Content and Exam Tips for OCR A Level Religious Studies
5. Society
The relationship between religion and society, including issues such as how religions adapt when encountering different cultures; religious tolerance, respect and recognition and views of other religions and non-religious worldviews; religion, equality and discrimination; the political and social influence of religious institutions
Changing Views on Gender Roles
Gender and Society
Content
The effects of changing views of gender and gender roles on Christian thought and practice, including:
Christian teaching on the roles of men and women in the family and society
Christian responses to contemporary secular views about the roles of men and women in the family and society
Key Knowledge
including reference to: o Ephesians 5:22–33
Mulieris Dignitatem 18–19
the ways in which Christians have adapted and challenged changing attitudes to family and gender, including issues of:
motherhood/parenthood
different types of family
Feminism
Gender and Theology
Content
The reinterpretation of God by feminist theologians, including:
the teaching of Rosemary Radford Ruether and Mary Daly on gender and its implications for the Christian idea of God
Key Knowledge
Ruether’s discussion of the maleness of Christ and its implications for salvation including:
Jesus’ challenge to the male warriormessiah expectation
God as the female wisdom principle
Jesus as the incarnation of wisdom
Daly’s claim that ‘if God is male then the male is God’ and its implications for Christianity, including:
Christianity’s ‘Unholy Trinity’ of rape, genocide and war
spirituality experienced through nature