Christianity, Family, and the Rise of the West [Hardcover]

Rosemary Radford Ruether (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 30, 2000

In a time when 'family values' occupies the minds of politicians and the public, Christianity, Family, and the Rise of the West sheds new light on two of our oldest institutions, and offers a way of rethinking our relationships to ourselves and Christian faith.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This book is Ruether!s (theology, Garrett-Evangelical Seminary) self-professed critique of the failure of the Christian Right!s family values! campaign to embody an ethic of justice and reconciliation. Highlighting historical Christianity!s paradoxical stances on marriage, celibacy, and women, Ruether argues strongly that the concept of the family has undergone many manifestations over time and that, when espousing a return to family values, the church stands more on cultural standards than theological truths. Ruether!s strength lies in presenting a comprehensive sociopolitical history of women and the family rather than in delineating corresponding Christian/clerical responses to changing social norms. She neither pits church doctrines against social claims nor explains how the church historically altered its vision with respect to the family. While it might sacrifice depth for breadth, this is still a highly readable and important political stab at timely theological and cultural questions for women!s studies and religion collections."Sandra Collins, Duquesne Univ. Lib., PA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

In lucidly accounting for the social construction of the modern family and its sacralization by the Christian right, Ruether is characteristically direct. She begins by juxtaposing a Focus on the Family description of Jesus as "founder of homes" and "creator of families" with Jesus' insistence, in Luke's Gospel, that any disciple of his must hate father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, and even his or her own life. She concludes by articulating a reimagining of families as structurally diverse "redemptive communities," grounded in friendship, in which making love is "a means of grace for redemptive life." In between, she surveys the transformation of early Christianity's socially critical, politically subversive perspective on the family into the Christian right's defensive regard for the Victorian family as normative. Ruether combines careful scholarship, theological reflection, and passionate vision, and her suggested alternative to the family model that the Christian right favors and would make injunctive will ring true to those living in a world where both Christianity and families are diverse. Steven Schroeder
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Press (July 30, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807054046
• ISBN-13: 978-0807054048
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #674,659 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The repeatedly reinvented Christian family, January 17, 2008

By 

Brian Griffith (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Christianity and the Making of the Modern Family (Paperback)

Ruether traces the history "Christian family values" through a series of transformations, in which the very notion of a static tradition goes up in smoke. Among these turns we find the Reformation's destruction of women's religious communities, as the Augsburg town council proclaimed in 1534:

"How should it come to any good when women join themselves in a separate life, contrary to the ordinance of God, yes, against nature, they give themselves to obedience to a woman, who has neither reason nor the understanding to govern whether in spiritual or temporal matters, who ought not to govern but be governed?" (p. 72)

Women's place, once more, was in the home. Until reading the Bible at home gave rise to hosts of biblically literate mothers, ready to form a Christianity of both fathers and mothers. Ruether shows the old divisions of roles and powers for each sex slowly collapsing, partly because the scriptures described Jesus as combining both paternal and maternal values. Then comes a tide of women's values invading the public domain. By Victorian times we see the very image of Jesus changing, as an almost hyper-feminized Jesus makes his appearance in religious art: "In Victorian images, Jesus had limpid eyes, delicate features, and silky hair and was surrounded by children, no more the glaring medieval pantocrator as world ruler, warrior, judge and king". (p. 104) This new Jesus might be meek and mild; but his female soldiers could be militant, as seen in the movements against slavery or child labor, for public education of both girls and boys, and for the vote. As Ruether puts it, "Reform of working and social conditions and public sanitation was thereby defined as an extension of a woman's housekeeping role in the family". (p. 112)

Ruether's portrayal of social transformations for men and for children is equally dramatic. In her account, "family tradition" is exposed as a controversy-charged work in progress for every generation. History writing seldom gets so important or hits so close to home as this.

-author of Correcting Jesus

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Faith and Family--marriage made in heaven?, August 2, 2007

By 

David Radcliff (Elgin, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Christianity and the Making of the Modern Family (Paperback)

This leading Christian feminist does a very good job tracing the roots--or lack thereof--of the contemporary concept of family. Turns out there never really was a "good ole days," as models of the family have changed considerably over the years. She examines families in pre-Christian Judaism and the Greco-Roman world, then reminds us the way in which the Jesus Movement challenged concepts of family--along with all other human institutions. Reuther follows gender roles, the teachings (and practice) of the church in relation to marriage and family, and societal family arrangements on up through the time of the early church, the Middle Ages, and recent history. She challenges the idea of God-ordained male domination of families, and calls for love, justice and equality to reign.

A great introduction to the role of Christianity in shaping "family values," but not in the typical understanding of that catch-phrase--which has been commandeered by the religious right.

Interesting quote: "The Jesus Movement was a gathering of mostly marginalized women and men out of families and occupations into a countercultural community."