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Eleanor Rae (born 1934) is an American author and proponent of eco-feminism.
| This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
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Eleanor Rae (born 1934) is an American author and proponent of eco-feminism.
Rae was born in Meriden, Connecticut on January 31, 1934. Eleanor was the youngest of four children, her parents Stella Sandj and Jon Pracon immigrated to the United States from Poland. Her parents named here after First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt with the thought that her family would survive the Great Depression. Eleanor Rae is married to Giles Rae and they together have two daughters, a son, and eight grandchildren. [1]
Rae first earned a Mathematics degree from the College of New Rochelle. She received a Master's degree from Southern Connecticut State University in early childhood education and a Masters in parish ministry and adult education from Fordham University. Rae earned her doctoral degree from Fordham in contemporary systematic theology. . [2]
After her youngest child entered school, Rae worked as a day care worker, parent cooperative nursery school director, in church ministries, and a public school teacher. In her most recent position as Director of Office of the Laity for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport CT, she developed an interest in women’s issues and the environment. [3] After seventeen years her controversial and abrupt dismissal from the Diocese led to her founding of the Centre for Women, the Earth, the Divine (CWED). Eleanor also became increasingly involved in The North American Coalition for Christianity and Ecology (NACCE), [4] one of the early organizations in the United States founded to motivate Christians toward eco-logical action, [5] where she was elected president and served as such for several terms.
Rae co-authored the book Created in Her Image: Models of the Feminine Divine. Beginning in 1995, Rae has published a quarterly newsletter Weaving the Connections on various women’s issues. [6]
Eleanor Rae uses her feminist perspective, spirituality, and her social concerns to put forth a book that explains the powers of the feminist divine. The book outlines the role that psychology has played in feminism and how it will also play a role going forward. [7]
Rae puts together three topics of concern in this 1994 novel. The novel focuses on rediscovering feminine principle that is a not a result of male view. Instead, Rae uses real world experiences from women. She ties together eco feminism with religion and relates them to real world issues. The novel examines western tendencies to ignore women's voices and peoples ability to overlook women's capabilities across various subjects. Rae compares the feminine principle with four major religions, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism.
Rae is considered a staple in eco feminist theology. She has had a focus on women’s oppression and issues around this subject her entire career. Rae is part of a group of eco feminists that contribute to social in justice and attacks philosophical theories that contribute to injustices. Eco feminism as a whole aims to connect, historically and philosophically, the idea of women’s oppression and nature’s exploitation. 'Rae is credited as one of these eco feminists. [8]
Rae has worked with Amazon river dolphins in Peru and leatherback turtles in Suriname.
Rae was awarded the Ursula Lauris citation for her leadership achievements. [9]
Dianic Wicca, also known as Dianic Witchcraft, is a modern pagan goddess tradition focused on female experience and empowerment. Leadership is by women, who may be ordained as priestesses, or in less formal groups that function as collectives. While some adherents identify as Wiccan, it differs from most traditions of Wicca in that only goddesses are honored.
Feminist theology is a movement found in several religions, including Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Neopaganism, Baháʼí Faith, Judaism, Christianity and New Thought, to reconsider the traditions, practices, scriptures, and theologies of those religions from a feminist perspective. Some of the goals of feminist theology include increasing the role of women among clergy and religious authorities, reinterpreting patriarchal (male-dominated) imagery and language about God, determining women's place in relation to career and motherhood, studying images of women in the religions' sacred texts, and matriarchal religion.
Thealogy views divine matters through feminine perspectives including but not limited to feminism. Valerie Saiving, Isaac Bonewits (1976) and Naomi Goldenberg (1979) introduced the concept as a neologism. Its use then widened to mean all feminine ideas of the sacred, which Charlotte Caron usefully explained in 1993: "reflection on the divine in feminine or feminist terms". By 1996, when Melissa Raphael published Thealogy and Embodiment, the term was well established.
Mary Daly was an American radical feminist philosopher and theologian. Daly, who described herself as a "radical lesbian feminist", taught at the Jesuit-run Boston College for 33 years. Once a practicing Roman Catholic, she had disavowed Christianity by the early 1970s. Daly retired from Boston College in 1999, after violating university policy by refusing to allow male students in her advanced women's studies classes. She allowed male students in her introductory class and privately tutored those who wanted to take advanced classes.
The Goddess movement includes spiritual beliefs or practices that emerged predominantly in North America, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand in the 1970s. The movement grew as a reaction to Abrahamic religions, which have only gods with whom are referred by male pronouns, and it uses goddess worship and may include a focus on women or on one or more understandings of gender or femininity.
Islamic feminism is a form of feminism concerned with the role of women in Islam. It aims for the full equality of all Muslims, regardless of gender, in public and private life. Islamic feminists advocate women's rights, gender equality, and social justice grounded in an Islamic framework. Although rooted in Islam, the movement's pioneers have also utilized secular, Western, or otherwise non-Muslim feminist discourses, and have recognized the role of Islamic feminism as part of an integrated global feminist movement.
Margaret Daphne Hampson is an English theologian. Educated at Oxford and at Harvard, she held a personal Chair in "Post-Christian Thought" at the University of St Andrews. Hampson's distinctive theological position has both gained her notoriety and been widely influential. Holding that Christianity is neither true nor moral, she believes the overcoming of patriarchal religion to be fundamental to human emancipation. As a theologian Hampson has always held to a "realist" position, in which the understanding of "that which is God" is based in human religious experience.
