Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing
by Rosemary Radford Ruether
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In her most significant work to date, Rosemary Radford Ruether sifts through the legacy of the Christian and Western cultural heritage - the beliefs and stories that have influenced our relationships with each other and with the earth - to illuminate future models for earth healing. "Ecological healing is a theological and psychic-spiritual process," writes Ruether. Although she examines the Western patriarchal tradition from an ecofeminist perspective, Ruether insists. That "classical show more traditions did not only sacralize patriarchal hierarchy over women, workers, and the earth. They also struggled with what they perceived to be injustice and sin and sought to create just and loving relations between people in their relation to the earth and to the divine. Some of this effort to name evil and struggle against it reinforced relations of domination and created victim-blaming spiritualities and ethics. But there are also glimpses in this. Heritage of transformative, biophilic relationships. These glimpses are a precious legacy that needs to be separated from the toxic waste of sacralized domination." Ruether sees the work of eco-justice and the work of spirituality as interrelated, the inner and outer aspects of one process of conversion and transformation. In juxtaposing the terms Gaia and God in the title of this book, she explores crucial issues surrounding the relationship between the living planet. Earth, and our Western religious traditions. Gaia is the Greek earth goddess, and a term adopted by biologists such as James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis in reference to their thesis that the entire planet is a living system behaving as a unified organism. Growing numbers of people have begun to see the Jewish and Christian male monotheistic God as a destructive concept that rationalizes alienation from and neglect of the earth, while Gaia, as an immanent divinity, is seen. As the all-nurturing earth mother goddess. Ruether points out that merely replacing a transcendent male deity with a female one does not answer the "god-problem." What we need, in her view, is a vision of a much more abundant and creative source of life. "A healed relation to each other and to the earth calls for a new consciousness, a new symbolic culture and spirituality." writes Ruether. "We need to transform our inner psyches and the way we symbolize the. Interrelations of men and women, humans and earth, humans and the divine, the divine and the earth." Gaia and God is a major critical work by an internationally acclaimed writer and teacher. It is a sweeping ecofeminist theology that argues for healing relationships between men and women, classes and nations, and humans and the earth. show lessTags
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This is based on Biblical tradition but open to enrichment from other sources. The author makes clear that we can not simply appropriate past sources but do some dreaming and creation of our own.
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67+ Works 3,542 Members
American feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. Ruether graduated from Scripps College in 1958 and received her doctorate in classics and patristics from Claremont Graduate School in 1956. In 1976 she became Georgia Harkness Professor of Theology at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, a position she show more continues to hold. An activist in the civil rights and peace movements of the 1960s, Ruether turned her energies to the emerging women's movement. During the 1970s and successive decades, feminist concerns impelled her to rethink historical theology, analyzing the patriarchal biases in both Christianity and Judaism that elevated male gender at the expense of women. Her rigorous scholarship has challenged many of the assumptions of traditionally male-dominated Christian theology. Recognized as one of the most prolific and readable Catholic writers, Ruether's work represents a significant contribution to contemporary theology, and her views have influenced a generation of scholars and theologians. Her imprint on feminist theology has been reinforced by her lectureships at a number of universities in the United States and abroad. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1992
- Dedication
- This book is dedicated to Adiba Khader and her four daughters, Ghada (twenty-one), Abir (seventeen), Ghalda (fourteen), and Ghana (twelve), and all the other mothers and children who died in the early morning of February 13, ... (show all)1991, in a bomb shelter in Baghdad that was shattered by two American "smart bombs."
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, Religion & Spirituality, Sexuality and Gender Studies, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 261.8 — Religion Christian organization, social work & worship Social theology and interreligious relations and attitudes Christianity and socioeconomic problems
- LCC
- BT695.5 .R83 — Philosophy, Psychology and Religion Doctrinal Theology Doctrinal Theology Creation
- BISAC
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- 290
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- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.44)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 3
- ASINs
- 1
