Carol P. Christ – Page 6 – Feminism and Religion

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Is the Prophetic Vision of Social and Ecojustice the Fruit of the Poisonous Tree?

This post was originally published on Aug. 26th, 2011

Carol P. Christ earned her BA from Stanford University and her Ph.D. from Yale University. She is a founding mother in the study of women and religion, feminist theology, women’s spirituality, and the Goddess movement and work has revolutionized the field of feminism and religion. She has been active in anti-racist, anti-war, feminist, and anti-nuclear causes for many years. Since 2001 she has been working with Friends of Green Lesbos to save the wetlands of her home island. She drafted a massive complaint to the European Commission charging failure to protect Natura wetlands in Lesbos. In 2010 she ran for office in Lesbos and helped to elect the first Green Party representative to the Regional Council of the North Aegean. She helped to organize Lesbos Go Green, which is working on recycling in Lesbos.

My hope for the new blog on Feminism and Religion is that it can become a place for real discussion with mutual respect of feminist issues in religion and spirituality.

I agree with Rosemary Radford Ruether who argued in a recent blog “The Biblical Vision of Ecojustice” that the prophets viewed the covenant with Israel and Judah as inclusive of nature. Indeed in my senior thesis at Stanford University on “Nature Imagery in Hosea and Second Isaiah,” in which I worked with the Hebrew texts, I argued that too. I also agree that the dualism Rosemary has so accurately diagnosed as one of the main sources of sexism and other forms of domination comes from the Greeks not the Hebrews. I agree that Carolyn Merchant is right that nature was viewed as a living being in Christian thought up until the modern scientific revolution. I agree with Rosemary that it is a good thing for Christians to use sources within tradition to create an ecojustice ethic. I am happy that there are Christians like Rosemary who are working to transform Christianity. Finally, I am pleased to admit that I have learned a great deal from her.

Continue reading “Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Is the Prophetic Vision of Social and Ecojustice the Fruit of the Poisonous Tree?”

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Do White Feminists Have Ancestors?

This post was originally published on Aug. 12th, 2011

Carol P. Christ is a founding mother in the study of women and religion, feminist theology, women’s spirituality, and the Goddess movement. She teaches in the Women’s Spirituality program at CIIS and through Ariadne Institute offers Goddess Pilgrimages to Crete. Her books include She Who Changes and Rebirth of the Goddess and the widely used anthologies Womanspirit Rising and Weaving the Visions.

Some years ago when I was speaking on ecofeminism, womanist theologian Karen Baker-Fletcher posed a question that went something like this: What I am missing in your presentation is reference to ancestors. For black women, this issue is critical.

Baker-Fletcher’s question provoked a process of thinking that continues to this day. For example, I began to notice that when black women spoke at the American Academy of Religion, they often began by thanking their foremothers Delores Williams and Katie Cannon for beginning the womanist dialogue. It is far rarer to hear a white woman thank Valerie Saiving, Mary Daly, Rosemary Radford Ruether, or Marija Gimbutas before her talk.

To the contrary, many white women take great pains to distance themselves from feminist foresisters. I once heard a white woman Biblical scholar tell women students to do work on women in the Bible or other areas of religion without using the word feminist or placing their work in a female or feminist train of thought– if they wanted to get it published. She was very proud that she had used this method and succeeded. In other words, she was following in the footsteps of Mary Daly, Phyllis Trible, and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza but acting as if she had invented the study of women and the Bible herself. The reason for this, she freely admitted, was that male scholars who held power in her field would not respect her work if she used the “f” word. Continue reading “Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Do White Feminists Have Ancestors?”

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Exciting New Research on Matriarchal Societies

This post was originally published on Aug. 5th, 2011

The following is a guest post written by Carol Christ, Ph.D., a pioneer and founding mother of the Goddess, women’s spirituality, and feminist theology movements, and director of the Ariadne Institute. She is also the author of multiple books including Rebirth of the Goddess.

Although there are some of us who disagree, the “party line” in the fields of Religious Studies and Archaeology—even among feminists– is that there never were any matriarchies and that claims about peaceful, matrifocal, sedentary, agricultural, Goddess-worshipping societies in Old Europe or elsewhere have been manufactured out of utopian longing.

I myself and most other English-speaking scholars defending Marija Gimbutas’s theories about Old Europe have studiously avoided the word “matriarchy” (speaking rather of “matrifocal, matrilineal, and matrilocal” societies) because the very word “matriarchy” conjures up the image of female-dominated societies where women ruled, waged wars, held men as slaves, and raped and abused men and boys. In fact, this fantasy tells us far more about patriarchy than about it does about matriarchy. Continue reading “Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Exciting New Research on Matriarchal Societies”

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: WOMEN ARTISTS AND RITUALISTS IN THE GREAT CAVES: THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF INDOLENT ASSUMPTIONS

This was originally posted October 21, 2013

In an earlier blog, I suggested that women might have blown red ocher around their hands to leave their marks in prehistoric caves.

At the time I thought this was a rather bold suggestion.

Had I been asked why I thought the images were made by women, I might have said that people have understood caves to be the womb of the Great Mother, the Source of All Life, from time immemorial. I might have added that those who performed rituals in the caves cannot have been performing simple “hunting magic,” but must also have been thanking the Source of Life for making life possible for them and for the great beasts they hunted. Still I am not certain that I imagined women as the artists in the Paleolithic caves.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: The Turtle Goddess from Myrtos in Ancient Crete

This was originally posted on October 15, 2012

“As we bless the Source of Life, so we are blessed.” Song by Faith Rogow.

