The Work
Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology was published by Beacon Press (Boston) in 1983. It is approximately 289 pages and organized as a systematic theology - moving through the classic loci of Christian doctrine: sources and norms, God, humanity and sin, Christology, ecclesiology, eschatology, and ethics - from the perspective of feminist analysis. The book became the standard text of Christian feminist theology within a decade of its publication and is still widely assigned in seminary and university theology courses.
The book was the culmination of Ruether's development through the 1960s and 1970s, during which she had published studies on the Jewish-Christian relationship, on liberation theology, on race and religion, and on women's history in Christianity. Sexism and God-Talk synthesized these concerns into a comprehensive feminist systematic theology.
Biblical Engagement
Ruether's method involves identifying a 'prophetic-liberating tradition' within Scripture that provides a critical principle for evaluating all theological formulations - including the sexist ones that have accumulated within the tradition.
Luke 1:52-53 (Mary's Magnificat: 'He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away') is central to Ruether's argument that the liberating word of God in Scripture consistently sides with the marginalized against the powerful. The Magnificat's reversal of hierarchies - the mighty put down, the humble exalted - provides a scriptural model for the feminist theological claim that a theology complicit in women's subordination has betrayed the prophetic tradition.
Galatians 3:28 - 'There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus' - is for Ruether the clearest New Testament statement of the egalitarian implications of the gospel. She argues that this text represents the 'breakthrough' of the gospel against the social hierarchies of the ancient world, and that the subsequent history of Christianity's accommodation to those hierarchies represents a falling away from this vision.
Genesis 1:27 - 'So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them' - provides the foundation for Ruether's theological anthropology. The creation of both male and female in the divine image means that the divine image is not primarily masculine; exclusive masculine imagery for God distorts both theology and anthropology by suggesting that men are more fully in the image of God than women.
Joel 2:28 - 'And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy' - is one of the texts Ruether uses to argue that women's prophetic and ministerial roles are consistent with the biblical tradition's own most expansive vision.
Author and Context
Rosemary Radford Ruether (b. 1936) was born in Georgetown, Washington D.C., and educated at Scripps College (BA) and Claremont Graduate University (MA, PhD). She was a professor of applied theology at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary (1976-2002) and then at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley. She was raised Catholic, married a Protestant minister, and remains within the Catholic tradition while being one of its most persistent critics.
Ruether came to feminist theology through the civil rights movement and the Second Vatican Council. The Council's opening of Catholic theology to historical-critical methods, ecumenical dialogue, and engagement with contemporary social issues created space for the kind of feminist critique she developed. The publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963) and the emergence of the feminist movement in the late 1960s provided the social context.
The book was written in the shadow of two major debates: the ongoing struggle for women's ordination in Catholic and Episcopal churches, which came to a head in the Episcopal Church's 1976 ordination of women; and the debate over inclusive language in liturgy and Bible translation, which divided mainline Protestant and Catholic churches throughout the 1980s.
Structure and Argument
The book opens by establishing Ruether's methodological principle: the 'prophetic-critical tradition' in Scripture provides a critical norm that stands in judgment over all subsequent theological formulations, including the tradition's own sexism. This is not a rejection of Scripture but a claim that Scripture contains its own self-critical principle - the tradition of the prophets who challenged Israel's established institutions in the name of divine justice.
The Christology chapter is the most theologically ambitious and controversial. Ruether argues that the maleness of Jesus is not soteriologically significant - it is not because Jesus was male that he is savior - and that 'Christ' can be represented in female as well as male forms. This claim became one of the most debated in feminist theology.
The chapter on God-language argues that both masculine and feminine language for God are metaphors and that the exclusive use of masculine language distorts theology by suggesting that maleness is an essential divine attribute. Ruether draws on the Hebrew Bible's feminine imagery for God (Deuteronomy 32:18, Isaiah 66:13, Luke 15:8-10) to demonstrate that the tradition itself is more linguistically varied than its dominant forms suggest.
Critical Reception
The book received mixed reception: enthusiastic from feminist theologians and from scholars in liberation theology; cautious or negative from orthodox Catholic and Protestant theologians. The Christology chapter drew the most sustained criticism: conservatives argued that Ruether's claim that the maleness of Jesus is soteriologically irrelevant effectively detaches Christology from the historical particularity of the incarnation. Ruether's defenders argued that this was a misreading - she is not denying the historical Jesus's maleness but arguing about what that maleness means theologically.
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza's In Memory of Her (1983), published the same year, provided a complementary feminist historical-critical account of women in early Christianity; together the two books defined the field of feminist theology for the next two decades.
Theological Significance
The book's enduring significance is its demonstration that feminist analysis is not an addition to systematic theology but a transformation of its method. When women's experience is included as a source for theology - alongside Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience (to use the Wesleyan quadrilateral's categories) - the classical doctrines do not simply remain unchanged with women added; they are revised, challenged, and in some cases fundamentally reconceived.
The book also established the principle that a theology which systematically excludes or subordinates half the human race has a structural problem at its heart, not merely an accidental failing that can be corrected by adding women to existing institutional structures. This insight - that the problem is systemic rather than incidental - is Ruether's most lasting contribution to theological method.
Legacy
The book helped catalyze the movement for women's ordination in mainline Protestant and Episcopal churches (which had already begun), provided intellectual grounding for the inclusive language debates, and shaped the teaching of feminist theology in seminaries across North America and Europe. Second-generation feminist theologians - including Serene Jones, Mary McClintock Fulkerson, and Ada María Isasi-Díaz - developed different approaches but acknowledged Ruether's foundational work.
Reading Alongside Scripture
Readers should study Luke 1:46-55 (the Magnificat), Galatians 3:26-29 (equality in Christ), Genesis 1:26-31 (male and female in the image of God), Proverbs 8:1-36 (Wisdom as a feminine divine figure), Isaiah 66:13 (God as a mother comforting her child), and Joel 2:28-32 (the Spirit poured out on sons and daughters).
Further Reading
- Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (1983) - the complementary feminist historical-critical study. - Serene Jones, Feminist Theory and Christian Theology: Cartographies of Grace (2000) - the best second-generation engagement with Ruether's project. - Rosemary Radford Ruether, Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing (1992) - Ruether's extension of feminist theology into ecological concerns.