Elizabeth Jones
55.1K posts
Elizabeth Jones
@chaplaineliza
mom/wife/friend, hospice chaplain, UCC pastor, in DMin program; mental health advocate, cheerful, creative communicator, music-maker, journeying through life
In a 1960s theology seminar, a young scholar raised her hand and asked a simple question: “Does the evidence actually say that?” The professors had presented it as settled truth: God had commanded women to be silent in churches. Scripture was clear. Tradition had already decided. There was nothing more to discuss. But Rosemary Radford Ruether did not accept answers without checking the sources. She began reading, not just medieval theology, but the original texts. Ancient letters. Archaeological records. What she found was not a small correction. It was a crisis. Women were leading the earliest churches. Phoebe was not merely a helper. Paul called her a deacon, using the same Greek word used for male deacons. Full authority. Junia was identified as an apostle. Not someone connected to the apostles. An apostle. Priscilla taught theology as an equal partner, correcting other teachers on doctrine. Mary Magdalene was sent by Jesus himself to announce the resurrection to the male apostles, which is why early Christians called her “apostle to the apostles.” These were not rare exceptions. They were part of the pattern. But somewhere along the way, centuries after Jesus, institutional power needed hierarchy. So the rewriting began. Names were altered. Titles were reduced. Women’s roles were explained away as mistakes. In some medieval Bibles, “Junia” became “Junias,” an invented male name used to hide the fact that Paul had called a woman an apostle. It was systematic. Intentional. Institutional. Rosemary held up the evidence and asked: Your own texts contradict your rules. When did God change his mind about women leading? The answer was obvious: He did not. The institution did. Then it spent centuries pretending politics were doctrine. Over six decades, Rosemary published more than 40 books. She did not simply argue for equality. She proved that the church had rewritten parts of its own history to strengthen male power. She showed that the same theology used to silence women could also be used to justify domination over other races, over nature, and over the poor. She called it “domination theology,” and once you recognized it, you could not stop seeing it. The institutions tried to silence her. They denied her positions. They condemned her work. But she kept teaching, kept writing, and kept training a new generation of scholars to question what they had been told was ordained by God. By the time Rosemary died in 2022, feminist theology had become an academic discipline because she had helped build it. Liberation theology, the belief that God stands with the oppressed, had a matriarch because she refused to separate justice for women from justice for humanity. She proved that sometimes the most faithful act is refusing to accept what people claim faith requires. The women were there from the beginning. Leading. Teaching. Holding authority. The erasure came later. And Rosemary made sure we would never forget it. Today, every woman who stands in a pulpit stands on ground she helped clear. Every person asking whether hierarchy is truly holy is walking a path she helped open. Every scholar linking faith to justice owes something to her work. Because Rosemary Radford Ruether did something the church tried hard to prevent: she made us see how completely institutions can manufacture divine approval for human power. And once you see that mechanism, you begin to question everything. The names were never truly lost. We only had to remember them: Phoebe. Junia. Priscilla. Mary Magdalene. They were apostles, deacons, and teachers. The church tried to erase them. Rosemary Radford Ruether spent her life making sure we remembered.
