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The Feminist
Movement
 Some would say feminism is about basic human
rights and that it's just a modern social movement.
The truth is, the
feminist movement is neither modern nor social in its origin. At its roots are
ancient, highly religious elements that are rarely, if ever, mentioned.
Feminist leaders easily fit what the apostle Paul warned about ...
saying false teachers can often be identified by their opposition or
indifference to the essential truths of the gospel.
"They are the kind
who worm their way into homes and gain control over weak-willed women, who are
loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, always
learning but never able to acknowledge the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres
opposed Moses, so also these men oppose the truth--men of depraved minds, who,
as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. But they will not get very far
because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone."
[2 Timothy 3:1-8]
The false teachers of feminism
teach a false lifestyle of unrighteousness. They prey on weak-willed women -
unstable women who are guilt ridden because of their sins, torn by lust, and
victims of various false teachers ("always learning," but never coming to a
saving knowledge of Christ). A large number of feminists are victims of
childhood abuse and are bitter toward men. Their 'guilt' is associated somehow
with the false belief that they are responsible for their abuse. Rather than
receiving the forgiving grace of Jesus, most of these women have bought into
the lie perpetrated by false teachers that they are 'emancipated' and as a
result are unable to function in a healthy relationship with a man. Is it any
surprise the majority of women in NOW are lesbians?
Many of those
involved in the Feminist Movement may sincerely believe it is a political
crusade to gain equality with men. Feminists teach women to see themselves as
oppressed, and then make sure to blame it all on men and patriarchal society.
At the 1998 ReImagining conference women were encouraged to express the divine
reality that is locked deep within their identities by sharing their stories.
Special emphasis was placed on telling stories of abuse, defilement, and
repression, the kinds of stories that evoke what conference leader Rita
Nakashima Brock, called "holy outrage."
Women are taught how to reshape
who they are to better give of their gifts and talents through the feminist
movement. Then they can attack it from another direction: They can elevate
their self-esteem by remembering who they really are.
If you resist
the movement, you are labeled as chauvinistic, bigoted, or just don't really
understand what feminists are all about. |
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Feminist
Spirituality
Who are they really?
Goddesses who have been forced into amnesia by primitive white men trying to
keep them from their true potential. Feminism is in fact a spiritual movement
based partly on reawakening of "goddess consciousness," and its real goal is
matriarchy, not equality.
 Consider the spiritual advice feminist
O.H.P. Belmont gave one young woman: "Call on God my dear. She will help you."
Another feminist, Rosalind Miles had her own version of the Genesis 1:1
account: "In the beginning, as humankind emerged from the darkness of
prehistory, God was a woman. And what a woman!"
The ultimate symbol of
the patriarchy is a male God - the Father. In response, feminists at the
National Council of Churches pushed through a unisex version of the Bible in
which God is "our father and mother in heaven." and Jesus Christ is not the
"Son of God," but the "child of God." The St. Hilda Community (an offshoot of
the Church of England's Movement for the Ordination of Women) are not rewriting
Christian creeds, but replacing them with stuff such as, "We believe in the
presence of God in the world. She is our mother, source of deep wisdom ... she
is our lover and is allowed to touch our pain ... she is our friend who stands
alongside us." They have rewritten the Lords Prayer (depatriarchalised as
"Prayer of Jesus") which reads in part, "Beloved, our Father and Mother in whom
is heaven, hallowed by your name, followed by your royal way ..."
In her
book Beyond God the Father, Mary Daly stated that "to exist humanly is
to name the self, the world and God. The 'method' of the evolving spiritual
consciousness of women is nothing less than this beginning to speak humanly - a
reclaiming of the right to name." The right to name, the right to define, the
right to give meaning, is at the heart of the feminist movement. Over the last
decade, feminists have progressed from naming themselves - affirming and
celebrating their differences from men - to naming their world - affirming and
celebrating female contributions to society and religious life - to now naming
God - affirming and celebrating what we as gendered people consider to be
feminine aspects of the divine.
