We learned yesterday of the death of Mary Daly, perhaps the most important feminist theologian in the twentieth century. She taught for more than thirty years at Boston College. I never met her but she had an enormous impact on Harvard Divinity School. When I arrived there in the early ’80s, feminist theology was beginning to make significant inroads there and her books were widely read.

Women still told war stories from the seventies when the concern over gendered language first surfaced. By the mid-eighties, that concern had morphed occasionally into silliness. I’ll never forget the time a female student castigated a male classmate who referrred to “the thrust” of an author’s argument. She said, “we don’t use that term anymore.”

Daly’s Beyond God the Father was an important work in my theological development, and I can remember laughing uproariously while reading Gyn/Ecology. Daly had a wicked sense of humor that she used effectively to show the patriarchal roots of language, symbolism, and religion.

There’s more about her death, and the reaction to her death, available here.