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The Church, called to proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, is also to be a prophetic voice to those enmeshed in the evils of this world’s structures and philosophies. Yet sadly, sometimes worldly-structures and philosophies invade the Church. Paul, in sorrow, told the elders of Ephesus, “I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.” He explained that even among those particular elders there would arise those “speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them.” (Acts 20:29, 30) Today in many mainline churches several conflicting religious views are troubling the peace and unity of God’s people. One particular religious view, Radical Feminist Theology, is in conflict with the biblical teachings of the Church. I believe Radical Feminist theologians are closer in intention, structure and system to the views of Neo-Pagans. In this article I will explain the many similarities between Radical Feminist theology and pagan beliefs. Both religious views begin from some of the same intentions and those intentions lead to the same theological conclusions. Theologically I will focus on revelation, deity and the incarnation when making the comparison. Both of their structures are also similar and I will explain why. 

Radical Feminist theology embraces many definitions, including Womanist theology and Mujerista theology.1 However, I want to exclude from my categories those women doing theology in such movements as “Christians for Biblical Equality,” that is, those who are Orthodox in belief but are writing for the sake of women’s equality in ministry.  As theologian, Thomas C. Oden has stated, “Feminist and Liberation theologies that remain faithful to that Word are to be received and lauded, and some do.” Oden further states, “There are many feminist theologies, one of which is evangelical. Another with similar interests is better [known] as orthodox.”2

Like Wicca,* the most prevalent group within the Neo-Pagan movement, the intention of most Radical Feminist theologies is to speak to a perceived patriarchal oppressiveness in sacred texts as well as religious institutions and society in general. The whole focus of intention is toward solutions, affirmations and celebrations for women who are seen as victims of male domination. Other groups of oppressed peoples as well as the environment and animals are seen as victims included in the heading “oppressed women”. For instance in Dictionary of Feminist Theologies, the author of “Rights, Animal,” writes, “3Western feminism inevitably confronts the status of animals, because historically, the ideological justification for women’s alleged inferiority was made by appropriating them to animals: women were seen to be closer to animals than to men.”  Christine Gudorf’s article “Rights, Children’s” in the same book is another example. She writes, “The issue of Children’s rights arose as a secular concept within late twentieth-century liberalism, largely as a consequence of the feminist-inspired rethinking of patriarchically defined family roles.”4 

Radical Feminist theologies that focus on Christianity bring all of these concerns to the biblical text. Some Radical Feminist theologians find in the Hebrew Bible a picture of an oppressive patriarchal society that develops a tyrannical male god as a means of enforcing their authoritarian positions.5 They picture Paul and other apostles in the New Testament as advocates of a male dominated church. All theology done by these feminists is defined by concerns about a patriarchal religious view.  The biblical texts are approached using a “critical feminist perspective.” Different methods are meant to expose “the biases within the biblical story,” and in some cases “open the canonical texts to meanings not considered by the biblical authors.”6

In the same manner Wicca devotees approach their religion with a goal toward affirming women and rejecting a perceived male bias in almost all other religious choices. Their symbolism, ritual and texts of choice are meant as affirmations of the female. Carol Christ evaluating women’s perspectives of the Wicca symbol of the divine, the Goddess, writes:

(1) The Goddess is divine female, a personification who can be invoked in prayer and ritual; (2) the Goddess is symbol of the life, death, and rebirth energy in nature and culture, in personal and communal life; and (3) the Goddess is symbol of the affirmation of the legitimacy and beauty of female power. . . . 7

Witchcraft has always been a religion of poetry, not theology. The myths, legends, and teachings are recognized as metaphors for “That Which-Cannot-Be-Told,” the absolute reality our limited minds can never completely know. The mysteries of the absolute can never be explained—only felt or intuited. Symbols and ritual acts are used to trigger altered states of awareness, in which insights that go beyond words are revealed.

Understanding theology or religion from human experience often leads to some form of pantheism since the vision of deity can go no further than human images drawn from creation. In the final version creation becomes god or goddess. C.S. Lewis explains, “So far from being the final religious refinement, Pantheism is in fact the permanent bent of the human mind.”  Writing of how “congenial” it is to the human mind, Lewis states,  “If ‘religion’ means simply what man says about God, and not what God does about man, then Pantheism almost is religion.”11  It is the age- old descent of religion, and both Radical Feminist theologies and pagan beliefs are filled with the downward spiral. Any concept of deity within these two groups mostly fits within a pantheistic or panentheistic view. Women developing Radical Feminist theologies, while troubled with the problems of pantheism, still explain theology in terms that better fit that model of the universe.  Many use a kind of panentheism that in reality dissolves into pantheism.

