recommended reading

These books, and others, may be borrowed 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.  Sundays from our “Book Nook” in the entryway to the church:

God is a Black Woman by Cristina Cleveland

In this timely, much-needed book, theologian, social psychologist, and activist Christena Cleveland recounts her personal journey to dismantle the cultural “whitemalegod” and uncover the Sacred Black Feminine, introducing a Black Female God who imbues us with hope, healing, and liberating presence.

For years, Christena Cleveland spoke about racial reconciliation to congregations, justice organizations, and colleges. But she increasingly felt she could no longer trust in the God she’d been implicitly taught to worship—a white male God who preferentially empowered white men despite his claim to love all people. A God who clearly did not relate to, advocate for, or affirm a Black woman like Christena. 

Her crisis of faith sent her on an intellectual and spiritual journey through history and across France, on a 400-mile walking pilgrimage to the ancient shrines of Black Madonnas to find healing in the Sacred Black Feminine. God Is a Black Woman is the chronicle of her liberating transformation and a critique of a society shaped  by white patriarchal Christianity and culture. Christena reveals how America’s collective idea of God as a white man has perpetuated hurt, hopelessness, and racial and gender oppression. Integrating her powerful personal story, womanist ideology, as well as theological, historical, and social science research, she invites us to take seriously the truth that God is not white nor male and gives us a new and hopeful path for connecting with the divine and honoring the sacredness of all Black people.

The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd

To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the book’s publication, this special edition has been released with a brand new Introduction by the author. In the last two decades, this groundbreaking memoir has become a classic work of feminine spiritual discovery that has impacted hundreds of thousands of readers, and is as compelling today as when it was first published. The genesis of the author’s bestselling fiction lies within the journey described in these pages.

“I was amazed to find that I had no idea how to unfold my spiritual life in a feminine way. I was surprised, and, in fact, a little terrified, when I found myself in the middle of a feminist spiritual reawakening."
—Sue Monk Kidd

For years, Sue Monk Kidd was a conventionally religious woman. Then, in the late 1980s, she experienced an unexpected awakening and began a journey toward a feminine spirituality. With the exceptional storytelling skills that have helped make her name, Kidd tells her very personal story of the fear, anger, healing, freedom, and empowerment she experienced on the path toward the wholeness that many women have lost within faith traditions. From a jarring encounter with sexism in a suburban drugstore, to monastery retreats, to rituals in the caves of Crete, she reveals a new level of feminine spiritual consciousness for all women, one that has the power to transform in the most positive ways every fundamental relationship in a woman's life—most notably her relationship with herself.

Rebirth of the Goddess, by Carol P. Christ.

Carol P. Christ is a religious scholar who lives in Greece and is the director of the Ariadne Institute for the Study of Myth and Ritual. "To nurture life is to manifest the power of the Goddess," she writes, "to honor, respect, and support mothers and children . . . to embody the intelligent love that is the ground of all being." These are some of the touchstones that enable us to make the mythos of the Goddess into an ethos, or way of life.

Growing numbers of women and men around the world, Christ observes, are tapping into the nourishing vitalities of the Goddess. Grounded in the body, the Earth, and nature, the Goddess balances the patriarchal, disembodied, dualistic, and transcendent image of the Divine common in Western religions. The rebirth of the Goddess in our time signals "a compelling image of female power, a vision of the deep connection of all beings in the web of life, and a call to create peace on earth."

Christ believes that the institutionalizing of warfare as a way of life led to the subjugation and subordination of women. Today many women are finding renewal through rituals celebrating the Goddess as a giver of life and showing reverence for the natural world. The thea-logy that Christ unspools here puts the accent on the spiritual practices of beauty, love, hospitality, connections, and nurturing. The author interweaves the personal and the scholarly into an exquisite tapestry of feminist spirituality.

