As you may have heard, arch-separatist feminist-essentialist and theologian Mary Daly has passed away. Sungold of Kittywampus, while acutely alert to Daly’s shortcomings points out a powerful, largely gender-neutral contribution she made to humane theology.
[Daly identifies] three false deities – or idols – in Christianity. The first is the “God of explanation” to whom we turn to explain, and thus justify, that which is unexplainable: the suffering and death of children, the structures of social privilege. The second idol is “otherworldliness,” conceiving of God as a judge in a remote heaven who keeps people docile with the promise of rewards and punishments after death. Daly says this idol can be dethroned simply by living a full and rich life in this world – which women, particularly, are discouraged to do. The third idol is God as the Judge of sin, which promotes self-destructive guilt, especially in women who violate patriarchal church teachings on sex and family roles.
All of this is radical but also reasonable and compassionate, assuming one has any interest whatsoever in reforming Christianity/religion and liberating women within religions.
As Sungold says that may be neither here nor there if you’re an athiest, but it’s actually well-founded and quite comforting for many millions of progressives, including those who aren’t so much atheists as deeply alienated and squeezed out of faith by harsher, more absolutist visions of deity. Ironic considering her absolutism in other arenas but surely welcome regardless.
