The study of religion, dealing as it does with the problems of finitude in human beings such as mortality, temporality, susceptibility and selfishness, has rarely recognized one of the most important problems of finitude: that of the distinction between the sexes. In my view, like many of the various disciplines these days, it reflects the way of thinking that “man” is the only sex and has ignored the problem of the other sex. As a result, the religious viewpoint has come to be a one-sided, male-dominated affair. Thus, the study of religion, though it seeks to overcome the problems of finitude, has itself unwittingly fallen into the pitfall of finitude by ignoring a distinction between the sexes.
In order to restore religion to its original wholeness, I think it is necessary to reconsider the meaning of the distinction between the sexes in religion. In this essay I consider the problem from two aspects, the theoretical and the historical. In the theoretical, I discuss two types of human religiosity, the male and the female, and also elucidate two types of religion, the maternal and the patriarchal. In the historical, I analyze the religions which have appeared in history according to the above categories.
