Women’s Voices – Feminism and Religion

Nine Goddesses Every Woman Should Know by Annie Finch

Are you a woman (or man) who has lost touch with yourself spiritually — or

has never gotten in touch with yourself spiritually — or who just wants more joy in each day? If so, you may want to try entwining more goddess energy into your life. Many anthropologists believe that human societies were originally goddess-centered, and goddesses are still worshipped on every continent. Whatever your desire — strength, wisdom, compassion, fertility, creativity, sexuality — there is a goddess who can help you. Connecting with the goddesses who call to you — in the form of jewelry or art, words and music, or simply your thoughts — can sweeten and enhance your days with bright threads of unity, wonder, and female power.

But how to begin? The number and diversity of goddesses loved, worshipped, and celebrated throughout time and into the present, in every corner of the earth, is so breathtakingly large that trying to keep track of them can feel like counting the stars. To start you off, here are nine of my own favorite goddesses, chosen from among the most popular female divinities celebrated today (please note that many of them may also be known by different names or spellings).

Durga. The great Hindu mother goddess Durga is really nine goddesses in one. Durga’s nine manifestations — embodying qualities from courage to piety to blissful joy — are celebrated in India during a huge nine-day festival called Navarati. Durga is often pictured as a fierce goddess with many arms riding a lion. I have revered her ever since I found an ancient and powerful stone carving of her in the Asian wing of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. You can call on Durga’s invincible spirit when you need to be strong to your core!

Me (5^th from right) with friends at a Durga Puja Celebration in Kolkata, India, many-armed Sculpture of Durga in background

Seasons and Circles of Time by Sara Wright

Bright red tomatoes, fresh garlic, luscious blueberries, ripening seeds, a melon, one tincture and an ear of corn are spread over the kitchen table to mark this first celebration of the Harvest. At this fifth Turning of the seasonal Wheel, the Pueblo and Hopi Indigenous peoples celebrate the Corn Mother’s Abundance and I follow suit. Cedar stands watch in my mother’s vase etched with spinning wheels in blue.

The Sunstar is on the wane. The days are shorter as we move towards the darker months of the year. Yet look around – most of the wildflowers, bushes and fruit trees are seeding up and ripened berries disappear the moment they are tasty. The birds are watching and so are the bears.

With all this abundance I am struggling to bear witness to the fact that Earth is on Fire – that whole forests are being incinerated, that animals and people are dying. Here, smoke- filled air turn once blue skies into a sickly yellow soup. I plan my days around bad air, keeping Coalie and I inside when headaches and burning eyes strike and the worst of the smoke is entering our lungs and bloodstreams with irreversible consequences. All warnings have gone unheeded. Summers have become a threat to all; those that know, those who won’t.

How to re-dress imbalance is presently beyond my comprehension. We must surrender our lives to Earth’s wisdom which may be harsh. Consequences are the result of refusing to take appropriate action.

Faithfully Dissident Daughters by Chelsea Kim Long

At 28 weeks pregnant with twins, on a gorgeous summer day, I looked in the mirror and marveled at the way my body had expanded to accommodate the two lives within. I was proud of my body, proud of myself. I put on a black, lacy bralette with matching underwear and threw a lightweight open front kaftan on top. I set my phone on a self timer and took some beautiful shots of myself. Sitting on the bed. Standing in front of a mirror. Next to the crib, looking down at my belly.

The lighting was perfect; I felt ethereal—like the definition of a glowing pregnant woman. Pregnancy is magical for about 2 seconds out of 9 months and I was basking in them. I thought about God as Mother and smiled at the way my body reflected the image of God. I uploaded a photo to Instagram. Positive comments started to come in right away.

A few minutes later, my husband Colby walked into the room asking, “Did you just post a picture of yourself wearing a bra? That’s really weird.”

My heart dropped into my stomach. He had policed my outfit choices before, and it wasn’t worth the conflict to bring it up. This time felt different. This time I was carrying a baby girl who would be a sister in a family with two brothers.

