While planting and constructing my indoor container garden, I thought about how my ancestors put seeds into their children’s hair so that in case they were taken away to live and die in chains, they would at least be able to sustain themselves with a piece of the motherland. Rice, okra, yams, watermelon, and so MANY more crops that would go on to make white slaveholding Americans so rich (passing their wealth to their descendants and zero reparations for the descendants of enslaved Africans), that they were willing to fight a war to sustain their evil practices of owning human beings as chattel (Check out High on the Hog Netflix documentary which was adapted from a book by Dr. Jessica B. Harris). Enslaved Africans brought these foods to the new world, a direct result of slavery.
As I wash my daughter’s hair (which for Black women and girls is a PROCESS!!), as I moisturize her hair, and as I braid my hair, I am thankful that no one has a right to my child and that I do not need to fear her enslavement. Instead, I manifest her revolutionary future to carry the torch of our ancestors. A Torch and a commitment to elevate our community and move the community forward. I leave it up to her to choose how she will carry that torch forward!
Carol P. Christ is one the bravest, boldest, and most revolutionary women we have ever known. For so many of us, Carol is a friend, a mentor, and the one who taught us to tell our stories. Her books, articles, and writings here on Feminism and Religion created a space for other women to ask questions, to challenge the patriarchy, and to affirm our value.
Carol’s gift to us came at a cost to her. Like the lotus flower, she had to grow through mud before recognizing her own beauty. It was through her own struggle in darkness, her efforts to wade through its heaviness, that she found her strength, wisdom, and voice. She found the Goddess.
Carol described her journey as a Serpentine Path; one that began in despair and resulted in “rebirth and regeneration.” It led her from Stanford, to Yale, to her beloved home in Lesbos. She struggled with the “gap between what we know in our minds and what we feel in our hearts and in our bodies.” It is this disconnect that Carol sought to reconcile and ultimately found the power within herself to attain holistic healing.
Her journey is a representation of the expedition that so many women find themselves on – leaving behind the confines of patriarchal religion and male dominated spaces to find a sustaining spiritual vision that is affirming to women and the Earth.
Carol lived this spiritual vision through her writing, her activism, and her Goddess Pilgrimage. She is a trailblazer; the founding mother of the Goddess movement, and a woman who engaged her divine energy to create positive change and teach us that we have the ability to do the same.
We may not be able to see Carol, to speak to her, and will desperately miss her physical presence and brilliance; and yet, she is here. Her spirit is woven into the Earth and is ever-present in our lives.
According to Carol, “The simple act of telling a woman’s story from a woman’s point of view is a revolutionary act.” It is through Carol’s story that we have learned to share our own, to see each other, and to know that the Goddess is within us. And it is through our vulnerability and willingness to speak up, our empathy and compassion, our acknowledged connection, and care for one another – our continued revolutionary acts – that Carol lives.
Our sister friend, Laura Shannon, emailed us early in the morning to share the news that “Carol passed peacefully in her sleep last night at 12.11 am on July 14th. Alexis (Masters) was with her.” Carol died in the company of friends.
The community of Feminism and Religion (FAR) grieves the death of Carol P. Christ.
Our sister friend, Laura Shannon, emailed us early in the morning to share the news that “Carol passed peacefully in her sleep last night at 12.11 am on July 14th. Alexis (Masters) was with her.” Carol died in the company of friends.
Her writings here on FAR have been a gift to countless many of us for years. She recently emailed me to let me know that she would need to step back from writing her weekly FAR post for the foreseeable future, and, that if she could pull it off, she would send in her swan song soon. That moment didn’t come and that’s ok. There is no finale for a person such as Carol. We are changed and blessed because of her presence in our lives. Her legacy will be long and enduring.
I invite you all who would like to share a short tribute in honor of Carol Christ to send it here to FAR so it can be published as part of this post. This will serve as a running tribute that we can keep adding to. It will be a space to share, to grieve, and to celebrate her life. Send in your reflections to feminismandreligionblog@gmail.com. You may also share in comments below as well.
No single one of us can capture all that Carol has meant to us and to the world –– it is only right to hear from the many voices as we celebrate this most brilliant friend and teacher of ours.
“In Goddess religion death is not feared, but is understood to be a part of life, followed by birth and renewal.” — Carol P. Christ
Carol married intellect with heart centering –– she had a formidable intellect but always spoke from her heart.
In view of learning of Carol’s death I find these words from Janet’s post today inspiring:
“Who is she that shines through like the morning star, beautiful as the moon, radiant as the sun awe-inspiring as a cascade of starlight?”
On a personal level, Carol’s words were essential on my journey away from god by way of the Goddess. Her courage required me to dig deep to embrace my own version of the “hubris” exhibited by male “god makers” and “system builders.” Carol’s quote below inspired many us to take on the two-fold task of unearthing the patriarchal symbol system woven into the fabric of our socialization and of replacing it with words of truth, communities of support, ceremonies of meaning, and images of the goddess, all inspired by stories of the very beginning when the divine was imagined as female.
The reason for the continuing effects of religious symbols is that the mind is uncomfortable with a vacuum. Symbol systems cannot simply be rejected, they must be replaced. Where there is no replacement, the mind will revert to familiar structures at times of crisis, bafflement, or defeat. (Carol Christ, Womanspirit Rising)
–– Patricia Lynn Reilly, Author of A God Who Looks Like Me
Carol was a wonderful friend and colleague. She loved to read my work in progress (brilliantly, often several times in a row before she wrote back to me) and I hers.
Her essay on patriarchy was the best I have ever read. I asked her to contribute it to the anthology, Foremothers of the Women’s Spirituality Movement: Elders and Visionaries. The day after she sent it to me, I found that the essays fir the book had to be personal. I felt terrible. I emailed her to tell her, and she said it wasn’t a problem. The next day she had a new, wonderful, perfect essay for me.
Although I knew she didn’t have many months to live, I am still stunned by this loss.
–– Miriam Robbins Dexter
Carol was and will remain one of the foremothers and most brilliant voices of the Women’s Spirituality movement. At the conference on “The Great Goddess Re-Emerging” at the University of California at Santa Cruz in the spring of 1978, Carol delivered the keynote address, “Why Women Need the Goddess: Phenomenological, Psychological, and Political Reflections.” Christ proposed four compelling reasons why women might turn to the Goddess: the affirmation and legitimation of female power as beneficent; affirmation of the female body and its life cycles; affirmation of women’s will; and affirmation of women’s bonds with one another and their positive female heritage (Christ 1979).
In her most recent article, for the Encyclopedia of Women in World Religion: Faith and Culture, Christ wrote about the Goddess religion and culture of her beloved island of Crete, and the roles women played in that “egalitarian matriarchal” civilization. Her eloquent words speak not only to the Goddess religion of ancient Crete, but also to the spirituality and ethical values she also cherished, which are much needed in our own culture today.
As discerners and guardians of the mysteries, women created rituals to celebrate the Source of Life and to pass the secrets of agriculture, pottery, and weaving down through the generations. The major rituals of the agricultural cycle involved blessing the seeds before planting, offering the first fruits of the harvest to the Goddess, and sharing the bounty of the harvest in communal feasts. These rituals establish that life is a gift of the Goddess and institute gift-giving as a cultural practice. As women controlled the secrets of agriculture, it makes sense that land was held by maternal clans, that kinship and inheritance passed through the maternal line, and that governance and decision-making for the group were in the hands of the elders of the maternal clan. In this context, the intelligence, love, and generosity of mothers and clan mothers would have been understood to reflect the intelligence, love, and generosity of the Goddess.*
Honor, blessing, and gratitude to you for your life, Carol. You told us many times you did not fear death. You did not speculate on what comes after. Whatever goddess is, surely you reman in her embrace.
A wise woman committed to the spiritual freedom of women and a teacher of life and struggle has set out to meet the infinite. I thank life for giving me the joy of walking part of the way in this world, in the company and wisdom of women like her.
Thanks for everything my dear Carol. For the ideas and enthusiasm with which you always supported my work. For creating community and safe spaces For lovingly and intensely vindicating the transcendence of the humanity of women
Blessed journey our woman, teacher and guide. May the divine that you found in all women receive you today in her loving arms.
That was Karolina’s last message to me, on June 18th, 2021. I like to think it was also her last message to the universe, as she climbed back into the lap of the Goddess early on the morning of July 14th.
I’d sent her a selfie of me with a new haircut, a few inches shorter, as she’d suggested some time earlier. “Yessssss” was her immediate, characteristic reply. Two days later I forwarded an even better photo. It was surprising not to hear back from her, and I should have been concerned. Instead, I let two weeks go by before reaching out again. And then it was too late.
“Yessssss” was Karolina’s full-hearted response to life, and part of how she nurtured her friends and acquaintances. I will carry that “yessssss” with me till the end of my days, always grateful to have known and been nurtured so generously, so unfailingly by her. Her soft voice, her gentle laugh, her quiet glamor, her deep engagement with all the details of life … I could talk with her about my cats, my husband, my writing, my childhood, my haircut. Nothing was too small or too large, nothing too complex or too simple.
