Abstract
Rosemary Radford Ruether is one of the foremothers of feminist theology and the range of subject areas she has covered provide sharp and fascinating feminist theological insights into areas often untouched by other forms of liberation theology. She wrote hundreds of articles, chapters in books and over 50 authored or co-authored books and each is as relevant today as when they were written. Decades of students have been grateful for her work which remains the standard go-to texts for those studying feminist and liberation theologies as there they will find exposed the central issues with any hitherto patriarchal theology as well as a rich vein of feminist alternative readings.
There seems to be little doubt that her experiences in life set in place much of the grist to her theological mill. She grew up in a female-dominated house due to her father being away at war and then as part of his work with the American Mission for Aid working in Greece. The family did join him there in 1947 but he died in 1948 when Rosemary was just 12 years old. This led to Rosemary and her mother returning to America while her older sisters remained in school in France and Switzerland. Her mother and her aunt Mary were intelligent, articulate and self-confident women whose presence alone impacted the young Rosemary. In this environment, she was told she could be and do anything she set her mind to. This strong matriarchal background and empowering support must have played a part when on finishing her PhD her supervisor assumed she would stay on as his assistant, a thought that had never entered her head as she wanted an academic career of her own. In addition to the matriarchal conclave of her home which would influence her theological thinking, she had Jewish members of her Roman Catholic family. This not only gave her insight into how the Hebrew Bible was used and understood but guarded her against the at times unintentional anti-semitism that much of the early feminist theology has been accused of.
Rosemary spent her childhood years in Washington (1936–1952) and in 1952 the family moved to California where her mother was originally from. By 1965, Rosemary was married to Herman Ruether and they had three children under 7 years of age, an MA in Roman history and a PhD in Classics and Patristics with work on Gregory of Nazianzus. She was also writing a book on ecclesiology which she titled ‘The Church against Herself’; however, the publisher changed herself to itself. Needless to say none of the academic achievement came without struggle, not intellectually but rather in terms of obstacles from male colleagues. During the summer of 1965, Rosemary who was already involved in civil rights for African Americans travelled to Mississippi with other students and faculty to work with the Delta Ministry. She describes this as a turning point in her self-awareness as she weighed the possibility of dying, since violence was at its height in these years, and the obligation to do the right thing. She went. This marked just one step in her deepening awareness of harsh inequalities, the battle against which has been her life’s work. Another such wakeup call happened on a visit to Latin America she happened to remark to her companion that the strawberries in the field were a vivid red and looked delicious, yes came the reply, red with the blood of the workers who are exposed to the pesticides that keep the fruit red and kill them. Experiences such as this and many more were never forgotten and were used to deepen and broaden her theological thinking.
Rosemary’s life raised questions that fed her theology and this is the case with her initial article. Having been told by a Catholic priest that she and Herman would be expected to produce a child in the first year of marriage, she cast her eye on the Catholic Church and contraception. This was never an easy topic for a Catholic theologian, but she returned to the topic and that of abortion many times in her writing and became involved with campaigning organisations. Her stance as ever was clear and compassionate viewing abortion as a decision more often than not taken in order to avoid a greater disastrous outcome. She reminded the Catholic Church that if it allowed contraception then abortion would be reduced. It is not at all surprising that the question of women’s ordination was also one that would be addressed by Rosemary. With her background in patristics, she was able to enter the debate by challenging the long-held conviction that women had never held positions of leadership within the church. She was able to show that people such as Abelard defended women’s ordination, thus highlighting the issue was not a modern feminist move.
Many of the issues concerning women and the church came together in Sexism and God-Talk: Towards a Feminist Theology (Boston, Beacon Press), which was published in 1983. In this work, many of the principles of theology are examined from a feminist perspective ranging from ministry, images of God, Mariology, ecology, eschatology, socioeconomic redemption to Christology, where the question is asked ‘Can a male savior save women?’. This work sets out feminist methodology in theology, which is understood as an interacting dialectic between experience of oneself, the divine, the community and the world. Rosemary’s insistence that the ability for the believing community to declare that certain symbols no longer speak authentically to their experience and as such should either be discarded or examined to find new meaning was a major contribution of feminist thought.
Rosemary’s love of her Jewish uncle David coupled with her horror at Nazism and her reading of church history which exposed the anti-Semitism within the Christian tradition propelled her into a lifetime of activism and publishing in Jewish, Christian and Muslim relations. In 1989, along with her husband Herman Ruether she published The Wrath Of Jonah: The Crisis of Religious Nationalism in the Israel-Palestinian Conflict (San Francisco, Harper & Row), which was one of the many books and articles she wrote on this subject. The Ruethers write with deep concern for justice and are aware of the long-standing misinterpretations on both sides of the ideological divide. As ever the book comes from experience of the situation firsthand and conversations with both Israeli and Palestinian friends who feel torn into indefensible positions on both sides.
Having a background in the classics and a tutor at Scripps that she found inspirational who introduced her to the study of Greek religion Rosemary was perhaps more open than many of her contemporaries to the questions raised by theologians and pagan practitioners. However, in the 1970s, she raised some questions about what she considered to be the naïve way in which they often used questionable texts from the nineteenth century which appeared to support a matriarchal goddess worshipping paganism. These early works were vehemently attacked by those believing quite wrongly that Rosemary did not see paganism as a religion.
Ecology was an early interest of Rosemary’s having in 1972 read the Club of Rome report ‘Limits of Growth’ and her book Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing (San Francisco, Harper, 1992) expresses her concerns and to a degree her solutions. It is the first thorough feminist theological examination of the background to Christianity’s relationship with the natural order. In characteristic fashion in 1996 Rosemary broadened the eco conversation to include those women who she knew suffered most from the crisis of earth care. She edited a collection of essays by women from the global south entitled Women Healing Earth: Third World Women on Ecology, Feminism and Religion (Maryknoll, Orbis Books). This is the feminist at the heart of Rosemary Ruether, she at every turn enabled women to speak and delighted in global conversations.
Rosemary’s theology was always rooted in personal experience and there is none more personal than her work on mental health. In her book, Many Forms of Madness: A Family’s Struggle with Mental Illness and the Mental Health System (Minneapolis, Fortress, 2010) she lays bare the struggles her son David has endured with mental health issues and the struggles the family have had with the system itself which she found over many years to be inadequate. Her experience raised theological questions as she pondered the relationship between the brain and the self while scientists ponder the relationship between brain and mind – both perhaps in their own ways trying to bring together what centuries of dualism has driven apart. She found a psychiatrist who demonstrates that while people with mental health issues may not be cured they can recover and be enabled to live meaningful lives. This was her hope for her son David although she knew to be some way off but she will never give up. It may also have had some influence on the title of her autobiography, My Quests for Hope and Meaning. An Autobiography (Oregon, Cascade, 2013) although the use of the plural signals that this has been her life’s work in diverse areas.
Professor Rosemary Radford Ruether was a woman of remarkable talent and achievement who remained always open to new ideas and was keen to support young scholars and to network across cultural divides. She was a stern critic of how things have been in both church and society but as the title of her autobiography attests she still saw her life as ‘a quest for hope and meaning’. These very valuable qualities she shared with others through her vision, work and activism. We will miss you my friend but feel your influence still.