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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2009
The title of this article contains a paradox which I have chosen deliberately and the meaning of which will become clear during the course of it. The topic is ‘Women in Dissent’. A number of meanings could be attributed to this title. It could either be understood as ‘Women in the dissenting or non-conformist tradition’ or it could mean ‘dissenting women’ which is the option I have chosen. I want to discuss whether or not feminism, or to be more precise, feminist theology, can be understood as a form of dissent or in what respects it differs from the forms of dissent that would normally be studied in the dissenting or non-conformist tradition.
1 For an extensive study of the ecclesiology of the founder of the Brethren, John Nelson Darby, see Geldbach, Erich, Christliche Versammlung und Heilsgeschichte bei John Nelson Darby (Wuppertal: Theologischer Verlag R. Brockhaus, 1971).Google Scholar
2 Women have a calling in the churches today: a calling to represent that liberating sign of new humanity, precisely because they have so long endured so much oppression and deprivation of full humanity’. Ruether, Rosemary Radford, ‘The Call of Women in the Church Today’, in: Women of Faith in Dialogue, ed. Mollenkott, Virginia Ramey (New York: Crossroad, 1987), 88.Google Scholar
3 Stuart, Elizabeth, Just Good Friends. Towards a Lesbian and Gay Theology of Relationships (London: Mowbray, 1995), 24.Google Scholar
4 ‘Gather in My Name: Toward a Christian Feminist Spirituality’ is reprinted as an appendix to Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler, In Memory of Her. A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (London: SCM, 1983)Google Scholar as well as in Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler, Discipleship of Equals. A Critical Feminist Ekklesia-logy of Liberation (London: SCM, 1993), 195–205.Google Scholar
5 Fiorenza, , Discipleship, 197.Google Scholar
6 For Fiorenza's distinction between archetype and prototype, see Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler, In Memory of Her. AFeminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (2nd Ed.London: SCM, 1993), 33.Google Scholar
7 Meyer-Wilmes, Hedwig, Rebellion on the Borders. Feminist Theology between Theory and Praxis (Kampen: Pharos, 1995), 209.Google Scholar
8 Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler, Bread Not Stone The Challenge of Feminist Biblical Interpretation (Boston: Beacon, 1984), 7.Google Scholar
9 For the connection between feminist theology and liberation theology see Mary Hunt, ‘Feminist Liberation Theology: The Development of Method in Construction’ Diss. theol. Berkeley Graduate Theological Union 1980; Hogan, Linda, From Women's Experience to Liberation Theology (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995)Google Scholar and Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler, ‘Feminist Theology as a Critical Theology of Liberation’ Theological Studies 36 (1975), 606–626.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10 Ruether, Rosemary Radford, Women-Church. Theology and Practice of Feminist Liturgical Communities (San Francisco: Harper&Row, 1985), 64.Google Scholar
11 See also Ruether, Rosemary Radford, ‘Being a Catholic Feminist at the End of the Twentieth Century’, Feminist Theology 10 (1995), 9–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12 Ruether, Women-Church, 60: ‘Thus we are not talking about separatism as a total ideology, but as a step in a process, a stage that is absolutely necessary but not an end in itself, a step toward a further end in the formation of a critical culture and community of women and men in exodus from patriarchy’.
13 Ruether, , Women-Church, 5.Google Scholar
14 With regard to the house church movement, Andrew Walker speaks of ‘restorationism’: ‘Restorationists wish to restore or return to the New Testament pattern (as they see it) of the Early Church. The restoring of the Church as it was in its pristine form is to restore a charismatically ordained church, and one which Christians are seen as living in a kingdom run according to God's order and rules’. Walker, Andrew, Restoring the Kingdom. The Radical Christianity of the House Church Movement (London: Hodder & Stroughton, 1985), 22f.Google Scholar
15 ‚An intellectual re-creation of early Christian beginnings seeking to make the past intelligible must depart from an androcentric historiography that cannot do justice to the information of our sources, namely that women were participatory actors in the early Christian churches. Finally, such theoretical frameworks adequate to a feminist historiography must not only elucidate what it meant for women to become active members and leaders in early Christianity but also highlight the historical significance of women's active involvement in early Christian beginnings’. Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, 70.
16 Fiorenza, In Memory, 92.
17 Walker, Restoring, 23.
18 See especially Ruether, Rosemary Radford, ‘Eschatology and Feminism’ in Lift Every Voice. Constructing Christian Theologies from the Underside ed. Thistlethwaite, Susan Brooks and Engel, Mary Potter (San Francisco: Harper 1990), 111–124Google Scholar and Gaia and God. An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Heating by the same author (London: SCM, 1992).Google Scholar
19 See Ruether, , Women-Church, 64.Google Scholar
20 Ruether, , Women-Church, 38.Google Scholar
21 A representative collection is Women of Spirit. Female Leadership in the Jewish and Christian Traditions ed. Ruether, Rosemary Radford and McLaughlin, Eleanor (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979)Google Scholar.
22 A typical example for this which I observed in a Brethren church was that the weekly celebration of the breaking of the bread did often not begin with a general invitation stressing God's welcome, but with the warning that if anyone did not know Jesus as their Lord and Saviour, he or she should let bread and wine pass. Andrew Walker mentions ‘commitment courses’ as a form of initiation into the house church movement or, as he calls it, the kingdom.
23 Russell, Letty, Church in the Round. Feminist Interpretation of the Church (Westminster: John Knox Press, 1993).Google Scholar
24 It is interesting to note that Letty Russell's work on ecclesiology is based on her work as a Presbyterian minister in East Harlem and on working for the World Council of Churches, an organisation of mainstream denominations.
25 Daly, Mary, Beyond God the Father. Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation (London: The Women's Press, 1993), 139.Google Scholar
26 ‘The New Being of Antichurch is a rising up of Mother and Daughter together, beyond the Madonna's image and beyond the ambivalent Warrior Maiden's image. The togetherness comes from nonimmersion in either role and it comes from our desperation which has made us remember and look forward to the Golden Age’. Daly, , Beyond God the Father, 150.Google Scholar
27 Fulkerson, Mary McClintock, Changing the Subject. Women's Discourses and Feminist Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994).Google Scholar
28 Loughlin, Gerard, Telling God's Story. Bible, Church and narrative theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
29 Chauvet, Louis-Marie, Symbol and Sacrament. A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existence (Collegeville: Minneapolis, 1995).Google Scholar
30 Fulkerson characterises this priority of theology as the priority of scripture: ‘Faithful reading is faithful praxis. We may speak of faithful performance of scripture and understand that the stage of that performance is the life of the individual and the society (even if there is no explicitly political hermeneutic for the text and that performance)’. Fulkerson, , Changing the Subject, 189.Google Scholar
31 For a study of the notion of ‘praxis’ in the theological concepts by which feminist theology is informed, see Hogan, , Women's Experience, 64–84.Google Scholar