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Twentieth Century Women’s Spirituality Movement

In a wonderful essay entitled “My Cab Ride with Gloria Steinem,” Federica Mathewes-Green not only tells about her encounter with feminist Steinem, she reveals a small but significant detail about her own feminist past.  Mathewes-Green writes of “attending a consciousness-raising session at the home of lesbian friends during the 1970s.” Important to her story was the discovery that the two friends were raising mushrooms in cow manure in their bathtub.1 This was the early beginning of the women’s liberation movement of the twentieth century which includes the women’s spirituality movement. Mathewes-Green’s experience with the feminist movement was among those feminists who could best be described as cultural feminist, those who value women’s nature as will as nature itself. They are also referred to as radical feminists. Mathewes-Green has since become a devoted follower of Jesus Christ and laid aside her feminism. She has found her home in the Greek Orthodox Church. In the same manner, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, historian and author of many books including Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South, writes of a consciousness-raising group she helped to organize in the 1970s. This group consisted mostly of young married women supporting their professional husbands. Based on Fox-Genovese’s description, it was not radical but rather a means for women to enjoy a time away from families while sharing with each other their joys and frustrations as well as a means of encouraging each other to “become strong independent women.” 2 Fox-Genovese has since become a follower of Jesus Christ and a member of the Roman Catholic Church.

Women gathering in consciousness-raising groups are a part of the story of the women’s liberation movement which began with earnest in the late sixties and early seventies. Purportedly an early feminist group, sometime in the mid sixties, named New York, Radical Women, began the activity as a means “to defeat male spremacy (sic) and give women equality.” Kathie Sarachild author of “Consciousness-Raising A Radical Weapon,” spoke of this in 1973. She stated that they studied “women’s lives by topics like childhood, jobs, motherhood, etc.” Their authoritative foundation was their own experiences and one of the questions they brought “at all times to” their “studies would be -- who and what has an interest in maintaining the oppression in our lives.”3 While, clearly not all women held to a radical agenda when exploring their own experiences, many were moved by radical activism and experimentation at the very beginning of the women’s liberation movement.

The movement undoubtedly came to birth with the publication in 1963 of Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique. Basically the book is a critique of many women’s lifestyles in the fifties when to some new drapes and shaggy carpets seemed like a very high goal. For some women it was an eye-opener, for others, who were busy anyway, it was just an affirmation that women, like men, needed higher aspirations. The comments of Elizabeth Achtemeier, who was visiting Professor of Hermeneutics and Homiletics at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, are telling. “So when women confined themselves to housework and joined in 1965 in Betty Friedan’s published plaint, ‘Is this all?’ I thought, for goodness sakes, of course it’s not all! Get out there and use your talents. Stop draining your brains down the kitchen sink.”4 Reading The Feminine Mystique sparked much of the consciousness-raising groups among women. One sees the connection in the records of the United Presbyterian Church.

In 1966, an early effort to give woman more rights in the United Presbyterian church included a consultation at Ghost Mountain Conference Center. Maggie Kuhn, who was to be “instrumental in organizing the Gray Panthers,” instigated the Ghost Mountain Conference named “Masculine/Feminine: Mystery, Misery, or…” Betty Friedan was “a resource leader.”5 A Task Force on Women was established in 1969 by the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church, although it was not overseen by the General Assembly. Along with this national Task Force, Elizabeth Howell Verdesi writes that women were forming local task forces, “so that by 1971 there were five functioning judicatory task forces on women.” Verdesi goes on to write that, “as a consequence of such activity, the Task Force on Women recognized that the future effectiveness of the women’s movement within the church depended on the establishment of small consciousness-raising groups in the judicatories”6 Another move was the establishment of women’s religious organizations promoting both religion and women’s liberation agendas. Many of these were independent of the church, yet the church contributed to them. Jeanette Stokes, Presbyterian Pastor and founder in 1977 of Resource Center for Women & Ministry in the South writes, “When I moved to Greensboro, North Carolina, in the fall, RCWMS took up residence in a spare room of my apartment and consisted of a cardboard box and some three-by-five cards with the names of women interested in feminism, religion, ministry, and social justice.” Stokes, now involved in promoting the divine feminine, further states that in 1978 the United Presbyterian Church’s Council on Women and the Church (COWAC) gave from their Emergency and Experimental funds fifteen hundred dollars to her new organization.7

