ABSTRACT
In her book After Christianity Daphne Hampson continues to re-work her familiar theme — the dangerous irrelevance of the Christian 'myth' for the modern feminist self. Christianity, she says, lays claim to a unique historical revelation of God in Christ, which cannot be verified according to a modern scientific understanding, nor can it be ethically justified since it fails to uphold the central value of gender equality, but instead symbolically legitimates the oppression of women by men under the patriarchal system. Hampson castigates men for re-creating a "gendered social reality" in their theological speculations. Patriarchy and its gender hierarchy could also be regarded as a traditional 'contract' between men and women by which a structure of reciprocal obligations between the sexes was endorsed. Hampson has modernised the classic myth of women's superior moral sensibility, which emerged in tandem with the discourse of the autonomous rational self.