Pretzels: The cruelty behind patriarchal women in positions of power by Sara Wright

” I would say it’s not just patriarchal men in power. The patriarchal women in power are doing plenty of damage as well. The cruel choices are deliberate and to see the pretzels they turn themselves into to justify the cruelty is a sight to behold.”
Janet Rudolph

During the last year I have been repeatedly betrayed by women. In retrospect my mother initiated me into woman betrayal by terrorizing a sensitive little girl by threatening to send her away if she wasn’t ‘good’. My terror of all women and my mother’s skepticism/dismissal of my grandmother as an ‘old woman’ whose opinions didn’t matter eroded my relationship with my grandmother that followed me into adulthood with catastrophic effects.

My fear kept me separate from the comfort of developing friendships with any woman until I became a feminist (yet I felt like an orphan when my grandmother died so my love for her survived).

I came to feminism through the back door through my love for Nature, the only real mother I have ever known. My love for animals, plants, trees, did their best to sustain me although I was very lonely. It is important to acknowledge that I also chose to be alone because I seemed to have so little in common with women in general (my 50 percent).

Medieval Bhakti Women Saints: Early Voices of Feminism by Sonal Jakhar

Long before the first wave of feminism in the mid-nineteenth century had its initial launch, a well-established religious movement sparked a socio-political awakening in India. The processes of social and cultural integration in the bhakti tradition have significantly reshaped medieval Indian society. To understand the reclamation inherent in the bhakti movement, one must first acknowledge the ‘dominant power structure’ that prevailed.

The orthodox Brahmanical hierarchy (the priestly class) enforced a strict monopoly over religious ceremonies, temple access, and sacred texts. On the other hand, spiritual knowledge was bound within Sanskrit, a language only upper-class men could learn. The bhakti movement arose from a desire for a direct relationship with God while rejecting society’s rules and rituals. Women and marginalised castes were heavily oppressed and restricted from public spheres. Since religious space was the only space available to women in the early medieval period, many women embraced bhakti (devotion), and it eventually provided them space to define their own voices that revised society, relationships and religions.

The bhakti movement, since its emergence in the 7^th century in South India, had a seismic impact on women and marginalised groups. Ideas of inclusivity, accessibility, and connectivity were running through reforms and resistance. A small but steadily growing group of thinkers called for the democratisation of the Divine against the social hierarchy in religious practises. Many women supported this reform with resilience, as they knew that change, whether conservative or revolutionary, would inevitably shape gender relations and advance women’s rights.

Maiden, Mother, Crone: The Anthology by Madeleine White

Introduction: When I last wrote for Feminism and Religion, I shared some of the experiences that led me to write Maiden Mother Crone, a memoir in verse exploring trauma, motherhood, addiction, recovery, hope and the search for more inclusive forms of spiritual expression.

That personal journey has now opened into a wider conversation.

Maiden Mother Crone: The Anthology, published by Sea Crow Press and co-edited by me and Sea Crow Press founder and publisher Mary Petiet, is the third and culminating volume in my Crossing Places series. Drawn from around 150 submissions and developed through workshops in the UK and internationally, it brings together poets from across cultures, generations and geographies to explore body, memory, land, love, loss, motherhood, daughterhood, ageing, renewal, courage and hope.

While responding to Mary’s questions about the anthology, I found myself returning to Bosorka, a statue I encountered recently in Bratislava. Created in memory of the women and men persecuted and killed after being accused of witchcraft, she seemed to embody many of the questions at the heart of the collection: whose voices are heard, whose experiences are mistrusted or erased, and how poetry and storytelling can help us remember, bear witness and create connection.

THE COURAGE TO BE HATED by Esther Nelson

Carla Power, a prolific journalist, has written a long-awaited, insightful biography of amina wadud (b. 1952) titled THE LADY IMAM HOW AMINA WADUD’S LIFE AND FAITH CHANGED THE WORLD (One World 2026). (Because the Arabic alphabet uses no capital lettering, amina chooses to be consistent with that script by not capitalizing her name.)

amina and I were colleagues from the mid-1990s through the mid-2000s at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, where she was a Professor of Islamic Studies. In this essay, I want to highlight some anecdotes from Carla’s book as well as offer some of my own reflections about amina. This essay is not intended to be a book review, but a tribute to someone who learned to navigate her life with grace in spite of myriad difficulties which included diagnoses of bipolar disorder and ADD/ADHD.

Notwithstanding the many words written and videos made about amina, she herself (in addition to chapters in books and essays) has written the following two books:

QUR’AN AND WOMAN REREADING THE SACRED TEXT FROM A WOMAN’S PERSPECTIVE, Oxford University Press 1999.

