Feminist Spirituality

Presented To: Rev. Viju Wilson

Presented By : Swapnil Navgire David, Lalchhuanawma, Mrinmoy Edwin Singha,
K. Ajonlui and Vibha Archana Kerketta.
Date : 31/03/2021.
Table of Contents
Introduction

Definiton

1. Brief introduction of Feminism and Religion.

2. Feminist spirituality and christian spirituality

3. The background and development of feminist spirituality

4. Main Features of feminist spirituality.

4.1. Development

4.2. Discovery of Goddess and its Theology

4.3 God/dess

Reflection

Conclusion

Bibliography.
Introduction

Feminist spirituality is a grassroots religious movement inside and outside established religions that
reclaims the power, value, and dignity of women. It is a commitment to bringing about in oneself
and in the world an alternative vision of justice and equality for all. It focuses on women's heritages,
women's body as the locus of the divine, and women's work of replacing patriarchal, kyriarchal
societies with equality for all. Therefore this paper deals with the core aspect of feminist spirituality
from understanding it background , main features and its development.

Definition
Feminist Spirituality is often referred to as “spiritual ecofeminism” or “myth feminism.” According to “The
Dictionary of Feminist Theory” by Maggie Humm, this branch of feminism “emphasizes the spiritual
dimension as being as, or more, important than material rights to women’s happiness” . In other words,
spiritual feminism seeks to empower women spiritually, often by returning to pre-Abrahamic religions, like
Native American and Wiccan spirituality.1

1. Brief introduction of Feminism and Religion

Religion refers, in general, ‘to beliefs and practices through which people express their
understanding of divine powers or of the spiritual dimension of human existence and structure an
appropriate response.’ Similarly, in discussions of religion in the western and eastern world, the
emphasis still tends to be placed on belief in a single transcendent and masculine divine being as
creator and sustainer of human life within and beyond terrestrial existence and on the corresponding
institutional structure; that is, the Christian Church. Feminists offer a critique of existing religious
belief and practice based on exposing the effects of privileging a particular perspective, typically a
male perspective. Feminists in the field of religion recognise, increasingly, that privileging the
views of groups on the basis of race, colour or social class is ultimately another symptom of the
same syndrome that seeks definition and identity by excluding what is viewed as ‘Other’. Feminists
have had to come to terms with the silencing and marginalising effects of a number of other factors
besides gender, such as race, poverty, lack of basic education, handicap or sexual orientation.
Nevertheless, this represents not so much any ‘postfeminist’ dilution of the earlier form of feminist

1 https://readerwoman.wordpress.com/spiritual-feminism/
analysis as an application and expansion of it. Another central aspect of this feminist critique cutting
across religions identifies the gendered character of symbols that give significance within human
culture. These symbols might be viewed in terms of discrete events or objects such as the form or
occasion of enlightenment or the names and characteristics of the divine, or they might include
every aspect of a religious culture from its language, practices of worship, liturgy and organisational
structures to its theological or cosmological presuppositions. The aim is to make explicit when
gender-related symbols take on a hierarchical character, devaluing or even demonising what is
associated with woman and the feminine. Feminist methodology in religion is not simply a matter
of critique. It also has a pragmatic and constructive aspect.
Feminist critiques of religious scripture are growing in number. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza is one
of the best-known feminist biblical scholars writing within the Christian tradition. She has
attempted, by exercising what she calls the hermeneutics of suspicion, to reveal how processes of
censorship and redaction have often served to preserve the masculine tradition within Christianity.
She is suspicious of all forms of interpretation that marginalise women or their concerns. In her
earlier work, in particular, she showed how, when the privileged view is abandoned, the writings of
the earliest Christian Church in the New Testament reveal traces of a much stronger female
presence and the formulation of a radical emancipatory praxis. Riffat Hassan has done similar work
on the Qu’ran (the book of Revelation believed by Muslims to be the word of God) and the Hadith
(the sayings attributed to the Prophet Mohammed). She reads the Qur’anic creation story against the
accumulation of fundamentally non-Qur’anic material in the Hadith literature which has, she
argues, been affected by misogynistic—particularly Christian—readings of Genesis 2–3. She
reveals a commitment to justice and equality in the Qur’an, overlaid by interpretation which has a
vested interest in the patriarchal status quo. Amongst those feminists who are hoping to find
resources for a new way of conceptualising the divine or the spiritual within existing religious
scriptures, Phyllis Trible problematises powerful, yet uncritical, notions of divine masculinity that
still influence the lives of women and men and highlights lesser-known metaphors for God within
the Old Testament. Other feminists within Christianity and Judaism have found the female
personification of Wisdom from the Wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and the
Apocrypha (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), and Wisdom of Solomon) a source
of empowerment. Some feminists exercise a critical methodology by looking at specific themes or
theologies developed within religious communities which are based on traditions of theology or
dogma as well as foundational texts. Within other religious traditions women similarly work to
recover mythic constructions of the feminine that are not simply a product of privileged male
imagination and desire. They argue that, within the Buddhist tradition, of course, there is no deity
and life is sustained not by any external saviour or saviour God but by a combination of inspiration
provided by the Buddha, a purposeful structure for living expressed in the Dharma, and a formative
community, the Sangha., whereas in Hinduism the nature of the Hindu Divine revealed as the
goddess Kali shows that this female figure repeatedly adopts patterns of behaviour that do not fit
with the proper role of women within Hindu tradition. She is a wife but she is rarely found with her
partner, Siva. She has no children, lives mostly outdoors and has no fixed household. Her
iconography portrays her as wearing necklaces of skulls and severed heads, and she is associated
with graveyards and battlefields. Moreover, she appears very often as the personified wrath of other
goddesses whose conduct is, normally, very much more conventional. Lina Gupta suggests that this
anger represents a deep and repressed rage against the felt injustice of women in particular. In
particular she suggests that it is the presumption of certain gender roles associated with women that
makes Kali appear violent and bloodthirsty. A male god behaving in such a way would more
probably be regarded as bold and strong. Rather Kali is ‘out of patriarchal control’ and therefore a
powerful model for women of strength and self-liberation.2

