The Secret Spiritual History of Western Feminism
In this essay, I challenge the widely-held belief that Western feminism has been primarily a secular phenomenon. I contend that spiritual practices and mystical experiences played a key role in the development of Western feminism. My focus in this post is primarily on U.S. feminism, given that this is the arena I know the most about.
Before discussing this “secret spiritual history,” I note the oppressive role that religion has played in women’s lives.
Religion, Patriarchy, and Leadership
Since the beginning of patriarchy, religious ideologies have played a key role in women’s subordination. If the Ultimate Leader is understood to be male, how unsurprising that both women and men have internalized the belief that men are more suited to leadership. This linkage between gender and spiritual leadership has been made explicit within some traditions; Roman Catholics, for example, have argued that women cannot be priests “because the priest is supposed to image Christ,” who is male (as noted by feminist Catholic priest Victoria Rue here).[1] Carol Christ, one of the founders of the women’s spirituality movement, has argued that religions focused solely on a male god create justifications for male dominance and “keep women in a state of psychological dependence on men and male authority.”[2] Whether or not we reject these male-centered religious traditions as adults, we have to recognize the impact this early conditioning has on our psyches and on how we view women’s capacities.
Even Buddhism, without a supreme male god, has perpetuated patriarchal leadership. The Buddha is said to have initially denied women entrance into monastic life, and some Buddhist teachings assert that women have to be reborn as men before they can achieve enlightenment. The rules for monks and nuns in traditional Buddhist orders specify that even the highest-ranking nun is of lower status than the lowest-ranking monk. (So many Western women are drawn to Buddhism as an antidote to the monotheistic patriarchy of Judaism and Christianity, so I think it’s necessary for such women to be aware of just how patriarchal Buddhism’s history has been).
In Hinduism, both gods and goddesses are widely worshipped, yet the culture remains profoundly patriarchal. Powerful goddesses remain as reminders of pre-patriarchal traditions, yet they have come under male control. In some goddess-worshipping sects of India, only men are allowed to be Her disciples – challenging the Western assumption that goddesses are the purview of women. Meanwhile, consort goddesses are widely worshipped by men and women, yet are depicted as subservient to their husbands. Girls and women are encouraged to emulate these self-sacrificing goddesses.
There is evidence that there was a time when goddesses reigned supreme in cultures throughout the world, and that women were revered as priestesses and leaders.[3] Motherhood was especially venerated.
According to historian Gerda Lerner, patriarchy evolved in stages, beginning with men’s exploitation of women’s sexuality and reproductive abilities, continuing with the development of class-based social divisions, and culminating with the “dethroning” of the Goddess. In earlier stages of Western patriarchy, powerful goddesses continued to be worshipped even as women became socially and politically subordinate. Eventually, however, male monotheism took over and women’s connection to Divine power was severed. Ultimately, according to Lerner, the “symbolic devaluing of women in relation to the divine becomes one of the founding metaphors of Western civilization.”[4] Although Lerner focuses on Western societies, much of her argument can, in my view, be applied to Eastern cultures, too. (In the latter case, goddesses were not eradicated but were domesticated.) Many Indigenous cultures around the world have continued to venerate both female deities and women leaders. But Indigenous societies across the globe have been colonized and oppressed, and their leaders are struggling for a voice in a world dominated by patriarchal values.
The Secret Spiritual History of Feminism
As noted above, religion has been a key part of women’s subordination. On the other hand, women’s spiritual experiences – their direct connection with the Divine, however that is understood – have played a powerful role in bolstering women’s ability to resist patriarchal values. When working on my dissertation about 15 years ago, I found numerous historical examples of women whose feminist activism was inspired by their spirituality. Because I had never been taught of this in my secular women’s studies programs - and did not see this discussed in most feminist texts – I came to consider this the “secret spiritual history of feminism."
For instance, in The Creation of Feminist Consciousness (her sequel to The Creation of Patriarchy) Gerda Lerner locates the emergence of “feminist consciousness” in women mystics. According to Lerner, female mystics such as Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) and Julian of Norwich (c.1342 – c. 1413) derived an authority to speak from their mystical experiences and visions. Other women found authority through smaller Christian groups, such as the Cathars and Beguines, that supported women’s equality with men. Although the female mystics may not have conformed to contemporary notions of feminism, they nevertheless broke new ground for women by claiming the right to speak and to teach. While tradition and religion “inculcated in women a deep sense of mental inferiority,”[5] mystical revelation provided “an alternative mode of thought to patriarchal thinking.”[6] For Lerner, the efforts of religious women to assert spiritual authority prefigured women’s struggles for political authority.
Moving to a different historical era, Ann Braude’s Radical Spirits charts the co-emergence of Spiritualism and feminism among mid-19th century American women. As a new religious movement that stressed each individual’s connection to the divine and supernatural realms, “Spiritualism formed a major – if not the major – vehicle for the spread of women’s rights ideas in mid-century America.”[7] The belief that women’s relationship to the divine need not be mediated nor sanctioned by male-dominated churches gave women a deep sense of personal agency. Moreover, trance states freed female mediums’ psyches from societal constraints.