INSIDE THE GENDER JIHAD: WOMEN’S REFORM IN ISLAM, a book that demonstrates that “jihad” (to struggle) encompasses something well beyond the popular understanding of “holy war.” Oxford: Oneworld, 2006.

Soul-Fully Scripting Flesh: Poetic Justice & Joy by Margot Van Sluytman

Ours is a city of abundant tattoo shops. Places, I was to learn, where art and heart are rife. Places in which rich conversations occur. Conversations that linger long after the ink has begun to settle.

Wending my way to find the place to begin the process of scripting my skin, I spoke with a young man. His back was bent as he focussed on his animal friend and for a short while, before approaching him with my questions, I read the ink that covered his arms and legs. So many designs, descriptors, expressive strokes of thought and meaning known only to him. Hieroglyphs wherein his voice, his many selves, were revealed, yet hidden unless conversation were struck and desire to speak forthcoming. Wherefrom grew his choices?

I decided to cross the street and to ask him the meaning of some of his tattoos, the ones that spoke most vocally to me. As I moved closer, I spotted the script on his wrist. Script among an array of the colours and images. That script struck me. A fragment from The Tempest. Caliban’s words.

Be not afeard; the isle is full of
noises,
Sounds and sweet airs that give
delight and hurt not.

She Changes Everything She Touches: A Reflection on Love and Loss, part 2 by Sara Wright

part 1 was posted last week, you can read it here.

How much I like clipping by hand. Surprised by this realization I feel satisfaction rising. I was bored by this task as a child. I am delighted to meet a bevy of fat nubbly toads who appear out of the overgrown ground covers and in between sun warmed stones. Both child and ‘old woman’ feel happy that none will get mowed down by a polluting gas guzzling machine. The Peace of this Land that we belong to steals over us. Less is more. I’ll tackle the patch of bracken later, or maybe not until tomorrow. In this weather accomplishing one simple chore a day is enough.

Well not quite. I am creating a serpentine path of fieldstone that stretches from my front door to meet the path that climbs the hill. My original intention was to have someone ‘more professional’ do the work, but they were too busy so here I am, an almost eighty-one-year-old woman, creating a mosaic out of cracked stone! ‘I am the artist’ I say, as I carry a few more irregular rocks down from the huge pile sitting in front of the garage eyeing the mosaic for the perfect fit. Illumination strikes when wind hits the stones. Blowing seeds, withered crabapple bits, pine needles and leaves into the cracks I see what is happening. Small plants like violets, creeping charlie, ground ivy, and catmint will find niches in the soil that is being created before my eyes. Mosses will follow in the shade. Ah, Nature is going to help me craft a unique and imaginative fieldstone floor. Each time it rains the stones flatten out becoming more stable. That same feeling of satisfaction steals over me again. Vaguely I think that I may be doing something else besides laying stones in an artistic way and trusting that Nature will fill in the cracks, but I am not clear just what this might be. All I know is that it doesn’t matter how long this project takes. Process has taken precedence. This much feels just right.

Grief, Grace, and the Eco-Feminist Legacy of Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia, part 2 by Elanur Williams

Part 1 was posted yesterday.

The Fridging Paradox

Jesse and Leslie’s autonomy is structurally threatened by the narrative’s conclusion, and Leslie’s sudden death invites a critique of the “fridging” trope, a term derived from the comic book industry describing the practice of injuring or killing a female character primarily to serve as a plot device for a male character’s emotional development. Named after a 1994 comic book scene in The Green Lantern where a hero discovers his murdered girlfriend in a refrigerator, the term critiques the tendency in fiction to treat female characters as disposable tools for male growth rather than as autonomous individuals with their own arcs.

In Bridge to Terabithia, this sacrifice unfolds in three critical movements:

The Intersection of the Boundary: When the narrative notes, “The rain had been falling all night… the creek would be angry,” it signals the reassertion of the physical world. The creek acts as the boundary between the wild sanctuary and the dangerous, restrictive reality. By having the creek kill her, the text suggests that the “wild” or “feminine” space is inherently dangerous and incompatible with long-term survival.

