feminism and religion – Page 13 – Feminism and Religion

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Essentialism Reconsidered

This was originally posted on September 15, 2014

In my Ecofeminism class we have been discussing essentialism because some feminists have alleged that other feminists, particularly ecofeminists and Goddess feminists, are “essentialists.” They argue that essentialist views reinforce traditional stereotypes including those that designate men as rational and women as emotional. I too find essentialism problematic, but I do not agree that Goddess feminism and ecofeminism are intrinsically essentialist.

Goddess feminists and ecofeminists criticize classical dualism: the traditions of thinking that value reason over emotion and feeling, male over female, man over nature. We argued that the western rational tradition sowed the seeds of the environmental crisis when it separated “man” from “nature.”

Goddess feminists and ecofeminists affirm the connections between women and nature in an environmental worldview that acknowledges the interconnection of all beings in the web of life.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: The Sacred Feminine or Goddess Feminism?

This was originally posted on January 25, 2016

In recent years “the Sacred Feminine” has become interchangeable with (for some) and preferable to (for others) “Goddess” and “Goddess feminism.” The terms Goddess and feminism, it is sometimes argued, raise hackles: Is Goddess to replace God? And if so why? Does feminism imply an aggressive stance? And if so, against whom or what?

In contrast, the term “sacred feminine” (with or without caps) feels warm and fuzzy, implying love, care, and concern without invoking the G word or even the M(other) word–about which some people have mixed feelings. Advocates of the sacred feminine stand against no one, for men have their “sacred feminine” sides, while women have their “sacred masculine” sides as well.

Nothing lost, and much to be gained. Right? Wrong.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Sacred Marriage or Unholy Cover-up?

This was originally posted on November 7, 2016

Many women are drawn to the image of the Sacred Marriage—perhaps especially those raised in Roman Catholic or Protestant traditions where sex is viewed as necessary for procreation but nothing more, and who learn that the naked female body as symbolized by Eve is the source of sin and evil. In this context, the positive valuing of sexuality and the female body found in symbols of the Sacred Marriage can feel and even be liberating.

Jungians have claimed that the Sacred Marriage is an archetype of the wedding between the “masculine” and the “feminine.” Many women have been attracted to this idea as well. It “softens” the radical feminist critique of patriarchy and male dominance. Rather than “castrating” the “phallocracy” as Mary Daly urged, we can think in terms of the “marriage” of qualities traditionally associated with male and female roles. Women, it is said, can use a good dose of ego and assertiveness traditionally associated with the masculine, while men need to have their dominating rational egos tempered by feminine qualities like care and compassion.

From the Archives: Sacred Water by Molly Remer

This was originally posted on August 9, 2017

“Drinking the water, I thought how earth and sky are generous with their gifts and how good it is to receive them. Most of us are taught, somehow, about giving and accepting human gifts, but not about opening ourselves and our bodies to welcome the sun, the land, the visions of sky and dreaming, not about standing in the rain ecstatic with what is offered.”

–Linda Hogan in Sisters of the Earth

The women have gathered in a large open living room, under high ceilings and banisters draped with goddess tapestries, their faces are turned towards me, waiting expectantly. We are here for our first overnight Red Tent Retreat, our women’s circle’s second only overnight ceremony in ten years. We are preparing to go on a pilgrimage. I tell them a synopsis version of Inanna’s descent into the underworld, her passage through seven gates and the requirement that at each gate she lie down something of herself, to give up or sacrifice something she holds dear, until she arrives naked and shaking in the depths of the underworld, with nothing left to offer, but her life.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Transcendence, Immanence, and the Sixth Great Extinction

This was originally posted August 4, 2014

In my recent blog “The Flourishing of Life and Feminist Theology” I discussed Grace Jantzen’s view that theology should focus on “natality” or birth and life, rather than life after death or life apart from this world. This week Tikkun magazine published its summer issue with a feature called “Thinking Anew about God.” In it two male thinkers, one Buddhist and one Christian, argue for a similar turn toward the world in their traditions. Their calls for religions to focus on this world were published the same week scientists warned that the world stands on the brink of the sixth great extinction.

