Rosemary Radford Ruether papers, 1954-2016

Rosemary Radford Ruether (1936–2022) was a theologian and feminist scholar who worked as a professor at Howard University and later served as the Georgia Harkness Professor of Applied Theology at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary and Northwestern University. She was one of the most influential American feminist theologians of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and helped establish feminist theology and ecofeminist theology as distinct fields of academic study. Her scholarship and activism examined Christianity, feminism, liberation theology, ecology, antisemitism, Jewish-Christian relations, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while her public work challenged the exclusion of women from theological education and leadership. Despite her persistent challenges to Church teachings and practices concerning contraception, abortion, women's ordination, women's participation in theological and ecclesiastical leadership, and sexual abuse, which brought her into conflict with some Church leaders, Ruether remained a Catholic throughout her life. She advocated publicly for women's ordination and contributed regularly to National Catholic Reporter and Sojourners.

Ruether was born Rosemary Radford on November 2, 1936, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the youngest of three daughters of Rebecca Cresap Radford (née Ord) and Robert Radford. Her father, an Episcopalian and civil engineer, died when she was twelve. Following his death, Ruether and her mother moved to San Diego, California. Later, she attended Catholic schools staffed by the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana. Her education and relationships with Catholic women activists contributed to the feminist and social-justice commitments that shaped her later career. Ruether attended Scripps College from 1954 to 1958, receiving a BA in philosophy and religion in 1958. She subsequently earned an MA in ancient history from Claremont Graduate School in 1960 and a PhD in classics and patristics from Claremont Graduate School in 1965. Her doctoral dissertation focused on the fourth-century Christian theologian Gregory of Nazianzus, which was later published in 1969. Ruether married political scientist Herman J. Ruether in 1957 with whom she later collaborated on The Wrath of Jonah: The Crisis of Religious Nationalism in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2002). The couple had three children: Rebecca, David, and Mimi. With her son she collaborated in Many forms of madness: a family's struggle with mental illness and the mental health system (2010).

Ruether began her teaching career in 1964-1965 at Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles, but lost the position because of her pro-birth-control and pro-choice views. In the summer of 1965, she worked as a civil rights activist in Mississippi with the Delta Ministry, an experience that deepened her engagement with racial justice and liberation theology. From 1965 to 1976, she taught at Howard University in Washington, D.C., an historically Black university, where she eventually chaired the religion department. Her work there brought her into sustained engagement with Black liberation theology and the struggles of African American communities. She also participated actively in the peace movement, taking part in demonstrations and marches and, on several occasions, being arrested with other Catholic and Protestant activists.

After a brief appointment as a visiting professor at Harvard Divinity School, Ruether joined Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary and Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, in 1976. She taught at Garrett-Evangelical for nearly three decades and in 1977 became the Georgia Harkness Professor of Applied Theology, the first woman to hold an endowed chair at the seminary. She remained in the position until her retirement in 2002. Following her retirement from Garrett-Evangelical, she became the Carpenter Professor of Feminist Theology at the Pacific School of Religion and the Graduate Theological Union. Some of Ruether's courses were "Feminist Theologies in North America;" "Feminist Theologies in the Third World;" "Ecofeminist Theology and Practice;" "Liberation Theology in Latin America;" and "Gender and Western Christian Thought: Second to Seventeenth Centuries," among many others.

Over the course of her career, Ruether authored more than forty books and more than six hundred articles. Her first book, The Church Against Itself (1967), challenged established Christian teachings concerning sexuality and reproduction. Among her most influential works was Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (1983), in which she argued that Christian theology must critically examine the patriarchal assumptions embedded in its traditions and institutions. Her scholarship helped bring women's experiences and perspectives into mainstream theological discourse and influenced generations of feminist theologians. Rather than advocating for the replacement of patriarchal Christianity with a single feminist alternative, Ruether emphasized theological plurality and sought to transform Christian traditions by making women's experiences integral to theological reflection.

Some of Ruether's most notorious books are Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism (1974); Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing (1994), an important contribution to ecofeminist theology; Christianity and the Making of the Modern Family (2001); Integrating Ecofeminism, Globalization, and World Religions (2005); Goddesses and the Divine Feminine: A Western Religious History (2005); America, Amerikkka: elect nation and imperial violence (2007); Women and Redemption: A Theological History (2012); and her intellectual memoirs My Quests for Hope and Meaning: An Autobiography (2013).

In 2012, her former graduate students honored her with the festschrift Voices of Feminist Liberation: Writings in Honor of Rosemary Radford Ruether, published in recognition of her seventy-fifth birthday. Her scholarship and teaching established her as a major figure in feminist theology, ecofeminist theology, and progressive Christian thought. She died on May 21, 2022, at a hospital in Pomona, California.