The strange and cheerful figure portrayed in this ancient Cretan vessel comes from the site known as Fournou Korifi near Myrtos, in Crete. Dated before 2000 BCE, she was called the “Goddess of Myrtos” by the excavator, Peter Warren. This little Goddess was found on an altar in a small room in the ritual area of a complex of small rooms on a hill above the sea that was home to up to 120 people. The Goddess of Myrtos is a vessel holding a vessel. In ritual libations, liquid would have been poured from the pitcher she holds onto an altar.

.She is obviously female, with breasts and a sacred triangle.

The cross-hatching on her sacred triangle and on the squares drawn on her body perhaps symbolize woven cloth and the important roles of women as weavers in the community that created her. A side view shows that she is “stitched together” along her sides. The many spindle whorls and loom weights recovered from the site provide material proof of the importance of weaving at Myrtos.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Kamala Harris! “I Feel Heard”

This was originally posted on August 17, 2020

Shortly after Kamala Harris was announced as Joe Biden’s choice for his Vice Presidential running mate, a panel of black women were asked, “How do you feel right now?” “I feel heard” was the simple yet profound response of one of them. As is well-known to those who follow the polls, black women voters are the backbone of the Democratic party. In the primary election, black women in South Carolina delivered the Presidential nomination to Joe Biden. Yet all too often black women have felt that their votes were taken for granted.

Instead of focusing on the needs and priorities of black women and their communities, all too often the Democratic Party’s strategy has been to reach out to other groups—for example working class white men or white suburban women. To feel heard at this moment means to be taken seriously as a political actor and as a person. Right now, the fact that a black woman was selected is what matters most. There were other qualified women and out of all of them. a black woman, Kamala Harris was chosen. And because of this, black women feel heard. It’s about time. Period.

Legacy of Carol P Christ: WAR, WAR, WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR?

This was originally posted Sept 16, 2013. It is sadly pertinent today

“They used chemical weapons, we must do something to stop them.” A justification widely used in support of President Obama’s decision to launch a military strike against Syria.

We fought the Civil War to end slavery and racism. We fought the Second World War to end fascism. Did we end racism? Did we end fascism? Howard Zinn

At the time of the Revolutionary War, “a not inconsiderable Quaker element was on principle opposed to war, as itself a greater evil than any it might seek to right.”

Michelle Obama is against military intervention in Syria. Does the President dismiss Michelle’s dissent as “womanish”?

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: A New Glossary for Crete: The Power of Naming and the Study of History

This was originally posted on Sept. 2, 2013

The words we use affect our thinking. In the case of ancient Crete the repetition of the terms “Palace,” “Palace of Knossos,” “King Minos,” “Minoan,” “Priest-King,” and “Prince of the Lilies” shape the way we understand history–even when we ourselves know these terms are incorrect. We must engage in “new naming.”

Ariadne. May have been a name of the Goddess of pre-patriarchal Crete. The ending “ne” signifies that Ariadne is not of Greek or Indo-European origin and thus predates the later Greek myths.

Ariadnian. The name I have given to the Old European pre-patriarchal culture of Crete, from arrival of the Neolithic settlers from Anatolia c.7000 BCE to the Mycenaean invasion c.1450 BCE. Arthur Evans named the Bronze Age (c.3000-1450 BCE) culture of Crete “Minoan” after King Minos of Greek mythology, son of Zeus and Europa, husband of Pasiphae, father of Ariadne, whose gift of the secret of the labyrinth to Theseus led to the downfall of her culture. Evans assumed that Minoan Crete was ruled by a King.

This image I call “Ariadne Dancing” could become the new “icon” of Ariadnian Crete.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: GODDESS WITH US: IS A RELATIONAL GOD POWERFUL ENOUGH?

This was originally posted on Sept 2, 2013

Last week I wrote about Protestant Neo-Orthodoxy’s deification of male power as power over. This week I want to ask why the relational Goddess or God* of process philosophy has not been more widely embraced, both generally and in feminist theologies.

Could it be that a relational God just isn’t powerful enough? Are some of us still hoping that an omnipotent God can and will intervene in history to set things right? Do we believe an omnipotent God can save us from death?

Process philosophy provides an attractive alternative to the concept of divine power modeled on male power as domination. According to leading process philosopher Charles Hartshorne, the power to coerce, power as power over and domination, is not the kind of power God has.

The concept of divine power as omnipotent (having all the power) leads to what Hartshorne called “the zero fallacy.” If God has all the power and can dominate in all situations, then the power of individuals* other than God is reduced to zero. In effect, this means that individuals other than God do not really exist, but at most are puppets whose strings are pulled by the divine power.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Neo-Orthodoxy: The Apotheosis* of Power as Power Over

Recently I have been thinking about Neo-Orthodoxy, the leading Protestant theological movement of the twentieth century, as a deification of male power as power over. In the language of the schoolyard, this translates as “mine is bigger than yours.” Or more precisely: “God’s is bigger than yours.”

Neo-Orthodoxy dominated Protestant theology in Europe and America in the mid-twentieth century and structured my theological education at Yale in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Yale may have been “the bastion” of Neo-Orthodoxy, but Neo-Orthodox perspectives reigned in all the Protestant seminaries and were even celebrated in the media. Neo-Orthodoxy may have some commonalities with fundamentalism but it was by no means an anti-intellectualist approach to theology.