— Book review by Mary Ann Brussat

Living in the Lap of the Goddess by Cynthia Eller

"One of the most rapidly growing religious movements in the United States, feminist spirituality first came of age during the religious ferment of the 1960s. It has since emerged as one of the sturdiest survivors of that era of religious experimentation. The goddess, her worshipers, and the myth of her reign over humankind's prehistory are becoming familiar features in the American religious landscape, and are gradually spreading beyond there, out into the cultural mainstream." "In spite of its increasing cultural presence, feminist spirituality is poorly understood by those not participating in its development or privy to its secrets. Why do these women worship a goddess, and who is she? What do they do when they meet together? What do they do alone? What attracts them to feminist spirituality? Are they part of a passing cult or are they creating a new religion that will one day take its place alongside Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in the West? What are their hopes for the world, and what are they doing to see their dreams actualized?" "Living in the Lap of the Goddess answers these questions and more. Drawing on scores of interviews with spiritual feminists, participant-observation in feminist spirituality's rituals and retreats, and a close reading of the movement's many texts, sociologist of religion Cynthia Eller describes this innovative spiritual movement in detail. Among the topics covered are the origins of feminist spirituality; its use of ritual, myth and magic; and the politics with which spiritual feminists determinedly intertwine their religion." "The feminist spirituality movement represents an important option for feminists, the critical third choice available in the false dilemma between reforming patriarchal religions and giving up on religion altogether. Living in the Lap of the Goddess introduces the reader to this important option, and the infinite variety that is the feminist spirituality movement. Memorable characters are met in the pages of this book, and novel theories on gender, deity, human civilization, and the universe are encountered. Throughout, the key question guiding this venture into the alternative religious world is this: Who are these women, and why are they doing what they do, saying what they say, thinking what they think? The answers, like the participants themselves, are manifold and intriguing."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Saving Jesus from Those Who Are Right: Rethinking What it Means to be Christian by Carter Heyward

In this theological resource for spiritual transformation and social change, Carter Heyward rethinks the figure and import of Jesus for church, academy, and society.

Rather than focus on the endlessly variable pictures of Jesus in contemporary biblical scholarship, and in radical opposition to the Jesus of the "Christian Right," Heyward presents "Jesus as our brother, infused with a sacred power and passion for embodying right (mutual) relation, and ourselves with him in this commitment." She goes on to "explore, concretely, how we might live this way."Wonderfully clear-sighted, this brief, faithful, and intelligent Christology offers reconstructions of incarnation, atonement, evil, suffering, and fear. It also sheds light on the significance of Jesus for ecological, racial, economic, and gender justice. Heyward's book envisions "a mighty counter-cultural force," which she names christic power, that can help save American culture from its greed and domination and save the figure of Jesus from culture-generated distortions. In short, Heyward's book will help people come to terms with the life-changing implications of Jesus' person and ethic. To a generation in search of the transforming potential of Christian commitment, Heyward's most important work offers both spiritual depth and unwavering commitment to the human good.

The Heart of Christianity, by Marcus J. Borg

In The Heart of Christianity, world-renowned Jesus scholar and author of the bestseller Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time argues that the essential ingredients of a Christian life—faith, being born again, the kingdom of God, the gospel of love—are as vitally important today as they have always been, even during this time of conflict and change in the church.

Borg wants to show us, as today’s thinking Christians, how to discover a life of faith by reconceptualizing familiar beliefs. Being born again, for example, has nothing to do with fundamentalism, but is a call to radical personal transformation. Talking about the kingdom of God does not mean that you are fighting against secularism, but that you have committed your life to the divine values of justice and love. And living the true Christian way is essentially about opening one’s heart—to God, and to others. Above all else, Borg believes with passion and conviction that living the Christian life still makes sense.

Sexism and God-Talk, by Rosemary Radford Ruther

How did a religion whose founding proponents advocated a shocking disregard of earthly ties come to extol the virtues of the "traditional" family? In this richly textured history of the relationship between Christianity and the family Rosemary Radford Ruether traces the development of these centerpieces of modern life to reveal the misconceptions at the heart of the "family values" debate.

The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner

A major new work by a leading historian and pioneer in women's studies, The Creation of Patriarchy is a radical reconceptualization of Western civilization that makes gender central to its analysis. Gerda Lerner argues that male dominance over women is not "natural" or biological, but the product of an historical development begun in the second millennium BC in the Ancient Near East. As patriarchy as a system of organizing society was established historically, she contends, it can also be ended by the historical process.

