What do you think?
Rate this book
Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality – Key Writings on the Diversity of Women's Experience
In this sequel to Womanspirit Rising, Judith Plaskow and Carol Christ have selected key writings in feminist spirituality, focusing on constructive elements in the feminist approach to religion in North America and the great diversity of women’s experience. The writings presented here deal with a reconceptualization of the central religious categories of theology through a wide range of voices and traditions. Contributors are white, black, Chicana, Asian American, and Native American, and represent Jewish, Christian, Goddess, Native American, Yoruba, Voudou, and other perspectives. “Feminist too often have avoided and denied [our] differences,” write the editors, “but difference is the source of our creativity, the ‘raw and powerful’ connection from which our personal power is forged.”
359 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1989
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 9, 2014
If I had to recommend just one text to someone interested in feminist spirituality, this would be my first choice because of the diversity of perspectives and religious backgrounds represented.
December 23, 2012
This book made my mind explode when I read it in the early 1990s. This book connected me to a history of women in religious life and to a more fuller and complex understanding of God's nature that I had ever previously thought possible. Would it hit someone with the same impact today? It depends upon your religious background. Explore God's feminine side, learn about the ways God has spoken and still speaks to women, and perhaps you, too, will strengthen your faith and your sense of self. Highly recommended for all women faithful to a patriarchal form of worship who think there's something missing in their religious and devotional life.
August 28, 2013
Plaskow and Christ are great editors - lots of interesting texts in this book.
March 10, 2021
Though somewhat dated now, and while some of the power invoked is from an essentialist root, I found these essays quite lovely overall. They have given voice/language to things I’ve felt but didn’t have an appropriate/precise vocabulary to express and made me think of things in spirituality and religion like I’d never thought of before. I love that there is a balance of theory and somewhat personal essays (which also include theory) which makes the reading quite approachable (I’ve struggled w reading theory in the past). Highly recommend to (everyone, really) those who have long since left the church and are now finding themselves creating spiritual practices and rituals for themselves to feel connected to a divine energy that they believe is just as real as science.
Fav essays: “My Sister, My Spouse” by E. Ann Matter, “The Myth of Demeter and Persephone” by Charlene Spretnak, all of the “Naming the Sacred” section (esp “Artemis” and “The Goddess as Metaphoric Image”), “Womanist Theology” by Delores S. Williams, “Uses of the Erotic” by Audre Lorde, “Archetypal Theory” by Naomi R. Goldenberg, “Feminism and the Ethic of Inseparability” by Catherine Keller, “Sexuality, Love, Justice” by Carter Heyward, and “Ritual as Bonding” by Starhawk
Fav essays: “My Sister, My Spouse” by E. Ann Matter, “The Myth of Demeter and Persephone” by Charlene Spretnak, all of the “Naming the Sacred” section (esp “Artemis” and “The Goddess as Metaphoric Image”), “Womanist Theology” by Delores S. Williams, “Uses of the Erotic” by Audre Lorde, “Archetypal Theory” by Naomi R. Goldenberg, “Feminism and the Ethic of Inseparability” by Catherine Keller, “Sexuality, Love, Justice” by Carter Heyward, and “Ritual as Bonding” by Starhawk
March 31, 2026
THE FOLLOW-UP TO ‘WOMANSPIRIT RISING’
Editors Carol Christ and Judith Plaskow acknowledged in the Preface to this 1989 collection, “Anyone who reads our essays in this volume will perceive immediately that our intellectual and religious commitments have drawn us away from each other in the last ten years. In ‘Womanspirit Rising’ Judith had one foot in the ‘reformist,’ the other in the ‘revolutionary’ camp, while Carol was just beginning to explore Goddess spirituality alongside her work on feminist theology and spiritual quest in women’s literature. In the last decade, Carol has more deeply embraced Goddess and nature spirituality, while Judith has clearly committed herself to the transformation of Judaism.
