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

• Celibacy Is the Lynch-Pin of Male Dominance according to Matilda Joslyn Gage by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on December 2, 2019 • ( 9 )

  

  Matilda Joslyn Gage was an activist in the nineteenth century struggle for women’s rights equal to Susan B. Anthony, and a writer and theorist equal to Elizabeth Cady Stanton. That she is not remembered is due in large part to… Read More ›

• Susan B. Anthony’s Bargain with the Devil by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on November 25, 2019 • ( 42 )

  

    [T]he most grievous wrong ever inflicted on woman has been in the Christian teaching that she was not created equal to man, and the consequent denial of her rightful place in Church and State. –Matilda Joslyn Gage, Woman, Church,… Read More ›

• ERA—Equal Rights for Women—in the US: Has Our Time Finally Come? by Carol P. Christ

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

  

  On August 26, 1970, I borrowed an old VW bug from my mentor and summer employer Michael Novak to drive from Oyster Bay, Long Island to New York City to take part in the Women’s Strike for Equality march down… Read More ›

• Endings, Beginnings, and Dreamings by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on November 11, 2019 • ( 7 )

  

  Fifteen years ago, I bought my dream home in Molivos, Lesbos, one of the most stunning villages in the world. Over the next two years I renovated a listed Neoclassical house that had been neglected for over thirty years, restoring… Read More ›

• This is for colored girls who are movin to the ends of their own rainbows: Ntozake Shange’s Choreopoem of Spiritual Healing by Carol P. Christ

  By Carol P. Christ on November 4, 2019 • ( 7 )

  

  Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf has reopened at the Public Theater in New York City to rave reviews. I first saw for colored girls in 1976 after my friend Carolyn Broadaway, who… Read More ›

• Why Can’t a Man Be More Like a Woman? by Carol P. Christ (and Hannah Gadsby)

  By Carol P. Christ on October 28, 2019 • ( 17 )

  

  Women are loving, caring, and clever. Why do men say: “I will not be like that, never?” In a recent article in Gentlemen’s Quarterly, my favorite comedian, Hannah Gadsby, said: Hello, the men. My advice on modern masculinity would be… Read More ›

• 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 ›