Earlier, in 1977, the COWAC along with the Council of theological Seminaries held a Symposium in Chicago with the theme, “In Christ … Neither Male nor Female.”8 The journal Theology Today printed the position papers of the symposium along with other relevant articles. The early seeds of radical feminism can be seen in the various papers. For instance, the Editor, Hugh T. Kerr, intentionally offered his readers a group of prayers that leaves out any gendered pronouns, but the prayers also leave out any reference to Father and Son.9 One author, “Catherine Gunsalus Gonzalez, now Professor Emeritus of Church History at Columbia Seminary in Decatur, GA, in her article, “On the Way to Wholeness,” upholds the importance of revelation but admits that one’s experience will effect how the text is interpreted. And she does mention when affirming the importance of revelation those women who, at that time, no longer see revelation as the prime disclosure of who God is, but instead rely on their own experience. Gonzalez makes a case for seeing women’s basic sin as self-hatred in contrast to pride. She writes, “It is no accident that those in society who are most powerful and who are the norm for the human, that is to say, white men, frequently see pride as their greatest sin. . . . But others, and in this case women, are taught by the society to see themselves as weak, inept, vacillating, destined by their biology to serve others.” Gonzalez goes on to explain that women have no understanding of what to repent of because the church never mentions the sin of self hatred.10 In the coming years numerous women connected to both the women’s liberation movement and the church would not only push for needed reforms, they would push past the boundaries of a biblical Christianity and move into radical feminism. From their experimentation and focus on their own experiences they were to find an alternative spirituality for both secular women and church women.

Women’s spirituality groups grew out of and along side of the women’s liberation movement which had fostered the consciousness-raising groups. The women’s spirituality groups shaped not only the Wiccan groups coming to the United States from Britain but also affected many women in leadership in mainline churches. Cynthia Eller documents many aspects, including the history, of the women’s spirituality movement in her book Living in the Lap of the Goddess: the Feminist Spirituality Movement in America. As stated above, some of the movement’s beginnings happened in the consciousness-raising groups.11 Much of it was among lesbians seeking recognition and empowerment. Eller writes, “This pattern of entry into spirituality through radical feminism was particularly marked in the lesbian community, where for many women religion came as an unexpected but natural outgrowth of their experiments in radical feminism.”12 The push toward feminist spirituality based on the lesbian point of view can be seen in the history of an Evangelical women’s organization. What began as The Evangelical Women’s Caucus in 1975, a group seeking equal rights for Evangelical women, split in 1986 during a council meeting when a resolution asking for acknowledgement of “the lesbian minority within” the EWC and “protection for homosexual persons,” passed.  Nancy A Hardesty, a lesbian and one of the founding members of EWC writes that by 1990 the group’s name had changed to “Evangelical and Ecumenical Caucus,” and that in more recent conferences we have chosen to include women of other faiths.” She goes on to state, “if we are to be salt and light in the world, we must expand our vision and our experience of the Divine.” In the same speech, Hardesty does expand her vision of God opining, “we need to know that behind the ebb and flow of waves and water there is a Power, an Energy, a web of Wisdom we call God, …”13  The women’s spirituality movement was evolving from many different directions; even the secular would become the spiritual.

The first understanding of witch in the women’s liberation movement included a secular definition of the word. Witch was defined as an aggressive, independent and rule breaking woman. Eller writes about those secular groups that used Witch in a secular manner. “In New York on Halloween of 1968, a collective of women named themselves WITCH, an acronym standing for ‘Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell.’” Eller goes on to write that “These first feminist witches did not gather to worship nature, but to crush the patriarchy, and to do so in witty, flamboyant, and theatrical ways.” The word witch was to become an acronym for several activist groups, including “Women Infuriated at Taking Care of Hoodlums” and “Women Incensed at Telephone Company Harrassment.”14 Still, the women in the movement soon enough discovered a religious movement which supposedly flourished before written history and worshiped a goddess.

