The Sacred Feminine as Ideology and History:

Is the Goddess a Feminist?

Professor Rosemary Radford Ruether, Carpenter Professor of Feminist Theology, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California.

Dan Brown’s book The Da Vinci Code has raised, in popular culture, the question of the Sacred Feminine and the role of Mary Magdalene in Christian history. Rosemary Radford Ruether, whose most recent book is Goddess and the Divine Feminine: A Western Religious History, has led the historical and theological scholarly quest to reclaim women’s roles in religion for the past three decades. In this lecture, The Sacred Feminine as Ideology and History: Is the Goddess a Feminist? Professor Ruether will outline her latest discoveries, and assess the sacred feminine, its politics and ethics. 

Rosemary Radford Ruether: Former Georgia Harkness Professor of Theology at Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary from 1976-2000. Pioneer feminist liberation theologian, activist, and theorist, Rosemary has supported social and religious activists throughout the world in their quest for ethical globalisation. Her numerous publications include Sexism and God-Talk, Faith and Fratricide, and Integrating Ecofeminism: Globalizations and World Religions.  (See below for further details)

IMPORTANT NOTICE! - NEW Venue: MacNeill Theatre, Hamilton building, Trinity College Dublin. The Hamilton building is on the Westland Row end of Trinity College. (Enter by the Lincoln Gate, beside the Dental Hospital, and ask the porter for directions).

Date:               June 30^th 2006

Time:              7:45 - 9:45

Cost:               €20                  Students/ SW Benefits  €10

Organisers: Institute for Feminism and Religion.  www.instituteforfeminismandreligion.org

            Goddesses and the Divine Feminine: A Western Religious History

            AUTHOR: Rosemary Radford Ruether

            LIST PRICE: £17.95

            FORMAT: Hardback (pages: 336)

            ISBN: 0520231465

            13 DIGIT ISBN: 9780520231467

            PUBLISHER: University of California Press

            PUB. DATE: 15 Jun 2004

Brief Biography      

      Rosemary Radford Ruether has been a pioneer Christian feminist theologian

      for over three decades, and among the most widely read feminist

      theologians in North America. Her book, Sexism and God-Talk, a classic in

      the field of feminist theology, remains the only systematic feminist

      treatment of the Christian symbols to date. To categorize her as a

      feminist theologian, however, is to risk neglecting the broad scope of her

      interests. With wide-ranging scholarship and a penchant for finding the

      hidden connections among seemingly disparate fields, Ruether has written

      and edited close to twenty books and hundreds of articles and reviews. She

      is seemingly at home in such diverse fields as patristics, the historical

      and theological roots of anti-Semitism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,

      the history of women in American religion, liberation theology, the

      mythology of the Ancient Near East, and ecology.

      Select Biography

      Bibliography

      Selected Primary Works

      Ruether, Rosemary Radford. Gregory of Nazianzus: Rhetor and Philosopher.

      London: Oxford University Press, 1969.

      "Beginnings: An Intellectual Autobiography" in Journeys: The Impact of

      Personal Experience on Religious Thought, ed. Gregory Baum, New York:

      Paulist Press, 1975. [Abbreviated B]

      To Change the World. New York: Crossroad, 1981. [Abbreviated TCW]

      Disputed Questions: On Being a Christian (Nashville: Abingdon, 1982).

      [Abbreviated DQ]

      Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology. Boston: Beacon Press,

      1983. [Abbreviated SGT]

      Women-Church: Theology and Practice of Feminist Liturgical Communities.

      San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985.

      "Robert Palmer: First the God, Then the Dance," Christian Century (Feb.

      7-14, 1990), 125-26.

      Gaia & God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing. San Francisco:

      HarperCollins, 1992.

      Women and Redemption: A Theological History. Minneapolis: Fortress Press,

      1998. [Abbreviated WR]

      Ruether, Rosemary Radford and Herman J. Ruether. The Wrath of Jonah: The

      Crisis of Religious Nationalism in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. San

      Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989.

      Edited Works

      With Marc H. Ellis. Beyond Occupation: American Jewish, Christian, and

      Palestinian Voices for Peace. Boston: Beacon Press, 1990.

      With Naim S. Ateek and Marc H. Ellis. Faith and the Intifada: Palestinian

      Christian Voices. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1992.

Selected Secondary Sources

      Bouma-Prediger, Steven, The Greening of Theology: The Ecological Models of

      Rosemary Radford Ruether, Joseph Sittler, and Jürgen Moltmann. Atlanta:

      Scholars Press, 1995.

     Chopp, Rebecca, "Seeing and Naming the World Anew: The Works of     Rosemary

      Radford Ruether," Religious Studies Review 15.1 (January, 1989), 8-11.

      --------. "Feminist and Womanist Theologies" in The Modern Theologians,

      2nd ed., ed. by David F. Ford (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 389-404.

      Snyder, Mary Hembrow. The Christology of Rosemary Radford Ruether: A

      Critical Introduction. Mystic, Connecticut: Twenty-Third Publications,

      1988.

      --------. "Rosemary Radford Ruether" in A New Handbook of Christian

      Theologians. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 399-410.