Second wave feminism

and its discontents

There’s an often told story about the philosopher Gertrude Stein who, on her death bed, remarked “What is the answer? … In that case, what is the question?”

We love this story because it reveals that even as she lay dying, Stein was turning over in her mind the base-level assumptions we carry about the world. Good philosophers are always doing this, but theologians less so. Whereas asking “what exactly do you mean by that?” is standard fare among philosophers, it can be taken as an affront for theologians. The assumption, it seems, is that theologians are beginning with categories that are a bit more stable. We have a working definition of life, death, forgiveness, obedience, or resurrection before we set out. The work of theology often begins with a stable definition and then adds history, subtlety, or novelty to the concept.

We’d benefit, I think, with a bit more attention to our questions. This is especially the case with some of our most perennial questions- among them, God and the world, and how the two relate. The second place, I think, is on what we mean by “men” and “women”. The more interesting question, for me, is how these two sets of questions relate.

Since at least the advent of second wave feminist theology, this question has largely been about power.

Second wave feminist theologians took a few things for granted.

The first was that patriarchy was endemic. It was “the facts on the ground”, as present and tangible as the weather. Men were assumed to be more significant, more powerful and more competent then women. But patriarchy is not just about how men behave- it points to a deeper symbol system that becomes the primary reality about the world. It is a worldview or an “imaginary”; the water we swim in.

Second wave feminist theologians felt that Christianity reflected and reinforced patriarchal norms. They saw evidence of this all around. God was called “Father”, only men could be priests (or pastors), and women’s roles were largely valued for their docility or domestic presence- in the case of Mary, as the eternal mother. (Keeping Mary a mother forever is one way to keep her in the hand of the patriarchy). The church hierarchies were closed to women, and the symbol of God as Father reinforced the idea that men were in charge, and women were best kept at home.

If you think this is the truth about the world, you have a few options. The first is to not be a Christian. We forget that this is, indeed, a live option that some feminist theologians took (their insistence to rail against a tradition they do not believe in always seemed a bit frantic to me. Better to join a different tradition, I’d think).

The second is to try to improve Christianity. Some feminist theologians chose this route. Mary Daly called for the radical overhaul of the tradition. Imagine her calling the movers and taking all of the old furniture to the dump. “Father” would become “Mother”, female priests would replace male, and the views of divine power (omnipotence and omniscience- basically anything “omni”) would be replaced with less totalizing versions. (Daly eventually disavowed Christianity, finding it too deeply patriarchal).

Others, like Rosemary Reuther and Elisabeth Johnson, remained within the church and tried to massage its patriarchal visions into versions that were less hierarchal and male dominated. They made suggestions regarding changes in language and organization that would reflect historic teaching that included women and valued Mary as a symbol of the church and of Christ’s presence with the world.

These contributions are laudable, I think, and they are endlessly interesting. But second wave feminism was always about power. It was concerned with power in one, particular way- it wanted to know how God’s presence to the world did not prioritize male bodies. This is a good question! But second wave feminists often become preoccupied with the answer- God must not value men more than women!- and so looked to innovate their own understandings of God and the world. The idea is that if we got this right, we’d improve religion for the better.

For the most part, they became what is called "panentheist”. The most famous examples are Grace Jantzen (God’s World, God’s Body, 1984) and Sallie McFague (The Body of God, 1993), whose looked to reinterpret God’s relation to the world in order to modify what they saw as an intrinsically patriarchal view of God’s presence to the world. The great enemy here is dualism, which has inherently patriarchal implications. Dualism separates body and mind/soul, and identifies the male with the more valuable mind and soul. It identifies the female with the body, the source of the. indolent passions, uncontrollable urges, and the massively unstabilizing forces of life, death, and decay.

By offering a new metaphysical view of God’s relation to the world, Jantzen and McFague are countering dualism and patriarchy. Its a great example of answering the wrong question.