“Intelligent embodied love” is how Karolina described the ground of being, and intelligent embodied love was what she herself embodied and radiated, even as she suffered through her cancer and its treatment. For this past year, she devoted herself to making her new home as beautiful as possible. The last room she finished was the “guest room study,” and how I would have liked to have joined her there. Instead I will simply carry her “yessssss” in my heart.
Rabena yer’hamou – Que Dieu la berce dans sa matrice – “May she be cradled in the womb of the Goddess.” Blessed be.
Carol was my second cousin. In 2016, we spent about 10 days in France and Germany tracking down places where our ancestors lived. Like her Feminism and Religion research and writings she was a meticulous in her ancestry research and fearless about meeting strangers and asking questions. One of the places where are relatives came from was Saarland St Nikolaus-Rosbruk. We were having lunch by the river when she saw this tree that she wanted to embrace. Here is a picture of her by the tree. I love her expression.
Best to all, Bill Christ
I’ve been so honored to blog with Carol here at FAR over the last seven or so years and doubly honored that she wrote an endorsement for my new book just last month.
Carol was a tremendous role model and influence for me and she will be deeply missed. She impacted so many lives with her work and her depth of purpose and strength of character were so palaple, even across many miles. When I first read “Why Women Need the Goddess” it touched a chord within me that continues to reverberate through this day. Her work and writing shaped my own thealogy profoundly. In her honor, I chose one of her books off my shelf—She Who Changes—and randomly opened to a page, which, fittingly, was about how death is a part of life:
“For process philosophy, the whole universe is alive and changing, continually co-creating new possibilities of life. Every living individual is born, grows, and then dies. The world is a web of changing individuals interacting with, affecting, and changing each other. The body is the locus of changing life. Not to be embodied, not to change, is not to be alive…” –Carol P. Christ. (She Who Changes: Re-imagining the Divine in the World, p. 45)
I read this quote aloud during a small women’s circle the same day Carol died, a circle that, in some way, may not have existed without the gift of her presence in this world.
–– Molly Remer
Remembering Carol P. Christ
I am so grateful and glad that a circle of Carol’s friends and colleagues champion her accomplishments and celebrate her life.
I might be her oldest friend in this group, definitely more a personal friend than a professional colleague. We were in the same freshman dormitory on the same dorm corridor that was made into a social group at Stanford. Both of us felt a bit out of place, she—at the time–a political conservative from Orange County California, and I one of 17 Asians in a class of 1,200 from the small town of Gilroy, California.
Never her academic peer, we still spent time together studying, finding our way, and hanging on to our independent thinking. And we stayed in touch when we both relocated to the East Coast, she to Yale and I to New York City. I have attached a photo of Carol at her wedding in 1979 when she was living in northern California. Much later I met her family when her mother died and I knew of the family static that she worked to understand and make peace with. We stayed in touch through all these decades. I visited twice in Lesbos with my mother, sister and best friend, and she visited here in Oakland.
I saw Carol not through her scholarly achievements but from what I saw as her kind of priestess bearing. Always her forthright sense of what would make the world a better place, calling out the wrongs but being understanding, always with her oar in the water. I also saw her as a warm friend who could laugh about the foibles, not worry about binging on good television, enjoy a good meal with friends, and tend to her garden and pets.
Carol should not have suffered the pain of conflicts, even if those experiences sharpened her mind. She should not have suffered from debilitating illness. . .and she died too young. She told me once that she stayed in Greece because it was the most beautiful place she had ever been. Though I never liked having good friends so far away, it seemed that gave her joy and solace.
We will miss her.
–– Gail Kong
I was profoundly influenced by the keynote address Carol gave in 1978 at the Great Goddess Re-Emerging Conference in Santa Cruz, CA. I was one of the 500 women listening to her words “Why Women Need the Goddess”. The impact of her observation about the power of symbol systems on each of us individually and the influence symbol systems have on all of us collectively, helped guide my own life.
We met in the fall of 2017 when I was one of ten women on the Goddess Pilgrimage. Carol described herself as a “feminist and ecofeminist writer, activist, and educator”. Please view this eighteen minute video of Carol speaking at the Harvard Divinity School where she spoke about her life. This was the 2014 Religion and the Feminist Movement Conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwYygffNCAg.
