Jacquelyn Grant's Critique of Rosemary Ruether

For my write-up today of Jacquelyn Grant's White Women's Christ and Black Women's Jesus, I want to quote Dr. Grant's problem with feminist theologian Rosemary Ruether's views. It's on pages 145-146:

"Both Russell and Ruether re-examine the tradition for usable and unusable aspects of it. Whereas Russell tries to make more sense of the tradition by making it possible for us to participate in it (the traditioning process), Ruether focuses more upon recapturing the idiosyncrasies and contradiction of Tradition which have held women captives and proposes alternatives to these traditional interpretations. This is seen in her suggestions that perhaps Mary Magdalene is a more adequate model for women than Mary the Virgin mother of Jesus, and that the Christ can be conceived of as a sister as well.

"This new imagery is possible when women's experience is the primary source for doing theology. This source has enabled White liberationist feminists to forge a new theological agenda. One wonders, however, if even liberationist feminist[s] are able to understand the particularity of non-white women's experience. This is reflected at two points. (1) Whereas Ruether correctly critiques the Black nationalist movement and the Black church for its lack of sex and class analysis, she incorrectly locates the tension between Black churches and the women's movement at the point of the sexism of Black men. One could argue that Black men's responses to the women's movement are due equally to the racism of the women's movement as to the sexism in the Black movement. There is no reason to believe, as Ruether seems to make it appear, that White women are more concerned about Black women and the Black lower classes than are Black men...(2) Ruether suggests that perhaps a better model for women would be Mary Magdalene rather than Jesus. As we shall see later, there is little reason to believe that a White woman salvific model would be any more liberating of Black women than a White male model."

It will be interesting to see what solution Dr. Grant will propose.