Rosemary Radford Reuther: Ecofeminist Who Stayed Put

By DON ROLLINS

“Women must see that there can be no liberation for them and no solution to the ecological crisis within a society whose fundamental model of relationships continues to be one of domination. They must unite the demands of the women’s movement with those of the ecological movement…” — Rosemary Radford Reuther

If modern feminist theology could be distilled into one body of work, it would belong to the late Rosemary Radford Reuther. A Roman Catholic theologian, teacher and author conversant in both secular and religious thought, the self-described ecofeminist died in May after a half-century public career.

Reuther was born Rosemary Radford in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1936, and grew up in an Episcopalian/Catholic home. She and political scientist Herman Reuther married in 1957. Over the next six years, she would earn three academic degrees, the last a doctorate in patristics, the study of the early Christian church and authors. Her academic career began in 1965 and lasted for more than five decades.

Reuther’s choice of ecofeminist to describe herself was apt, for the same progressive urge that informed her womanist theology was evidenced in her political, social and environmental activism.

For Reuther, domination — usurping another’s legitimate power — is the sin behind and beneath all oppressions, including those done against the Earth. In that liberationist world, there can be no separation between the sacred and secular.

But for all the eventual spheres of Reuther’s influence (Israeli-Palestinian relations, women and poverty, environmental justice), it was her work as a feminist Christian scholar that defines her legacy. While not the first early church expert to challenge Christianity’s deeply patriarchal structures, the quality and timing of her work helped put in play the core assumptions of a nearly two thousand year-old institution.

Reuther’s work and passing are a further, melancholy reminder that domination has always taken the shape of whatever system it can commandeer, secular or religious. But she also stands as an example for all the change agents who stay put, keep the faith, and work from the inside out.

Don Rollins is a Unitarian Universalist minister living in Hendersonville, N.C. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, July 1-15, 2022

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