Author Archives

Carol P. Christ is a leading feminist historian of religion and theologian who leads the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete, a life transforming tour for women. www.goddessariadne.org

• Harriet Boyd Hawes, Marija Gimbutas, and the Religion of Ancient Crete by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on September 9, 2019 • ( 13 )

  

  One of the projects I am working on these days is an essay on the religion of ancient Crete for a series of books on various aspects of the Minoan site of Gournia. Harriet Boyd excavated the Minoan town of… Read More ›

• Finding Missing Pieces of My Ancestral Story: Scotland and Ireland by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on September 2, 2019 • ( 19 )

  

  When I began researching years ago, I knew the names of my grandparents and what country in Europe their ancestors were from, but not much more. I have now traced most of my ancestors back to the Old Country, some… Read More ›

• “Ursula Niebuhr, Ursula Niebuhr”: Unacknowledged Co-author of Great Works of Theology? by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on August 26, 2019 • ( 14 )

  

  A few days ago while watching the movie The Wife, I kept hearing the words “Ursula Niebuhr, Ursula Niebuhr,” in my mind. I knew the reason was Ursula’s unacknowledged collaboration on the work of Reinhold Niebuhr, which I discovered while… Read More ›

• On Believing Things That Are Not True by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on August 19, 2019 • ( 11 )

  

  Anyone who is following American politics these days knows that the American President and his acolytes have little respect for what the rest of us consider to be the truth—or at least the best approximation of the truth that we… Read More ›

• The Devil’s Bargain: “If You Can Convince a White Woman” by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on August 12, 2019 • ( 32 )

  

  This week’s news from America. Where to begin? When will it end? The President of the United States is a racist who incites racist violence. Republicans have been slow to condemn the President and are not likely to pass a… Read More ›

• We Are Not Alone: Embodying and Re-enacting Ancient Wisdom by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on August 5, 2019 • ( 8 )

  

  A few nights ago, on the way to dinner, two friends and I passed by a small church near the old fortress in Ierapetra, Crete. The liturgy was broadcast via microphone and a crowd of people gathered outside the church…. Read More ›

• Plant Trees, Trees, and More Trees by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on July 29, 2019 • ( 14 )

  

  I dream that all of us who are suffering burn-out because of national and world politics come together to plant and nurture trees. Scientists say that planting ONE TRILLION TREES would neutralize two-thirds of carbon emissions and reverse climate change…. Read More ›

• And We Are Singing, Singing for Our Lives! by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on July 22, 2019 • ( 10 )

  

  Last week I wrote about the grief I feel for the state of my nation (the United States) and of the world. A few days later one of my favorite writers, Katha Pollitt, asked why we are not all in… Read More ›

• Grief, Have I Denied You? by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on July 15, 2019 • ( 16 )

  

  I have never had so much trouble trying to find a topic for blog and to begin writing it as I have this time. It is 6:58 am in Greece, three hours and two minutes before my blog is due… Read More ›

• Trial by Fire, Healing by Water by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on July 9, 2019 • ( 5 )

  

  It wasn’t really fire. I came home to Lesbos from a soulful Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete and a discouraging emergency meeting of the Green Party Greece totally exhausted and wanting nothing more than to rest. It was the hottest June… Read More ›

• Patriotism Reconsidered by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on July 8, 2019 • ( 13 )

  

  Originally published on July 8, 2013 on FAR under the title “What Is Patriotism?,” this blog asks questions that seem even more important today, when tanks have been paraded in front of the Lincoln Memorial and children are held in… Read More ›

• Seared by Vietnam by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on May 6, 2019 • ( 7 )

  

  Warning: This post discusses and includes images of the violence of war.  Recently I have been binge-watching the American comedy-drama series This Is Us. I am of the same generation as Jack and Rebecca, the parents of the triplets, but… Read More ›

• My Body, My Self by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on April 29, 2019 • ( 19 )

  

  The other night I was invited out by a new friend to meet a group of his friends. It was a lovely gathering, and I felt welcomed. As we hugged good night outside the restaurant, one of the women commented,… Read More ›

• Kassiani’s Song: Woman at the Center of the Easter Drama by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on April 22, 2019 • ( 9 )

  

  Today I am reposting the song and story of Kassiani, the Byzantine composer, poet, and hymnographer, who is not well-known to western feminists or in western history in general. In Christian Orthodox tradition, Kassiani’s most famous song will be sung… Read More ›

• The Room Where We Support Each Other, Part 2 by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on April 15, 2019 • ( 8 )

  

  Last week, In the Room of Undressing where women strip themselves to the bone, my great-great-grandmothers on my father’s side spoke in me. I had been afraid they would judge me for not being a wife and mother like they… Read More ›

