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

• Troubling Our Souls: Selling Arms to Saudi Arabia, the War in Yemen, and the US Military Industrial Complex by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on October 22, 2018 • ( 19 )

  

  There is a very big elephant in the room. Apparently it is invisible because even the left is not discussing it. This elephant is the civil war in Yemen to which Saudi Arabia has contributed 19,000 (19,000!) deadly (deadly!) air… Read More ›

• Religions and the Abuse of Women and Girls by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on October 1, 2018 • ( 19 )

  

  At the 2009 meeting of the Parliament of World Religions, former US President Jimmy Carter called the worldwide abuse of girls and women the greatest unaddressed human rights crisis of our time. He stated that this problem is “largely caused… Read More ›

• “What Would Happen If One Woman Told the Truth about Her Life?” by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on September 24, 2018 • ( 20 )

  

  According to poet Muriel Rukeyser, “the world would split open.” This poem accurately describes what many women experienced in consciousness raising in the 1970s and what many women experience today in the #MeToo movement. For many of us the world… Read More ›

• Sophia, Goddess, and Feminist Spirituality: Imagining the Future by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on September 17, 2018 • ( 19 )

  

  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… Read More ›

• A Prophet in Our Midst: Vandana Shiva by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on September 10, 2018 • ( 10 )

  

  She is not crying in the wilderness. She is not railing in the streets.   She sits quietly and speaks softly and with absolute clarity and certainty. To let all the water systems and food systems and planetary climate systems… Read More ›

• The Ninth Touchstone: Repair the Web by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on September 3, 2018 • ( 10 )

  

  As I reflected on the Nine Touchstones again recently, I was pleased to discover that the first and the eighth touchstones are articulations of the central values of egalitarian matriarchal societies. Few of us live today in egalitarian matriarchies, and… Read More ›

• A Total Eclipse of the Moon by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on August 27, 2018 • ( 11 )

  

  The morning after the July 27 total eclipse of the moon, I wrote: I am a-mazed and still in awe. Last night I saw the eclipse and the blood moon from my favorite tavern in Pachia Ammos. We pulled the… Read More ›

• Practice Great Generosity by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on August 20, 2018 • ( 12 )

  

  Nurture life. Walk in love and beauty. Trust the knowledge that comes through the body. Speak the truth about conflict, pain, and suffering. Take only what you need. Think about the consequences of your actions for seven generations. Approach the… Read More ›

• Approach the Taking of Life with Great Restraint by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on August 13, 2018 • ( 10 )

  

  Nurture life. Walk in love and beauty. Trust the knowledge that comes through the body. Speak the truth about conflict, pain, and suffering. Take only what you need. Think about the consequences of your actions for seven generations. Approach the… Read More ›

• Think About the Consequences of Your Actions for Seven Generations by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on August 6, 2018 • ( 10 )

  

  Nurture life. Walk in love and beauty. Trust the knowledge that comes through the body. Speak the truth about conflict, pain, and suffering. Take only what you need. Think about the consequences of your actions for seven generations. Approach the… Read More ›

• Take Only What You Need: Can We? by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on July 30, 2018 • ( 8 )

  

  Nurture life. Walk in love and beauty. Trust the knowledge that comes through the body. Speak the truth about conflict, pain, and suffering. Take only what you need. Think about the consequences of your actions for seven generations. Approach the… Read More ›

• Speak the Truth about Conflict, Pain, and Suffering: It Is Not All Love and Light by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on July 23, 2018 • ( 11 )

  

  Nurture life. Walk in love and beauty. Trust the knowledge that comes through the body. Speak the truth about conflict, pain, and suffering. Take only what you need. Think about the consequences of your actions for seven generations. Approach the… Read More ›

• Trust the Knowledge that Comes through the Body: Heal Yourself, Heal the World by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on July 16, 2018 • ( 10 )

  

  Nurture life. Walk in love and beauty. Trust the knowledge that comes through the body. Speak the truth about conflict, pain, and suffering. Take only what you need. Think about the consequences of your actions for seven generations. Approach the… Read More ›

• Walk in Love and Beauty: A Touchstone for Healing by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on July 9, 2018 • ( 21 )

  

  Nurture life. Walk in love and beauty. Trust the knowledge that comes through the body. Speak the truth about conflict, pain, and suffering. Take only what you need. Think about the consequences of your actions for seven generations. Approach the… Read More ›

• Nurture Life: Ethics of Goddess Spirituality by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on July 2, 2018 • ( 9 )

  

  Nurture life. Walk in love and beauty. Trust the knowledge that comes through the body. Speak the truth about conflict, pain, and suffering. Take only what you need. Think about the consequences of your actions for seven generations. Approach the… Read More ›

• Ethics of Goddess Religion: Healing the World by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on June 25, 2018 • ( 25 )

