The most famous feminist theologian...

The most famous feminist theologian, a radical advocate of gynocentric feminism sometimes referred to as the 'foster mother of feminist theology', is the former Catholic nun, Mary Daly. She was the first American woman to earn a doctorate in Catholic theology at the University of Fribourg (in 1963). Her first major work, The Church and the Second Sex.11 echoes many of the ideas of Simone de Beauvoir, but applies them to Church history and theology.

She calls for Church reform and a reinterpretation of Christianity along the lines of equality feminism.

Her most famous work, however, is Beyond God the Father.12 In this work Daly argues that the Christian concept of God is irredeemably andro-centric, and she coins the often quoted slogan of feminist theology, "If God is male, then the male is God."13 The male dominance in Christian thought is further demanded by Trinitarian doctrine, according to which the male Christ is 'God the Son', the second person of the Trinity, and the first person of the Trinity is 'God the Father'.

Instead, Daly proposes that God be considered in a non-personal manner as the ground of all being, as taught by Paul Tillich. Daly's next major work, Gyn/Ecologv,14 makes a complete break from Christianity with the rejection of God in favour of the Goddess and the glorification of witchcraft as the esoteric knowledge of an earlier matriarchal culture. She also reasserts her advocacy of lesbianism and rejection of the complementarity of the masculine and the feminine.

This was followed by the publication of an even more radical work. Pure Lust15 in which lust is turned into a virtue through which 'complete empowerment' is to be achieved. Perhaps the most famous French feminist who has written on theology is Luce Irigaray. She writes from a post-modernist perspective critical of equality feminism.

Her ideal is not a society in which gender differences are eliminated, but one in which a new femininity emerges from the experiences of women freed from male domination. Liberation has theological implications. Like Mary Daly, she opposes Christianity for its masculine conception of God, particularly as expressed in the concept of the Trinity. Although she argues that women need religion and divinity, the idea of God presented in the Judeo-Christian religions is rejected.

Respect for God is possible as long as no one realizes that He is a mask concealing the fact that men have taken sole possession of the divine, of identity, and of kinship.