The Politics Of Women S Spirituality

Essays discuss goddess worship, spiritual consciousness, the relationship between politics and religion, and applications of spirituality as a political force.

A fascinating introduction to one of the fastest-growing religious movements in the United States today. Through interviews, participant-observation, and analysis of movement literature, Cynthia Eller explores what women who worship the goddess believe; how they express those beliefs in private, in public, and in the political realm; and the place of feminist spirituality in the history of American religion.

Taking a critical look at feminism and exploring its explicit and implicit spiritual dimensions, this revised and updated new edition of Women and Spirituality engages in a reflective dialogue with contemporary women's voices. It asks to what extent patriarchal oppression and androcentric thinking are inherent not only in Christianity but in all religious beliefs, practices and institutions. This is the only book which provides a comprehensive survey of current discussions in feminist theology and spirituality and offers a wide-ranging account of women and world religions and raising thought-provoking questions about the spiritual dimensions of human life.

This enlightening book examines how the feminist spirituality movement contributes to the establishment of new paradigms of mental health for women. Women’s Spirituality, Women’s Lives examines possible psychotherapeutic implications for women engaged in feminist spirituality and stimulates much-needed conversation between feminist therapists and feminist theologians/ritualists. Feminist spirituality is part of the current broad challenge to accepted ways of knowing and being. This book argues that as women tell their own stories, they create rituals that enable them to feel a sense of control over the future and to move toward a kind of authority, agency, and autonomy associated with mental health and psychological well-being. Women from many cultural backgrounds and religious perspectives have embraced alternative forms of spiritual expression, based on profound theoretical challenges to mainstream religious beliefs, ranging from calls for the radical reclamation and reconstruction of religious traditions to personal involvement in goddess worship and Wicca. Women’s Spirituality, Women’s Lives presents theoretical, conceptual, and experiential chapters that analyze the extent to which these proliferating women’s groups represent the beginnings of new norms of mental health for women. Women’s Spirituality, Women’s Lives presents a variety of voices, including Native American, Christian, Jewish, and Wiccan. Chapters are divided into three sections--Laying the Groundwork, Theoretical Challenges, and Living It Out--and explore a diverse array of topics such as: the “shouting” church and Black women’s mental health a traditionalist Native American challenge to New Age cooptation a feminist group and Jewish women’s self-identity lesbian altar-making and mental health feminist Wicca in the U.S. and Germany the martial arts and women’s mental health the use of feminist rituals in therapy and as therapy Feminist therapists and theologians, as well as other individuals interested in feminist spirituality or alternative spirituality, will find this book a fascinating exploration of the various aspects of the spirituality of women. Women’s Spirituality, Women’s Lives is also an excellent reader to expand the thinking of students in classes in women’s studies and religious studies.

This anthology addresses the experiences of third-wave feminists in the construction and reformulation of spirituality. It is a useful resource for any course on women and/or feminism and religion.

These stories, essays and poems by women examine the connections feminists are making between sex and God. The women write from very different perspectives, cutting across the spectrum of feminist writing about sexuality and spirituality within the Judeo-Christian tradition. Some writers, though critical, are determined to retain their radicality in the very teeth of patriarchy by remaining within the traditional forms of faith. Others – impatient, suggests the editor, with the ‘great inseminator in the sky’ – have moved on to what might be described as a post-patriarchal spirituality. Contributions indicate the exciting spiritual journeys women are currently making and focus on the following areas: monogamy and promiscuity; sex, politics and spirituality; childbirth; sex and healing in dying; feminist sexual psychology; lesbian identity; and feminist ‘embodied’ theology. The recent and continuing debate about women priests in the Anglican church uneasily echoes the rumblings of change at a fundamental level in the relationship between women and religion. This book, with its reflections on both the politics of Christian feminism and the more widespread expression of women’s spirituality, makes an important contribution to that change. First published in 1987.

Essays discuss goddess worship, spiritual consciousness, the relationship between politics and religion, and applications of spirituality as a political force