• The Room Where We Support Each Other, Part 1 by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on April 8, 2019 • ( 21 )

  

  Over the past year or so I have been reciting my mother line, seven generations back, as a mantra of gratitude that helps me sleep at night. Sometimes I also name my sixteen great-great-grandparents, though I often fall asleep before… Read More ›

• “Calling All Women” to Save the Earth, signed and shared by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on April 1, 2019 • ( 13 )

  

  I contend therefore that we have allowed these chemicals to be used with little or no advanced investigation of their effect on soil, water, wildlife and man himself. Future generations are unlikely to condone our lack of prudent concern for… Read More ›

• His Terror by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on March 25, 2019 • ( 8 )

  

  The first two parts of Susan Griffin’s Woman and Nature, “MATTER” and “SEPARATION,” are written in the authoritative voice of western philosophy and science that declares matter to be dead and the body an impediment to thought, and proceeds to… Read More ›

• A Matter of Life and Death: The Military or the Green New Deal? by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on March 18, 2019 • ( 12 )

  

  “I have set before you life and death . . .  Choose life.” (Deut. 30:19) Scientists tell us that an environmental catastrophe which has already begun threatens every aspect of life as we know it on planet earth. The choice… Read More ›

• Tree-Hugging Is About Trees and So Much More Than Trees by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on March 11, 2019 • ( 14 )

  

  Not too long ago I heard someone deride members of a seminar who were building labyrinths in the olive groves of Greece as “a bunch of tree-huggers.”  I bristled! I probably first heard of the Chipko tree-hugging movement which is… Read More ›

• Meeting the Windigo by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on March 4, 2019 • ( 14 )

  

  Towards the end of Braiding Sweetgrass, mother, biologist, and member of the Citizen Potawami Nation Robin Wall Kimmerer sets out at the end of winter to visit a forest area near her home that she considers hers not in name… Read More ›

• Time to Dismantle the Myth of the Nation State? by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on February 25, 2019 • ( 11 )

  

  I am a citizen of two countries currently being torn apart by popular nationalism. In Greece, the cry is “Macedonia is only Greek,” while in the United States a nation of immigrants is being told that it must fear being… Read More ›

• Making a New Home: It’s Not So Easy by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on February 18, 2019 • ( 16 )

  

  I am sitting in my studio apartment with my computer on my lap on a cold, windy, and rainy day in Voutes, Heraklion, Crete. My little dog is curled up asleep, seeing no reason to awake on a day like… Read More ›

• Just When We Thought It Couldn’t Get Worse, It Did by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on February 11, 2019 • ( 15 )

  

  Like many of you I have been following discussions of the revelation that Virginia Governor Ralph Northam dressed in blackface or as a member of the Ku Klux Klan when he was a medical student. It was reported that Northam… Read More ›

• Receiving, Giving, Reciprocating vs. Nonintervention: Two Different Models for Environmental Ethics by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on January 28, 2019 • ( 12 )

  

  “Gifts from the earth or from each other establish a particular relationship, an obligation of sorts to give, to receive, to reciprocate.” –Robin Wall Kimmerer The notion of a gift economy is at the heart of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding… Read More ›

• Iroquoian Women: Power Held and Shared by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on January 21, 2019 • ( 19 )

  

  According to Barbara Alice Mann, author of Iroquoian Women, women were at the center of a matrilineal Iroquoian society that could be called (though she does not call it that) an “egalitarian matriarchy.” As in other egalitarian matriarchies, including those… Read More ›

• When Violence is Normal and Normalized by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on January 14, 2019 • ( 20 )

  

  Warning: this blog discusses spanking and bodily violence “No Whips, No Punishments, No Threats: Women’s Control of Social Life” is the title of one of the chapters in Iroquoian Women, Barbara Alice Mann’s stunning reconstruction of female power in a… Read More ›

• “Old South Asia” and “Old Europe”: New DNA Research Suggests Tantalizing Relationships by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on January 7, 2019 • ( 27 )

  

  When European scholars began to study Sanskrit they were surprised to discover linguistic similarities between Sanskrit and Greek and Latin. Old Persian was found to be even closer to Sanskrit. Scholars thus began to speak of related groups of Indo-European… Read More ›

• The Lost Is Found by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on December 31, 2018 • ( 22 )

  

  Since I wrote “Claiming the Power to Choose to Our Lovers” and “Choosing to End Love” in the spring, my beloved and I came back together and parted again, not once, but twice.  At the end of the summer, believing… Read More ›

• Moving On by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on December 24, 2018 • ( 35 )

  

  Last year when I was newly in love, I found myself wondering if my boyfriend would ask me to move to Crete to be closer to him. Pondering this possibility, it suddenly dawned on me that I was ready to… Read More ›