Author Archives

Carol P. Christ leads Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete, a life transforming tour for women. www.goddessariadne.org A Serpentine Path: Mysteries of the Goddess and Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology (with Judith Plaskow) will be released in 2016. She is a founding mother in the study of women and religion, feminist theology, women’s spirituality, and the Goddess movement and teaches in the Women’s Spirituality program at CIIS. Her books include She Who Changes and Rebirth of the Goddess and the widely used anthologies Womanspirit Rising and Weaving the Visions.

• Weaving and Spinning Women: Witches and Pagans by Max Dashu: Reviewed by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on September 19, 2016 • ( 10 )

  

  Max Dashu’s  Witches and Pagans: Women in European Folk Religion 700-1000 challenges the assumption that Europe was fully Christianized within a few short centuries as traditional historians tell us. Most of us were taught not only that Europe became Christian… Read More ›

• “And God Said It Was So”: Donald Trump Is the Spittin’ Image of Bad Theology by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on September 12, 2016 • ( 38 )

  

  I try very hard this election season to avoid reading about, watching, or listening to Donald Trump: the man is a liar, a cheat, a bully, a narcissist, a racist, a sexist, the list goes on. Yet even progressive commentators… Read More ›

• Can Good Theology Change the World? Part 3: Embodied Theology by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on September 5, 2016 • ( 13 )

  

  In an earlier blog I asserted that one of the hallmarks of good theology is understanding that the only valid source of authority is to be found in individuals and communities that continually interpret and reinterpret texts and traditions in… Read More ›

• Can Good Theology Change the World? Part 2 by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on August 29, 2016 • ( 13 )

  

  In the first blog in this series, I argued that one of the hallmarks of a good theology is recognizing that the source of authority must be located in individuals and communities who interpret texts and traditions as they encounter… Read More ›

• Can Good Theology Change the World? Part 1 by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on August 22, 2016 • ( 20 )

  

  Theology is often viewed as abstract and removed from the problems of the real world. Yet many of the problems of the real world are caused by bad theologies. If bad theologies shape the world, might the same not be… Read More ›

• Thinking about Goddess and God by Judith Plaskow and Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on August 15, 2016 • ( 7 )

  

  Talking about our deepest beliefs and feelings can be surprisingly intimate. In our new book Goddess and God in the World, we discuss our different theologies and challenge each other’s views. In the conclusion, we consider whether there is any… Read More ›

• Maiden, Mother, Crone: Ancient Tradition or New Creative Synthesis? by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on August 8, 2016 • ( 28 )

  

  The image of the Goddess as Maiden, Mother, Crone is widespread in contemporary Goddess Spirituality. The Triple Goddess honors three ages of women, in contrast to the wider culture that: affirms young women as sex objects while shaming them as… Read More ›

• Embodied Theology: Goddess and God in the World by Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow

  By Carol P. Christ on August 1, 2016 • ( 10 )

  

  Today is the official release date for Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology. It just so happens that August 1 is also a day for celebrating the harvest. An excerpt from the Introduction introduces the embodied… Read More ›

• The Emergence of Feminist Theology: Remembering our Roots by Judith Plaskow and Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on July 25, 2016 • ( 19 )

  

  This blog is an excerpt from our new book Goddess and God in the World which will be published by Fortress Press in just one week — on August 1. As we look forward to its release, we remember the… Read More ›

• “All Children Are Our Children” by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on July 18, 2016 • ( 12 )

  

  “All children are our children.” As I was posting my recent blog about the shooting of black men by the police, these words came into my mind with the force of revelation. At the time I was looking at a… Read More ›

• Dealing with Despair by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on July 11, 2016 • ( 21 )

  

  In a state of shock after the police shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, I turned to my Facebook feed, looking for community in my grief and hoping to make sense of what had happened. The statement, “He would… Read More ›

• Elie Wiesel’s Stories: Still the Dialogue by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on July 4, 2016 • ( 27 )

  

  This blog is dedicated to Elie Wiesel, September 30, 1928-July 2, 2016 During the summer following my second year [as a graduate student] at Yale, I read Elie Wiesel’s The Gates of the Forest[1], which someone had recommended as a… Read More ›

• A Servant of God or a Lover of Life? by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on June 27, 2016 • ( 26 )

  

  Thus through an enormous network of mythological narrative, every aspect of culture is cloaked in the relationship of ruler and ruled, creator and created. . . . [Sumerian] legend endows the Sumerian ruler-gods with creative power; their subjects are recreated… Read More ›

• Toxic Masculinity: “Masculinity Must Be Killed” by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on June 20, 2016 • ( 41 )

  

  A few days ago I watched the movie An Unfinished Life starring Morgan Freeman, Robert Redford, and Jennifer Lopez. Though it was recommended as a sensitive psychological drama, and though on the surface level it criticizes (male) violence against women… Read More ›

• Sisterhood is . . . (Well) Complicated by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on May 23, 2016 • ( 32 )

  

