Women's Work and Women's Studies 1971 Questionnaire, Mary Daly, 1972, page 7

          Beyond God the Father

Women's Liberation and the Transformation of Religion

Mary Daly

Contents
Introduction: Problem and Method
Chapter One: After the Death of God the Father
Chapter Two: The Myth of the Fall: The Lie that Prevailed
Chapter Three: Beyond Christology to a World without Models
Chapter Four: Transvaluation of Values
Chapter Five: The Bonds of Freedom: Sisterhood as Anti-Church
Chapter Six: The Exodus Community: Sisterhood as Beyond-Church
Chapter Seven: The Sisterhood of Man
Conclusion

As the women's movement begins to have its effect upon the
fabric of society, transforming it from patriarchy into something
that never existed before-- into a diarchal situation that is
radically new-- it can become the greatest single challenge to
Christianity to rid itself of its oppressive tendencies or go out of
business. Beliefs and values that have held sway for thousands of
years will be questioned as never before. This revolution also may
well be the greatest single hope for survival of spiritual conscious-
ness on this planet.

The Judaic-Christian tradition has served to legitimate sexually
imbalanced patriarchal society. Thus, for example, the image of the
Father God, spawned in the human imagination and sustained as
plausible by patriarchy, has in turn rendered service to this type
of society by making its mechanisms for the oppression of women
appear right and fitting. The imbalance in Christian ideology
resulting from sexual hierarchy is manifested not only in the doc-
trine of God but also in the notion of Jesus as the unique God-man.
It will, I think, become increasingly evident that exclusively mas-
culine symbols for the ideal of "incarnation" will not do. The
becoming of women implies also a transvaluation of values in Christ-
ian morality. As the old order is challenged and as men and women
become free to experience a wholeness of personality which the old
sex role socialization impeded, the potentiality will be awakened
for a change in moral consciousness which will go far beyond
critiques of Christian values which still accept the premises of
patriarchal ideology.

This book attempts to outline future directions of religious
consciousness-- its symbols, theology, ethics-- the seeds of which can
be found in the emerging consciousness of the new sisterhood of
women.