Focusing on the contradiction between women's central role in creating society and their marginality in the meaning-giving process of definition and interpretation, Lerner explores such fascinating questions as: What can account for women's exclusion from the historical process? What could explain the long delay - more than 3,500 years - in women's coming to consciousness of their own subordinate position? 

She goes back to the cultures of the earliest known civilizations - those of the ancient Near East - to discover the origins of the major gender metaphors of Western civilization. Using historical, literary, archaeological, and artistic evidence, she then traces the development of these ideas, symbols, and metaphors and their incorporation into Western civilization as the basis of patriarchal gender relations.

Mary Magdalene – Beyond the Myth, by Esther De Boer

Return of the Great Goddess, by Burleigh Muten

From Sappho to Judy Chicago, from the late Egyptian era to Audrey Flack, this anthology of fine art reproductions and literary excerpts proclaims the strength and majesty of the feminine experience. The images and messages, based on the award-winning Return of the Goddess Engagement Calendars, remind women of their spiritual heritage, their innate wisdom, the integrity of the female body and its rites of passage, and the growing global community of women who celebrate the return of the feminine deity. 80 illustrations, 58 in color.

When God Was A Woman, by Merlin Stone

Here, archaeologically documented is the story of the religion of the Goddess. Known by many names, she reigned supreme in the Near and Middle East. How did the change in womens roles come about? By documenting the wholesale rewriting of myth and religious dogmans, Stone details an ancient conspiracy that laid the foundation for one of cultures greatest shams--the legend of Adam and fallen Eve.

Stone is IBM Professor of Marketing at SEMS and a leading expert on direct and relationship marketing, customer care, customer loyalty and customer information systems. He is a founder member of the Institute of Direct Marketing, a co-editor of the Journal of Financial Services Marketing and on the editorial advisory boards of the Journal of Database Marketing and the Journal of Interactive Marketing.

Beads of Faith, by Susannah Marriot and Gray Henry

The practice of the rosary in various faiths is thoroughly covered in this stunning book and its accompanying DVD. For background, the commentary explains that the word "bead" has an interfaith origin: it comes from both the Sanskrit "Buddh," which refers to self-realization (the Buddha is the "Enlightened One"); and it also derives from the Saxon verb "bidden," meaning to pray. The rosaries pictured are made from such materials as rose petals, chunks of Tibetan amber, exquisitely carved Italian coral, and silken Turkish tassels. One simple mantra or prayer for each faith is also presented, as is a prize-winning DVD that takes the viewer into various world cultures where the recitation and method can be heard and seen.

Gray Henry is a lecturer in world religions, directs two academic publishing houses—Fons Vitae and Quinta Essentia—and is the cofounder and trustee of the Islamic Texts Society in Cambridge, UK. She is the author of Understanding Islam and the Muslims. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky. Susannah Marriott is the author of The Good Karma Guide. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Church in the Round, Feminist Interpretation of the Church, by Letty Russell

Ideas of the Christian church are changing, and Letty Russell envisions its future as partnership and sharing for all members around a common table of hospitality. Russell draws on her pastorate in Harlem, her classes in theology, and many ecumenical conversations to help the newly emerging church face the challenges of liberation for all people.