In her book Changing of the Gods,
Naomi Goldenberg predicted that the continued feminist presence in religion
would force a redefinition - one that would alter the very essence of
Judeo-Christian belief. Goldenberg writes:
Undoubtedly, many followers of
new faiths will still cling to old labels. But a merely semantic veneer of
tradition ought not to hide the fact that very nontraditional faith will be
practiced ... The feminist movement in Western culture is engaged in the slow
execution of Christ and Yahweh. Yet very few of the women and men now working
for sexual equality within Christianity and Judaism realize the extent of their
heresy.
To make the leap out of the
boundaries of traditional religion, feminists needed to formulate radical new
images and understandings of the divine, for they would not find adequate or
useful answers in the external God of Christendom. The God of traditional
Christianity, Goldenberg argued, was too tainted with patriarchal dualisms -
too transcendent, ultimate, universal and other. Those dualisms would need to
be overcome and redeemed by feminism. The resultant God would be an internal
God - a God connected to all things, a God with less distinct boundaries
between creature and Creator. |
Witchcraft
Contemporary Goddess spirituality draws
inspiration from all the variations of earth-based religions, including Native
American Spiritism, which isn't matriarchal at all. It also embraces European
nature religions (especially witchcraft), Westernized Hinduism, Chinese Taoism,
Japanese Shintoism, and Buddhism whose quest for self-realization and aversion
for logic fits right in. Many differences and contradictions are simply
ignored. All these influences are merging and multiplying in today's
self-seeking, power-hungry, post-Christian Western culture.
It is important,
however, to understand what Paganism and Wicca is NOT. It is NOT devil worship,
does not involve hurting or cursing people, is not Satanism, and does not
involve the desecration of any traditional church's objects of veneration. The
Hollywood image of blood-drinking babykillers or kooks sticking wax dolls with
pins could not be further than the truth. As well, it is an image that many
Wiccans and Pagans despise and must struggle against every day. Most of us are
in what we call the "broom closet," and have lost apartments, jobs, and even
child custody for following the most practical of all spiritualities. If you
know anyone who is Wiccan or Pagan, I can assure you that that person is no
threat. Indeed, our spirituality demands care and deep love for the Earth and
all Her living creatures as well as complete responsibility for our actions and
their consequences. Harming or causing pain to another is repugnant and out of
the question for us. Far from trafficking with Satan, we are engaged in a
spirituality that centers on the joyous turning of the seasons, the endless
dance of the billions of components in Nature and our place in Nature. Injury
or harm is out of the question, and moreover our faith does not include any
personification of Evil such as the Christian Devil.
[From
www.io.com/~cortese/spirituality/wicca.html]
Contemporary Goddess spirituality draws
inspiration from all the variations of earth-based religions, including Native
American Spiritism, which isn't matriarchal at all. It also embraces European
nature religions (especially witchcraft), Westernized Hinduism, Chinese Taoism,
Japanese Shintoism, and Buddhism whose quest for self-realization and aversion
for logic fits right in. Many differences and contradictions are simply
ignored. All these influences are merging and multiplying in today's
self-seeking, power-hungry, post-Christian Western culture.
The
feminist's internal God, as Goldenberg anticipated, would be totally
antithetical to the traditional Judeo-Christian God of the Bible. Is this the
God - or rather the Goddess - who has been invented or re-imagined in the person of Sophia?
 New Age feminist and conference speaker Charlene Spretnak in her
book, The Politics of Women's Spirituality, teaches that, according to
one reviewer, "Goddess worship, paganism, Wicca, and witchcraft are all names
for a form of natural religion that is centered around the mystery, sexuality,
and psychic mysteries of the female. The book is a clarion call to women to
regain their natural power and to overthrow the global rule of men. The
author's starting point for the re-establishment of female dominance is in
bringing an end to Judeo-Christian religion." |
| Women's Progress
- The number of female senior vice
presidents in the business world has increased 75 percent in the past decade.
