Carol P. Christ – Page 50 – Feminism and Religion

The Cop on the Beat is Not Ice-T, the Prosecutor Is Not Sam Waterston, and Mariska Hargitay and S. Epatha Merkerson Are Not in Charge, by Carol P. Christ

I have watched every episode of Law and Order and Law and Order SVU, and most of them more than once. Though there is police violence on these programs, it is usually investigated, and viewers are given the sense that it is not OK. Not living in black America or even in the United States, I guess I was under the illusion that police forces are no longer primarily white and male, that police reforms advocated decades ago have had some effect, and that cops cannot get away with murder.

This despite the fact that I knew that inmates in US prisons are far more likely to be black than their numbers in the population warrant, and that I knew that stop and frisk and arresting black men for petty crimes are ordinary police policies.

For readers who don’t watch MSNBC as avidly as I do, stop and frisk, now banned in New York City, is the policy of searching (primarily) young black men hanging around on street corners to see if they have illegal drugs or weapons on their persons. This policy can lead to the incarceration of young black men for having one or two marijuana cigarettes intended for personal use in their pockets. Stop and frisk is not a policy on college campuses, where police are just as likely to find young white men and women in possession of illegal drugs. Why? Because college authorities and parents of white college students simply would not allow it. Continue reading “The Cop on the Beat is Not Ice-T, the Prosecutor Is Not Sam Waterston, and Mariska Hargitay and S. Epatha Merkerson Are Not in Charge, by Carol P. Christ”

An Archaic Trinity of Goddesses? Not Necessarily. by Barbara Ardinger

Barbara Ardinger In her comment following my last post which was about mythology, my friend, Carol Christ, expands on my paragraph about how the so-called “ancient triple goddess” was really invented in 1948 by Robert Graves in his book, The White Goddess. (Thanks, Carol.)

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, when the Goddess movement was just getting up on its feet and our ovular books were being published, the idea arose that if “they” have a holy trinity, “we” have one, too. And ours is older and holier. We see it in the three phases of the moon, new (Virgin), full (Mother), and dark (Crone). Here’s a tiny sample of these books that changed the lives of so many women and men:

Woman’s Mysteries Ancient and Modern by M. Esther Harding (1971, but first published in 1933)
The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe (1974) by Marija Gimbutas
When God Was a Woman (1976) by Merlin Stone
Lost Goddesses of Early Greece: A Collection of Pre-Hellenic Myths (1978) by Charlene Spretnak
The first edition of The Spiral Dance (1979) by Starhawk
The Chalice and the Blade (1987) by Riane Eisler
Laughter of Aphrodite (1987) by Carol P. Christ
The Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries (1989) by Z. Budapest
The Reflowering of the Goddess (1990) by Gloria Feman Orenstein
Whence the Goddesses: A Source Book (1990) by Miriam Robbins Dexter

Triple goddess? ’Tain’t so. Our beloved triple goddess is one of our foundational myths. It’s nice and it’s perhaps inspiring, but it’s only a myth. Anyone who looks at a calendar or almanac—or up into the sky every night for a month—can easily see that the moon doesn’t have three phases. It has four: waxing, full, waning, and dark. And since the late 20^th century, women have lived long enough to go through more than three stages of life. Continue reading “An Archaic Trinity of Goddesses? Not Necessarily. by Barbara Ardinger”

Dance of the Bees: Reading the Language of the Goddess by Carol P. Christ

The image from an ancient Cretan bowl (c.1700 BCE) from the Sacred Center of Phaistos pictured here has often been interpreted as an early depiction of Persephone’s descent or rising. But are clues from later Greek mythology pointing in the right direction in this case?

Recently, my colleague Mika Scott posted the Phaistos bowl image on our Goddess Pilgrimage Facebook site in conjunction with the bee pendant from Mallia. This juxtaposition led me to think again about the importance of bees and pollination in agricultural societies and to offer an alternative reading of the symbolism on the bowl. Continue reading “Dance of the Bees: Reading the Language of the Goddess by Carol P. Christ”

Has the Phaistos Disk Been Cracked? by Carol P. Christ

Recent headlines in the international press announced that the enigmatic language of the ancient Cretan “Phaistos Disk” has been translated—in part—by the Welch-Cretan scholar Gareth Owens. Owens states that the Phaistos Disk records an ancient hymn to a Mother Goddess. More specifically he claims that one side is dedicated to a Pregnant Goddess and the other to a Birth-Giving Goddess.

All of this is very exciting, but is he right? Continue reading “Has the Phaistos Disk Been Cracked? by Carol P. Christ”

Death with Dignity by Carol P. Christ

In the summer of 1960 when I was 14 years old my much loved grandmother Mae Inglis Christ died of a cancer that affected her brain. The last time I saw my Nannie was shortly after her diagnosis in the early spring. While we were visiting, the cancer affected her back, and she took to her bed. In those days children were not allowed in hospitals. I never saw my grandmother alive again, but my mother told us that our grandmother was hooked up to tubes much longer than she should have been. Mother vowed, “This will never happen to me.” I was driven to the funeral in a limousine with my grandmother’s girlfriends. They spoke about my grandmother’s last days, describing how (because her mind was affected by cancer) my little grandmother had screamed and screamed at them for not visiting–even though they were with her every day. They found my grandmother’s outbursts so traumatic that they said they were relieved to see her looking so peaceful in her coffin. Continue reading “Death with Dignity by Carol P. Christ”

The Ancestors Live in Us by Carol P. Christ

On the recent Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete women had the option of riding up a winding road on a mountainside in the back of a farm truck singing “She’ll Be Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain” or could choose to go with the guard in his closed automobile.

