Women and the Word : issues of power, control and language in social and religious life
The intention of this thesis is to offer a perspective on the current debate over women's place in Western religious institutions, i.e. the Judaeo-Christian tradition; and to provide a way of thinking about those issues which will lead to a positive, progressive and realistic vision of co-humanity, and a method of achieving it. The thorny battleground of the "women's debate", as it is inaccurately named, was not my original choice of thesis topic. A lifelong commitment to feminist principles has been matched with an equally lengthy wariness regarding society's attitude towards such matters. Also, the understandable obsession of South African religious studies departments, and journals, with the issue of racism has had the inevitable result of trivializing the related issue of sexism as secondary. The narrowness of such thinking has led to strange distortions, including the belief that evil can somehow be 'ranked' and that there can be a 'hierarchy' of oppression. My intentions changed during a search of religious publications and journals while completing a post-graduate assignment. It was abundantly apparent that the scale of the debate on women's place in religion was fast outstripping most other debates. However, it was not an area which had been treated locally with seriousness. It had unfolded into a comprehensive and highly contentious debate in North American and British campuses and religious institutions, and the proliferation of books and articles on the subject by not only theologians but also sociologists, anthropologists and linguists had greatly extended the platform and the level on which the debate was to be fought. It appeared that women working in many fields were laying claim to religion, and were engaging issues which had previously been left to the handful of articulate women working at least nominally within orthodox structures.
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations