Daphne Hampson
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Margaret Daphne Hampson (born 1944) is an English theologian. Educated at
Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
and at Harvard, she held a personal Chair in " Post-Christian Thought" at the
University of St Andrews (Aien aristeuein) , motto_lang = grc , mottoeng = Ever to ExcelorEver to be the Best , established = , type = Public research university Ancient university , endowment ...
. Hampson's distinctive theological position has both gained her notoriety and been widely influential. Holding that Christianity is neither true nor moral (in not being gender inclusive), she believes the overcoming of patriarchal religion to be fundamental to human emancipation. As a theologian Hampson has always held to a "realist" position, in which the understanding of "that which is God" is based in human religious experience.


Biography

Hampson was born on 15 June 1944 in
Croydon Croydon is a large town in south London, England, south of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Croydon, a local government district of Greater London. It is one of the largest commercial districts in Greater London, with an extensi ...
, England. Her background was in politics and modern history. Her
Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
doctorate on ''The British Response to the German Church Struggle, 1933–1939'' was not without its impact on her: she was later to write that a Church which discriminated against women was no more to be considered 'Christian' than one that discriminated against non-Aryans. From her early teens she had herself envisaged ordination. Following a year teaching British history, she went to Harvard as a Knox scholar (the second woman ever to enter the advanced degree programme in systematic theology). In 1974 she took up a post at the
University of Stirling The University of Stirling (, gd, Oilthigh Shruighlea (abbreviated as Stir or Shruiglea, in post-nominals) is a public university in Stirling, Scotland, founded by royal charter in 1967. It is located in the Central Belt of Scotland, built ...
; from 1977 in theology at the
University of St Andrews (Aien aristeuein) , motto_lang = grc , mottoeng = Ever to ExcelorEver to be the Best , established = , type = Public research university Ancient university , endowment ...
. Asking for
baptism Baptism (from grc-x-koine, βάπτισμα, váptisma) is a form of ritual purification—a characteristic of many religions throughout time and geography. In Christianity, it is a Christian sacrament of initiation and adoption, almost ...
, she was also
confirmed In Christian denominations that practice infant baptism, confirmation is seen as the sealing of the covenant created in baptism. Those being confirmed are known as confirmands. For adults, it is an affirmation of belief. It involves laying on ...
in the
Anglican Church Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of the ...
without being consulted. Now an insider, she took a lead in arguing in fundamental theological terms for the ordination of persons without respect to sex, writing the statement circulated to members of the Synod of the Church of England before the vote in 1979. With a growing feminist consciousness, in 1980 she left the church and, shortly after, Christianity, behind her as incompatible with human equality. It did not however occur to her that she should thereby cease to believe in God: indeed she comments that the move took her back to what essentially had been her formation at home and at her school. A frequent lecturer and occasional broadcaster, from the 1980s Hampson became known to a wider public. Many in the burgeoning women's movement in the church were challenged, or encouraged, by her thought. She was the first '
iconoclast Iconoclasm (from Greek: grc, εἰκών, lit=figure, icon, translit=eikṓn, label=none + grc, κλάω, lit=to break, translit=kláō, label=none)From grc, εἰκών + κλάω, lit=image-breaking. ''Iconoclasm'' may also be conside ...
' in the BBC Radio 4 series of that name. In 1986 she held a major debate with Rosemary Ruether on the compatibility of Christianity with feminism in
Westminster Cathedral Westminster Cathedral is the mother church of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. It is the largest Catholic church in the UK and the seat of the Archbishop of Westminster. The site on which the cathedral stands in the City o ...
hall. At St Andrews, Hampson set up one of the first two courses on 'Feminism and Theology' in the UK. From 1985-88 she was the founding president of the European Society of Women in Theological Research, with branches in Eastern and many Western European countries. After taking a degree in Continental philosophy at the
University of Warwick , mottoeng = Mind moves matter , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £7.0 million (2021) , budget = £698.2 million (2020 ...
in 1992-93, she expanded the range of her teaching at St Andrews to include courses on 'Challenges to Christian Belief', 'Theology and Recent Continental Philosophy' (the first such undergraduate course in the UK) and a cross-disciplinary course in the Faculty of Arts in 'Feminist Theory'. In 2002 she was awarded a personal chair and shortly afterwards, worn out from the situation she had for many years encountered in her job, took early retirement. Hampson has since lived in Oxford, where she is an Associate of the Faculty of Theology, undertaking some teaching and continuing to publish. In 2005 Hampson was a visiting fellow at
Clare Hall, Cambridge Clare Hall is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. Founded in 1966 by Clare College, Clare Hall is a college for advanced study, admitting only postgraduate students alongside postdoctoral researchers and fellows. It ...
, and is now a Life Member.


Thought

Hampson is unusual in being both schooled in Continental thought, thus having a post-
Kantian Kantianism is the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher born in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia). The term ''Kantianism'' or ''Kantian'' is sometimes also used to describe contemporary positions in philosophy of mind, ...
, post-
Freudian Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts i ...
and feminist ideological critique of Christianity, and also a marked British empirical streak, holding that theology should be grounded in human
religious experience A religious experience (sometimes known as a spiritual experience, sacred experience, or mystical experience) is a subjective experience which is interpreted within a religious framework. The concept originated in the 19th century, as a defense ...
. It would be misleading to regard her as predominantly a polemical thinker. Rather is her thought characterized by a desire for reasoned judgments as to what can be the case. She is adamant that Christian claims to a unique revelation in Christ are incompatible with what, since the eighteenth century Enlightenment, has been known to be the nature of reality. Hence she contends that the Christian myth must be discarded; while also allowing that it has served as a 'vehicle' which has carried human religious sensibilities. As she points out, a theology which makes no such claim to a particular revelation, in which God is rather conceived as everywhere and at all times available, while expanding a secular Enlightenment paradigm as to what is possible does not contravene the recognition that nature and history form a (non-determinative) causal nexus. She has long taken such an epistemological position for granted. As a 19-year-old on the radio, she challenged a panel as to how the Bible could be considered anything other than literature among other religious literature, the record of people's awareness of God. Hampson compounds such an epistemological position with an ethical critique of Christianity. From the belief there has been a unique revelation in history it follows that Christians must constantly refer back to that past age. The values and outlook of that patriarchal age, in its constant reiteration, come to form the religious subconscious, affecting present-day relations between men and women. Hampson further finds problematic the idea of a transcendent God; again the corollary of a belief in particular revelation. The relationship to such scripture, or to such a God, must necessarily be heteronomous. At a later date feminist appropriation of G. W. F. Hegel came to be crucial for Hampson's critique of Christianity. Prompted by Luce Irigaray's building on the thought of
Ludwig Feuerbach Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach (; 28 July 1804 – 13 September 1872) was a German anthropologist and philosopher, best known for his book '' The Essence of Christianity'', which provided a critique of Christianity that strongly influenced gene ...
, Hampson came to hold that religious thought-structures are a masculinist projection, both reflecting and serving to legitimise male superordination; and thus a form of
fascism Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy an ...
. Hampson would have theology become like any other discipline; drawing on the past when that remains appropriate, taking novel directions when the progress of human knowledge or ethics demands this. The more challenging aspect of Hampson's thought has been to consider (if the Christian myth is to be dismissed), how then 'God' had best be conceptualised. Hampson has always been forthright as to her belief that prayer, or focused thought for another, is effective. It is the conviction that there is such a dimension to reality, Hampson has said, that led her to abandon secular history for theology. 'God', for her, is the name that humans have given to their awareness (anthropomorphising it) of this reality. Hampson holds that God had best be understood as spirit, intimately interconnected with what we are. Drawing on the thought of
Schleiermacher Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (; 21 November 1768 – 12 February 1834) was a German Reformed theologian, philosopher, and biblical scholar known for his attempt to reconcile the criticisms of the Enlightenment with traditional ...
and feminist writing, she suggests that a 'porous' and relational understanding of the self may allow us to envisage how humans and 'that which is God' are inter-related. (Whether 'God' has agency, or would exist if humans did not, remain for her open questions.) It is this theological realism which those of more traditional beliefs have often recognised as being held in common. For her part Hampson always insists that the definition of what it is to be Christian necessarily involves an epistemological claim; what is no more than an ethical outlook cannot on its own constitute Christianity. Academically, Hampson has always been impressed by the power of
Lutheran Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Cathol ...
thought, little known or appreciated in the British context. She has found herself over many years existentially involved with the differing (and as she believes incompatible) structures of Lutheran and Catholic thought and their resulting spiritualities; the subject of her Harvard doctorate. She is fascinated by
Luther Luther may refer to: People * Martin Luther (1483–1546), German monk credited with initiating the Protestant Reformation * Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), American minister and leader in the American civil rights movement * Luther (give ...
's originality, over-turning philosophical presuppositions inherited from the ancient world and setting theology on another course. Hampson finds the Lutheran tradition best able to respond to the dilemma with which the Enlightenment confronts Christians. From the early 1970s she has been fascinated by the thought of Kierkegaard; in particular his ''
Philosophical Fragments ''Philosophical Fragments'' ( Danish title: ) is a Christian philosophical work written by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in 1844. It was the second of three works written under the pseudonym ''Johannes Climacus''; the other two were ''De ...
'' as that text which clarified the necessary clash of Christianity with modernity. Her most recent book is Kierkegaard: Exposition and Critique. Thinking
Rudolf Bultmann Rudolf Karl Bultmann (; 20 August 1884 – 30 July 1976) was a German Lutheran theologian and professor of the New Testament at the University of Marburg. He was one of the major figures of early-20th-century biblical studies. A prominent criti ...
's position the most adequate attempt to mount an apologetic for Christianity in modernity, she judges it however to fail. Among major theologians, it is Schleiermacher (not a Lutheran) to whom Hampson returns once and again in appreciation.Cf. ''After Christianity'' pp. 212-22; also 'Re-review: Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to the Cultured Among Its Despisers' in ''Modern Believing'', vol. 40, no. 4 (October 1999). Speaking at a 1997 UK conference, Hampson summed up her position thus:


Publications

* ''Theology and Feminism'' (Oxford:Basil Blackwell, 1990) * ''After Christianity'' (London: SCM Press, 1996, and Philadelphia, PA: Trinity Press International, 1997.) Second edition, London: SCM Press, 2002. * (Ed.) ''Swallowing a Fishbone? Feminist Theologians Debate Christianity'' (London: SPCK, 1996).
''Christian Contradictions: The Structures of Lutheran and Catholic Thought'' (Cambridge University Press, 2001, paperback 2004).

''Kierkegaard: Exposition and Critique'' (Oxford University Press, April 2013).
Recent articles: * 'The Sacred, The Feminine and French Feminist Theory', in eds. G. Pollock and V. Turvey Sauron, ''The Sacred and the Feminine: Imagination and Difference'' (London and New York, I. B. Tauris, 2007). * 'Enlightenment 2008', ''Caesar: A Journal of Religion and Human Values'', vol. 2, no. 2 (Fall 2008). * 'That Which Is God', in eds. G. Howie and J. Jobling, ''Women and the Divine: Touching Transcendence'' (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). * 'Kant and the Present', in ed. P. S. Anderson, ''New Topics in Feminist Philosophy of Religion: Resistance and Spiritual Practices'', ''The Feminist Philosophy Collection'' (New York: Springer, 2009). * 'Searching for God?' in eds. M. McGhee and J. Cornwell, ''Philosophers on God'' (London and New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2009). * 'Post-Christian Thought', in ed. D. Patte, ''The Cambridge Dictionary of Christianity'' (Cambridge University Press, 2010). * 'Freedom and Human Emancipation', in eds. N. Adams, G. Pattison and G. Ward, ''Oxford Handbook of Theology and Modern European Thought'', Oxford University Press, forthcoming.


See also

*
Mary Daly Mary Daly (October 16, 1928–January 3, 2010) was an American radical feminist philosopher and theologian. Daly, who described herself as a "radical lesbian feminist", taught at the Jesuit-run Boston College for 33 years. Once a practicing ...


References


External links

*
Conference speech given in 1997
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hampson, Daphne 1944 births 20th-century English theologians Academics of the University of St Andrews Academics of the University of Stirling Alumni of Keele University Alumni of the University of Oxford Alumni of the University of Warwick English feminist writers Feminist theologians Former Anglicans Harvard University alumni Kierkegaard scholars Living people Systematic theologians