2. Feminist Spirituality And Christianity Spirituality

Gloria Durka says fascination with spirituality has taken on a life of its own, Feminist thinkers are
not so much interested in adding to the growing number of commentaries on the lives of holy
women of the past rather they intend to comment on the spiritual journey of today’s women and to
ask what can be found in the lives of these women that can help women to better 3

According to Sandra Marie Schneiders Christians whose spirituality are genuinely feminist are
people who have been deeply involved with personal and or social spirituality within the Christian
tradition and who came to feminist consciousness at some point and began to realize that it had
serious implications for their spiritual life. They have come to recognize the ways in which male
controlled theology, moral formation, and spiritual guidance have functioned to infantilize and
demonize women. their consciousness raising has extended to the sphere of spirituality and they
have begun to judge traditional Christian spirituality as seriously flawed, even destructive of

2 Sarah Gamble, “The Routledge Companion to Feminism and Postfeminism” (UK: Routledge, 2001), 125-128.
3 Gloria Durka, “Feminist Spirituality: Restoration and Transformation,” British Journal of Religious Education, 12/1
(1989): 38.
women.4 She also says some Christian feminist are people whose coming to feminist spirituality
began in her or his involvement in feminist liberationist praxis. As this person has grown in
awareness of the ways in which women are marginalized , excluded , victimized , degraded , and
oppressed in family and society, he or she has begun to see that women undergo the same
oppression in the church and that the church is a major role player of the oppression of women in
family and society. The social analysis which enables such people to identify patriarchy as the root
of women's social, economic, and political oppression is extended to the church where it is
identified as the cause of women's religious oppression . However, such people recognize that the
situation in the church is complicated by the spiritual interpret their own religion. element.
Patriarchy has infected the inner life of the church as a community5. Schneider further says that
feminist insight comes as an addition to and an enrichment of a basically traditional experience of
growth in the Christian spiritual life. feminist consciousness, raised in other circumstances or in
relation to other issues, begins to enlighten their Christian spirituality and to call into question the
assumptions of that spirituality so far as these are patriarchal and oppressive.6

3. The Background and Development of Feminist Spirituality

Sandra Marie Schneiders in one of her writing entitled, Feminist Spirituality: Christian Alternative
or Alternative to Christianity?, states that the very term "feminist spirituality" began to be used very
early in the "second wave" of the modern feminist movement, arising in the United States in the
1970s and appearing in Europe in the 1980s.7 Shelley Finson also states that women spirituality
appears to have its roots in the earlier stages of the critique of sexism and patriarchy by feminist
theologians. For instance, Mary Daly launched her first challenge to patriarchal religion in 1968,
and her challenges have been pivotal in the development of feminist theology.8 The feminist
Spirituality states that the ideas which have defined “spirituality” have been constructed exclusively
by those in powering society and church, i.e., by ‘white male members of the ruling elite.’ They
have shaped and informed the spiritual reality. And as a result, historically women and women’s

