The Politics of Women's Spirituality: Essays by Founding Mothers of the Movement

by Charlene Spretnak

Rather than codifying a religion exclusively for women, the authors address a range of contemporary issues that are informed by spirituality, our attitudes toward life on Earth. The values and perceptions presented in this essay collection constitute a holistic paradigm, a dynamic model for the postpatriarchal era.

Genres: Feminism, Spirituality, Religion, Nonfiction, Goddess, Womens Studies, Politics

622 pages, Paperback

First published December 15, 1981

About the author

Charlene Spretnak has been intrigued throughout her life as a writer, speaker, and activist with dynamic interrelatedness. She has written nine books on various subjects in which interrelatedness plays a central role, including its expression in the arts. She is particularly interested in 21st-century discoveries indicating that the physical world, including the human bodymind, is far more dynamically interrelated than modernity had assumed. Such discoveries are currently causing a “relational shift” in our institutions and systems of knowledge, as she suggests in Relational Reality (2011). Several of her books have also proposed a "map of the terrain" of emergent social-change movements and an exploration of the issues involved. She has helped to create an eco-social frame of reference and vision in the areas of social criticism (including feminism), cultural history, and religion and spirituality. Since the mid-1980s, her books have examined the multiple crises of modernity and furthered the corrective efforts that are arising. Her book Green Politics was a major catalyst for the formation of the U.S. Green Party movement, of which she is a cofounder. Her book The Resurgence of the Real was named by the Los Angeles Times as one of the Best Books of 1997. In 2006 Charlene Spretnak was named by the British government's Environment Department as one of the "100 Eco-Heroes of All Time." In 2012 she received the Demeter Award for lifetime achievement as "one of the premier visionary feminist thinkers of our time" from the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology. She is a professor emerita in philosophy and religion.

Reviews

[Bookewyfe · Rating 5 out of 5]

So glad I found this book! The first part discusses the matriarchal societies that existed 25,000 years before the patriarchy of abrahamic religions; the second, how to take back our power through consciousness, rituals and community; the third, and biggest: politics. It is past time for womxn to be at the front. They (patriarchy) only have as much power over us as we let them. Think about what we need to do…to be, and stay—FREE.

[Magai · Rating 3 out of 5]

Useful for its comprehensiveness, always has something to say about this or that religion and antiquity is its strongest stake. In the beginning is Goddess Worship and all the rest upstarts.

Read it in the nineties when feminism was breaking boundaries in life and in scholarship, all sin was sin against the man and the father about time we took over. I have no idea now what happened, how come matriarchy did not make it in the polls, blame MacDo or Wallmart or was it all Bush's fault.

That's one sad thing about seeking answers in the archives when all over the mantra is, just rake it in, baby. Like diving into the wreck-- pardon, Adrienne-- and rising with tailings for face and hair...

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Classic in the field.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection of essays by more than 40 contributors!

[Meniek]

Rather than codifying a religion exclusively for women, the authors address a range of contemporary issues that are informed by spirituality, our attitudes toward life on Earth. The values and perceptions presented in this essay collection constitute a holistic paradigm, a dynamic model for the postpatriarchal era.

This book is full of articles that try to convince the pre - the patriarchal society dominated by women, as the worship of female deities.

[Glitter · Rating 3 out of 5]