“We would be less than honest if we did not acknowledge that our differences have tested our abilities to communicate with and hear each other. There have been times when each of us has reduced the other to tears and when our sensitivity to each other’s criticism has strained our friendship. Jealousy and competitiveness have intruded themselves into our relationship … Yet we have gradually learned to express our anger at each other… while affirming a friendship and a mutual commitment to feminism and the feminist transformation of religion that now spans twenty years. Our personal struggles… we believe … make this a stronger book...”
“It is not only in the content of our commitments that we have diverged from each other, but also in our methods and styles. Carol’s work has come to integrate personal reflection with scholarly analysis… Judith’s work has become more committed without becoming more autobiographical, reflecting… her conviction that experience can inform and enliven feminist theology without needing to be explicitly named….
“We have worked together on [this book] in much the same way as on ‘Womanspirit Rising’… the task of choosing selections was far more drawn out and agonizing than for ‘Womanspirit Rising.’ … Judith’s name appears first on the title page of this book because Carol’s was listed first in ‘Womanspirit Rising.’ In neither case does order represent precedence; both books are fully joint projects.”
Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza wrote in her essay, ‘In Search of Women’s Heritage,’ “It must be asked whether the reluctance of scholars to investigate the present topic might be sustained by an unconscious or conscious refusal to modify our androcentric grasp of reality and religion rather than by a legitimate concern for the integrity of biblical-historical scholarship… While it is hard to dislodge the intellectual misgivings of my colleagues in the academy, I have found it even more difficult to sustain my biblical interests in the face of feminist objections… Such exchanges have also compelled me to explore more deeply how a ‘feminist hermeneutics’ can be formulated…” (Pg. 33)
Judith Plaskow states in her essay on ‘Jewish Memory from a Feminist Perspective,’ “The Jewish feminist reshaping of Jewish history must therefore proceed on several levels at once. Feminist historiography can open up new questions to be brought to the past and new perspectives to be gleaned from it. It must be combined, however, with feminist midrash, or storytelling, and feminist liturgy before it becomes part of a living feminist Judaism.” (Pg. 44)
Gloria Anzaldúa asserts, “The Catholic and Protestant religions encourage fear and distrust of life and of the body; they encourage a split between the body and the spirit and totally ignore the soul; they encourage us to kill off parts of ourselves. We are taught that the body is an ignorant animal; intelligence dwells only in the head. But the body is smart. It does not discern between external stimuli and stimuli from the imagination. It reacts equally viscerally to events from the imagination as it does to all ‘real’ event.” (Pg. 85)
Marcia Falk (in her essay subtitled, ‘Toward a Feminist-Jewish Reconstruction of Prayer’) observes, “when, as inevitably will happen, critics address the authenticity of this work, denying feminist Jews the right to call our creativity ‘Jewish,’ we---the members of the feminist-Jewish communities that help comprise “klal yisrael,’ the community of Israel---need to remind them that Jewish prayer, like all of Jewish practice and belief, all of Jewish life, has never been finally ‘fixed.’ Rather, it has evolved, adapted and changed throughout Jewish history. It is only recently, in fact, that Hebrew liturgical tradition ossified; it is not too late, we must hope, to revive it.” (Pg. 136)
Sallie McFague states, “But the model of God as mother suggests a very different kind of creation, one in keeping with the world as God’s body but not one that the central tradition has been willing to consider. And it is clearly the parent as MOTHER that is the stronger candidate for an understanding of creation as bodied forth from the divine being, for it is the imagery of gestation, giving birth, and lactation that creates an imaginative picture of creation as profoundly dependent on and cared for divine life.” (Pg. 146)
Rosemary Radford Ruether asks, “Do these traditions of the androgyny of God and the female aspect of the Trinity resolve the problem of the exclusively male image of God? Some Christian feminists feel they do. God has both mothering or feminine as well as masculine characteristics. The feminine aspect of God is to be identified particularly with the Holy Spirit. It is doubtful, however, that we should settle for a concept of the Trinity that consists of two male and female ‘persons.’ Such a concept of God falls easily into an androcentric or male-dominant perspective. The female side of God then becomes a subordinate principle underneath the dominant image of male ... sovereignty.” (Pg. 154)