That evening one of the older women who had chosen to ride in the car said, “I saw how much fun you were all having, but I have done that before. This time I was happy to let the rest of you do it.”

“That’s exactly how I feel about death,” I responded. “Some people want to live on after death, but I don’t. I am happy to let others do it. The only thing that would upset me would be if life did not go on after me.” Continue reading “The Ancestors Live in Us by Carol P. Christ”

Anne Hutchinson, America’s First Feminist Theologian: 1591-1643 by Carol P. Christ

“She had rather been a husband than a wife; and a preacher than a hearer; and a magistrate than a subject.” Reverend Hugh Peter of Salem

Anne Hutchinson was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for heresy in 1637 and excommunicated from the Puritan Church of Boston in 1638. Her banishment came just three years after she, her husband, and eleven living children arrived in America seeking the freedom to practice their religion as they saw fit. Governor Michael Dukakis pardoned her in 1987. Historian Howard Zinn called her a true American hero.

I managed to get through graduate school in Religious Studies without ever having studied the theology of Anne Hutchinson,* though I vaguely remember references (probably with smirks of disapproval) to the “Antinomian Controversy” which is associated with her name. I recall Anne Hutchinson’s name because of an article published in Feminist Studies in the 1970s, when I had just begun to study women and religion. However it was not until recently that I learned of her place in history through reading American Jezebel by Eve LaPlante.

Hutchinson was accused of theological errors in her trials. The Calvinist doctrine of predestination figured heavily in the accusations. But the real issue at stake was that Anne dared to follow her own inner knowing, to articulate it theologically, and to teach her views against the grain of the Puritan authorities in Boston. Continue reading “Anne Hutchinson, America’s First Feminist Theologian: 1591-1643 by Carol P. Christ”

Reciprocity, Empathy, and Reconciliation: The Roots of Human Morality in Our Primate Ancestors by Carol P. Christ

A link to a talk called “Moral Behavior in Animals” by Franz de Waal recently found its way into my email inbox. I am a big fan of Franz de Waal because his findings confirm what I always believed—that animals are intelligent. I followed the link and other suggested links and spent most of the evening listening to de Waal.

De Waal began his studies of animal behavior at a time when instinctual behaviorism was academic orthodoxy: the idea that animals can think and feel was “poo-pooed” by “scientists.” As de Waal observed ironically, everyone who has a pet knows better than that. But academic researchers continued down this path, expressing contempt for ordinary people who thought their pets were intelligent and the likes of de Waal who suggested that scientists might be colossally wrong.

De Waal’s discovery that chimps almost always “reconcile” after fights by touching hands, hugging each other, grooming, and even kissing, led him down “the garden path” to his discovery that what he calls the “two pillars of morality”—“reciprocity and empathy”– are found in primate social systems and in those of other higher mammals including dolphins and elephants . Continue reading “Reciprocity, Empathy, and Reconciliation: The Roots of Human Morality in Our Primate Ancestors by Carol P. Christ”

In the Face of Despair, Choose Life by Carol P. Christ

Yesterday I had a delightful swim with a friend in the cool Aegean Sea. In in the evening I met two dear friends at an open air restaurant for a delicious meal and good conversation. Last night a beautiful moon rose over the sea and a soft breeze caressed my skin. All of this made me very happy. However, the state of the world does not.

Michael Brown. Trayvon Martin. The Ferguson police. Hold your ground laws. Bombing in Gaza. War in Ukraine. War in Iraq. War in Afghanistan. War in Syria. Wars that are not on my radar. Rape as a part of war. Joe Biden threatening to chase ISIL “to the gates of hell.” Citizens United. A rash of laws restricting voting rights. A rash of laws restricting abortion rights. Police brutality. Police brutality that is racially motivated. Young men being sentenced to prision for minor drug offenses. The brutality of the prison system. A woman with children being paid $8.50 an hour working at McDonalds and not even knowing when she will be called in to work. Open carry laws allowing Americans to walk the streets with loaded weapons. And that’s just off the top of my head this morning.

When I was young and protesting poverty, racism, and the War in Vietnam, I thought that it would be a relatively simple matter to change the world. It turned out that I was not only wrong: I was very wrong. The world has changed all right, but not for the most part for the better. In fact, despite the diligent efforts of social justice activists, in many respects the world has changed for the worse. Continue reading “In the Face of Despair, Choose Life by Carol P. Christ”

We Could Have Been Canadians and Other Thoughts about My New England Colonial Heritage by Carol P. Christ

My 2x great-grandparents Nathaniel Searing and Louisa Caroline Martin were pioneers who cleared the land and built a log cabin in Lyons, Michigan in 1840. They were descended from English Puritan Colonial settlers in New England. At least two of my ancestors are recognized by the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolutions. Other members of my family who were Quakers proudly refused to take part in the Revolutionary War.

My great-grandfather James Augustus married a woman of German descent, his daughter Lena Marie married a Swede, and my mother married a man who was German, Irish, and Scottish. As the descendants of Nathaniel Searing and Louisa Caroline Martin moved around the United States and married into the families of newer immigrants, the succeeding generations also lost touch with their history. Our family’s connections to the New England Colonists were not even mentioned at Thanksgiving! Continue reading “We Could Have Been Canadians and Other Thoughts about My New England Colonial Heritage by Carol P. Christ”