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The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Feminist Philosophy of Religion recently received a substantial revision. The entry looks quite long and ambitious.
Your Thoughts?
Feminist Philosophy of Religion
December 1, 2011 at 10:47 am 
Daniel Fincke 
Posted in 3 Responses to “Feminist Philosophy of Religion”
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I wish I had seen what it looked like before. Right now it seems to cover almost all of the feminist-theory concepts I encounter in my theology classes. The part about discourse is SO important. I recently read a book called “Naming the Witch” (K. Stratton) and “Ancient Greek Love Magic” (C. Faraone) which both point out that ancient literary and historical stories of the practice of magic almost ALWAYS paint magic, particularly love magic, as something practiced almost exclusively by women. When men DO practice magic, it is always always always a woman who brings him to it. There is a trope in the Greco-Roman classics of a man who is either supposed to be a fool or a bad guy who travels abroad and finds witches for nefarious purposes. But, the material and papyrological evidence says otherwise. According to what we know from magical texts and from binding love spells and other things, men were overwhelmingly the practitioners of magic and overwhelmingly the keepers of magical texts.
Feminist discourse is a relatively new cottage industry in scholarship, but it is really important because so much of what we believe about history (how many times have you heard things like “women have always throughout history)…” is actually the representation of the world based on the opinions of a few, educated men and doesn’t reflect reality. It’s also really important for opening up how our discourse informs our decisions as well.
One can always find the older version in the SEP archives.
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2010/entries/feminist-religion/
If those “few, educated men” were sufficiently educated, they’d lay off the sweeping generalities. Yeh – that’s a generality, too. But it’s not just women’s issues that might be better served by a reduction in tempting generalities which don’t fully reflect reality. Not that a given line of inquiry will necessarily turn perfect, but it’s to be hoped the effort towards attaining accuracy and catholicity would remain in the writers’ and thinkers’ minds.