engels restored in the 19th century. Communism was in many ways Marx and Engels's update on the primitve communalism of the Matrichates.

So yes, undoubtedly, there is a theological (thealogical) basis for Feminism. Some modern Wicca and Neo-Paganism revive unitarian Goddess-worship.

In closing, though, it is fair to say most mainstream feminists are more interested in the social and political aspects, and more often than not discount the religious ones. Still, as Robert Graves said, the Goddess abides...