Why do men need the goddess

As for the language of church services, other British denominations have gone ahead of the Church of England into inclusivity.

The Methodist Church introduced a new service book in which uses both male and female language for God, "our Father and our Mother". The United Reformed Church agreed in to use inclusive language in all its publications and last year its General Assembly called on all URC congregations to use "inclusive and expansive language and imagery in worship". The question is not one to trouble polytheistic religions, with their male and female gods.

It has had an impact on some parts of Judaism though. In , Gates of Repentance, the High Holy Day prayer book of Reform Judaism, was published, calling God "sovereign" instead of "king", and "source" or "parent" instead of father. There has been no comparable movement in Islam, which is less open to this kind of reinterpretation. Christianity and Judaism, however, seem to be in the process of a major continuing realignment. Research indicates that Pagans are predominantly educated, middle-class Caucasians with European heritages and I was curious if the profile of these practitioners was different.

Secondly, there were a number of questions posed to the participants about the meaning of goddesses both in their spiritual practices and in their quotidian lives. Could you name them? For example, is it usually during ritual or in everyday life? If so, in what ways?

Do you view Men and Women has being essentially different? If so, can you tell me the forms that this crisis takes? Do you think that men still have to change their attitudes and behaviours in order to create better societies? Given that this was merely a pilot study, I adopted a simple probability sample built around a snowballing strategy. During the first half of [39] , the internet link to the questionnaire was sent to a number of Pagan journals, magazines, e-lists and organizations internationally requesting for participants and that the link to the questionnaire be forwarded to other potential participants.

Given this sampling stratagem, I cannot claim that the research is in any sense representative of male Goddess spiritualists, nor can I make any estimation of its incidence. However, in the following sections some of the headline findings will be discussed and theorized.

The survey was open for a six month window and yielded respondents. Research consistently suggests that Pagans have overrepresentations of educated middle-class professionals. Eighty-six per cent of participants were educated to at least undergraduate degree level, with 31 per cent possessing postgraduate qualifications including 6 per cent possessing doctorates.

In two final respects the composition of the MGM differed from the demographics of mainstream Paganisms. In terms of sexual orientation, whilst gay men are overrepresented within Paganisms, the overrepresentation was much greater within the MGM. Forty-nine per cent of respondents identified as heterosexual, 45 per cent as homosexual and 6 per cent as bisexual.

Likewise, in terms of age, there was a divergence from mainstream Paganisms with a greater representation of younger men, particularly young gay men.

Whilst Pagans as a whole are predominantly drawn from the generation of baby boomers being born between and , the age profile of my participants was as follows:. For gay respondents, 67 per cent of practitioners were aged 39 or below. In terms of constructions of gender, performance of masculinity, spiritual practice and orientation to goddesses, initial content analyses demonstrate that there do not appear to be significant differences between gay and straight practitioners.

In sum, the demography of the MGM appears to be broadly in line with mainstream Paganisms. Simultaneous affiliations to a variety of goddesses in different pantheons were common to a majority of respondents. Despite this, one can discern a pattern in the religious careers of respondents. A significant majority discussed childhood encounters with a female spiritual being which appeared to lead to a state of cognitive dissonance [41] in practitioners. On the one hand, it was an empowering experience which was said to catalyse later practice.

On the other, many felt both marked out as different and thus isolated and alienated by these experiences. Typically, it was only later in life, most often as young adults when respondents became aware of Contemporary Paganisms, that these dissonant cognitions diminished.

Many came to Paganisms through finding books on the subject in local libraries or bookshops. Notices in mind-body-spirit or health shops lead to involvement in local Pagan groups or to magazine subscriptions which eventually led to committed Pagan practice. Paganism gave me the same thing. These dynamics are fairly typical of the profiles of Pagans more generally.