Mary Daly argues, “It would be not only absurd but ethically wrong to excuse the slaveholders’ wives, or to excuse contemporary female racist oppressors, or to condone a Phyllis Schlafly for her gynocidal, genocidal, biocidal politics. As conscious carriers of phallocratic diseases and executors of phallocratic crimes, such women are indeed responsible. Furies, moreover, will recognize that the obvious corruption and cooptation of women under patriarchy can function to weaken Female-identified Outrage in women who are sincerely struggling to live a metapatriarchal morality. That is, token torturers function as instruments of the sadostate not only as the appointed executors of oppressive acts, but also as dis-couraging and confusing role models, driving other women into paralyzing guilt and misdirected anger. Patriarchal women, then, function as Rage-blockers/twisters.” (Pg. 203)
Audre Lorde (in ‘Uses of the Erotic’) observes that “An important way in which the erotic connection functions is the open and fearless underlining of my capacity for joy. In the way my body stretches to music and opens into response, hearkening to its deepest rhythms, so every level upon which I sense also opens to the erotically satisfying experience, whether it is dancing, building a bookcase, writing a poem, examining an idea. That self-connection shared is a measure of the joy that I know myself to be capable of feeling, a reminder of my capacity for feeling. And that deep irreplaceable knowledge of my capacity for joy comes to demand from all of my life that it be lived within the knowledge that such satisfaction is possible, and does not have to be called ‘marriage,’ nor ‘god,’ nor ‘an afterlife.’” (Pg. 211)
Dhyani Ywahoo [a member of the Etowah Band of the Eastern (Cherokee) Nation] states, “People are not keeping tradition in their hearts; they are digging too far and using without consideration of returning. In this time it is either yes or no. You are either in harmony with the planet, with that part of truth in yourself, or you are not. The first step is to examine your own consciousness.” (Pg. 275)
Katie Geneva Cannon explains, “I make no apologies for the fact that this study is a partisan one. For too long the black community’s theological and ethical understanding have been written from a decidedly male bias…. It is my thesis that the Black women’s literary tradition is the best available literary repository for understanding the ethical values Black women have created and cultivated in their participation in this society. To prevail against the odds with integrity, Black women must assess their moral agency within the social conditions of the community… they implicitly pass on moral formulas for survival that allow them to stand over against the perversions of ethics and morality imposed on them by whites and males who support racial imperialism in a patriarchal social order.” (Pg. 285)
Carter Heyward suggests, “It occurs to me that it may be the special privilege of lesbians and gay men to take very seriously, and very actively, what it means to love. As lesbians and gay men, we have had to fall back on the category of ‘lover’ in order to speak of our most intimate, and often most meaningful, relationships. Deprived of the categories that are steeped in the tradition of romantic love… we have had no other common word for ourselves, and for those whom we love, except the word ‘lover.’” (Pg. 294)
Susan Brookes Thistlethwaite observes, “For too long we have neglected the healing and casting out of demons that occurs too frequently in biblical materials in favor of discussions focused solely around the miraculous. But for abused women, women who study the Bible with bloodied noses, bruised ribs, and broken limbs, healing has a concrete and immediate reference. Likewise, the demonic has a concrete reference of those who have experiences the cycle of violence that builds in homes of an abuser.” (Pg. 309)
This book will be of great interest to those who are studying contemporary female spirituality.
Editors Carol Christ and Judith Plaskow acknowledged in the Preface to this 1989 collection, “Anyone who reads our essays in this volume will perceive immediately that our intellectual and religious commitments have drawn us away from each other in the last ten years. In ‘Womanspirit Rising’ Judith had one foot in the ‘reformist,’ the other in the ‘revolutionary’ camp, while Carol was just beginning to explore Goddess spirituality alongside her work on feminist theology and spiritual quest in women’s literature. In the last decade, Carol has more deeply embraced Goddess and nature spirituality, while Judith has clearly committed herself to the transformation of Judaism.