4Sandra Marie Schneiders. “Feminist Spirituality: Christian Alternative or Alternative to Christianity?” Jesuit School of
Theology, Scholar Commons, 45
5 Schneiders. 46
6 Schneiders. 47
7Sandra Marie Schneiders, “Feminist Spirituality: Christian Alternative or Alternative to Christianity?” Jesuit School
of Theology, Scholar Commons, 30-67.
8 Shelley Finson, “Feminist spirituality within the framework of feminist consciousness,” SR 16/1 (1987): 65-77.
experience have been excluded from the male “world-building enterprise.” And that there is no
denial of the influence men have had on women spirituality.9
Schneiders claimed that ‘feminist spirituality’ did not arise within or in terms of any particular
institutional church or recognized religion. In support to this statement she brings in the view of
Catherina Halkes, who opines that the origin of feminist spirituality is the “realization by feminists
that women's estrangement and oppression are fuelled not primarily by sex role polarization but by
the dichotomy between spirit and body, with the former assigned to the male and the latter to the
female, which is essential to patriarchy.”10 Further, Gloria Durka brings in the ideas of Valerie
Saiving in which she states that the feminist philosophers and theologians have observed that
throughout its history western culture has been pervaded by a series of mutually “exclusive
dualisms or dichotomies.” She added by giving examples that these includes ‘creator and creature,’
‘humanity and nature,’ ‘mind and body,’ ‘reason and emotion,’ ‘self and other,’ ‘subject and object
etc.’ And these dichotomies are in one way or the other related with dualism of male and female.
Furthermore, she states that this has exhibited a pattern of dominance and subordination. And the
linking of these dualisms with the distinction between male and female have produced ideologies
and social structures which oppress women. And thus, such ideologies and structure are concretely
implanted in our language and institution, and engraved in our deepest feelings. 11 So, Feminist
spirituality was developed by women as a way to reclaim the reality and power designated by the
term "spirit" and the effort to reintegrate ‘spirit and body,’ ‘heaven and earth,’ ‘culture and nature,’
‘eternity and time,’ ‘public and private,’ all those “dichotomous dualisms” whose root is the split
between spirit and body and which basically leads to the splitting of male and female.12
For feminist spirituality the supreme deity was female. The Great Goddess was not merely an earth
mother, a mate for a male god, or a fertility goddess whose cult justified sexual license. She was the
“all-powerful Creator, Source of life and of destruction, the Queen of Heaven, the Ruler of the
universe.” Even in the patriarchal societies in which men controlled the myth and symbol systems,
the supreme deity was female and the mediators between the Great Goddess and humans were
usually female priests. Gloria Feman Orenstein writes, 13

9 Finson, Feminist spirituality within the framework of feminist consciousness, 65-77.

10 Schneiders, Feminist Spirituality…, 31-32.
11Gloria Durka, “Feminist Spirituality: Restoration and Transformation,” British Journal of Religious Education, 12/1
(1989): 38-44.
12 Schneiders, Feminist Spirituality…, 30-67.
13Cynthia Eller, “Divine Objectification: The Representation of Goddesses and Women in Feminist Spirituality.”
Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 16/1 (2000): 23-44.
the Goddess symbol…reminds women that our legitimate history has been buried, and that through
excavation we are learning how short the Patriarchal period in human history has been in
comparison with the 30,000 or more years of matristic history in which goddess-centred culture
flourished in central Europe, Anatolia and the Near and Middle East.
Feminist spirituality is drawn from women’s experience. It can only be described in a language and
imagery that is the result of reflection on that experience and that is interpreted by women.
However, this power and experience is excluded from the male “world-building enterprise.”

4. Main features of Feminist Spirituality

4.1 Development
Feminist spirituality has its roots not inside but outside the Church culture, for Church and its
beliefs were very much male centric giving women secondary position. This institution or its
sacred texts not only include very little of women's experience or history but also deemed women
unequipped and not worthy to participate. This in return resulted the growth of Feminist spirituality
beyond the religious barriers which allowed feminists a certain freedom to tell their individual and
corporate stories which are mutually empowering and to experiment with new theories that are
anathema in the academy and new rituals which seem frivolous or shocking to mainstream
religion.14

4.2 Discovery of Goddess and its Theology

The Discovery of Goddess is one the most important aspect of Feminist spirituality which is in its
nature disturbing to the mainline religion specially the Patriarchal religion as it stands out or
portrays a threat to religion and religious beliefs. The Discovery of goddess is a symbol of female
divinity and feminine sacred power. The theology behind it is that it involves the worship of the
Great Mother Goddess who is conceived as one , true ultimate divinity. However a major
difference between the understanding of Goddess is conceived as ultimately immanent rather than
ultimately transcendent. More exactly, her transcendence is her all-embracing, all-empowering