Ecospirituality connects the science of ecology with spirituality. It brings together religion and environmental activism. Ecospirituality has been defined as "a manifestation of the spiritual connection between human beings and the environment." The new millennium and the modern ecological crisis has created a need for environmentally based religion and spirituality. Ecospirituality is understood by some practitioners and scholars as one result of people wanting to free themselves from a consumeristic and materialistic society. Ecospirituality has been critiqued for being an umbrella term for concepts such as deep ecology, ecofeminism, and nature religion.
Ecotheology is a form of constructive theology that focuses on the interrelationships of religion and nature, particularly in the light of environmental concerns. Ecotheology generally starts from the premise that a relationship exists between human religious/spiritual worldviews and the degradation or restoration and preservation of nature. It explores the interaction between ecological values, such as sustainability, and the human domination of nature. The movement has produced numerous religious-environmental projects around the world.
Christian feminism is a school of Christian theology which seeks to advance and understand the equality of men and women morally, socially, spiritually, and in leadership from a Christian perspective. Christian feminists argue that contributions by women, and an acknowledgment of women's value, are necessary for a complete understanding of Christianity. Christian feminists believe that God does not discriminate on the basis of biologically-determined characteristics such as sex and race, but created all humans to exist in harmony and equality, regardless of race or gender. Christian feminists generally advocate for anti-essentialism as a part of their belief system, acknowledging that gender identities do not mandate a certain set of personality traits. Their major issues include the ordination of women, biblical equality in marriage, recognition of equal spiritual and moral abilities, abortion rights, integration of gender neutral pronouns within readings of the Bible, and the search for a feminine or gender-transcendent divine. Christian feminists often draw on the teachings of other religions and ideologies in addition to biblical evidence, and other Christian based texts throughout history that advocate for women's rights.
Rosemary Radford Ruether was an American feminist scholar and Roman Catholic theologian known for her significant contributions to the fields of feminist theology and ecofeminist theology. Her teaching and her writings helped establish these areas of theology as distinct fields of study; she is recognized as one of the first scholars to bring women's perspectives on Christian theology into mainstream academic discourse. She was active in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and her own work was influenced by liberation and black theologies. She taught at Howard University for ten years, and later at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. Over the course of her career, she wrote on a wide range of topics, including antisemitism, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the intersection of feminism and Christianity, and the climate crisis.
Christian egalitarianism, also known as biblical equality, is egalitarianism based in Christianity. Christian egalitarians believe that the Bible mandates gender equality and equal responsibilities for the family unit and the ability for women to exercise spiritual authority as clergy. In contrast to Christian complementarianists and Christian patriarchists, proponents of Christian egalitarianism argue that Bible verses often used to justify patriarchal domination in gender roles are misinterpreted. Egalitarians believe in a form of mutual submission in which all people submit to each other in relationships and institutions as a code of conduct without a need for hierarchical authority.
A matriarchal religion is a religion that focuses on a goddess or goddesses. The term is most often used to refer to theories of prehistoric matriarchal religions that were proposed by scholars such as Johann Jakob Bachofen, Jane Ellen Harrison, and Marija Gimbutas, and later popularized by second-wave feminism. In the 20th century, a movement to revive these practices resulted in the Goddess movement.
In feminist theory, kyriarchy is a social system or set of connecting social systems built around domination, oppression, and submission. The word was coined by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza in 1992 to describe her theory of interconnected, interacting, and self-extending systems of domination and submission, in which a single individual might be oppressed in some relationships and privileged in others. It is an intersectional extension of the idea of patriarchy beyond gender. Kyriarchy encompasses sexism, racism, ableism, ageism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Catholicism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, xenophobia, economic injustice, the prison-industrial complex, colonialism, militarism, ethnocentrism, speciesism, and other forms of dominating hierarchies in which the subordination of one person or group to another is internalized and institutionalized.
Atheist feminism is a branch of feminism that also advocates atheism. Atheist feminists hold that religion is a prominent source of female oppression and inequality, believing that the majority of the religions are sexist and oppressive towards women.
Ecofeminism is a branch of feminism and political ecology. Ecofeminist thinkers draw on the concept of gender to analyse the relationships between humans and the natural world. The term was coined by the French writer Françoise d'Eaubonne in her book Le Féminisme ou la Mort (1974). Ecofeminist theory asserts a feminist perspective of Green politics that calls for an egalitarian, collaborative society in which there is no one dominant group. Today, there are several branches of ecofeminism, with varying approaches and analyses, including liberal ecofeminism, spiritual/cultural ecofeminism, and social/socialist ecofeminism. Interpretations of ecofeminism and how it might be applied to social thought include ecofeminist art, social justice and political philosophy, religion, contemporary feminism, and poetry.
Kwok Pui-lan is a Hong Kong-born feminist theologian known for her work on Asian feminist theology and postcolonial theology.
Virginia Burrus is an American scholar of Late Antiquity and expert on gender, sexuality and religion. She is currently the Bishop W. Earl Ledden Professor of Religion and director of graduate studies at Syracuse University.
Grace Marion Jantzen was a Canadian feminist philosopher and theologian. She was professor of religion, culture and gender at Manchester University from 1996 until her death from cancer at the age of 57.
Glenys Livingstone is an Australian author and teacher who has made significant contributions to the feminist pagan community and is the creator of the earth-based goddess movement known as PaGaian Cosmology.
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