“We would be less than honest if we did not acknowledge that our differences have tested our abilities to communicate with and hear each other. There have been times when each of us has reduced the other to tears and when our sensitivity to each other’s criticism has strained our friendship. Jealousy and competitiveness have intruded themselves into our relationship … Yet we have gradually learned to express our anger at each other… while affirming a friendship and a mutual commitment to feminism and the feminist transformation of religion that now spans twenty years. Our personal struggles… we believe … make this a stronger book...”
“It is not only in the content of our commitments that we have diverged from each other, but also in our methods and styles. Carol’s work has come to integrate personal reflection with scholarly analysis… Judith’s work has become more committed without becoming more autobiographical, reflecting… her conviction that experience can inform and enliven feminist theology without needing to be explicitly named….
“We have worked together on [this book] in much the same way as on ‘Womanspirit Rising’… the task of choosing selections was far more drawn out and agonizing than for ‘Womanspirit Rising.’ … Judith’s name appears first on the title page of this book because Carol’s was listed first in ‘Womanspirit Rising.’ In neither case does order represent precedence; both books are fully joint projects.”
Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza wrote in her essay, ‘In Search of Women’s Heritage,’ “It must be asked whether the reluctance of scholars to investigate the present topic might be sustained by an unconscious or conscious refusal to modify our androcentric grasp of reality and religion rather than by a legitimate concern for the integrity of biblical-historical scholarship… While it is hard to dislodge the intellectual misgivings of my colleagues in the academy, I have found it even more difficult to sustain my biblical interests in the face of feminist objections… Such exchanges have also compelled me to explore more deeply how a ‘feminist hermeneutics’ can be formulated…” (Pg. 33)
Judith Plaskow states in her essay on ‘Jewish Memory from a Feminist Perspective,’ “The Jewish feminist reshaping of Jewish history must therefore proceed on several levels at once. Feminist historiography can open up new questions to be brought to the past and new perspectives to be gleaned from it. It must be combined, however, with feminist midrash, or storytelling, and feminist liturgy before it becomes part of a living feminist Judaism.” (Pg. 44)
Gloria Anzaldúa asserts, “The Catholic and Protestant religions encourage fear and distrust of life and of the body; they encourage a split between the body and the spirit and totally ignore the soul; they encourage us to kill off parts of ourselves. We are taught that the body is an ignorant animal; intelligence dwells only in the head. But the body is smart. It does not discern between external stimuli and stimuli from the imagination. It reacts equally viscerally to events from the imagination as it does to all ‘real’ event.” (Pg. 85)
Marcia Falk (in her essay subtitled, ‘Toward a Feminist-Jewish Reconstruction of Prayer’) observes, “when, as inevitably will happen, critics address the authenticity of this work, denying feminist Jews the right to call our creativity ‘Jewish,’ we---the members of the feminist-Jewish communities that help comprise “klal yisrael,’ the community of Israel---need to remind them that Jewish prayer, like all of Jewish practice and belief, all of Jewish life, has never been finally ‘fixed.’ Rather, it has evolved, adapted and changed throughout Jewish history. It is only recently, in fact, that Hebrew liturgical tradition ossified; it is not too late, we must hope, to revive it.” (Pg. 136)
Sallie McFague states, “But the model of God as mother suggests a very different kind of creation, one in keeping with the world as God’s body but not one that the central tradition has been willing to consider. And it is clearly the parent as MOTHER that is the stronger candidate for an understanding of creation as bodied forth from the divine being, for it is the imagery of gestation, giving birth, and lactation that creates an imaginative picture of creation as profoundly dependent on and cared for divine life.” (Pg. 146)
Rosemary Radford Ruether asks, “Do these traditions of the androgyny of God and the female aspect of the Trinity resolve the problem of the exclusively male image of God? Some Christian feminists feel they do. God has both mothering or feminine as well as masculine characteristics. The feminine aspect of God is to be identified particularly with the Holy Spirit. It is doubtful, however, that we should settle for a concept of the Trinity that consists of two male and female ‘persons.’ Such a concept of God falls easily into an androcentric or male-dominant perspective. The female side of God then becomes a subordinate principle underneath the dominant image of male ... sovereignty.” (Pg. 154)