Ronald Hutton, in his history on witchcraft, explains that in Britain most groups involved in witchcraft gave loyalty to both a god and goddess and ritual included the importance of a polar tension between male and female. This was often worked out as sexual ritual within a circle. When this evolving religious movement entered the United States during the sixties and seventies it collided with the women’s liberation movement and the newly developing feminism. He documents Mary Daly’s and Andrea Dworkin’s, embrace of witches although still without their religious aspects. Hutton writes, “The emphasis was far more upon witchcraft as an obstacle to patriarchy, however, then as a system of religion; to Dworkin the witch trials were simply ‘gynocide,’ while to Daly witches were women who had remained true to themselves and to sisterhood.15 Hutton explains that in the United States the early development of a feminist witchcraft, with a religious content and ritual, was begun by Zsuzsanna Budapest generally known as Z Budapest. Between her coven, which she named Susan B. Anthony, and her book, The Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries, as well as the books of Mary Daly the myths of an ancient goddess religion which was thought to be the cornerstone of a pervasive matriarchal society existing at the dawn of time became firmly established in many women’s circles. A great emphasis was placed on the “burning times,” the supposed time in medieval Europe when it was thought church men had burned at least a million if not nine-million witches who were simply healers.16

From Budapest’s thought came a new form of Wicca called Dianic. It either eliminated the god or simply exalted the goddess above any god. Men were not welcome in this kind of witchcraft. Diane Stein, activist in the Woman’s Liberation Movement, a lesbian activist as well and deeply involved in women’s spirituality writes about some of the differences between Dianic groups and the more traditional covens. Not only does Stein point out that only women may take part in the rituals of Dianic covens, she also points to their differences in decision making. Stein writes that in the traditional coven a priest and high priestess oversee the ritual and the priestess “either writes the full ritual or draws it from her own handed-down tradition.” She goes on to explain that the Dianic covens are more apt to use, “consensus and improvisation,” than the traditional coven. Stein writes,

“Consensus is not always reached quickly, but once it is, everyone participating is happy with the decisions. Where no one has had to give in to a majority, everyone is willing and the group operates in peaceful balance.”17 Although covens and circles would once again open to both genders, the goddess would remain the more visible and honored deity and most circles would stay centered around the female. As the feminist spirituality movement evolved from the Dianic type and took on activist views that centered on justice and peace movements some feminists within the church connected with the new goddess theology. Carol LeMasters, writes that the softening of women’s spirituality led to “a more ecumenical dimension.” She further states:

Coming together to work for the same causes, Christian feminists began talking extensively with Goddess worshipers who a few years earlier might have dismissed them as dupes of a ‘patriarchal’ tradition. Words like ‘embodiment,’ ‘nurturance,’ and ‘connectedness’ became part of the lingua franca of women’s spirituality, Christian and Pagan alike.18

And, indeed, for many women, whether they embraced witchcraft, were simply involved in some form of women’s spirituality or even stayed within the fold of a monotheistic religion such as Christianity or Judaism their view of the divine took on the trappings of some form of female deity. Having discovered a religion with a female deity they incorporated some form of her into whichever faith they held. New sacred female names flourished: Kali, the Sacred Feminine, Sophia and the Creatrix all have evolved from the women’s liberation movement and women’s spirituality groups.

While most radical neo-pagan feminists envision deity as female and are bold to speak of a goddess, the Black Madonna has recently become a popular way of speaking of deity among those “Christian” feminist who use feminine images for the divine. But generally such images begin in the Pagan community. For instance, Kali, the name of a female consort to the god Shiva in Hinduism, has taken on feminist’s attributes. Hinduism has seen her at times as a “kindly mother,” but she is also, “fierce and unapproachable, adorned with a necklace of skulls, and with four arms to flail her victims to pieces before she devours them.”19  At first extremely radical neo-pagan feminists chose Kali as one of the goddesses they would honor. LeMasters writes that the anger of the separatists or Dianic feminists allowed them to embrace the darkest of the goddesses. She writes, “Rage against sexism was at an all-time high; rituals were filled with hexes against rapists and batterers. Some of the most popular Goddess images were the fiercest ones: Medusa, Kali, Lilith, Hecate.”20 Now Kali is softened by equating her with the Black Madonna as are many other deities. At a conference on the Black Madonna at Graduate Theological Seminary in Berkeley, 2005, the web site advertisement states:

Known cross-culturally under many names, this Dark Mother is re-emerging as a source of wisdom, creativity, and liberation. She is known as Our Lady of Guadalupe or Tonantzin in Mexico, the Mother and Patron of all the Americas, or as the Black Madonna in European Catholicism, Isis in Egyptian Africa, Crow Mother in the Hopi American Indian tradition, Tara in Tibetan Buddhism, Kali in Hinduism, Erzuli Danto in Vodun, Yemaya in Yoruban Africa, and Oya in Brazilian Candomble. This beneficent, towering dark female divinity appears as a powerful symbol of healing, diversity, fierce compassion and of the Earth itself. As the national Patron of Brazil, she is known as Aparecida, the one who appears, and is called the Mother of the Excluded.21

