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roclarenett's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
3.0
tdwightdavis's review against another edition
I'm not going to give this book a rating largely because it's an artifact. Let me explain.
This is Daly's first book, published in 1968. At the time, she was still a reformist and thus The Church and the Second Sex is decidedly un-Dalylike. Reading it after reading some of her later work is a jarring experience, an experience that she herself echoes in her new archaic afterwords and feminist postchristian introduction.
Reading this book in 2018 is also a jarring experience. Knowing that Daly was fired from Boston College because of how "radical" this book was is both incredibly saddening and also a little funny in hindsight. This book is so moderate at this point in feminist discourse. Even Daly's attempts at female inclusion and ordination in the Roman Catholic Church are gone by the time she publishes her second book, Beyond God the Father. However, this book could be published today with very few changes and still would read as a scathing indictment of evangelical masculine theology, especially that of John Piper, Mark Driscoll, Wayne Grudem, et al. 50 years after it's publication, it could still be read as a critique of American conservative Protestant theology, and that's incredibly sad.
There are some really great things to be gained from reading The Church and the Second Sex. It's a good repository of the sexism on display in some of the biblical writings. It's got some interesting hermeneutical moves that could be helpful for a more generous theology of scripture and revelation. But mostly, like I said above, it's an artifact, a text that the author herself was extremely critical of later in her life. It's interesting from the standpoint of Daly scholarship, but I think that her later work would be more beneficial for constructive feminist projects.
This is Daly's first book, published in 1968. At the time, she was still a reformist and thus The Church and the Second Sex is decidedly un-Dalylike. Reading it after reading some of her later work is a jarring experience, an experience that she herself echoes in her new archaic afterwords and feminist postchristian introduction.
Reading this book in 2018 is also a jarring experience. Knowing that Daly was fired from Boston College because of how "radical" this book was is both incredibly saddening and also a little funny in hindsight. This book is so moderate at this point in feminist discourse. Even Daly's attempts at female inclusion and ordination in the Roman Catholic Church are gone by the time she publishes her second book, Beyond God the Father. However, this book could be published today with very few changes and still would read as a scathing indictment of evangelical masculine theology, especially that of John Piper, Mark Driscoll, Wayne Grudem, et al. 50 years after it's publication, it could still be read as a critique of American conservative Protestant theology, and that's incredibly sad.
There are some really great things to be gained from reading The Church and the Second Sex. It's a good repository of the sexism on display in some of the biblical writings. It's got some interesting hermeneutical moves that could be helpful for a more generous theology of scripture and revelation. But mostly, like I said above, it's an artifact, a text that the author herself was extremely critical of later in her life. It's interesting from the standpoint of Daly scholarship, but I think that her later work would be more beneficial for constructive feminist projects.
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