I was surprised to see the prominence that "Starhawk" has maintained, but then I don't get out much. I remember her from the heyday of Father Fox, but of course, she's moved on to the pages of the Washington Post, which is evidently interested in the thoughts of Wiccans. She's responding to a question about racism and sexism, but has managed to point out the glaring error in goddess worship a topic I touched on here.
In the Goddess religions, we see the divine as immanent in every human being. Each of us has an inherent worth that cannot be quantified, denied, or compared to the worth of another. If we restrict one portion of the human race from full participation in society, we limit our collective intelligence and potential...When spirit is split from nature, when God is removed from the world, then this world and all that we associate with it become devalued: the body; those who bring life into the world; the earth that sustains life; and darkness, the color of soil and the womb. Spirit, light, pure mind, intellect, maleness and detachment from the body are seen as closer to God. Within that split universe, we denigrate women, people of color, and those who work with the earth, who till the soil, clean up the messes, rear the children and do the physical maintenance of life.
She attempts to give dignity to the feminine by divinising it, as though being God is the only righteous alternative to, um, not being God.
Well, no. No one is God except -- God. The rest of us are His creatures. The reason God asked us to call Him Father was so that there would be no confusion about the nature of the Divine. Fathers create apart from themselves; mothers create with their very flesh and blood. Fathers do not confuse their identity with that of their children, because the flesh is distinct. Mothers usually have a far more difficult time letting go -- witness the tears with the cutting of the cord, the first day of school, the trip down the aisle, etc. Each event of independence is a wrenching experience for the mother.
Thus, God knew, that if we referred to Him as "mother," then the next thing would be to blur the line between divinity and creature, leading to exactly what Starhawk has done, renouncing the Christian faith for pantheism -- God present in all her creation.
If she would return to the Christianity of her roots, then she could see that the gritty "physical maintenance of life" that falls to women is transformed by the Incarnation, and the restoration of spirit and flesh would be given glory in the hypostatic union present in Jesus. It's all there, if we simply had the vocabulary and catechesis to respond.
[As for her thoughts on women in the ante-bellam South, and the vocation of women, a far better treatment is found here. This was written before the conversion of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, but it's excellent.]
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