The Women-Church

This is a quote from one of my favorite Christian, feminist theologians, Rosemary Radford Ruther, from her work The Women-Church Movement in Contemporary Christianity.

A religious community needs enablers in at least five areas: (1) liturgical creators - poets, artists, musicians, choreographers, who can help the community bring forth in creative expression its symbolic life; (2) teachers who know the history of religious thought systems and their relation to social systems and can help the community reflect on and reconstruct its inherited symbols; (3) administrators, organizers, in some cases a lawyer, who can oversee the material resources of the community; ((4) social justice experts who can critically analyze different structures of social oppression, the interface of poverty, sexism, racism, and militarism, and help the community focus its energies and resources on some particular areas of action; (5) spiritual counselors who have a wisdom in the inner life and its relation to life in community and can be guides in this journey of psychic-spiritual development.