Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Sophia, Goddess, and Feminist Spirituality: Imagining the Future

This was originally posted on September 17, 2018

Though represented by its detractors as an incursion of paganism into

Christianity, and presented as an integrally and intrinsically Christian phenomenon by its supporters, the truth about the Re-Imagining Conference and movement is that it was a product of a wider feminist awakening. The critique of patriarchal religions that emerged in the academy and in churches and synagogues in the late 1960s and early 1970s was part of the emerging feminist uprising. The feminist movement placed a question mark over all patriarchal texts and traditions, secular and religious, and as such was beholden to none.

In the spring of 1971, Roman Catholic Christian Mary Daly published “After the Death of God the Father” in the liberal Catholic magazine Commonweal. She asserted that the God whose death was touted in the “Death of God” movement was an idol fashioned in the image of male power and authority. She called for “the becoming of new symbols” to express the new becoming of women. In the summer of 1971, a group of nuns from Alverno College convened the first Conference of Women Theologians. Besides sparking dialogue about the role of women in religions, the conference endorsed my call to form a women’s group at the fall meetings of the American Academy of Religion, up until then a gathering of several thousand male scholars of religion, with only a handful of women scholars in attendance. At winter solstice, Z Budapest launched the Susan B. Anthony Coven #1 in Los Angeles publishing a Manifesto calling on women to return to the ancient religion of the Goddess.

In those early and exciting days, women seemed to be joining together in a common critique of patriarchal religions and a common search for alternatives. But cracks in the sisterhood soon emerged. At the 1972 meetings of the American Academy of Religion, Mary Daly resigned her position as the first chair of the Working Group that would become the Women and Religion Section of the American Academy of Religion, stating that she was no longer interested in working with women who wanted to reform patriarchal religions. Her 1973 book Beyond God the Father was not only widely embraced by grass-roots feminists, but also critiqued by Rosemary Radford Ruether and other Christian feminists who felt that Daly was throwing the baby out with the bathwater. At the 1974 celebration at Riverside Church of the irregularly ordained Episcopal priests, patriarchal language for God was on full display. I was told that the group felt it was enough to demand to join the priesthood and that making a fuss about God language would hurt their cause. Only in 2018 did Episcopalians vote to consider whether or not to revise the Book of Common Prayer to become gender inclusive. When the ancient religion of the Goddess was introduced to the New York Feminist Scholars of Religion as a contemporary religious possibility in 1976 by Anne Barstow, Naomi Goldenberg, and myself, all hell broke loose. Almost immediately, Beverly Harrison declared that because there can be no ethics in Goddess religion, Christian feminists should reject the Goddess movement. Lynn Gottlieb, who was a rabbinical student at the time, and who would become a strong advocate of female language for divinity, described the fear of judgment by her tradition evoked in her that night in her book She Who Dwells Within. The lively arguments and conversations that continued in the group for months did not repair the rift that was forming among feminists in religion.

By the time the Re-Imagining Conference was called, Christian feminists were learning to deflect criticisms that they were going too far, by defining boundaries. Thus, the 1993 conference was explicitly called a coming together of Christian women to re-imagine God and tradition. All of the invited speakers were Christian. Mary Daly, Carol P. Christ, Starhawk, Z Budapest, Merlin Stone, Charlene Spretnak, Rita Gross, Naomi Janowitz, Maggie Wenig, and many others who had contributed to the wider dialogue about female God language were not invited to speak. The Goddess was also not invited, but She came anyway, disguised as Sophia.

The conference closed with a ritual in which these words were spoken:

Our mother Sophia, we are women in your image: With the hot blood of our wombs we give form to new life. With the courage of our convictions we pour out our life blood for justice. Sophia-God, Creator-God let your milk and honey pour out, showering us with your nourishment. Our mother Sophia, we are women in your image: With the milk of our breasts we suckle the children; With the knowledge of our hearts we feed humanity. Sophia-God, Creator-God, let your milk and honey pour out, showering us with your nourishment. Our sweet Sophia, we are women in your image: With nectar between our thighs we invite a lover, we birth a child; With our warm body fluids we remind the world of its pleasure and sensations. Sophia-God, Creator-God, let your milk and honey pour out, showering us with your nourishment. Our guide, Sophia, we are women in your image: With our moist mouths we kiss away a tear, we smile encouragement. With the honey of wisdom in our mouths, we prophesy a full humanity to all the peoples. Sophia-God, Creator-God, let your milk and honey pour out, showering us with your nourishment.

Those who created the Sophia ritual did not use the word “Goddess” and understood Sophia to be rooted in Biblical traditions.“Sophia” is the Greek word for wisdom and a translation of the Hebrew word “hokmah.” A personification called hokmah is mentioned in Proverbs and Sophia is pictured as the female face of God in the Wisdom of Solomon, written in Greek by Jews in the  second century BCE and included in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible used by Greek-speaking Jews in the Roman Empire. The Wisdom of Solomon was recognized by early Christian theologians and is considered part of the Bible by Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics, but not by Jews and Protestants. Some have argued that Jesus was influenced by the Wisdom tradition and may even have viewed Sophia as the female face of God. The authors of the Re-Imagining liturgy refrained from describing Sophia. The images of breasts flowing with milk and honey-drenched thighs describe women in the image of Sophia, not Sophia herself. Moreover, the poem is careful to pair images referring to the creative powers of the female body with more conventional references to justice, knowledge, and prophesy.

. . .

I was not at the Re-Imagining Conference, but when I read the words of the Sophia liturgy, I recognized the Goddess. This was not the heavenly Sophia of the intertestamental period and Orthodox Christian tradition, nor the Sophia invoked from time to time by Jesus, possibly as the female counterpart to the Father God he spoke of more frequently. This was Great Goddess, She who creates the world through Her body, She whose body is the world. I imagine that participants in the ritual felt this too. And this of course is what worried those who criticized the Sophia ritual.

This blog is excerpted from the beginning of my address for the celebration of twenty-fifth anniversary of the Re-Imagining Conference at Hamline College on November 1. Criticism of the conference led to the firing of its organizer and created a climate of fear that more or less ended experimentation with female language for divinity in the churches. At the end of my speech I urge Christian women to “sin boldly” and to affirm that yes they are Christians and yes they are invoking divinity as Goddess and then to let the chips fall where they may.