From the Washington Post.

Mary Daly’s ‘courage to sin big’

If there ever were a big sinner in the eyes of patriarchal religion, the honor of that title goes to Mary Daly. Mary Daly, “elemental feminist philosopher” and ground-breaking early feminist theologian, has died, but her ability to give women courage to name their experience will continue.

When I was a graduate student in religion the 1970’s, I bought a copy of Daly’s Beyond God the Father (1973) and I wrapped it in brown paper so nobody at Duke Divinity School could see what I was reading. In those days, Daly’s work was considered very radical, and even dangerous; several of my professors roundly condemned Daly’s work. Reading Beyond God the Father in secret helped give me the courage to invent myself as a feminist theologian; I had no help in that from my all-male teachers at Duke.

More than three decades ago, Daly wrote, “If God is male, then male is God.” She was right then, and she is right now. Religions that will not recognize the full equality of women simply substitute maleness for divinity.

I used to talk with Mary Daly in Boston as we lived in the same neighborhood and had our cars repaired at the same garage. She once said to me, in a critical tone, “they’ll punish you just as much for being a little bit of a feminist as going all the way.”

Daly knew what it was to be punished for speaking her mind. She was attacked often for her writings, and for her teaching at Boston College. She finally was forced to retire as part of the settlement of a lawsuit over her practice of teaching only women. She documented her account of that struggle in the 2006 book, “Amazon Grace: Recalling the Courage to Sin Big.” (Read more about gender and sexuality.)

Daly held six graduate degrees, including three doctorates in religion, theology and philosophy. Beyond God the Father was her last book in which she attempted to re-take “God-talk” for feminists; but even in early work, Daly creatively reimagines the term God as a verb rather than a noun. In this she was influenced by both the Protestant theologian Paul Tillich, and the Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber. She soon abandoned theology altogether for an existenialist philosophical exploration of women’s experience as she came to define it.

Controversy followed Daly’s work not only in regard to her critiques of patriarchal religion and her teaching, but also within the women’s movement. Audre Lorde, a Caribbean-American poet, writer and activist, wrote a personal letter to Daly in the 1980’s. While expressing appreciation for Daly’s work, Lorde questioned Daly’s failure to acknowledge the “herstory” of women of color. After four months with no reply, Lorde published the letter. The debate that resulted illustrates the difficulties many white feminists theorists have had (and continue to have) in deeply engaging issues of race as well as gender. Daly was also later criticized for her rejection of transexuals.

There is no universal category of “women” — that is where I part company with Daly. Racial dominance can blind us to the real differences of other women’s experience. The experience of transgendered people may mess up your theory, but in my view it’s the theory that has to change, not the other way around.

But Daly’s experience was different from my own, and my critique of her single-minded focus on her understanding of gender does not blind me to the incredible gift of her work to feminist theory. Above all, in works like Gyn/Ecology,Pure Lust, and Webster’s First New Intergalactic Wickedary she helped me to laugh at the pretensions of patriarchal views of women, reclaiming terms such as “hag,” “witch,” and “crone” and illuminating their origin in the fear of women.

Not long ago, I had occasion to re-read Beyond God the Father. Not only did I find I agreed with all of it, these days I would go beyond the Mary Daly of 1973 in my critique of patriarchal theology, as would most progressive women in religion I know. That is the gift of really big sinners like Mary Daly — they give others of us courage to go farther than we ever dreamed possible in treasuring the lives of women.

BY SUSAN BROOKS THISTLETHWAITE | JANUARY 5, 2010