book 27: Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology by Rosemary Radford Ruether

I'm glad this book came right after In Memory of Her as this was much easier to read!

I first read this probably probably in '14 or '15 and it was so hard to find this book that I bought the used copy that I own now just to read it. I reread it again while preparing for seminary, so this was my third time reading it.

This book is much whiter than I remember, since much better able to identify that now. It really grated on me to read that spiritual revelation comes to individuals and not communities - this is a very white way of thinking! Throughout the rest of the book, Radford Ruether doesn't mention race and treats whiteness as the default without seeming to realize it. 

This speaks a lot to the feminist Catholic movement in the early '80s, which has only marginally improved. Nevertheless, this is historically a very significant book and I'm grateful for it. It's a foundational, mostly accessible text about how sexism has been ingrained in Christian institutions, writings, and social systems. The fact that this book is only a couple years older than me, and I just turned 40, shows how recent this discussion is. Radford Ruether wasn't the first person to write about this, but if you've encountered conversations about this in your life, it's at least partly because of her work.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/367714.Sexism_and_God_Talk 

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