Carol P. Christ – Page 2 – Feminism and Religion

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

This blog was originally posted on Dec 2, 2019

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 Susan B. Anthony’s efforts to write her out of history.

Matilda Joslyn Gage was also a scholar of women’s history unrivaled in her time. In Woman Church, and State, Gage argued that “the most grievous wrong ever inflicted upon women was in the Christian teaching that she was not created equal with man.” (page 1) From this it follows that feminists must never lose sight of the role Christian teachings have played and continue to play in the unequal treatment of women.

According to Gage, women’s position in church and state did not improve in the Christian era. To the contrary it declined! Gage proved this thesis in chapters titled: The Matriarchate, Celibacy, Canon Law, Marquette, Witchcraft, Wives, Polygamy, Woman and Work, and The Church of Today.

The Epstein Files Prove Just How Right Carol Christ Had Been, part 1 by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

We here at FAR are so honored and grateful to be the custodian of so many of Carol’s writings. Her 3-part seminal piece Patriarchy as a System of Male Dominance Created at the Intersection of the Control of Women, Private Property, and War first appeared on our site in 2013. We have committed to re-running it each year on the anniversary of her death in July. It is a piece that needs to be read over and over again until the understanding of what she writes seeps into our very bones. And even for those who already know this in our bones, it is important to articulate. We shouldn’t have needed the Epstein files to provide proof of Carol’s work. But alas . .. it does provide it in slews. And the fact that we needed the Epstein files for society at large to even begin discussing this proves Carol’s points of how insidious patriarchy is. It is so ingrained into our world that it is invisible unless there is a stimulus to bring it to the forefront. Will that be enough to make change?

For this two part post, I quote Carol from Part I of her essay (linked above – her words in italics). My commentary is based on recent events as well as the Epstein revelations. Really this is just scratching the surface and I plan to write more posts highlighting the work that Carol did on patriarchy. Here is her definition of patriarchy.

The Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Losing My Skin

This was originally posted on June 29, 2020

I arrived to Crete on June 6. Movers were in my house in Lesbos on the 4^th and 5^th. I put myself, my car, and my cat on an overnight ferry from Lesbos to Athens on June 5, and, after a day, took a second overnight ferry from Athens to Heraklion. Then another day moving my furniture and belongings up to my 5^th floor apartment using a crane. The agreement was that the moving company would put all of the furniture in its place, while I would unpack over the next few days.

This was the end of a very long journey. I bought the apartment at the end of September and expected to be in Crete by Christmas. Paperwork problems delayed the contract of sale until the end of February. My architect was ready to begin renovations. I hoped to be in Crete by the end of March. Then the Covid quarantine hit Greece. Luckily work on the apartment was allowed to continue during the quarantine. And my architect sent copious photographs and asked my opinion about everything.

The Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Liminal Space

This was originally posted on December 30, 2019

From the Latin word limen meaning threshold.

When I returned to Lesbos in mid-October, I imagined I would be living in my new apartment in Crete for the holidays. In fact, my lawyer and my realtor insisted that I arrange to transfer money to Greece quickly, as they expected the contract to be ready soon.

When I opened the door and entered into what had been my dream home in Lesbos, I was greeted by the smell of damp and the sight of peeling paint. The previous winter had been the rainiest in many years, one of my living room walls is partially underground due to a slope, and moisture had seeped through the walls. I wanted to move out—and fast.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Love Divine, All Loves Excelling

This was first posted on 09/09/11 and then again on 5/23/22

A founding mother of the study of women and religion and feminist thealogy, Carol has been active in social justice, anti-war, feminist, anti-nuclear, and environmental causes for many years. Her books include She Who Changes and Rebirth of the Goddess and the widely used anthologiesWomanspirit Rising and Weaving the Visions.

In my last blog I wrote that the image of God as a dominating other who enforces his will through violence–found in the Bible and in the Christian tradition up to the present day–is one of the reasons I do not choose to work within the Christian tradition. To be fair, there is another image of God in Christian tradition that I continue to embrace. “Love divine, all loves excelling” is the opening line of a well-known hymn by Charles Wesley. Charles Hartshorne invoked these words and by implication the melody with which they are sung as expressing the feelings at the heart of the understanding of God that he wrote about in The Divine Relativity.

Love divine, all loves excelling also expresses my understanding of Goddess or as I sometimes write Goddess/God. Though I am no longer a Christian, but rather an earth-based Goddess feminist, I freely admit that I learned about the love of God while singing in Christian churches. Hartshorne wrote that he knew the love of God best through the love of his own mother, and I can say that this is true for me as well. My mother was not perfect, and she did not understand why I wanted to go to graduate school, my feminism, or my adult political views, but I never doubted her love or my grandmothers’ love for me. (I count myself lucky. I know others did not have this experience.) Like Hartshorne, I also learned about the love of God through the world that I always understood to be God’s body. Running in fields and hills, swimming in the sea, standing under redwood trees, and encountering peacocks in my grandmother’s garden, I felt connected to a power greater than myself. Continue reading “Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Love Divine, All Loves Excelling”

The Legacy of Carol P. Christ: The Feast Day of St. Brigid

This was originally posted on 1/30/12 and then again on 1/29/24. Moderator’s Note: We are posting Carol’s legacy post on Sunday this week rather than Monday because today is the Feast Day of St. Brigid. We also feel this is an important message in these difficult times.

May we remember Brigid on her day in the fullness of her connection to bountiful and life-giving earth by setting a bowl of milk on an altar or special place in the garden on her holy day. Who knows, a snake just might come to drink from it.

