Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Great sentence

OK - I read a great sentence in the Miroslav Volf book last night - here goes:

"There are good reasons for the vacuity of divine femininity. For if we were to give it concrete content, we could not avoid freezing a particular cultural construction of gender and then infusing it with divine powers and claims."
Good, eh? (Yes, I'm a geek - I love university!)

In every day English - we should be cautious of creating or promoting a Female God because we will - undoubtedly - impose our own gendered/cultured views onto that God.
And yet we do that all the time with God now, right? Sure, we would never say that God is male, but sometimes we sure describe "Him" as male, infusing our particular constructions of gender with divine powers. People always complain of "political correctness crap" when someone is unsure about using male, gendered language for God, but the language DOES affect our thinking.

And speaking of feminism - Amnesty International has an interesting campaign advocating on behalf of Stolen Sisters. Read the stats about the risks that Aboriginal women face in this country  - they are scary.

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