"By them we have been carried away out of our own land, as into a Babylonian captivity, and despoiled of all our precious possessions." Martin Luther, 1520
"Their goal is our 'deracination,' which is 'detachment from one's background (as from homeland, customs, traditions).' Thus women and other Elemental creatures on this planet are rendered homeless, cut off from knowledge of our Race's customs and traditions." Mary Daly, 1984
What is this land, this world of which these two theologians are speaking? Why do the two statements above sound similar in the authors' longing for a true home, for our own land? And who is this "them" who carries us away and cuts us off? Could it be possible that Martin Luther and Mary Daly, different in almost every way, are saying something similar? Why do these key figures in the Christian theological tradition, who come from different times, places, and politics, engage in such a parallel task? How is this possible?
This book examines a series of surprising parallels between two key reforming figures in the Christian theological tradition and suggests that the two are in fact engaged in the same task: political theology. Applying a new label to familiar theologians enables readers to see both of them as well as their reformations in a new light. The sixteenth-century Reformation and second wave feminism are viewed through the pioneering work of Luther and Daly here to further establish the political content and consequence of these theologians.
Author - Caryn D. Riswold
"Without minimizing the differences, Riswold reveals remarkable similarities between these two people who, in many ways, are striking opposites. . . . Regardless of one's opinion of Luther and Daly, Riswold's
Two Reformers will help readers to understand these two paradigm-overhauling figures anew."
—
Lutheran Partners"Of
Two Reformers it can be said that a daring thesis is half of an accomplishment. The reader gets the audacity already in the cover, and the other half of the accomplishment in the pages that follow, in a remarkable journey of recovering the political meaning of theological and ecclesial protest. Caryn Riswold's book finds a way of bringing together voices of dissent in the utter dissonance of the contexts of two thinkers that theology cannot afford to ignore or read apart from the political causes they in common espoused and from their frailty in the struggles they shared."
—Vítor Westhelle
author of
The Scandalous God