The Creation of the Feminist Consciousness by Gerda Lerner

A pioneer in women's studies and long-term activist for women's issues, and a past president of the Organization of American Historians, Gerda Lerner is one of the founders and foremost scholars of Women's History. The Creation of Patriarchy, the first book in her two-volume magnum opus Women and History (1986) received wide review attention and much acclaim, winning the prestigious Joan Kelly Prize of the American Historical Association for the best work on Women's History that year. Ms hailed the book for providing a grand historical framework that was impossible even to imagine before the enlightenment about women's place in the world provided by her earlier work and that of other feminist scholars. New Directions for Women said it may well be the most important work in feminist theory to appear in our generation.
Patriarchy traced the development of the ideas, symbols, and metaphors by which men institutionalized their domination of women. Now, in The Creation of Feminist Consciousness, the eagerly awaited concluding volume of Women and History, Lerner documents the twelve-hundred-year struggle of women to free their minds from patriarchal thought, to create Women's History, and to achieve a feminist consciousness. In a richly documented narrative filled with inspiring portraits of women, Lerner ranges from the Middle Ages to the late 19th century, tracing several important ways by which women strove for autonomy and equality. One of the most remarkable sections examines over twelve hundred years of feminist Bible criticism. Since objections to women's thinking, teaching, and speaking in public were based on biblical authority--most notably, passages from Genesis and the writings of St. Paul--women returned again and again to these texts, in an attempt to subvert patriarchal dominance and establish their equality with men. This survey of biblical criticism allows Lerner to illustrate her most important insight--the discontinuity of women's history. She describes how women's history was not passed on from generation to generation, forcing women in effect to reinvent the wheel over and over again. In a series of fascinating portraits of individual women who resisted patriarchal indoctrination, Lerner discusses women mystics such as Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich and later Protestant mystics, and brings to life the many women of great literary talent, from Christine de Pisan to Louise Labe to Emily Dickinson, who simply bypassed patriarchal thought and created alternate worlds for themselves.
Documenting the 1,200 year struggle of women to free their minds from patriarchal thought, create a women's history, and achieve a feminist consciousness, this brilliant work charts new ground for feminist theory, the history of ideas, and the development of women's place in our intellectual tradition.

The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, by Leonard Shlain

This groundbreaking book proposes that the rise of alphabetic literacy reconfigured the human brain and brought about profound changes in history, religion, and gender relations. Making remarkable connections across brain function, myth, and anthropology, Dr. Shlain shows why pre-literate cultures were principally informed by holistic, right-brain modes that venerated the Goddess, images, and feminine values. Writing drove cultures toward linear left-brain thinking and this shift upset the balance between men and women, initiating the decline of the feminine and ushering in patriarchal rule. Examining the cultures of the Israelites, Greeks, Christians, and Muslims, Shlain reinterprets ancient myths and parables in light of his theory. Provocative and inspiring, this book is a paradigm-shattering work that will transform your view of history and the mind.

She Who Changes, Re-Imagining the Divine in the World, by Carol Christ

Can we re-imagine divine power as deeply related to the changing world? Can we re-imagine the creation of the world as an ongoing process of co-creation in which every individual from particles of atoms to human beings plays a part? Can we re-imagine Goddess/God as the most relational of all relational beings? Can we re-imagine the world as the body of Goddess/God? If we can, then we can understand the deeper meaning of female images of divine power, including Goddess, God-She, Sophia, and Shekhina. Many traditional understandings of divine power begin with thinly disguised rejections of the female body and connection to the natural world. Women theologians from Jewish, Christian, Goddess, and other traditions are re-imagining divine and human power as embodied, embedded in a changing world, and deeply related to all beings in the web of life. Drawing on the work of process philosopher Charles Hartshorne - whose insights deserve a wider hearing - Carol P. Christ offers intellectual foundations for deeply held feelings about the meanings of female images of divine power. Her gift is the ability to make complex ideas seem simple and radically new ideas seem familiar. This book is addressed to everyone who has ever wondered about the implications of re-imagining God as female.

In Search of the Christa-Sophia, by Jann Aldredge-Clanton

In Search of the Christ-Sophia presents powerful biblical and theological support for a Divine Feminine image buried in Christianity. The popularity of The Da Vinci Code demonstrates the widespread hunger for the lost Sacred Feminine. This book resurrects Sophia (Wisdom) and connects Her to Jesus Christ. Aldredge-Clanton combines theological scholarship with pastoral sensitivity to demonstrate that a christology inclusive of both female and male is vital to liberation and equality. She uncovers the New Testament links between Christ and Wisdom (Sophia), a feminine symbol of Deity in the Hebrew Scriptures. She applies the theology of Christ-Sophia to contemporary spirituality, social justice ministry, and the restructuring of the Christian community. This book also contains services, prayers, litanies, reflections, and songs that can be used for personal meditation or communal worship.With a clear and concise style accessible to general readers and theology students, In Search of the Christ-Sophia challenges individuals and churches to bring liberation through the inclusion of the Divine Feminine.