14 Sandra Marie Schneiders, “Feminist Spirituality: Christian Alternative or Alternative to Christianity?” Jesuit School
of Theology, Scholar Commons, 41.
immanence. She is transcendently immanent. Thus, Goddess not only divinises the feminine and its
life-giving mysteries but also negates the ruinous split between transcendent and immanent, spirit
and body, divinity and nature, heaven and earth with all their Maintain progeny in the realms of
thought and action. A feminine deity allows women to experience themselves as truly "like
Goddess," as imaging divinity in their very life-giving powers. Rather than being unclean because
of their bodily capacity to give life, they are divine because of it. Women are rehabilitated in the
rehabilitation of the body which is not the opposite of spirit but the enspirited vessel of divine
creativity.15

4.3 God /dess

A less radical form of feminist spirituality which is also approached by many Christian feminist is a
well symbolised symbol of divinity as God/dess. This is an effort for appropriating the theological
and religious tradition about God for women They emphasize the feminine aspects of the biblical
deity, insist on a compensatory highlighting of feminine biblical metaphors for Yahweh, demand the
use of gender inclusive language for both divine and human being in prayer and worship, and
struggle to- ward a reimagining, for themselves and others, of the male God in female terms. In
other words, they refuse to allow the biblical God to be appropriated by men and used against
women. They see themselves as fully in the image and likeness of God/dess, not only because they
possess intellect and will, i.e. spiritual faculties, but also because they participate bodily in the great
divine work of giving and nurturing life. Thus they attempt to achieve much
the same appropriation of spiritual power, rehabilitation of the body, and reintegration of the
dichotomized spheres of reality that more radical Goddess worshippers do, but they seek to do this
without separating themselves from the Judaeo-Christian beliefs.16

Reflection
Naucicaa Giulia Bianchi in her article “why do we need Feminist Spirituality” writes that today God
is only seen is his masculinity, God The Father, according to our own, old and new, patriarchal
ideas. If God is casted as all masculine, macho, warrior, dictatorial, perfectionist, distant, all
knowing, all rational, all powerful, this narrow image shape our understanding of the entire world as
based on power and punishment, and therefore based on inequality and violence. This is a God

15 Sandra Marie Schneiders, “Feminist Spirituality: Christian Alternative or Alternative to Christianity?” Jesuit School
of Theology, Scholar Commons, 42.
16 Sandra Marie Schneiders, “Feminist Spirituality: Christian Alternative or Alternative to Christianity?” Jesuit School
of Theology, Scholar Commons, 43.
drawn to make the powerful more powerful and diminish the rest. If God is male, male is God.
Bianchi further writes that there is a need for feminist understanding of God and that every major
spiritual tradition carry within them a feminist understanding of God deeply rooted in ancient
scriptures.feminist spirituality comes with a sense of co-creation and responsibility in the world,
and with the necessary respect for all people.17
Feminism is the radical notion that women are people too and that and every person under the sun
not in power are people. A feminist spirituality must therefore be rooted in equality and inclusivity,
be not hierarchical, be not based on power but collaboration and compassion. A feminist spirituality
comes with a sense of co-creation and responsibility in the world, and with the necessary respect for
all people.

Conclusion.
Feminist spirituality even though challenging the core beliefs and religious world-views presents
altogether a different prospective towards life of women who were and are considered secondary in
every organisation. It not only creates platform but also and equal bases to how women can
empower oneself in the day to day life dealing with theological as well as spiritual aspects.
Understanding its background , main features and development therefore brings more light to the
religious movement called Feminist Spirituality.

17https://medium.com/@nausicaa1978/why-do-we-need-feminist-spirituality-3cd856c86306 accessed on 29th March

2021
Bibliography
Durka,Gloria. “Feminist Spirituality: Restoration and Transformation,” British Journal of Religious
Education, 12/1 (1989)
Eller, Cynthia. “Divine Objectification: The Representation of Goddesses and Women in Feminist
Spirituality.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 16/1 (2000): 23-44.

Finson, Shelley. “Feminist spirituality within the framework of feminist consciousness,” SR 16/1
(1987): 65-77.

Gamble, Sarah. The Routledge Companion to Feminism and Postfeminism. UK: Routledge, 2001
Schneiders, Sandra Marie. “Feminist Spirituality: Christian Alternative or Alternative to
Christianity?” Jesuit School of Theology, Scholar Commons.

Webliography
https://readerwoman.wordpress.com/spiritual-feminism/
https://medium.com/@nausicaa1978/why-do-we-need-feminist-spirituality-3cd856c86306 accessed on 29th March
2021