Blog Post #3

Mary Daly, was a great influence to the women’s movement. Daly, preferred addressed as a philosopher and a theologian, rather than a religious study scholar, and liked to view herself as a right wing lesbian feminist. She was a strong believer that most of the popular religions we hear about today such as Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc., are extremely patriarchal or paternally focused and that any matrilineal religions have completely disappeared from history. She did not have a great outlook on society because it was and still is, man-ran. She also goes on to express and write about how everything wrong that happens in society is a direct representation of having men in positions of power, and “sees the woes of the world, such as environmental degradation, constant warfare, racist and ethnocentric attitudes, and particularly the terrible plight of women, as a direct consequence of patriarchy. Another reason why Daly was not a fan of religions like Christianity, was largely in part to treating women inferior or subordinate to men in society. This was obviously not going to settle well with a feminist who believed everything that went wrong in society was due to having men in positions of power.

Another thing Mary Daly writes, is how other’s personal perspectives are going to differ from person to person, and that it is completely okay and that one should not be judged for that. She goes on and writes, “it is as inappropriate to make personal negative moral judgments or criticisms about it within the framework of one’s work, as it is to cloak the findings of one’s research, compromise the rigor of one’s analysis, and modify the language in which it is articulated, in order to justify or protect the religious tradition being studied”, and she follows that with the example of Mary Magdalene. Magdalene was a woman who many Christians believed to be a prostitute and that she should be stoned to death for her actions. Despite the fact that not many Christians were a fan of Magdalene, she continued to hold the authority of the Church diligently.