Dualism is in fact a Christian heresy. We cannot denigrate the body and the world in order to value the soul and the spiritual realm. But the best solution to opposing dualism is not to embrace a view of God as in, or identical to the world.

Feminist theologians almost always renovate their metaphysics in some way. I used to joke that I was a feminist with a traditional view of divine power, which meant I didn’t have many friends. It wasn’t a good joke, because it wasn’t funny. But the main claims there remain true. I considered myself a feminist, at the time, because I did not think that a patriarchal sex-based hierarchy was built into creation. I also did (and still do) hold to what’s called a “traditional view of divine power”, which means that God acts on the world as outside in, not as part of it. (It means other things too, but that’ll work for now). You’ll find very few people who hold to both of these things.

Panentheism offers a way to value the things of the world- including bodies and gender- without placing a firm line between God and the world. It allows God to be identified with the world and not be “outside” it. (Even our language here gets slippery). Panentheists want to maintain that God is not only “outside” the world but within it as well, and there is an interdependence between God and the world.

Today we still haven’t settled the panentheism question, and I think it is more critical than ever. In our discussions of women’s holiness or George Floyd’s vicarious suffering or the world’s “enchantment”, we constantly bump up agains the question of bodies and holiness. Some traditions have settled on mechanisms to adjudicate the question (we call them sacraments), but other, lower church traditions have to concern themselves with the question anew. We are all aching for holiness, thirsty for a swallow of something most of us haven’t tasted. I think many of us wouldn’t recognize it, if we did.

Holiness tastes a lot more like toil and obedience than rising above our state. It’s more like a bush set aflame from within, thorns and all, than it is like rising to a higher plane. This is, after all, the point of Christianity- not that we are rescued to rise above this world, but that God comes to us in the midst of it. Bushes can burn. But there are no magic words or potions (or liturgies!) to ensure they do so. God plays not dice, but something closer to this than we might wish. The early bird doesn’t always get the worm.

All of our attempts to “hallow” the ordinary- whether it be motherhood or fertility or marriage or church life, study or family or chastity- can become a horcrux. Say the right words, bring the right gestures, and the bush might set alight. We treat the world more like we are coming to the Witch of Endor, than like we are encountering a God who owes us nothing.

The Holy Spirit plays dirty, is what I’m saying.

So many of our concerns about getting “doctrine” or liturgy right reflect a view that God might show up if we do. But Religion is all a gift to a God who is already there. The Christian life is more duty and devotion than mystical rendering. We offer back what is given. Worship is not a game we play. By seeking to identify God’s presence with the world, panentheism misses what I see as a critical aspect of Christianity- which is that God needs none of it. It’s all sheer gift, and then return.

When it comes to the issue of “Women and the Church”, what Daly and McFague and Jantzen and Reuther seemed to miss is that if you get women pastors, all you get is women pastors. But if you renovate the entire metaphysical order so that God is within the world, what you get is a different religion altogether. The question of feminist theology might be what we call God or how we order our churches, but it all too often becomes an entirely renovated metaphysical system that concerns how God relates to the world. So, too, the question of how we value the world becomes not a question about the world’s goodness, as it is, but a question of God’s relation to it. In both examples, we make God a tool of our preferred ideology. If we desire less gender based hierarchy (and this is a good thing to desire!), we use God to get our way. If we desire better care for the environment (and we should!), we recruit God to that task, too.

None of these likely seem like problems, but over time, the tasks we put God up to bleed out into our view of what God is for. Over time, God becomes a tool that we might use in order to achieve our preferred social programs. S/He becomes a cheerleader for social change that we’d prefer. What we gain might be a bettered social order, but what we lose is a vision of God that has anything at all to do with Religion. Everything becomes politics. Feminist theology, for all its benefits, too often fails to speak of what we need God for, when more power might do. In second wave feminism, the concerns of the movement and the concerns of Christian theology became misaligned. This becomes even more pronounced in third wave feminism and its Christian versions. We’ll talk about this another time.

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