PART I, November 2019: “If God is male, then male is God.~~ Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father, 1973.

Over the past two months as an adjusted dosage of Ibrance, a chemo-type pill for metastatic breast cancer, has taken hold, my energy has returned about 90% and my brain fog has cleared 85%–the fog returns when the fatigue does. Life in many colors has inspired me to think about writing and to do research.

Writing goal: through an op-ed piece to explicate the impact of a god who is addressed Father, King, Lord, Almighty, He, Him, His. This naming and imaging of God as male encourages and validates men’s right to exercise power over others. These others are women, children and powerless men who are human trafficked, sexually assaulted, vulnerable to violence, and/or held as slaves in every country in the world. Most often these targeted human beings, including in First World countries, are voiceless, uneducated, and live in poverty. 

First, my ongoing research. I explored online. Yes, there are websites and articles defending God as male as well as websites dedicated to G*ddess. I did not discover any discussing the possibility that G*d named and imaged as male implicitly encourages and validates men’s power over and violence against women. 

Second, I have been digging out my feminist theology books, seeking the same connections and updating my knowledge. I perused Elizabeth Johnson briefly; then went on to Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza where I hit pay dirt. Reading Elisabeth again stimulated my research juices. Even before I studied with her at seminary 1984-86, I was intrigued by her radical thinking–radical: going to the root of thinking, in this case the roots of Christian biblical and traditional white male theology. Now I sought her most recent writings and plan to listen to the latest YouTube recordings of her lectures. (to be continued in later blogs)

Then, I began attending a study group led by a recently appointed gay male minister to a Peaks Island church. I was amazed that the group was reading Womanist Midrash by Wil Gafney. I knew Wil when she was an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of PA, and a professor of Hebrew Scripture at Lutheran Theological Seminary. 

She has researched as well as imagined every woman named and unnamed in the Hebrew Scriptures from a Womanist (African-American feminist) perspective. She tells the biblical story, then she imagines her way into the story through a Womanist perspective.

One of the first comments I heard from the group was “All of the women we’ve read about have been raped!” From there the conversation centered on doubts and questions raised by this revelation and Wil’s Womanist imaginings. Absorbing and exploring these questions exposed the rote and cherry-picked knowledge taught by both in both Judaic and Christian traditions. To question is to begin to claim a personal faith that has been incubating within us as well as to claim a faith that explodes the traditions, letting in the breath and fire of the Spirit we call Holy.