Sarah Sentilles

Carol P. Christ’s Legacy: Why Don’t Feminists Express Anger At God? by Carol P. Christ

Moderator’s Note: We here at FAR have been so fortunate to work along side Carol Christ for many years. She died from cancer in July, 2021. Her work continues through her non-profit foundation, the Ariadne Institute for the Study of Myth and Ritual and the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete. To honor her legacy, as well as allow as many people as possible to read her thought-provoking and important blogs, we are pleased to offer this new column to highlight her work. We will be picking out special blogs for reposting. This blog was originally posted July 9, 2012. You can read it long with its original comments here.

My relationship to God changed when I accused “Him” of everything I thought “He” had done or let be done to women—from allowing us to be beaten and raped and sold into slavery, to not sending us female prophets and saviors, to allowing “Himself” to be portrayed as a “man of war.”

In the silence that followed my outpouring of anger, I heard a still small voice within me say: In God is a woman like yourself. She too has been silenced and had her history stolen from her. Until that moment God had been an “Other” to me. “He” sometimes appeared as a dominating and judgmental Other, and at other times as a loving and supportive Other, but “He” was always an “Other.” I as a woman in my female mind-body definitely was not in “His” image.

Writing: Changing the World and Ourselves. By Ivy Helman

I still remember the first time I read Mary Daly’s Gyn/Ecology. It awoke something within me. Her use of language, the power of her writing and the ease with which she created new words taught me so much about the world around me and about the way the language, and subsequently its use in writing, shapes lives, choices, abilities and destinies. She also taught me about myself.

I was hooked, but not just on Mary Daly. Shortly after I finished her book, I moved onto other feminists writing about religion like Katie Cannon, Judith Plaskow, Alice Walker, Carol Christ, Rita Gross, Gloria Anzaldua, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Margaret Farley and Starhawk to name just a few. All of them, in fact every feminist I’ve ever read, has shown me the way in which words have power and how words speak truth to power. Ever since, I’ve wanted to be the kind of writer whose words carry a power that not only affects people but also inspires a more just, more equal, more compassionate and more humane world. In other words, I wanted to be a writer activist.

Yet, I’ve always carried around with me a sneaky suspicion that people don’t consider writers true activists. If you aren’t holding a sign, screaming or participating in some sort of public demonstration or civil disobedience, then you have no right to call yourself an activist. Is that really true? Continue reading “Writing: Changing the World and Ourselves. By Ivy Helman”

Sexist Responses to Women Writing About Religion by Sarah Sentilles

IN RESPONSE TO my recent memoir, Breaking Up with God: A Love Story, several reviewers came close to calling me stupid. Many suggested I didn’t know what I was talking about. As the title of the book suggests, I used the analogy of a romantic relationship gone wrong to describe my faith and its dissolution. These reviewers seemed to believe I understood my metaphorical romantic relationship with God to be a literal one. They wrote about me as if I actually thought God was my real boyfriend, as if I sat around waiting for God to take me to the prom and just couldn’t understand why my date never showed up. Silly girl. Continue reading “Sexist Responses to Women Writing About Religion by Sarah Sentilles”

WHY DON’T FEMINISTS EXPRESS ANGER AT GOD? by Carol P. Christ

After I expressed my anger to God, God transformed from an Other into what Whitehead once described as “a fellow [or should I say female] sufferer who understands.” Although I had already been searching for a “God in my image” or “in whose image I could be,” I had yet to find Her. In the quiet after the storm, I came to believe that I would. Continue reading “WHY DON’T FEMINISTS EXPRESS ANGER AT GOD? by Carol P. Christ”

Breaking Up with Bad Stories by Sarah Sentilles

Writing a memoir meant denying stories about myself that are no longer true.

Note: This post is part of a Religion Roundtable where the authors of three prominent faith memoirs were asked to write about their views on—and experience of—female spirituality. Check http://www.patheos.com to read the discussion between Jana Riess, Lauren Winner, and Sarah Sentilles on the unique religious questions facing women today.

Dear Jana and Lauren,

Jana writes that “Mormon women don’t yet have the luxury of taking their own voices for granted,” and while I recognize that Mormon women are in a different political/theological position than other women, especially in demonimations that ordain women, I would like to expand her statement: No woman—anywhere, in any tradition, or on the outside of any tradition—has the luxury of taking her own voice for granted.

Jana worries that writing with a political agenda in mind could make our work smack of propaganda, and I think she is right, but I want to propose that all language is propaganda. Especially theological language. Our words about God are shot through with intentions and agendas; they convey people’s purposes and hopes and fears; and they have real effects. Continue reading “Breaking Up with Bad Stories by Sarah Sentilles”