- Women now earn 98 percent as much as men -- after taking into account
such factors as family status, education, profession and the number of hours
worked.
- The number of businesses owned by women is growing faster than
the national economy.
- Women are now earning more college degrees than
men and outnumber them in graduate schools.
Source: Dr. Sally Satel (Independent Women's Forum), "NOW's Time Is
Past," Wall Street Journal, July 11, 1997. |
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History
Rewritten
The 1971 Declaration of
Feminism states, "All of history must be rewritten in terms of the oppression
of women. We must go back to ancient female religions like witchcraft." The
Minnesota chapter of NOW published an article advocating the return to
"primitive goddess worship" as a replacement for Christianity. Indeed, not only
witchcraft, but goddess worship has become a major component of feminist
activity all over the country. Margot Adler, a modern witch, points out in
Bringing Down the Moon that it is now time for the sisters to go out and
do the magic circle and summon the goddess.
The spirit of radical
feminism is the spirit of witchcraft and rebellion, the spirit manifested in
Jezebel. It is the spirit which rejects God's lawful order and authority and
tries to usurp that authority to itself, as did Eve in the Garden of Eden.
Because they build much of their thinking on humanism, leaders in the feminist
movement have no place for God. Gloria Steinem says of feminism that "the
bottom line is that self-authority is the single most radical idea there is and
there is a real hunger for putting the personal and the external back together
again." The New Age agenda of transforming society is apparent in her thinking,
"The point is for people to empower themselves," she says. She was also quoted
as saying, "By the year 2,000, we will, I hope raise children to believe in
human potential, not God."
 Speaking at an event that
The Los Angeles Times on March 16, 1982, billed as "Goddesses of Coming New
Age Probe the Meaning of It All," Spretnak and other New Age feminists
resolved that churches should either adopt New Age beliefs or be shut down. One
backdoor approach in bringing this about is to give New Age definitions to
Christian doctrinal terms (i.e. atonement means at-one-ment with the divine.)
Modern feminists are rediscovering the great goddess. Certainly nothing
can seem to lift a woman's self-esteem more than becoming a goddess. That
indeed appears to be one solution to "problems of self-worth and identity." To
them it vindicates the feminine in a universe where too much male principle
seems to be operative. If the goal is judicial equality in society, then the
same alternative must be applied to the cosmos. Followers of the goddess say
that a male deity must be counterbalanced with a female counterpart. It only
makes sense in an era of judicial egalitarianism. It also brings back
androgyny.
Starhawk, priestess of the Old Religion of the Goddess, is
one of witchcraft's leading ambassadors. An instructor at Matthew Fox's
Institute for Culture and Creation, she and others who share her pagan
persuasions have been teaching wiccan rituals and the "positive" side of
witchcraft in church groups and seminaries across the country. "Witchcraft is
... perhaps the oldest religion existent in the West," writes Starhawk in The
Spiritual Dance, a manual on witchcraft which is also used in Women's Studies
in colleges, universities and even in some seminaries.
Increasingly, we
see the followers of Wicca, a pagan religion which worships nature, the Earth
goddess and so forth gaining respect in society. Wicca followers are changing
the public's perception of them. They claim thay are not Satanists because they
don't even believe in Satan. Despite the fact that Wicca, another name for
witchcraft, is indeed occultism, the pagan religion is gaining respect in
society because of its respect for the planet and environmental
concerns.
Zealous protectors of the environment, witches view the earth
as the physical manifestation of the Goddess. To them, the earth is the sacred
body of the goddess, whose life-force flows through everything. The model of
the Goddess...fosters respect for the sacredness of all living things.
Witchcraft can be seen as a religion of ecology. Its goal is harmony with
nature, so that life may not just survive, but thrive.
It would appear that the feminist movement has bought the
oldest lie. Like Eve, who ate the forbidden fruit at the invitation of the
serpent with the promise that she would become as a god and never die, it is
again women as part of the feminist movement, who has again been deceived by
Satan, and is trying to pass on the forbidden fruit.
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