Carol P. Christ Quotes

The simple act of telling a woman's story from a woman's point of view is a revolutionary act: it never has been done before.

After much diligent research, aided by other women, I gradually came to understand that beneath the familiar Goddesses of the patriarchy, there is a much more ancient Goddess.

Symbol systems cannot simply be rejected; they must be replaced. Where there is no replacement, the mind will revert to familiar structures at times of crisis, bafflement, or defeat.

The often cruel behavior of Christians toward unbelievers and even toward dissenters among themselves is shocking evidence of the function of that image in relation to values and behavior.

Religions centered on the worship of a male God create "moods" and "motivations" that keep women in a state of psychological dependence on men and male authority, while at the same legitimating the political and social authority of fathers and sons in the institutions of society.

Gradually, it began to dawn on me that the image of God as Father, Son and Spirit was at the root of the problem. No matter what I did, I would never be ¨in his image.¨ While I had hoped to find in God a father who would love and accept my female self, it seemed that ¨he,¨ like my father and most of my professors, liked boys better. I decided that unless we could call God Mother as well as Father, Daughter as well as Son, women and girls would never be valued.

Subversive language, however, must be constantly reinvented, because it is continually being co-opted by the powerful.

In Old Europe and Ancient Crete, women were respected for their roles in the discovery of agriculture and for inventing the arts of weaving and pottery making.

Man" it was said, had two natures, a rational nature and an animal or bodily nature. These two natures, it was thought, were continually at war with each other. Whereas reason should have been able to rule the body, all too often, it seemed, the body asserted its own needs and desires. The practice of asceticism, in the East as well as the West, arose out of the attempt to control the unruly body through denial and sometimes punishment. While women also practiced asceticism, the literature of asceticism, written primarily by men, is filled with images equating the temptations of the body with women and the female body. Instead of accepting the changing body as part of the self, asceticism attempted to deny it. Great cruelty to the self and the body have al too often been the fruits of this view.

Throughout the years, many Christian women have told me of their great respect for the bravery and courage evident in my work, perhaps even gesturing to their own Isis earrings or a Nile River Goddess pendants.

In Goddess religion death is not feared, but is understood to be a part of life, followed by birth and renewal.

At first the ancient images of the Goddess did not interest me.

Beliefs and values that have held sway for thousands of years will be questioned as never before.

Why does everyone cling to the masculine imagery and pronouns even though they are a mere linguistic device that has never meant that God is male?

Our great symbol for the Goddess is the moon, whose three aspects reflect the three stages in women's lives and whose cycles of waxing and waning coincide with women's menstrual cycles.