Voices of challenge

Abstract

Women have always been deeply involved with religious beliefs and practices, but they have rarely held positions of institutional authority in the world religions. Yet many woman in past and present are known for their great moral and spiritual authority which has given them a high status and much prestige within their own community. Many aspects of traditional religion and spirituality have been called into question and deeply challenged by feminist writers. This challenge is not only addressed to religions from without, but also from within, as quite a few women who are strongly committed to a religious faith have developed a growing feminist consciousness. This enables them to criticise religion from within probably more effectively than secular women can do from without.

‘It might seem that the women’s revolution should just go about its business of generating a new consciousness, without worrying about God. I suggest that the fallacy involved in this would be an overlooking of a basic question that is implied in human existence and that the pitfall in such an oversight is cutting off the radical potential of the movement itself.

It is reasonable to take the position that sustained effort toward self-transcendence requires keeping alive in one’s consciousness the question of ultimate transcendence, that is, God. … The new wave of feminism desperately needs to be not only many-faceted but cosmic and ultimately religious in its vision. This means reaching outward and inward toward the God beyond and beneath the gods who have stolen our identity.’ — Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father, pp. 28ff.