External links
- Women-Church Complete Archive on JSTOR Open Community Collections, University of Divinity Digital Collections, Mannix Library.
- Women-Church on Informit
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Erin White | |
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| Born | 1941 |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Alma mater | University of Sydney PhD |
| Occupation(s) | Feminist philosopher and theologian |
| Known for | Founder of Sydney Women-Church group |
Erin Gabrielle White (born 1941) is a feminist philosopher and theologian. As an author she contributed significantly to feminist scholarship in Australia. She was the founder of the Sydney Women-Church Group and one of the founding editors of Women-Church: an Australian journal of feminist studies in religion .
Erin White was born in 1941. She completed her PhD in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Sydney. Her doctoral thesis, Itineraries of meaning: Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutic of the idea of the sacred, was completed in 1986. [1] [2]
White was a nun for 15 years from 1960 to 1975. [3] The 1970s had seen a rise of Christian feminism in Australian churches and White suggested that as a nun she had been untouched by this wave of feminism because, "[W]e were too busy to hear; we had too many responsibilities to feel powerless; we were encouraged to be anti-intellectual; we lived in a Catholic female ghetto largely shielded from the more crass aspects of sexism and the more enlightened aspects of ecumenism." [3]
White, along with Hilary Carey, was one of the founding editors of Women-Church: an Australian journal of feminist studies in religion , which was distributed internationally and published between 1987 and 2007 by the Women-Church Collective. The journal was launched at the first Women and the Australian Church (WATAC) National Conference that was held in Sydney in August 1987. [4] In Women-Church's second-last and final issue White contributed personal accounts of the history of the journal and the Women-Church Group. [5] [6] The Women-Church archives are now held by the Jessie Street National Women's Library in Sydney. [7]
White was a significant contributor to feminist scholarship in Australia. In 1989, at the Towards a Feminist Theology national conference held in Sydney, White, along with Elaine Wainwright, contributed an Australian response to the work of feminist theologian Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza. [8] The conference had been called together by the Movement for the Ordination of Women (Australia), Women and the Australian Church (WATAC), and Women-Church. [8] At the time White was a post-doctoral Fellow in the School of Philosophy at the University of New South Wales. [8]
White was also a presenter at the Women Authoring Theology Conference, held in Strathfield, Sydney in 1991. [9]
White's book Knowing otherwise: feminism, women & religion, was co-authored with Marie Tulip and published in 1991. [10] One reviewer, Margaret Heagney described the work as “a vital contribution to feminist scholarship in Australia”. [11] White's other contributions included journal articles and book chapters in edited volumes, in subject areas related to religion and gender, theology and feminism.
After White left the Sisters of St Brigid, she later married Graham Joseph English (16 September 1944 – 15 June 2021) and they had one child together. [3] [12]
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.
Marie Tulip was an Australian feminist writer, academic and proponent for the ordination of women as priests.
The Movement for the Ordination of Women (MOW) was the name used by organisations in England and Australia that campaigned for the ordination of women as deacons, priests and bishops in the Anglican Communion.
Hilary Mary Carey, is an Australian historian whose research focused for many years on the religious history of Australia. She has been professor of imperial and religious history at the University of Bristol since 2014, where her research interests include religious missions in Canada and Greenland and missions to seamen.
Camille Agnes Becker Paul (1932-2010) was an Australian feminist, moral theologian and activist.
Sarojini Nadar is a South African theologian and biblical scholar who is the Desmond Tutu Research Chair in Religion and Social Justice at the University of the Western Cape.
Elaine Stuart Lindsay is an Australian academic. She was instrumental in the development of the Women-Church journal which provided publishing opportunities in feminist theology for Australian women.
Kathleen McPhillips is an Australian sociologist of religion and gender in the School of Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Sciences at the University of Newcastle, Australia and the current vice-president of the Australian Association for the Study of Religion.
Beatriz Melano was a Uruguayan, Protestant theologian from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Melano is the first known, Protestant woman in Latin America to earn a doctorate in theology. Her participation in international theological conferences established a foundation for future women and Latin American theologians. Melano's books, articles, and presentations on a wide range of theological topics contributed to Latin American feminist and liberation theology. Her influence as a theologian extended beyond Latin America to the United States and Europe. In 1994, a meeting of "Women Professors of Theology" honored Melano as the first woman to be a professor of theology in Latin America.
Angela Coco is an Australian sociologist and academic whose primary research interests have been in the area of the sociology of religion, new religious movements, Catholicism, and Paganism.
Women-Church: An Australian journal of feminist studies in religion was an Australian journal published by the Women-Church Collective. It was established in 1987 and ceased publication in 2007, with a total of 40 issues published over that time. The journal covered a broad range of topics in the fields of feminist theology, religion and spirituality.
Magdalene: A Christian Newsletter for Women was an Australian Christian feminist magazine published by the Sydney group Christian Women Concerned.
Anita Monro is an Australian academic, theologian, and Uniting Church in Australia minister. She is the Principal of Grace College, one of the residential colleges of the University of Queensland, located on the St Lucia campus. She is also an Honorary Senior Fellow, in the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, at the University of Queensland.
Bernice Moore is an Australian educator and former Sister of the Good Samaritan from Sydney. She is known for her significant contributions to the fields of education, feminist theology and social justice. Moore was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in 1997.
Women and the Australian Church (WATAC) is an Australian ecumenical religious organisation that was founded in 1984. It was originally a Catholic initiative, being a national project of Australian religious men and women. It is now an ecumenical association, open to different denominations and faiths, with a network of separate groups operating in different Australian states and territories.
Towards a Feminist Theology is the title of a publication based on an Australian feminist theology conference held from 18 to 20 August 1989 at the Collaroy Centre in Sydney. The conference was the first ecumenical feminist theology conference held in Australia. Significantly it was also the first time that three women's organisations had joined with a common purpose. The combined gathering of around 500 attendees represented an important milestone in the development of feminist theology in Australia.
Women Authoring Theology is the title of a publication based on a national Australian feminist theology conference held in Strathfied, Sydney in 1991. It was the second ecumenical conference of its type ever held in Australia, with attendees mostly coming mostly from the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Uniting Churches in Australia, as well as several international keynote speakers.
Jean Gledhill is a member of the Uniting Church in Australia and a former member of the Commission on the Status of Women of the Australian Council of Churches. She was associated with two publications that contributed to the development of religious feminism in Australia. These were the Christian feminist magazine Magdalene and Women-Church: an Australian journal of feminist studies in religion.
Christian Women Concerned was the first explicitly religious feminist organisation in Australia. It was founded in 1968 by a small ecumenical group of feminist scholars that included Marie Tulip, Dorothy McRae-McMahon and Jean Skuse. The organisation played a significant role in the establishment of the Commission on the Status of Women in the Church by the Australian Council of Churches and published the Christian feminist magazine Magdalene from 1973 to 1987.
Dangerous Memory is the title of a publication based on a national Australian feminist theology conference held in Canberra in 1995. It was the fourth ecumenical conference of its type held in Australia.
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