The Christian Feast Day of St. Brigid of Kildare, one of the two patron saints of Ireland, is held on February 1, the pre-Christian holiday known as Imbloc. It is well known that St. Brigid has the same name as a pre-Christian Goddess of Ireland, variously known as Brighid (pronounced “Breed”), Brigid, Brigit, Bride, or Bridie. The name Brigid is from the Celtic “Brig” meaning “High One” or “Exalted One.” Brigid like other Irish Goddesses was originally associated with a Mountain Mother, protectress of the people who lived within sight of her and of the flocks nurtured on her slopes.

Imbolc marked the day that cows and ewes give birth and begin to produce milk. It was also said to be the day when hibernating snakes (like groundhogs) first come out of their holes. In northern countries, Imbolc signals the beginning of the ending of winter. The days have begun to lengthen perceptibly after the winter solstice when the sun stands still and it seems that winter will never end. At Imbloc spring is not yet in full blossom. But if hibernating snakes come out of their holes, it is a sure sign that the processes of transformation will continue and warmer days will not be far off. As Marija Gimbutas says, “The awakening of the snakes meant the awakening of all of nature, the beginning of the life of the new year.”

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Another Bow to Hestia

This was originally posted on Jan 4, 2021

I am not big on New Year’s resolutions, but this year I have vowed to change one of my habits. I have always been house-proud and love using my artistic flair to decorate my home in beauty. I have had a cleaning lady most of the time for many years, so my homes have been relatively clean. The living room and dining room have always been ready to receive guests. But I didn’t always do the dishes or clean the surfaces in the kitchen right away, clothes I had worn often sat on chairs before I hung them up, and I didn’t make the bed every day.

Now that I think about it, this habit goes back to my childhood and teen-age years, when my not picking up things in my bedroom was a bone of contention between me and my mother. Joyce Zonana wrote recently about how she rejected her mother’s role as homemaker and “dutiful” wife when she was young. Only now during the Covid crisis, she writes, is she beginning to enjoy the traditional women’s work of cooking regularly and knitting.

When I was a teen-ager, I sewed all of my clothes (both because we didn’t have a lot of money and because, as I was very tall and very skinny, most ready-made clothes didn’t fit). I was a second mother to my baby brother. For me, those were the fun parts of women’s work. But I hated washing dishes and cleaning the house, and I did not learn how to cook. I suppose I recoiled from the repetitiveness of those tasks. I was also aware that my father ruled the roost, and though I would never have criticized him, I knew that one of my mother’s jobs was to please him. Laura Montoya’s meditation on her grandmother’s life in a recent blog reminds us that the failure of homemakers to meet their husbands needs or wants can lead to violence.

The Legacy of Carol P. Christ: The Matricide Basic to Patriarchy’s Birth

This was originally posted on January 13, 2020

About 20 years ago I witnessed a performance of the 3 plays of the Oresteia (the Orestes plays) by Aeschylus. I was stunned. Watching them in sequence, I understood that the plays were one of patriarchy’s “just so stories” and that their continuing performance was part and parcel of patriarchy’s perpetuation and legitimation.

According to the myths, Helen, the wife of King Menelaus of Sparta, ran off to Troy with its prince, Paris. In revenge for his lost honor, Menelaus called the Greeks to attack Troy and bring her back. Agamemnon, brother of Menelaus and king of Mycenae, assembled his ships, but the wind refused to fill their sails. He was told that his army would be allowed to depart only if he killed his daughter Iphigenia. He lured his daughter and her mother Clytemnestra to the place where his ships were waiting with the promise of marriage to Achilles. When they arrived, he killed his daughter and the ships sailed.

The myths do not tell us that in matrilineal and egalitarian matriarchal cultures the mother-daughter bond is the sacred because it represents the continuation of life. Continue reading “The Legacy of Carol P. Christ: The Matricide Basic to Patriarchy’s Birth”

The Legacy of Carol P. Christ: “Oh For a Pair of Clean Dry Warm Socks”

This was originally posted on Jan. 15, 2018

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 population of the island. Though this number is huge, it does not compare to the estimated 91,506 arrivals in Lesbos in 2016. In January 2018, 7572 refugees are estimated to be stranded in the island waiting for their applications for asylum to be processed. The government-controlled reception center has a capacity of 2000, but up to three times that number are being housed there at any one time, in conditions that must be described as inhumane. It is suspected that “someone” in Greece or the European Union is slowing the asylum process in order to discourage refugees from attempting to enter the EU via Lesbos.

Recently I have begun to work with the Starfish Foundation, a local non-profit helping refugees on the island, using my skills as a writer to help with outreach. Today I share with the FAR community a blog I wrote to contextualize the desperation of the situation the refugees find themselves in.

The Legacy of Carol P. Christ: THE REFUGEE CRISIS IN GREECE: A TEST OF OUR COMMON HUMANITY by Michael Bakas, translated by Carol P. Christ

This was originally posted on June 22, 2105

Note from Carol Christ: I returned home from the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete a week ago to find my island, Lesbos, and my village, Molivos, overwhelmed with a refugee crisis of enormous proportions. We are a town of about 1000 permanent residents, and I would estimate that 10,000 or more refugees from the wars in Syria and Afghanistan have passed through our village in recent months. Local authorities and volunteers are exhausted, and there is an urgent need for help from the European Union. This week instead of my own blog, I am offering my translation of a moving plea for help from my dear friend and colleague in the Green Party, Michael Bakas, who by the way is himself a feminist.

There is nothing new about refugees fleeing from war. At the beginning of World War I, more than 50,000 people arrived in Lesbos from the nearby shores of what is now Turkey. At the end of the war many of these refugees returned to Asia Minor, but after the Greek army invaded and was driven back, the Asia Minor Catastrophe of 1922 sent nearly a million refugees to Greece.