Joycelyn Moody’s study of the autobiographies of six African-American “holy women” of the 19th century offers another perspective on the connection between spiritual expression and political authority. Although the women she examines drew from a more traditional theology than their Spiritualist counterparts, they were part of the Black tradition of re-interpreting Christianity as a liberatory force. In their narratives, Black holy women speak to being called by the Divine to “prick the nation’s conscience.”[8] Arguing against slaveowners’ conceit in disregarding God’s design, these women exercised both spiritual and political authority. Through their religious work, Black holy women found avenues in which they could command respect and exercise agency.
Quaker women, too, played an important role in first-wave feminism, and comprised the majority of delegates at the historic Seneca Falls Convention Unlike more dominant forms of Christianity that relied upon religious authorities, Quaker philosophy stressed an individual’s connection to their own inner voice and conscience. Leaders of the Convention were thus guided by spiritual inspiration that came from within. Helen LaKelly Hunt highlights part of the declaration made by these women:
The time has come for woman to move in that sphere which Providence has assigned her, and no longer remain satisfied with the circumscribed limits with which corrupt custom and a perverse application of the Scripture have encircled her.[9]
Hunt points out that these feminists differentiated between their personal religious experience and felt sense of equality, on the one hand, and an oppressive institutionalized church on the other. Likewise, Leigh Eric Schmidt has argued, “to spiritualize (and de-institutionalize) religion, to embrace the liberal notion that religion was chiefly a matter of the individual in solitude, was for many first-wave feminists and their allies an important move.”[10]
Hunt also notes that mystical experience was the transformative event that turned an enslaved woman named “Belle” into Sojourner Truth, a preacher and abolitionist who has become a feminist historical icon. During this mystical experience,
Belle realized that God was everywhere in everything. ‘There was no place where God was not,’ she proclaimed . . . This realization strengthened Belle’s inner voice. What began as a whispered prayer to God became a crystallized understanding that she and her children deserved to be free . . . . She asked God for a new name, and He gave her “Sojourner Truth.”[11]
Years later, another “bell” – bell hooks – had similar experiences. In fact, hooks explains that it was early experiences of religious ecstasy within the Black church that politicized her: “it was those mystical experiences that enabled me to recognize that the Beloved offers us a realm of being and spiritual experience that transcends the law, that is beyond the authority of man."[12] Although hooks later left the Church due to its sexism, her engagement with spirituality only deepened over time, as she discusses in “A Life in the Spirit: Reflections on Faith and Feminism.” [13]
The feminist movement would not be where it is today were it not for women’s religious questioning, mystical yearnings, and embodied spiritual experiences. A bias toward a soulless, materialist view of the world has obscured the spiritual history of our feminist foremothers. For many of these women, it was direct divine experience - not religious doctrine - that shaped their activism. In honor of Women’s History Month, I invite us to reclaim these narratives and learn from the spiritually radical voices of women.
To learn more about this topic, check out my chapter “Re-Enchanting Feminism: Challenging Religious and Secular Patriarchies,” in the book Postsecular Feminisms: Religion and Gender in Transnational Context. [14]
Sources:
[1] Victoria Rue is a university professor, a theatre writer/director, and a lesbian-feminist Roman Catholic priest. You can learn more about her here: http://www.victoriarue.com.
[2] Carol P. Christ, “Why Women Need the Goddess: Phenomenological, Psychological and Political Reflections,” in Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion, eds. Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow (San Francisco:HarperSanFrancisco, 2007) 273–86.
[3] Anne Key and Candace Kant, Candace. Stepping into Ourselves: An Anthology of Writings on Priestesses (Albuquerque: Goddess Ink Limited, 2014).
[4] Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy, 10.
[5] Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy, vol. 1. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986) 65.
[6] Gerda Lerner. 1993. The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-Seventy, vol. 2. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993) 77.
[7] Ann Braude, Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 57.
[8] Joycelyn Moody, Sentimental Confessions: Spiritual Narratives of Nineteenth-Century African American Women (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001) xii.
[9] Helen L. Hunt, Faith and Feminism: A Holy Alliance (New York: Atria Books, 2004) 9.
[10] Leigh Eric Schmidt, Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005) 91.
[11] Helen L. Hunt, Faith and Feminism: A Holy Alliance (New York: Atria Books, 2004) 57-59.
[12] bell hooks, “A Life in the Spirit: Reflections on Faith and Politics” (ReVision, 15(3), Winter, 1993) 100.
[13] Ibid, 101.
[14] Alka Arora, “Re-Enchanting Feminism: Challenging Religious and Secular Patriarchies,” in Postsecular Feminisms: Religion and Gender in Transnational Context, ed. Nandini Deo (Oxford: Bloomsbury Press, 2018) 32-51.