I’m always moved by women speaking on their own behalf about their lives with no intermediary to interpret their life from afar. You will certainly gain a sense of who Carol was in her world.
My lesbian partner, Jeanne Neath, and I had reservations to join the 2021 Pilgrimage. To ease my grief at Carol’s death, I’ve gathered ten more candid photos of Karolina on some of the earlier Pilgrimages. You can see those photos on my blog http://paulamariedaughter.com/. Carol put incredible energy into each day of those two weeks she escorted us around the various sites that linked us to the ancestors.
Carol dared to examine the deeply embedded beliefs of our patriarchal institutions including academia and religion. She invented a new life for herself. She ‘shed the skin’ of an academic. Karolina was determined to reach other women like herself willing to look beyond the familiar goddesses of the patriarchy to discover the much more ancient Earth Goddess of our Neolithic and Paleolithic ancestors.
Many of us now acknowledge Carol/Karolina as a beloved ancestor.
Blessed Be, Paula Mariedaughter
One of Carol Christ’s books early on, in 1980, that impressed me deeply was Diving Deep and Surfacing – Women Writers on Spiritual Quest, published by Beacon Press. It helped me rediscover my spiritual path. I actually incorporated the phrase “diving deep and surfacing” in a process of self-understanding and awareness. — feeling grateful.
When I first learnt how patriarchy plotted and schemed to write the Goddess out of existence and by extension, the history of all women; not stopping at the written word, using violence and the threat of violence too; I was furious. This was the first time I experienced rage. Not fully knowing our history means we exist in a world of numb. To discover is to feel. To feel is to be alive. This is why Carol’s work is so important – because it links women to their collective past and to their collective future. The anger has subsided and now I ride a wave of certainty, connected to an international movement of powerful women. Understanding our story is empowering. Empowerment is Carol’s legacy.” – Claire Dorey
I met Karolina in 2018, when I was in Lesvos working as a volunteer with refugee organisations, so ours was a very short friendship by comparison with most of her other friends. We kept in touch when I went back to Sydney, and then picked up again where we had left off when I returned to Lesvos in early 2020 for another few months of volunteer work, before the Covid pandemic intervened. After that we kept in touch via Skype.
I was a bit younger than Karolina, but we shared the same feminist background and had a broadly similar outlook on life. In the short time that we spent together we shared a lot of long lunches with copious amounts of red wine. It was great for me, because Karolina could order meals in Greek, so we always ate interesting local food. She loved to dance, so if there was music she would be on the dance floor! Karolina knew a lot about Greek Orthodoxy and local customs. I spent a memorable “Clean Monday” with her in 2018, when she donned a tutu as part of a dance troupe, and then danced the afternoon away in Maria’s Taverna… (Clean Monday is the start of the 40 days of Lent in the Greek Orthodox Church).
Even though we didn’t know each other for very long, I think that we both valued our friendship, perhaps for different reasons. From my perspective, I loved staying in Karolina’s beautiful old house in Molyvos at weekends, bird watching in the salt marshes at Kalloni, and going to out-of-the-way places to eat. As well as intellectual stimulation she also provided some relief from the intensity of my refugee work, which was very welcome!
I thought it was incredibly brave of Karolina to leave Lesvos and move to Crete, and I’m glad that she got to enjoy her new apartment in Heraklion, however briefly. I would love to have visited her there, but Covid and her illness meant that was not to be. I will miss her.
This is the 5th in a series of work I have been doing to translate passages of the bible into poetry that strips out the patriarchal overlays. You can read the previous posts.
In this installment I am grouping together some passages that deal with vibrational energy and its role in creation. We humans often express sacred vibration as song or chant. When we get into the vibrational flow they are truly uplifting. In the translations below, I have kept two of the words in Hebrew because of their wonderful vibrational essences:
Old Woman cackled on the wing a pterodactyl with claws crimson black and white a great wind was howling and she was too. Passages she screeched. Her wrath undid me.
The Way was Narrow. Cushions of moss calmed wet cavern walls, steep stones threatened uncertain footsteps, echoing my descent. At the bottom of the well Silence rang out like a bell.
This week’s Torah portion is Devarim (Deuteronomy 1:1-3:22). In it, the Isrealites are preparing to enter the Promised Land, as the last of the sinful generation have died. Most of the parshah consists of Moses recalling the divinely sanctioned wars they undertook and the mass murder they committed in order to possess the land.
Needless to say, this emphasis on war is difficult from a feminist perspective. Starhawk argues, in “Why We Need Women’s Actions and Feminist Voices for Peace,” that, “Patriarchy finds its ultimate expression in war.” In other words, a parshah ripe with war is ripe with patriarchy.