Panentheism sees God in relation to the world as the head is to the body. In such a case, the universe is a part of God, but not all of God. In many feminist theologies it is creation that forms the being of God. The Holy Spirit plays an important part in this kind of theological thinking. Sallie McFague writes, “While the Holy Spirit has often been seen as the immanent side of God, feminists see God as basically and radically immanent and the Holy Spirit as a central, if not the primary ‘name’ for God.”12 To say that God is “basically and radically immanent” is to say that God is not separate from creation and only personal when the voice of humanity and/or creation expresses the words of God.

Rosemary Radford Ruether understands deity as “the Primal Matrix, the great womb within which all things, Gods and humans, sky and earth, human and nonhuman beings, are generated.”13 Since she believes that at death the ego “dissolves back into the cosmic matrix of matter/energy” she has developed a pantheism that is almost classic Hinduism. 14 Carter Heyward sees God as “radically loving community, ever unfolding, changing, living, dying, and yet ever-living. In a literal sense---embodied, sensual, transformative---God is holy communion.”15 She explains her several definitions in her notes, “I suggest that radical immanence (which is very close to pan-en-theism) and radical participation are by no means mutually exclusive experiences or images of divine and human and creaturely involvement.”16 Heyward is saying here that the picture of God coming along side of us with comfort and help is not different than a God who is a part of us. This is a redefinition of classical theology into panentheism. 

In the same way Pagan devotees see deity and creation as interchangeable. The goddess, the main deity of Wicca is defined in Pantheistic terms. Starhawk writes:

The Goddess has infinite aspects and thousands of names—She is the reality behind many metaphors. She is reality, the manifest deity, omnipresent in all of life, in each of us. The Goddess is not separate from the world—she is the world, and all things in it: moon, earth, star, stone, seed, flowing river, wind, wave, leaf and branch, bud and blossom, fang and claw, woman and man.17

From the perspective of immanence, I experience the sacred as a very present Source, the life within my every living moment, rather than as a Creator from long ago and far away. I neither perceive nor acknowledge any kind of division between the Creator and Creation.  . . . My Pagan faith on the other hand, honors the diversity of Divinity and the Divinity of diversity.18

 Believing that the incarnation of Jesus is not unique, Radical Feminist theologians use the concept of incarnation, God in human flesh, to weave together a religious voice for their own various concerns. Anne Bathurst Gilson writes, “God becoming incarnate in human flesh has been reinterpreted to mean that humanity, bodies, females, sexuality, and the earth are good.”20 In the same article Gilson referring to  Rita Nakashima Brock, writes, “When our concrete particularities are affirmed as part of our connection to others, we ‘continue to become the fullest incarnation of erotic power.’ ”21 In the search for models of divinity neither earth nor creature is ignored. Seeming to reach back to very ancient paganism, Radical Feminist theologian, Carol Adams, expresses the concerns of feminist animal advocacy. One concern is, “that an anthropomorphized God excludes animals from the godhead.”22 

At this point there is little difference between Pagan beliefs and Radical Feminist theologies. Having excluded Jesus Christ from His unique incarnation, radical feminist theologians offer modals of deity that are no different than those of Pagans. Even their liturgies become pagan. Ruether offers various rites in her book Women-Church: Theology & Practice of Feminist Liturgical Communities, including a “Croning Liturgy;” which includes casting circles and incantations.23  This is not a church celebration; this is a neo-pagan rite, and a crone is not a saintly older woman of the church but an older pagan woman.

Likewise, since there are many models for deity in both Paganism and Radical Feminist theologies, both groups are constantly multiplying different theologies, belief systems, sacred celebrations and groupings. Their religious structures are in constant flux. Religious beliefs based on human experience are prone to multiply and change. Also, religious tenets formed out of human experience are not only shaped by human goodness but by human sin. In the Wicca movement small inklings of that are visible.  In a recent edition of Gnosis, Carol LeMasters, writing about “The Goddess Movement: Past and Present,” expresses hope in those who are “drawing attention to the darker aspects of the Goddess and offering more complex mythological interpretations.” This is in answer to her concern that within the movement, “acceptance has never extended to promiscuity or anonymous encounters or kinky sex.”24 Neither movement has any true way of preventing the dark shadow of human sin from infecting their theologies and beliefs.