Dennis Carpenter, for example, reviews the same research outputs by discussing the processes whereby individuals become Pagans. Most common was the centrality of feminine divinity, although the need for individual spiritual expression and the reverence for nature were also commonly emphasized by respondents. These findings chime with studies of Contemporary Paganisms more generally.

That is, goddesses universally possessed physical strength and aggression. By contrast, human culture, and patriarchy specifically, was seen as the cause of a host of spiritual, moral and ecological problems.

This is typical of mainstream Pagans, but was over-represented to a greater extent in the MGM. Secondly, this acted as a critique of normative and essentialized social constructions of gender. Whilst their practices were obviously built around sexual difference men venerating female deities , they rejected gender essentialism. Typically, masculine traits of excessive aggression and dogmatic rationalism were seen by participants as social constructions historically rooted in the marginalization of female spiritual archetypes in world religions, specifically Christianity.

This, for many practitioners, was exacerbated by the rise of modernity. This is not what men are It is modern society that has made this worse I was raised a Baptist and Christianity is to blame too God is not a male. Goddesses were almost universally seen as panentheistic. That is, they are co-extensive with the material universe, but also independent of it — a mid-point on a continuum of belief between deism and pantheism [47] This has implications for the way that respondents viewed gender difference.

As goddesses manifest a reality that is external to the material world and human bodies , but which also suffuses it, panentheism is antiessentialist. Throughout Christian history, there have been many expressions of the mothering quality of God.

The Gnostics discuss the Motherhood of God, Jesus' mother Mary has been considered an intercessor, and such people as St. Anselm of Canterbury and Julian of Norwich have called God mother. Sprunger 3. Jesus and Divine Parents. If the primary purpose of Jesus Christ's mission of Earth was to provide humans with a more complete revelation, he must be believed to have had special, authentic knowledge of God.

In the four gospels, Jesus uses the words abba father times to describe God's relationship to humans and his very nature. However, scholars disagree on the meaning of abba during Jesus' lifetime and the exact use of the cognate pater in the first century C. So why did Jesus not call God mother? For one thing, the patriarchal society he lived in would probably not have accepted or understood God in that way. Judaism had long been trying to eradicate the influence of fertility and goddess cults of the Levant geographical region east of the Mediterranean.

So, Jesus used the language of his day to communicate to the patriarchal society he lived in. Despite the language he used, Jesus treated women as equals to men and helped them find spiritual freedom from the patriarchy they lived in.

Jesus did use maternal language to describe divine ministry: "O Jerusalem. How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! Also, biblically, Christ's maleness never constitutes any spiritual significance. Groothuis 5 If God were essentially male, then Christ would also need to physically be male as an incarnation of God's metaphysical maleness. From this idea, one could then conclude the male gender is divinely superior in representing God and therefore human males have authority in possessing God's gender, over that of women's.

The idea that men bear God's image more than women is part of the notion of women's divinely ordained subordination to men's spiritual superiority.

However, this idea is not consistent with the biblically supported principle of the essential spiritual equality of women with men. Groothuis 7. The Church as Mother. You cannot have God for your Father unless you have the church for your Mother.

There is no other way to enter into life unless this mother conceive us in her womb, give us birth, [and] nourish us at her breast. Peter J. While goddess worship is meaningful in areas of this predominantly Hindu country, is it a practice that empowers girls? Although its impact was not measured, the posters highlighted the contrast between deity worship and the treatment of girls and women in modern-day India, where a high female infanticide rate exists and , incidents of crimes against women were reported in An ancient tradition in India and Nepal enforces that relationship and carefully selects pre-pubescent girls as incarnations of a goddess.

But in Nepal, where goddess worship is also prevalent, she is isolated from society, taking her daily seat at the temple to be worshipped by locals as well as royalty.

Once she reaches puberty, another chosen girl replaces her. However, some NGOs find that religion is used to excuse or veil negative cultural norms. The age-old Indian devadasi practice dedicates young girls to the goddess Yellamma, who are then unable to marry and forced into prostitution.