Sallie McFague Remembered

By DON ROLLINS

From the once unimaginable political fissures among evangelicals, to the election of arguably the most progressive pope in Catholic annals, many American religious traditions are in epic transition: separate Pew studies indicate a 20% decline in attendance at religious events, from 70 to 50 percent over the last 10 years: millennials and older Gen Xers are far less invested in institutional religion than their parents and grandparents, ensuring a further drop in those figures, and, save for the most conservative faiths, longstanding mores, rituals and theological assertions have come into question, if not altogether reimagined or jettisoned.

But while it’s debatable which emerging trends are most impacting the state of religion in this country, surely the burgeoning effort to dismantle gender-based religious oppression ranks near if not at the top. Present en masse at least as early the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 - and allied with today’s movement to move beyond binary conceptions of gender - progressive women theologians in particular have served, and continue to serve at the vanguard for religious change.

Example: Although not a household name outside the realm of 20th and 21st century liberal theology, feminist theologian, Sallie McFague, was among the most influential of those change agents. She died last November, having spent over half a century researching, writing and teaching in the fields of metaphorical theology and ecofeminism.

As to the former, McFague found nearly all Christian theology lacking in imagination, and thereby siphoned of its mystery, creativity and power. As cited in her 1982 work, “Metaphorical Theology,” she advocated instead for a theology rooted in confronting the human craving for certainty: “… metaphors of God, far from reducing God to what we understand, underscore … the unknowability of God. This crucial characteristic of metaphorical language is lost, however, when only one important personal relationship, that of father and child, is allowed to serve as a grid for speaking of the God-human relationship.”

McFague was no less critical of our treatment of the Earth, positing at the height of the last economic downturn a juxtaposition between profit and belief: “The economic meltdown are two sides of the same problem, a problem based in large part on the basic assumptions we well-off Western human beings hold about ourselves: that we are ‘individuals’ who deserve whatever we want and can legally hoard for ourselves, our comfort, and our pleasure. The major religions disagree about many things, but none of them commend “Blessed are the greedy.’”

Despite resistance to her jarring theology — and the deep sexism she encountered along the way — McFague eventually gaining status in progressive circles. She: served as Vanderbilt Divinity School’s first female dean (1974); was an invitee to the Vatican Observatory Conference on Science, Philosophy and Theology (1991) and; participated in a conference on ecology and ethics convened by the Dalai Lama (2011).

McFague moved to Vancouver, Canada, in 2000, where she continued teaching and publishing until shortly before her death. Her work continues to be a touchstone for progressive religion, becoming even more relative in the struggle against white supremacy and climate change deniers.

As American religion as we have known it continues to ebb, it may be that something good is beginning to flow — something universal and metaphorical, something not siloed and certain — a tall order in any age, much less a nation in time, lorded over by the narrowest of political minds.

Yet progressives — both religious and secular — can draw upon the religious champions who’ve cast a vision, shown the way and paid the price. With Sallie McFague’s passing, we sadly but with gratitude add one more.

Don Rollins is a Unitarian Universalist minister living in Hendersonville, N.C. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, February 1, 2020

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