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Santa Clara University Scholar Commons Jesuit School of Theology 1996 Feminist Spirituality: Christian Alternative or Alternative to Christianity? Sandra Marie Schneiders Jesuit School of Theology/Graduate Theological Union, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/jst Part of the Religion Commons Recommended Citation Schneiders, Sandra Marie “Feminist Spirituality: Christian Alternative or Alternative to Christianity?” In Women’s Spirituality: Resources for Christian Development, 2nd ed. Edited by Joann Wolski Conn, 30-67. New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1996. Reprinted with permission. This Book Chapter is brought to you for free and open access by Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Jesuit School of Theology by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Feminist Spirituality: Christian Alternative or Alternative to Christianity? Sandra M. Schneiders Let us consider the issue of fe minism in relatio n to Christi an spirituality, i.e . to the area of lived experi ence of the fa ith. It must be noted , however, that the term "spiritua lity" is no lo nger an exclusively Christian , no r even an exclusively reli gious, term . Not surprisingly, therefore , fe minist spirituality is not necessaril y a C hristi an o r even a religio us pheno meno n. In fact , however, as we shall see, fe minist spirituality whether Christi an or not tends to be deeply re ligious. Consequently, o ur first task is to define spirituality and specify the meaning of C hristi an spirituality so that we can then raise the questi o n of how fe minism is related to spirituality and fin all y how feminist spirituality is related to Chris­ tian spirituality. E lsewhe re I have traced the hi story of the term spirituality from its C hristi an biblical roots as a designati o n of that which is brought abo ut by the influence of the H oly Spirit, through its development in Christi an hi story to designate primaril y the inner li fe of the Christi a n striving for more than ordinary holiness, to its contemporary usage not onl y for re ligious experi ence but also fo r non-religio us and even anti-re li gious li fe-organizations such as secul ar fe minism and atheistic Marxism . 1 I defin ed spirituality, as the term is being used today, as " the experience of conscio usly striving to in tegrate o ne's life in terms no t of isolatio n and self­ absorpti on but of self-transcendence toward the ultimate value one perceives. "2 T his de finitio n is open enough to in cl ude both reli gious and no n-religious li fe projects but specific enough to 30 FEMINIST SPIRITUALITY 31 exclude aimless spontaneity, partial projects, or religious dilettant­ ism. Its essential elements are conscious effort, the goal of life integration through self-transcendence, and the finalization of the project by ultimate value. Its marked difference from the tradi­ tional Christian definition lies in its openness concerning the na­ ture of " ultimate value." Christian spirituality involves a specification of this definition in terms of the participation of the person in the paschal mystery of Jesus the Christ. For the Christian the horizon of ultimate concern is the holy mystery of God revealed in Jesus Christ and experienced through the gift of the Holy Spirit within the life of the church. 3 Thus, Christian spirituality, as Christian, is essen­ tially trinitarian, christocentric, and ecclesial. Given the way in which the tradition has presented the trinitarian God, viz. as three male "persons ," the recent presentation of the theological signifi­ cance of the maleness of Jesus by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,4 and the church as a hierarchical (i.e. sacral ized patriarchal) structure within which women , on the basis of their sex, are excluded from full participation, it is not surpris­ ing that women, once their consciousness has been raised , have problems with the living of their faith in terms of the principal coordin ates of traditional Christian spirituality. In other words, Chri stian spirituality will become problematic for any woman who becomes a feminist in the sense in which we have been using the term. II. FEMINISM AND SPIRITUALITY A . The Background and Development of Feminist Spirituality The 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. 5 It was mainstreamed in the feminist movement in this country with the publication in 1979 of the groundbreaking work Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion, 6 which was followed ten years later by its sequel, Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality. 7 While some of the feminists 32 SANDRA M . SC HNEIDERS using the term spirituality were practicing members of one or another recogni zed reli gious tradition, and re li gion and/or theol­ ogy was central to the academic feminist in terests of most of them , feminist spirituality did not ari se within or in terms of any parti cular institutional church or recogni zed religion. Catherina H alkes is probabl y correct in locating the origin of fe minist spirituality not in re ligion or even in the critique of reli­ gion but in the reali zation by fe minists that women's estrange­ ment and oppression are fueled not primaril y by sex role polariza­ tio n but by the dichotomy between spiri t and body, with the former assigned to the male and the latter to the female, which is intrinsic to patriarchy. 8 In other words, male control of fe male sexuali ty, as it developed over the ce nturies, led eventually to the identificati on of women wi th their sexual/reproductive function and their consequent identificati on with the realm of the body whi ch led to their gradual exclusion from the realm of the spirit. T hi s spiritual realm , presided over by the male God who reigns in heaven, was opposed to the realm of nature which was relegated to the once universall y powerful but now discredited Mothe r God­ dess, the fe minine divi nity who was fin all y dethroned and defini ­ tively banis hed by the triumph of patriarchal monotheism. 9 Feminist spirituality is the recl aiming by women of the reali ty and power designated by the term "spirit" 10 and the effort to reintegrate spirit and body, heave n and earth, cul ture and nature, eternity and time , publi c a nd private , political and pe rsonal, in short , all those hierarchized dichotomous duali sms whose root is the split between spirit and body and whose pri mary incarnation is the split between male and female . 11 It is well beyond the scope of this work to enter into the complex and much disputed di scussion of how a single , all ­ powerful male God came to take the pl ace of the Great G oddess and the pantheon of lesser gods and goddesses who were wor­ shiped everywhe re in the ancient world before the relatively late advent of patriarchal monotheism in the west.12 However, ce rtain concl usions from the immense amo unt of research whi ch has been done o n this subject can be accepted as established . As far back into antiquity as western religion can be traced the supreme deity was fe male. T he Great Goddess was not merely an earth mother, a mate for a male god, or a fertility FEMI N IST SPIRITUALI T Y 33 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 unive rse. As a number of scholars have argued, this does not prove that the re was ever a matriarchal society, a theory for which there is no hard evide nce. 13 But even in patriarchal societi es in which me n controlled the myth and symbol systems, the supreme deity was female and the medi ators be­ tween the G reat Goddess and humans were usuall y female priests. Patriarchy, however, was compatible with matrilocal and ma­ trilineal kinship patterns, and strong patriarchal monarchi es did not develop until the economic, social, and military conditions for this type of political organi zation arose. The Israelite monarchy, for example, did not emerge until centuries after the tribes ar­ rived in Canaan, and a major political and military project of the fi rst kings, Saul and David , was to centralize political power. An important aspect of this effort was the unificati on and centrali za­ tion of the cult in Jerusale m. D avid's son So lomon was unabl e to maintain the fragil e unity, and part of hi s failure to do so was hi s in abil ity and/or unwillingness to stamp out the reli gion of the Great Goddess which , in many forms, was alive and well in his kingdom despite the official sanction of Yahwistic monotheism (cf. 1 Kgs 11:1-14) . Gerda Le rn er in her very important study The Creation of Patriarchy descri bes the pattern observabl e in archaic societi es which developed strong male monarchi es. The observabl e pattern is: fi rst, the demoti on of the Mother­ Goddess fi gure and the ascendance and later dominati on of her male consort/son; then hi s merging with a storm-god into a male Creator-God, who heads the pantheon of gods and god­ desses.
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