The Reduction to Catalyst: In the aftermath, the text frames Leslie’s existence through her utility to Jesse. He realizes “it was up to him to pay back to the world in beauty and caring what Leslie had loaned him in vision and strength.” This is the core of the “fridging” critique; Leslie is explicitly framed as a “loaned” object, and as a resource for Jesse, rather than a person with her own trajectory.
The Post-Death Domesticization: Finally, Jesse assumes control: “He had to teach May Belle, for he was the king of Terabithia, and it was his duty to pass on the crown.” This shift in language marks the institutionalization of their anarchic space. By bringing May Belle in, Jesse settles the “frontier,” turning a radical, feminist space into a legacy for the next generation, effectively cementing Leslie as a relic of the past.

This tension is most visible in how the forest is described. When Leslie is alive, the forest is an active, creative force. Paterson describes how “Leslie had turned into a beautiful wild creature.” Yet, after she is dead, the forest becomes a site of mourning and memory, described as “still, and the creek was clear and cool.”

Would the novel have been more or less feminist if Leslie had lived? Does her death (within the context of a 1970s children’s book) actually provide the only way for a “non-conforming” girl to be fully accepted by the patriarchal structures of Lark Creek?

To view Leslie solely as a plot device is to overlook the novel’s sophisticated, often brutal, exploration of grief as a catalyst for moral maturity. While the “fridging” critique highlights a structural reliance on her death, one might argue Paterson is engaging in a deeper inquiry regarding the necessity of loss in the formation of the self. In this light, Leslie’s death serves not to diminish her agency, but to transition the novel from a fantasy of escapism into a somber, realistic lesson on the burden of growth. She is not merely a tool for Jesse’s development; rather, her death forces the permanent integration of her radical, imaginative spirit into the “real” world. By “loaning” him her vision, Leslie ensures her feminist influence survives her physical body, compelling Jesse to carry that disruptive, egalitarian force into a resistant, patriarchal landscape. She becomes an internalized mentor, suggesting that a true feminist impact is measured by how deeply one’s vision survives in those who remain. Terabithia ceases to be a secret getaway and becomes a foundation for the transformation of others.

It’s also important to keep in mind Paterson writes from a place of deep, personal vulnerability. She began the novel to help her son process the sudden death of his best friend. When we realize this, the “fridging” trope takes on a different hue. While the structural critique holds, it is also an attempt by an author to offer healing for her son.

The Secular Saint: Aesthetic Grace and Mentorship

Some may argue Miss Edmunds serves as the narrative’s secular saint of aesthetic grace. By treating Jesse’s art with profound respect, she acts as a bridge to a wider world, a living testament that one can exist within a rural community without being confined by its rigid gendered expectations. She provides institutional permission for Jesse to value his own sensitivity, effectively acting as the precursor to the creative sanctuary he will later build. While Leslie represents the collaborative, anarchic spirit of childhood, Miss Edmunds offers a glimpse of that same autonomy realized in adulthood. She is the professional, self-actualized woman of the story, and her presence proves to Jesse there is an alternative way to be, an existence defined by the pursuit of beauty and individual purpose.

Looking back, I can see how Leslie’s golden room and her expansive approach to faith taught me one of my first lessons in feminism, religion, and spirituality. It showed me that the borders we build, whether between countries, genders, or theological doctrines, are often artificial. Although the narrative’s reliance on “fridging” reveals a patriarchal constraint, the legacy of Leslie’s vision remains, and continues to inspire.

This piece is part of a series of explorations on children’s literature, spirituality and feminism by Elanur Williams. FAR has posted several of them.
Two pieces on The Chronicles of Narnia which you can read here and here.
Anne of Green Gables which you can read here.

Bibliography and Recommended Reading:

Escaping to Nature: Ecofeminism in the Children’s Book Bridge to Terabithia, by Anandayu Suri Ardini (2023):

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/372862789_Escaping_to_Nature_Ecofeminism_in_the_Children’s_Book_Bridge_to_Terabithia

BIO: Elanur Williams writes from Dublin, Ireland. She holds an MPhil in Children’s Literature and a MS Ed in Literacy Studies. She is a teacher who specializes in reading and writing instruction, as well as a poet whose work has appeared in Eunoia Review, the Ekphrastic Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, and Cosmic Daffodil, among others. Above all, she is inspired daily by her daughter, whose presence imbues her life with joy, magic, and a sense of limitless possibility.