  

  Nurture life. Walk in love and beauty. Trust the knowledge that comes through the body. Speak the truth about conflict, pain, and suffering. Take only what you need. Think about the consequences of your actions for seven generations. Approach the… Read More ›

• A Question about “Egalitarian Matriarchy” in West Sumatra by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on May 21, 2018 • ( 11 )

  

  Following up on my recent blogs on the roles of women in the Neolithic revolution and on “egalitarian matriarchy,” I have been re-reading Peggy Reeves Sanday’s ground-breaking book, Women at the Center, about the survival of the “adat matriarchaat” (the… Read More ›

• Women and Men in “Egalitarian Matriarchy” by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on May 14, 2018 • ( 26 )

  

  When the word “matriarchy” is spoken, the first question that comes up is: what about men? Most people imagine that matriarchy must oppress men—just as patriarchy oppresses women. Sadly, concern about the oppression of women in patriarchy is less automatic…. Read More ›

• How “Egalitarian Matriarchy” Works among the Minangkabau of West Sumatra by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on May 7, 2018 • ( 22 )

  

  Currently I am reading Peggy Reeves Sanday’s a-mazing book Women at the Center: Life in a Modern Matriarchy for the third time. In it Sanday describes the living egalitarian matriarchal culture of four million people of the Minangkabau culture of… Read More ›

• Choosing to End Love by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on April 23, 2018 • ( 14 )

  

  A month or so ago I wrote that women need to learn what it means to choose our lovers and partners. I have just learned another lesson in this process. When I wrote about the power to choose, I was… Read More ›

• What Is “Egalitarian Matriarchy” and Why Is It So Often Misunderstood? by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on April 16, 2018 • ( 13 )

  

  In their purest form, “egalitarian matriarchies” place the mother principle at the center of culture and society. Their highest values are the love, care, and generosity they associate with motherhood. These values are not limited to women and girls. Boys… Read More ›

• The Blue Organdy Dress by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on April 9, 2018 • ( 18 )

  

  The blue organdy dress was a present my grandfather bought for me at the end of a summer I spent in San Francisco with my grandparents when I was six-going-on-seven. Was this the first time I crossed my father? Or… Read More ›

• The Heraklion Museum: A Critique of the Neolithic Display by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on April 2, 2018 • ( 17 )

  

  If I had been asked to write the words that introduce visitors to the Heraklion Archaeological Museum of Crete to its earliest inhabitants, I would have said something like this: While there is evidence that human beings visited Crete as… Read More ›

• Claiming the Power to Choose Our Lovers and Partners by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on March 26, 2018 • ( 19 )

  

  My dear friend Carol Lee Sanchez once told me that the women of the Laguna Pueblo– whose culture is an egalitarian matriarchy–taught her that women must choose their men, not wait for the men to choose them.* This was a… Read More ›

• A Victory for the Environment: For Birds and for Us by Carol Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on March 19, 2018 • ( 12 )

  

  On February 20, 2018, the Greek government issued a Presidential Decree mandating the formation of government bodies to monitor and protect the more than four hundred bird and wildlife habitats in Greece designated as part of the European law Natura… Read More ›

• Children of German Immigrant Farmers in Cherry Ridge: American Stories by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on February 12, 2018 • ( 10 )

  

  In my genealogy research, I traced my father’s grandmother, Catherine, to her roots on the Iloff farm in Cherry Ridge, Honesdale, Pennsylvania, about two hours north of New York City. Catherine’s parents were Henry Iloff, who emigrated in 1841 from… Read More ›

• Great Goddess, Mother Goddess, Creatrix, Source of Life by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on February 5, 2018 • ( 21 )

  

  The symbol of the Goddess is as old as human history. The most ancient images of the Goddesses from the Paleolithic era are neither pregnant nor holding a child. In Neolithic Old Europe the Goddess was most commonly linked with… Read More ›

• Run Women Run! You Can Do Better than a Mediocre White Man! by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on January 29, 2018 • ( 10 )

  

  When I was in graduate school, I learned to doubt myself. Despite having won Danforth and Woodrow Wilson graduate fellowships that paid for my tuition and living expenses, I was continually told by professors and male students alike that I… Read More ›

• The Beauty Way by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on January 22, 2018 • ( 18 )

  

  When I learned about the Navajo Beauty Way, I understood it to be a path in which human beings respect all beings in the web of life and live in harmony with them. But I didn’t understand why this path… Read More ›

• “Oh For a Pair of Clean Dry Warm Socks” by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on January 15, 2018 • ( 12 )

  

  Stories about refugees in the island of Lesbos (where I live) are no longer front page news. Yet according the United Nations Refugee Agency, 12, 742 refugees arrived here in 2017. This number is equivalent to 15% of the year-around… Read More ›