  When I was a girl, the women in the neighborhood looked out for each other, and my mother had a wide circle of women friends. My grandmother lived nearby, and she and my mother spoke on the telephone nearly every… Read More ›

• Interpretations, Interpretations, Interpretation by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on May 16, 2016 • ( 18 )

  

  The Pope’s call for a new study of the possibility of ordaining women as deacons in the Roman Catholic Church and the impasse in the United Methodist Church over homosexuality and abortion, once again ask us to recognize that theories… Read More ›

• What Does Mother’s Day Mean in a Patriarchal and Matricidal Culture? by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on May 9, 2016 • ( 17 )

  

  When we seek immortality or spiritual “rebirth,” are we not saying that there is something wrong with the “birth” that was given to us through the body of our mothers? In She Who Changes and in “Reading Plato’s Allegory of… Read More ›

• A Tale of Two Sisters and a Daughter and Niece by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on May 2, 2016 • ( 5 )

  

  This continues the story I began last week. Catherina is my 2x great-grandmother; Agnes is my 2x great-aunt; Johanetta is my first cousin, 3x removed, and my step-2x great-grandmother; Henry is my 2x great-grandfather. It is true that Henry had… Read More ›

• A Tale of Two Sisters by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on April 25, 2016 • ( 17 )

  

  When I first returned from my ancestor quest in Germany, I fell ill with a bad cold and cough and had little physical energy. For two weeks I lived in the dreamtime, communicating with the ancestors and trying to make… Read More ›

• The Pope Punts and Catholics Vote with Their Feet by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on April 18, 2016 • ( 12 )

  

  Reading the recently released papal letter “The Joy of Love,” I was surprised to see that it opens a “new” discussion of marriage and the family with a very old patriarchal trope from Psalm 128: Blessed is every one who… Read More ›

• An Illegitimate Child in Mecklenburg, 1850 by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on April 11, 2016 • ( 12 )

  

  I am Carol Patrice Christ, born in Pasadena, California, daughter of Janet Claire Bergman, born in El Paso, Texas, daughter of Lena Marie Searing, born in Lyons, Michigan, daughter of Dora Sophia Bahlke, born in Alma, Michigan, daughter of Maria… Read More ›

• Finding Bavarian Ancestors by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on April 4, 2016 • ( 18 )

  

  In the past month I have been on a spiritual journey seeking my German ancestors. Six of my 2x great-grandparents were born in Germany, which means I am 37 ½ percent German. Growing up, I was subjected to a form… Read More ›

• Fear, Guilt, Duplicity, and Cover-up in the Roman Catholic Church by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on February 22, 2016 • ( 27 )

  

  Last week I watched Spotlight, the film about the Boston Globe‘s exposure of priests’ sexual abuse of children, and then I watched it again. There are many reasons for my fascination with this film. I almost always root for the… Read More ›

• Dear Gloria: The Feminist Candidate I Can Believe In Must Be Unbossed and Unbought by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on February 15, 2016 • ( 37 )

  

  In the past week, founder of Ms. Magazine Gloria Steinem, whom I have always greatly admired, stated that young women are supporting Bernie Sanders because his campaign is where the boys are. She has since recanted the comment, but I… Read More ›

• “Light and Darkness” of the Goddess by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on February 8, 2016 • ( 21 )

  

  “Light and Darkness” is a song written and arranged to one of the oldest known European melodies by Ariadne Institute founding Co-Director Jana Ruble, following her first Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete. Every year since then, we have sung it in… Read More ›

• “God is Not a Man, God Is Not a White Man” by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on February 1, 2016 • ( 18 )

  

  “The pictures that line the halls speak volumes about the history of racism and sexism and they shape the future in powerful ways.”–Simon Timm The author of these words recently posted a short video on Youtube entitled “Mirror Mirror on… Read More ›

• The Sacred Feminine or Goddess Feminism? by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on January 25, 2016 • ( 48 )

  

  In recent years “the Sacred Feminine” has become interchangeable with (for some) and preferable to (for others) “Goddess” and “Goddess feminism.” The terms Goddess and feminism, it is sometimes argued, raise hackles: Is Goddess to replace God? And if so… Read More ›

• Fear and Loathing in Discussions of Female Power in the Academy by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on January 18, 2016 • ( 32 )

  

  No matter how carefully developed they are, theories of female power in pre-patriarchal societies are dismissed in academic circles as “romantic fantasies” of a “golden age” based in “emotional longings” with “no basis in fact.” I was reminded of this… Read More ›

• Releasing Artemis by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on January 11, 2016 • ( 25 )

  

  As I was writing this story, my Word program froze several times, and I lost what I had written. This has never happened before. The fifth time, it occurred to me that Artemis was not happy with the way I… Read More ›

• In Dreamtime with the Ancestors by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on January 4, 2016 • ( 8 )

  

  The last few days I have been living in dreamtime with my Swedish ancestors, most especially with my great-great-grandmother Ingrid, about whom I have learned a great deal over the past year. Through a distant cousin Thomas Sievertsson, who has… Read More ›