Abstract
A personal tribute
I read Carol’s groundbreaking article, Why Women Need the Goddess, in 1985 and it changed my life. It provoked me to confront the paradigm-shifting implications of her feminist critiques of androcentric language and symbolism and set me on a personal and academic path which I have been following ever since. As a retired Religious Studies lecturer, I have had the privilege of introducing students to Carol’s work and have watched as so many of them have also had their worldviews transformed by her work.
Carol made an outstanding contribution to the birth and growth of feminist theo/alogies. The two anthologies she edited with Judith Plaskow, Womanspirit Rising and Weaving the Visions, remain the best introduction to and celebration of the beginnings of female-centred approaches to the study and transformation of religion/s. In her last book, Goddess and God in the World, Carol again collaborated with Judith Plaskow and their survey of the development of feminist theo/alogies provides a reminder of the remarkable role that Carol played in establishing and defending the role of feminist scholarship in the patriarchal institutions of Theology and Religious Studies.
In achieving this, Carol had to show great bravery and determination, and she exhibited these throughout her life. She chose to opt out of mainstream academia in order to live in Greece to follow her Odyssey with the Goddess. Carol showed the same characteristic courage in facing her diagnosis of aggressive cancer.
Carol was astoundingly brilliant, wonderfully funny, beautiful, loving, courageous and often challenging. I loved her dearly and I will miss her terribly.
Blessed Be, Carol. This world is a much better place for having had you in it and it feels so much emptier without you.