Feminist Theology

In this article I offer possibilities for conversations between a feminist, post-realist thealogy and an exploration of the posthuman as presented by Rosi Braidotti. Braidotti draws on the influence of Baruch Spinoza to argue for an awareness of the ‘radical immanence’ which allows a challenge to the hierarchically dualistic assumptions of an anthropocentric paradigm. I maintain that the role of ‘Goddess-talk’ can contribute to this exploration with its figurations of a transgressive sacrality which can embrace ambiguity and plurality and which is immanent in a connection and interdependence with all forms of life. Such a thealogy can have points of contact with Braidotti’s call for an interrogation of what is meant by ‘being human’, a consideration of the implications of a ‘post-anthropocentric’ world and a challenge to the ways in which a global capitalist economy is undertaking the commodification of life itself.

In this article Carol P. Christ states that ‘thealogy matters’ because religious symbols not only articulate meaning but also provide orientation for ethical decision-making. Rejecting the notions that religious meaning is delivered from on high and that traditions must be uncritically accepted, she proposes a model of ‘embodied theology’ in which individuals and communities take responsibility for religious worldviews. She asks us to question Jungian theories of the feminine, images of the Goddess in patriarchal traditions, models of ritual practice in the Wiccan tradition as articulated by Gerald Garner, and the idea of divine omnipotence modelled on the ‘tyrant ideal’ of God. She explores two ways in which process panentheism can help us to understand the divine power we call Goddess.

In the first part of this article I will explore the reasons for the loss of the Divine Feminine and the powerful mythologies and beliefs which have structured our present view of reality. These have split Nature from Spirit and mind from soul and led to the idea of our dominance of Nature rather than to a caring relationship with it. In the second part I will explore the transformation of this outdated view as our consciousness moves to a new level of understanding and embraces a New Story. The greatest challenge of our time is to heal the split between Spirit and Nature and reconnect our rational mind with our neglected soul.

This article considers the issue of racial difference in the Goddess movement, using the mythological figure of Arachne, a skilful weaver whom the goddess Athena transformed into a spider, to explore the unequal relational dynamics between white Goddess feminists and women of colour.

Bringing Goddess spirituality and thealogical metaphors of webs and weaving into dialogue with postcolonial and black feminist perspectives on the politics of voice, marginality and representation, the article points to some of the ways in which colonial narratives weave through Goddess feminism, including practices of silencing and the romanticization of racial difference. Ultimately, I argue that feminist spirituality must recognize and address structural inequality between white women and women of colour, or in other words, listen to Arachne’s voice.

The author narrates her journey to women’s circle dances of the Balkans, and explores how they incorporate prehistoric signs which Marija Gimbutas called ‘the language of the Goddess’. These symbolic images appear in archaeological artefacts, textile motifs, song words, and dance patterns, and have been passed down for thousands of years in nonverbal ways. The interdisciplinary approach of archaeomythology suggests that the images may carry ideas and values from the Neolithic cultures in which these dances are said to have their roots. Women’s ritual dances affirm the Old European values which honoured the Goddess, the mother principle, and the cycles of life, and offer an extraordinary oasis of women’s empowerment, even within patriarchal culture, indicating that the dances most likely originate in pre-patriarchal egalitarian matriarchy. For women today, even outside the Balkans, these women’s ritual dances offer insight and meaning through an embodied experience of the values of the Goddess.

Domestic abuse is a common occurrence for women in the Christian Church. Underlying this dark reality is a long history of patriarchal theological interpretations that have depicted God as a dominant male figure that subjects women to male hierarchy as a subordinate. Often based on an understanding of Jesus as subordinate to God the Father in the Trinity, the correlated praxis of the Church has commonly been to subject women to suffering at the hands of men – even at the cost of their lives – thus mimicking the death of Christ. This deeply flawed androcentric theology and subsequent praxis of women’s subordination has been severely challenged by liberal feminists, and rightly so for the sake of women’s survival and flourishing. This article utilizes the Social Trinity to provide a Christian feminist critique of patriarchal atonement models and theology towards the feminist goal of liberating women from male-perpetrated violence. Ultimately a reframing of God will be presented that includes women as full persons and calls them to resist the suffering of domestic abuse and to reclaim their full personhood as the imago Dei.

The Platonic chora, as the third, intermediating term, has been left in a state of virtual dereliction in the West. Its ternary logic transmutes oppositional logics of binarity, including the oppositions of interior and exterior, psyche and cosmos, human and divine. In this article I (psycho)analyse the mytho-philosophical trajectory of the chora from Plato’s Timaeus, and Diotimaic love found in Plato’s Symposium. I argue that both the disruptive force of Diotimaic love, and the subversive chora with its ‘bastard reasoning’¹ are indicative of Plato’s efforts to resolve an internalized conflict which mirrored a larger conflict found in his cultural epoch, a time in which abstracted self-consciousness was on the horizon and chthonic-participatory consciousness was receding. In (re)membering the chora I find a fecund space-time, an enabling field, for human participatory becoming-with the cosmos.