Abstract
Feminist theologians have often asked whether a body on a cross serves as a helpful model to know and understand God.1 Mary Daly argues that Christianity has turned the ancient fertility symbol of the tree of life into “a torture cross.”2 She criticizes the Christian tradition for “necrophilia” and states that it has more to do with “Christolatry” than Christology. Daly moreover accuses it of fixing women in a “Scapegoat Syndrome” because of their traditional roles of passivity and humility in the Western tradition.3 Like Daly, many feminist theologians have criticized atonement theories and the Christian insistence on the cross. Grace Jantzen concurs with Daly and writes, “The western intellectual tradition is obsessed with death and other worlds, a violent obsession that is interwoven with masculinist drive for mastery.”4
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Bibliography
Allen, Paula Gunn. “The Woman I Love Is a Planet: The Planet I Love Is a Tree.” In This Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature, Environment, edited by Roger S. Gottlieb, 364–68. London: Routledge, 1996.
Bonaventure . The Soul’s Journey into God, The Tree of Life, The Life of St. Francis. Edited by Ewert Cousins. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1978.
Brock, Rita Nakashima. “The Question of the Cross in ‘Good’ Friday.” Huffington Post, April 1, 2010. Accessed July 2, 2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rita-nakashima-brock-ph-d/on-good-friday-did-god-us_b_519347.html.
Brown, Joanna Carlson, and Rebecca Parker. “For God So Loved the World?” In Violence against Women and Children: A Christian Theological Sourcebook, edited by Carol Adams and Marie M. Fortune, 36–59. New York: Continuum, 1995.
Bynum, Carolyn Walker. Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.
Cousins, Ewert. “Introduction.” In The Soul’s Journey into God, The Tree of Life, The Life of St. Francis, by Bonaventure , 1–50. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1978.
Cuomo, Chris. Feminism and Ecological Communities: An Ethic of Flourishing. London: Routledge, 1998.
Daly, Mary. Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation, with an Original Reintroduction by the Author. Boston: Beacon Press, 1985.
—. Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism, with a New Intergalactic Introduction by the Author. Boston: Beacon Press, 1990.
Deane-Drummond, Celia. Ecotheology. London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2008.
—. Wonder and Wisdom: Conversations in Science, Spirituality and Theology. London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2010.
Estermann, José. “Jesus Christ as Chakana: Outline of an Andean Christology of Liberation.” In Getting the Poor down from the Cross: Christology of Liberation, edited by José Maria Vigil. International Association of Third World Theologians, EATWOT, 2007. Accessed July 4, 2014, http://www.servicioskoinonia.org/LibrosDigitales/LDK/EATWOTGettingThePoorDown.pdf.
Fox, Matthew. The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of Global Renaissance. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983.
Gudmarsdottir, Sigridur. “Rapes of Earth and Grapes of Wrath: Steinbeck, Apocalypticism and the Metaphor of Rape.” Feminist Theology: The Journal of the Britain and Ireland School of Feminist Theology 18 (January 2010): 206–22.
Guðmundsdóttir, Arnfríður. Meeting God on the Cross: Christ, Cross and the Feminist Critique. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Jantzen, Grace. Becoming Divine: Toward a Feminist Philosophy of Religion. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998.
Kaza, Stephanie. “House of Wood.” In This Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature, Environment, edited by Roger S. Gottlieb, 41–43. London: Routledge, 1996.
Kolivupuu, Marju. “Natural Sacred Places in Landscape: An Estonian Model.” In Nature, Space and the Sacred: Transdisciplinary Perspectives, edited by Sigurd Bergmann, Peter M. Scott, Maria Jansdatter Samuelsson, and Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, 223–34. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009.
McDaniel, Jay. With Roots and Wings: Christianity in an Age of Ecology and Dialogue. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995.
Pétursson, Hallgrímur. Hymns of the Passion: Meditations of the Passion of Christ. Translated by Arthur Charles Gook. Reykjavík: Hallgríms Church, 1978.
—. Passíusálmarnir. Reykjavík: Hallgrímskirkja, 1991.
Wallace, Mark I. Green Christianity: Five Ways to a Sustainable Future. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2015 Jenny Daggers and Grace Ji-Sun Kim
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Gudmarsdottir, S. (2015). The Green Cross. In: Daggers, J., Kim, G.JS. (eds) Christian Doctrines for Global Gender Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137462220_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137462220_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-50179-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-46222-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave Religion & Philosophy CollectionPhilosophy and Religion (R0)