MALE FEMINISM Essay Research Paper I chose

MALE FEMINISM Essay, Research Paper

I chose to do my research report on Male Responses to Feminism. In which I read this book called .Who Needs Feminism.. by Richard Holloway. Richard Holloway, distinguished churchmen, and male theologians in this book discusses the key aspects of feminism and how it affects the way they live, understand the world and the Christian faith today.

I think feminism is based on the principle that women have innate worth, inalienable rights, and valuable ideas and talents to contribute to society. It is true to me that feminism goes beyond mere equality and insists not only that women be given equal rights with men, but also that they be respected for themselves as well. In addition, feminism has always been about more than just women.s rights. From what I have learned thru all my years of school is that some of the same individuals who were key figures in the early women.s rights movement were also influential abolitionists, fighters for workers and

children.s rights, and reformers at all levels of government and church. For example in one of my history classes I remember learning about a women named Betty Friedan who was a women.s activist and fought for the rights of women in the women.s rights movement. In the women.s rights movement I think it has always been the idea that each individual has innate rights; that each individual is a valuable, contributing member of society. In this book the distinguished churchmen, and male theologians say that, .Feminism presents a profound internal challenge to the tents of Christianity (Pg 8).. This brings up certain questions to me. In fact what positive contribution does feminism have to offer. Is feminism helpful only to women. Or is it true that men need feminism too. That is how Richard Holloway and his colleagues respond to feminism in this book.

To some people, men as well as women, feminism is a subversive threat to both church and society. That to me does not seem like feminism is positive because as a colleague of the author L. William Countryman states that, .Feminism enables the church to survive or retain authority in its environing society (Pg 11).. I think if feminists

are hurting the church in any way that it cannot be contributing anything positive at all. I may not be a church going person but I have always thought that if someone did something to hurt the church it was a crime. For example, if I owned a store and one woman thought she was not being treated right and got a feminist group together and protested, but all the other women employees thought they were being treated right. That would hurt my business, and I see this as a simile to feminist hurting any progress to the church.

Over the years a big question has come about; why can women not be ordained. Instead of looking at negative things a woman cannot do for the church, lets look at the positive. As L. William Countryman says, .Women have been full active members in the community from the start, serving as patrons, prophets, deacons, and apostles (Pg 22).. Richard Holloway then responds to this by saying, .Very much the way a man is incapable of bearing children, women are incapable by nature of receiving ordination (Pg 7).. I see this as a good point because we all cannot do the same things in the world. We have to be different in some ways. Like Richard Holloway said men cannot have

`babies by nature and women cannot be ordained by nature. Then that is the way it has to be until someone changes that.

A male theologian named Stephen C. Barton sees Christian feminist writing, .Having the tendency to claim either too much or too little from history is a problem (Pg 34).. He thinks that this is not positive because it does not help the church by responding, .The effect of this is to cut women and men off from the past, from the Church, and from the biblical tradition of liberation and also, it denies the experience of many women themselves (Pg 34).. He responds to the feminist writing by sayings that are trying to get rid of history. That is most likely impossible because that is like getting rid of the bible and all of history of the world.

In chapter four of this book Iain Torrance a minister of the Church of Scotland and a lecturer in Theology at the University of Birmingham defends that the church is not totally sexist by saying, .Much of the Christian culture has been and is deeply sexist. There is no doubt about that but it is something men must learn and repent of. But I want to maintain that Christianity need not be so; at its

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heart Christianity is gospel-good news-for both woman and man (Pg75).. He is responding to a book called .Theology and Feminism. wrote by Daphne Hampson a feminists. He has set to defend Christianity from a feminist.s point of view. First, Daphne Hampson says, .The problem of Christology for feminists is that .Jesus was a male human being and that thus . . .as the Second Person of the Trinity, it would seem that .God. becomes in some way .male.. This then gives the male human being a privilege. How may women see in the Godhead an image of themselves (Pg 77).. Then Iain Torrance responds to her argument by saying, .As far as she is concerned, Christianity is simply not true. Christ is one person from a union of divine and human natures, and a quandary how to express this (Pg77)..

If a person