Yet, it is more problematic than that. The deity is understood to be a warrior as are the Israelites. Verses 1:30 reads, “The L-rd, your G-d, Who goes before you… will fight for you, just as G-d did for you in Egypt before your very eyes.” In addition, this warrior mentality requires the Israelites to fight as well. G-d hardens the hearts of Sihon which requires the Israelites to fight (1:27). Thus, war and mass murder become divinely sanctioned methods which G-d and the Israelites use to further the sacred promise of the Land.
Most people know Portugal as a deeply Catholic country with a rich Islamic past and an ancient Sephardic Jewish heritage reaching back to Roman Lusitania. But what about the country’s pre-Roman, pre-Abrahamic Goddess cultures?
Like many foreigners, I moved to Portugal knowing nothing about Portugal’s Goddess heritage.
Then I met Luiza Frazão, Priestess, author, and independent scholar who studied at the Glastonbury Goddess Temple in England with Kathy Jones. After years of training and steeping herself in the lore of the Celtic Goddesses of the Avalonian Tradition, Luiza returned to her native Portugal to research the rich Goddess lore of her country. Intrigued and eager to learn more about her research, I met up with Luiza in the medieval town of Óbidos.
For millennia, people have struggled for gender and many other kinds of equality, with progress achingly slow and sometimes regressing. Egalitarian societies have existed and do exist, such as those described by Marija Gimbutas and Heide Goettner-Abendroth and others. So why does a 21st century egalitarian world seem so far away? Sometimes looking at challenges from a fresh perspective can be illuminating as well as inspiring for the long journey ahead. So, what if we envision equality as a tree, those wondrous beings that make life on earth possible and symbolize our world in so many cultures? What are the roots, the source truths which lead to all forms of equality and, if embraced by everyone, would make equality an assumed fact of life? What is the trunk where the roots manifest as positive supports for equality work? What are the branches, our acts reaching up towards our greatest aspirations for a truly equal society?
Let’s start with the roots, the basic statement from which all forms of equality grow. To me it is “All participate in the essential life force of the universe and are therefore inherently, completely, and infinitely valuable.” “Essential life force of the universal” may or may not refer to a deity, depending on individual beliefs, but it does have a spiritual element in that it relates our individual existence to that universal essence which gave us life, connects us to all other beings, and is beyond any personal characteristics. You may have a different root statement but I think that any root statement is more powerful with a spiritual element.
Last weekend I watched the 2019 movie Bombshell. I had not heard about it, and I ended up seeing it for the suggestion of Prime’s “you might enjoy this” algorithm. I had no idea about the story of Gretchen Carlson and Megyn Kelly’s legal battle for sexual harassment against Fox News’ master Roger Ailes. The movie was not very long, but it was intense. It portrayed really well the misogyny expected to be found in such a workplace led by a mighty, egotistic man like Roger Ailes.
Bombshell – 2019
A good part of the movie, we join Kayla Pospisil, Margot Robbie’s fictional character, in her quest to become a host in the news. So we go with her into Roger’s office and witness what an interview with that man was. It was about “loyalty” and intended to “prove” that she had what it took to earn a place in one of the most competitive work environments. **Content warning: description of workplace sexual harassmentto follow** Obviously, it meant that she had to sleep with him because how else could a woman with a hot body prove she is competent? Immediately she was forced to show him her legs because legs sell good on T.V., and then we get to see her underwear because he was too turned on and couldn’t stop himself. **End Content Warning** Thanks to Robbie, we also feel the panic, surprise, and horror of a naïve girl trying to get a dream job in the real world.
I offered up morning prayers at dawn this July morning to the song of cardinals, rose breasted grosbeaks, and just barely rippling waters. The air was sweetened by water. Peace filtered through the green – seedlings, lichens, mosses, grasses, ferns, trees, clear mountain waters. Silence, except for the birds’ benediction.
I honored my body with a poem. I also repeated my hope that my house will get the necessary structural help she needs, that the work will be completed. At the brook I experienced my body rooting into forested soil… I am loved here; I belong here – at least for now.
The drought drones on, although today at least we have light rain falling, for which I am profoundly grateful, especially because the dreaded 4th of July weekend is ahead – if only the rain will continue the deafening explosions might be tempered. In case this does not happen the dogs and I are going to retreat to the silence and peace of the woodlands to spend our nights in the car, the back of which has been turned into a comfortable bed.
Feminism and Religion 