The move to make the black Madonnas divine, and thus meld goddesses with Christianity, is rooted in the myths of early feminism. The myth is the belief that Mary, mother of Jesus, was given great honor in Christianity because she followed in a long line of goddesses. In all cultures, so the myth goes, where a goddess was prominent Mary began to take on the aspects of that particular goddess. Mary is then seen as Cosmic and feminists relate to her as the supposed Great Mother thought to have been worshiped in pre-historical times. Charlene Spretnak in her book Missing Mary: The Queen of Heaven and Her Re-Emergence in the Modern Church, asks rhetorically, “Christ’s gospel of love is profoundly relational and compassionate, but where did that emphasis come from if he was solely an offspring of the legalistic and sometimes punitive Yahweh.” Her answer, “Where else could Jesus’ emphasis on loving compassion and forgiveness have come from but the other half of his cultural and spiritual ‘DNA’: Mary and the long lineage of mother goddesses she continued.”22 Although Spretnak is Catholic the understanding of Mary or the black Madonnas as divine or as goddesses is wide spread among radical feminists in Protestant churches. Not only did Presbyterian Women’s Ministry Area, in 2005, promote the idea of the Black Madonna, using the book The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd as a starting point, they likewise recommended books which equate her with divinity such as Longing For Darkness: Tara and the Black Madonna and Dancing in the Flames: The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness.  The movement continues and evolves with various Presbyterian women’s organizations as well as individual Presbyterian women, both those ordained and laity, continuing to promote books, organizations and individuals who lift up a goddess rather than the biblical God.

One example is Presbyterian Pastor, Jeanette Stokes, who is mentioned above. Stokes has become extremely radical and promotes many goddesses. Her organization, Resource Center for Women & Ministry in the South, also mentioned above, offers seminars and classes on such topics as “Being Visible, Being Sacred, Being Goddess:” and “Calling Forth Kali: A Workshop.” The organization sponsors a project which includes a video entitled, Meinrad Craighead: Praying with Images. In the video Craighead “explains the dreams and shamanic journeys that have often been the inspiration for her art.” The website text states that the public will see “images of the Divine Mother that have appeared around the globe throughout human history.” Additionally, later “programs focusing on the Black Madonna and on Craighead’s lifelong fascination with animals as the sacred emissaries of divine messages will be introduced in this initial program.”23 As women’s spirituality groups evolve the church has, through many mainline women’s organizations, become infected with deepening heretical imaginings to the point that like the people Paul mentions in Romans, they are exchanging, “the truth of God for a lie” and worship and serve “the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever.”(Romans 1:24) While those women whose theological foundation is the bedrock of scripture maintain a stability of certainty radical feminism is fragmenting and the definitions that define the movement are like shattered pieces of glass.

Various definitions of feminist theology have been offered by different scholars and theologians. Most feminist theologians attempt to draw a dividing line between radical feminists and their theology of the divine feminine which includes a goddess and those who stay within the boundaries of Christianity by reinterpreting biblical texts. Anne M. Clifford in her book, Introducing Feminist Theology, names the latter theologians “Reconstructionist Christian Feminist.” She explains that what makes such theologians Christian “is Jesus.” But then Clifford gives the longer answer which includes seeing the reign of God fulfilled as “Jesus’ powerful social vision was incarnate in the inclusive community of women and men, drawn together and empowered by him to preach the good news of God’s coming reign.” Likewise, her comments on the Trinity are telling since she sees the biblical names Father, Son and Holy Spirit as metaphors and not different then other names.24 In reality as the feminist movement evolves any differences between radical feminist theologians and so called Reconstructionist feminist theologians are fast fading. 

Furthermore there seemingly is no place left within leadership positions in the women’s church organizations for those whose views are secured in scripture rather than female experience. The call expressed by women in leadership in women’s church organizations can be seen in a 2005 job offering for an “Associate for Advocacy for Women.” One of the functions listed on the postings is to “Provide the theological framework in which the church may address the crucial issues of women.” But this person is also required to advocate, “on behalf of the work being done by women theologians and of the theology offered from the experiential perspective.”25 (Emphasis mine) There is no place in the organization for women who see the Christian faith as that which is built on the foundation of the apostles, the confessions and creeds and more importantly the holy word of God.   Presbyterian women’s official organizations are demanding the use of experiential theology. For women, it has become an urgent matter, they must choose between doing ministry based on experiential theology within official women’s organizations and doing ministry based on a biblical foundation outside of those official organizations.