In Memoriam: Dr. Rosemary Radford Ruether

Remembering our beloved Professor Rosemary Radford Ruether who died Saturday, May 21, 2022. She was 85. 

Dr. Ruether was a groundbreaking feminist theologian whose scholarship formed a generation of students. Born in 1936 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Dr. Ruether earned her BA in Religion and Philosophy from Scripps College in 1958, an MA in Ancient History from Claremont Graduate University (CGU) in 1960, and a PhD in Classics and Patristics also from CGU in 1965. It was during her studies at CGU that her connection with Claremont School of Theology began, in particular with John Cobb and the Center for Process Studies. “She would join us in our efforts at the Center for Process Studies, and we loved to have her.  But she made clear that she would never read a page of Whitehead (or any other process thinker).  That, of course, was not important to us since we appreciated almost everything she said,” John Cobb noted. By 1982, she earned her first of thirteen honorary doctorate degrees!

A prolific author, sought-after speaker, generous colleague, friend, mentor, and activist, Dr. Ruether’s legacy reaches across the globe. “I taught a seminar on Ruether and Daly in my first semester as a CST professor in 1990. Of course we read all of Ruether’s books, her latest at the time being Gaia and God — and we all appreciated the process sensitivities woven throughout that work in particular. She was a marvelous scholar, truly trailblazing, changing the landscape of theology not only in the academy, but in the church as well,” Marjorie Suchocki shared. 

She began her teaching career at Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles in 1965 but soon moved to Washington, D.C. to teach at Howard University School of Religion as an associate professor of historical theology. She served Howard for a decade before moving to Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary and Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, from 1976-2000. Dr. Ruether returned to California in 2000 to serve as the Carpenter Professor of Feminist Theology at the Graduate Theological Union, in Berkeley. Upon her retirement in 2005, she returned to Claremont and continued to teach until 2016.

“I met Dr. Ruether in 1995 when I was invited by the faculty of Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary to interview for a teaching position in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament,” said CST president, Rev. Dr. Kah-Jin Jeffrey Kuan. “As part of the interview process, I gave a lecture to students, and she attended. It was early in my teaching career, and having a scholar of her stature sitting in my lecture blew me away! Like many people, I had read her works and held her in high esteem. What a gift she was and is for the world! She will be greatly missed.”

Some of Dr. Ruether’s favorite courses to teach were “Feminist Theologies in North America,” a course that featured Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and Wiccan feminist hermeneutics and theology; “Feminist Theologies in the Two-Thirds World,” which introduced students to major work of Christian feminist theologians in Latin America, India, Korea, the Phillippines, Japan, and Africa; “Ecofeminist Theology and Practice,” which included ecological theology in Christianity, Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism, Judaism, and Islam from the context of globalization and economics. Dr. Ruether also taught popular courses titled, “Liberation Theology in Latin America” and “Gender and Western Christian Thought: Second to Seventeenth Centuries.”

“Rosemary Radford Ruether’s scholarship has been so influential for me and for so many other feminist Christians I know,” shared CST professor of ethics, Dr. Grace Yia-Hei Kao. “Teaching at CST, I got to know Rosemary on a more personal level. What has always struck me is how generous she was with her time. I truly cannot recall one incident where I asked/invited her to do something (e.g., guest lecture in my Intro to Christian Ethics or Feminist Ethics courses on ecofeminism, serve as a panelist on an AAR session I was organizing, come to my Chinese New Year Party) where she declined.

And it wasn’t just me. I saw her continue to mentor graduate students, serve on their dissertation committees, and write forwards to the books of emerging scholars to help promote them — all while she was officially retired.” 

Dr. Ruether was married to Herman J. Ruether, a professor in political science and Asian studies, and together, they had three children, Rebecca, David, and Mimi. We offer our heartfelt condolences to all of her family, friends, colleagues, and students. May she rest in power, and may her legacy continue to make the world a more just and equitable place.

To read more about Dr. Ruether’s life and career, you can visit NPR and National Catholic Reporter.