Radical Feminist theologies as alternative ways of understanding God and His word within the Church is blasphemous. The faithful will be shamed and hurt by such theology. Those promoting such teachings will find no place for redemption in their own words since the Holy Word of God has been stepped on, insulted, and obliterated. Pastor Hans Asmussen when addressing the members of the Synod of Barmen stated that those who seek God “without Christ from and in the creatures and events” of history have become “heathen”. He further stated: 

Whenever that happens, whether under a pagan or Christian guise, there exists man’s own wisdom, his self-righteousness, self-sanctification, self-redemption. Other lords than Jesus Christ, other commandments than his commandments, acquire dominion over us. They offer services to us as saviors, but they prove to be torturers of an unredeemed world.25

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* Wicca is a religious movement within the current Neo-Pagan movement. Most Wicca members consider themselves witches and believe in a Goddess and sometimes her consort, the Horned God. For most Wicca devotees these two deities represent or are symbols of creation. A Wicca group is called a Coven and is generally lead by a priestess. The priestess generally develops and leads the ritual of the coven. Wicca devotees have designed their own rituals using the traditions of various cultures and religions. Some of their rituals resemble the ceremonies of literary and mythical witchcraft such as casting a circle,(considered a sacred space), and using a cauldron, (a cooking pot used for ritual). The ceremonies preformed within the circle are a way of experiencing union with the Goddess, and as a way of focusing power on individual or group needs. The rites may be preformed in clothes or “sky clad,” that is, in the nude. For additional information see: www.naminggrace.org/id38.htm. 

1 It is in fact difficult to use the term Feminist Theologies since as Malanie A. May has pointed out “Recognizing that women’s right to and responsibility for self-naming is integral to the theological task, it is unclear whether or in what way the term feminist can or will refer to women who are not white, European-American, and middle-class.” Letty M. Russell, J. Shannon Clarkson, Eds. Dictionary of Feminist Theologies, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996) 107.

2 Thomas C. Oden, The Confessing Movement [Methodist] “Response To The ‘Critical Challenge’: An Open Letter to readers of ‘A Critical Challenge to the ‘Confessing Movement,’ “ http://www.confessingumc.org/doc_critics.html. 4,6.

3 Carol J. Adams, “Rights, Animal” in  Feminist Theologies, 246.

4 Christine Gudorf, “Rights, Children’s,” Ibid., 247.

5 Under the heading, “Anti-Judaism/Anti-Semitism” Susannah Heschel gives a concerned warning to Christian Feminists. She writes, “Most of the negative depictions of Judaism in Christian feminist writings are inaccurate distortions that draw on age-old stereotypes rather than reliable scholarship.” Among some of her concerns is the feminist view of Judaism as the originator of patriarchy, “the rise of war and violence.” In Feminist Theologies, 12.

6 Dianne Bergant, “Canon” Feminist Theologies, 35.

7 Carol P. Christ, “Why Women Need the Goddess: Phenomenological, Psychological, and Political Reflections,” Womanspirit Rising: a Feminist Reader in Religion, Carol P. Christ & Judith Plaskow, Eds. (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1979), 278.

8 Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology, 10th Anniversary edition, (Boston: Beacon Press 1993), 12.

9 Mary C. Grey, “Revelation,” Feminist Theologies, 243.

10 Starhawk, The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess, 10th anniversary edition, (San Francisco: Harper & Row 1989), 22.

11 C.S. Lewis, Miracles, (New York: Simon & Schuster 1996), 110.

12 Sallie Mcfague, “Holy Spirit”, Feminist Theologies, 147.

13 Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk, 48.

14 Ibid., 257.

15 Carter Heyward, Saving Jesus From Those Who are Right: Rethinking What It Means to be Christian, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1999), 64.

16 Ibid., 222.

17 Starhawk, The Spiral Dance, 22.

18 Judy Harrow, “Explaining Wicca: An Overview of the teachings of today’s predominant form of NeoPaganism”, Gnosis: A Journal of the Western Inner Tradition, no.48 (Summer, 1998), 23.

19 Ibid., 23.

20 Anne Bathurst Gilson, “Incarnation,” Feminist Theologies, 151.

21 Rita Nakashima Brock, Journeys by heart :A Christology of Erotic Power, (New York: Crossroad 1988/1992) 63, in Feminist Theologies, 151.

22 Carol Adams, “Animal,” Ibid., 246.

23 Rosemary Radford Ruether, Women-Church: theology & Practice of Feminist Liturgical Communities, (San Francisco: Harper & Row 1986), 206-209.

24 Carol LeMasters, “The Goddess Movement: Past and Present,” Gnosis, 48.

25 Hans Asmussen, “An Address on the Theological Declaration Concerning The Present Situation in the German Evangelical Church”, in The Church’s Confession Under Hitler, Arthur C. Cochrane, (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press 1962), 256.