I have come to believe that any religion espousing cosmological dualism (devaluing this world in favor of a superior reality such as heaven) and individual salvation (the idea that what ultimately happens to me is disconnected from what ultimately happens to you) is contributing to our world’s problems rather than offering a solution. … [Religions should] stop emphasizing the hereafter and focus instead on how to overcome the illusion that we are separate from this precious, endangered earth. –David Loy, Buddhist, writing in Tikkun Summer 2014

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: The Flourishing of Life and Feminist Theology

This was originally posted on July 28, 2014

I first encountered the image and concept of “flourishing” in Grace M. Jatzen’s feminist philosophy of religion, Becoming Divine. For Jantzen “flourishing” is a symbol of a theology of “natality” or birth and life, which she contrasts to the focus on death and life after death in traditional Christian theologies.

Jantzen argues that the focus on death and life after death is a rejection of birth. Birth is rejected because birth through a body into a body implies finitude. Birth ends in death. Jantzen argues that embracing natality means embracing finitude and death.

Image and Likeness by Dale Allen

I attended a beautiful women’s circle to celebrate my dear friend Gloria’s birthday recently. Each woman was invited to bring a sharing for Gloria – a poem, reflection, oracle card, song or dance – whatever felt right. Each sharing that day was not only a gift to Gloria, but to each of us.

I had met Gloria during the period of my life when I had written a play titled, “Dancers of the Dawn,” with a cast of seven women of different ages, shapes, sizes and colors. The play featured original music, drummers, myth, history, dance, even comedy for a sumptuous experience of the sacred feminine emerging in modern women. Gloria was a part of the women’s sacred circles that we co-created during that time – circles that continued for a decade and still retain heart-connections today.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: TWO TORTOISES IN THE WEB OF LIFE

This was originally posted on March 14, 2014

The Gods made only one creature like them—man. Greek TV documentary

The sight of a reptile or an amphibian usually provokes, at the very least, a feeling of repulsion in most people. Natural History of Lesbos

In the past days and weeks thetwo tortoises with whom I share my garden have woken up from a long winter’s sleep. Henry, testudo marginata, has been up for a while now. More than a month ago when I was cutting back and weeding in the area of the garden where he had been sleeping, Henry roused himself to sit in the sun near me for a few hours each day before creeping back under a shrub. At first I thought I had disturbed him, but when he came back out day after day while I worked, I began to wonder if he was coming out to say hello.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Remembering Audre Lorde and “The Uses Of The Erotic”

This was originally posted on March 18, 2013

Moderator’s Note: Carol’s original essay had links to the essay which are no longer active. The essay can be found in Sister Outsider.

I was given a copy of Audre Lorde’s essay “The Uses of the Erotic” in my first year of teaching at San Jose State by a young white lesbian M.A. student named Terry. It was 1978. I was in my early 30s. This essay came into my life and the lives of my students, friends, and colleagues at “the right time.” It became a kind of “sacred text” that authorized us to continue to explore the feelings of our bodies and to take them seriously.

The second wave of the women’s movement was about to enter its second decade. We had already been through years of consciousness raising groups. There we learned to “hear each other to speech” about feelings we had learned to suppress because we had been told they were not acceptable for us as women to have or to express. Those early days of the women’s movement were one big “coming out” movement. We were bringing our feelings and ourselves out of the closet.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Argument from “Absence” and Absence of Dialogue

This was originally posted August 31, 2015

Recently in a conversation with a noted archaeologist and his male graduate student assistant, I proposed that the absence of war and the trappings of war, including images of larger than life-size warrior kings, suggested to me that we should not understand the social structure of ancient Crete on the model of patriarchal kingship. “Kings are always warriors,” I said, “yet there is no clear and convincing evidence of organized warfare in ancient Crete. And,” I continued, “because warrior kingship is not a ‘natural state,’ but one achieved through warfare and domination, kings must legitimate and celebrate their power through larger than life-size images of themselves. Such images were common in ancient Sumer and in ancient Egypt, but are not found in ancient Crete.”

The response I received was unexpected: both archaeologists seemed dumbfounded. “Is kingship always associated with war?” they asked. “Yes,” I responded, “this is a conclusion I reached many years ago while studying the cultures of ancient Greece and ancient Israel, and I have recently elaborated this theory in a series of essays on the blog Feminism and Religion ( See “Patriarchy as a System of Male Dominance Created at the Intersection of the the Control of Women, Private Property, and War”).”