Professor Keith Egan
Saint Mary's
College
Religious Studies 310
"Women As Church"
This course, an exercise in historical theology, explores the ways in
which women have experimented with being church. This experimentation
has usually occurred among women who have formally or informally
organized themselves as ecclesial communities that often took their
inspiration from a monastic interpretation of Christian discipleship.
A theology of the church is known as ecclesiology which did not become
a formal study until the late middle ages. A working principle of this
course is that lived ecclesiology precedes a theoretical ecclesiology;
life before theory. Our challenge will be to explore the meaning of
women's movements in Christianity that formed these ecclesial
communities. We shall investigate historical movements like the women
of the desert, women's eucharistic spirituality and the beguines in
the middle ages. Then we shall reflect upon these movements
theologically asking what wisdom about being church these women's
movements have contributed to the ecclesiological tradition and what
wisdom these movements may contribute to the contemporary women's
movement within the church. Members of this course will develop skills
in reflection upon documents and texts that women have left behind
them. Teresa of Avila and Therese of Lisieux have described themselves
as daughters of the church. How can daughters of the church discover
in the Christian tradition women's wisdom about being church, wisdom
that may stretch the imagination? This course asks this question and
others that members of the course will bring to their reflection on
the women's movements within the church. RLST 310, taking various
approaches in differing semesters, may be taken more than once.
Emphasis will be on women's movements in the early church, the
medieval church and the church at the time of the Reformation.