Mary Daly argues, “It would be not only absurd but ethically wrong to excuse the slaveholders’ wives, or to excuse contemporary female racist oppressors, or to condone a Phyllis Schlafly for her gynocidal, genocidal, biocidal politics. As conscious carriers of phallocratic diseases and executors of phallocratic crimes, such women are indeed responsible. Furies, moreover, will recognize that the obvious corruption and cooptation of women under patriarchy can function to weaken Female-identified Outrage in women who are sincerely struggling to live a metapatriarchal morality. That is, token torturers function as instruments of the sadostate not only as the appointed executors of oppressive acts, but also as dis-couraging and confusing role models, driving other women into paralyzing guilt and misdirected anger. Patriarchal women, then, function as Rage-blockers/twisters.” (Pg. 203)
Audre Lorde (in ‘Uses of the Erotic’) observes that “An important way in which the erotic connection functions is the open and fearless underlining of my capacity for joy. In the way my body stretches to music and opens into response, hearkening to its deepest rhythms, so every level upon which I sense also opens to the erotically satisfying experience, whether it is dancing, building a bookcase, writing a poem, examining an idea. That self-connection shared is a measure of the joy that I know myself to be capable of feeling, a reminder of my capacity for feeling. And that deep irreplaceable knowledge of my capacity for joy comes to demand from all of my life that it be lived within the knowledge that such satisfaction is possible, and does not have to be called ‘marriage,’ nor ‘god,’ nor ‘an afterlife.’” (Pg. 211)
Dhyani Ywahoo [a member of the Etowah Band of the Eastern (Cherokee) Nation] states, “People are not keeping tradition in their hearts; they are digging too far and using without consideration of returning. In this time it is either yes or no. You are either in harmony with the planet, with that part of truth in yourself, or you are not. The first step is to examine your own consciousness.” (Pg. 275)
Katie Geneva Cannon explains, “I make no apologies for the fact that this study is a partisan one. For too long the black community’s theological and ethical understanding have been written from a decidedly male bias…. It is my thesis that the Black women’s literary tradition is the best available literary repository for understanding the ethical values Black women have created and cultivated in their participation in this society. To prevail against the odds with integrity, Black women must assess their moral agency within the social conditions of the community… they implicitly pass on moral formulas for survival that allow them to stand over against the perversions of ethics and morality imposed on them by whites and males who support racial imperialism in a patriarchal social order.” (Pg. 285)
Carter Heyward suggests, “It occurs to me that it may be the special privilege of lesbians and gay men to take very seriously, and very actively, what it means to love. As lesbians and gay men, we have had to fall back on the category of ‘lover’ in order to speak of our most intimate, and often most meaningful, relationships. Deprived of the categories that are steeped in the tradition of romantic love… we have had no other common word for ourselves, and for those whom we love, except the word ‘lover.’” (Pg. 294)
Susan Brookes Thistlethwaite observes, “For too long we have neglected the healing and casting out of demons that occurs too frequently in biblical materials in favor of discussions focused solely around the miraculous. But for abused women, women who study the Bible with bloodied noses, bruised ribs, and broken limbs, healing has a concrete and immediate reference. Likewise, the demonic has a concrete reference of those who have experiences the cycle of violence that builds in homes of an abuser.” (Pg. 309)
This book will be of great interest to those who are studying contemporary female spirituality.
July 9, 2016
Overall I really appreciated this book for all the obvious reasons. Slight disappointment in a few of the pieces-- while I was glad to see a variety of genres, some of the more "creative" pieces left me wishing for something more; some continuation of the editors' commentary, or a critical response. This isn't to say I favored a more rigidly academic structure, as the pieces that interested me the most were transgenre (i.e.: Anzaldúa). Further, a little more cohesion so there wasn't as much overlap between some of the pieces (I recall reading a few times the same arguments about the femininity of God) would have been useful. Nonetheless a powerful work in raising consciousness of different frameworks and practices.
July 18, 2009
A must read for all women, an excellent reconnection to what has been lost over time
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews