“Are women priests necessarily pagans?” asks a reader. Yes and no.
No, of course they’re not necessarily conscious pagans. Many of the women priests I knew in the Anglican Church were just nice, good, pious Christian ladies who wanted to serve Jesus and his church. They were not all bra burning feminists, men haters or wacky eco-femi-nazis. Their theology was mainstream and a fairly orthodox version of Protestantism. In saying this, it should be noted that a survey amongst Anglican clergy did find that women priests were far more likely to hold very liberal theological positions.
But were they pagans? Were they worshipping the Mother Goddess, casting spells, mixing potions, rolling in the earth and dancing naked around campfires? No, of course not.
I said, ‘Yes and No’ because while most of the nice Anglican ladies like the ones pictured here, were not blatant card-carrying members of Wicca, they were still influenced by, and usually sympathetic to, an implicit paganism that goes along with feminism. Here are the main tenets:
1. Antipathy to patriarchy – feminists dislike the whole patriarchal system and see a male only priesthood as the last bastion of the male dominated power systems. This means they find it very hard to really like the entire Judeo-Christian story–which is inescapably patriarchal. As a result, there is a constant theme within Christian feminism that is simply un-Christian.
2. Antipathy to the ‘Sky Father’ – along with the antipathy to patriarchy goes an antipathy of the Sky Father God. They don’t like patriarchs here below or there above. Their dislike of patriarchy therefore requires a deconstruction of the ‘Sky Father God’ myth. In its place they wish to have the Earth Mother. This is simply not part of the Judeo-Christian salvation story, and it has always been an integral part of paganism.
3. Enthusiasm for Earth Religion a religious type of ecological movement goes along with feminism because of the desire for an Earth Mother religion. Intimacy with the earth and the natural forces is desired and encouraged. Reverence for the Earth Mother and a desire to tap into the Earth powers is all part of ‘Christian’ feminism. It is also an integral part of paganism.
4. Enthusiasm for Revisionist Christianity – the feminists are not content to simply be ‘lady priests’. The leaders of the movement are very active in revising the liturgy, providing revisionist Biblical interpretation and creating new canticles, ‘psalms’ and even alternative ‘gospels’ all done from a feminist perspective. What they wish to create within the historic churches is nothing less than a new form of Christianity. Unfortunately this new form of Christianity is neither new nor Christianity. It is simply old paganism dressed up.
5. Antipathy to the Traditional Family – the traditional Christian family, for the feminist, is irredeemably patriarchal. Therefore all forms of ‘alternative’ family methods are to be encouraged. Homosexual unions, lesbian unions, single mothers, communal ‘tribal’ living–all this is to be accepted and encouraged for it undermines patriarchy. We see this happening not only within Anglicanism worldwide, but within the other mainstream Protestant churches too. This is not just ‘modern immorality’ but it is part of a consistent agenda based on an anti-Christian worldview and theology.
6. Enthusiasm for ‘Reproductive Freedom’ This seems like it might be something new; something that only came along with the invention of artificial contraception. However it is not new at all. The modern feminist who does not want to be ‘barefoot and pregnant and in the kitchen’ insists that the reproductive powers she has should be controlled by her and her only. Of course, ‘reproductive freedom’ is actually code for ‘sexual freedom’. What the feminist really wants is unrestrained sexual activity. They want to have sex with whom and when and how they want it. This is not new at all, and it has always been a very major component of paganism. Unrestrained sexual activity is seen as liberating people from patriarchal control. It also helps one to transcend the patriarchal inhibitions and fuse more intimately with ‘creation.’
7. Enthusiasm for Abortion and Infanticide – what follows ‘reproductive freedom’ is the need to dispose of the results of sexual freedom blamelessly. The feminist movement has endorsed abortion on demand from the beginning. Once again, this is nothing new. The pagans routinely practiced abortion and infanticide. The infants were often offered to the pagan gods in return for prosperity and protection.
Are all women priests and all supporters of women’s ordination signed up to the seven points above? Not consciously, but if they stopped to examine their first principles and look seriously at the writings of feminist theologians and the agenda of feminist clergy they will soon realize that it is pretty difficult to be gung ho about women’s ordination and avoid all these things.
I’ve had a fair bit of experience with women priests in the Anglican Church and I can honestly say that I do not know any who would openly eschew all of the things I have outlined above. While they may not be ardent campaigners, neither are they ardent defenders of historic Christian orthodoxy.
On the other hand, every woman I’ve known who is a joyful, robust and ardent defender of the historic Christian faith wouldn’t touch any of the stuff above with a barge pole.
So does women’s ordination equal paganism? If it doesn’t now it soon will.
Fr. Dwight, you are impugning pagans here. Not ALL pagans sacrificed babies, at least not on a regular basis. I think perhaps what you meant is that the tendency was always there, lurking (more or less, depending on the circumstances or the particular brand of paganism) ominously in the background. GKC writes about it so well in “Orthodoxy” — the dreadful possibility that, if you want something badly enough, there is a horrible god who will accept your most awful sacrifice and really give it to you. That tendency is hiding in the most flowery Earth goddess tripe.But the pagans weren’t all sacrificing babies on the hour from 9 to 5 on weekdays. Just so’s we’re clear on that.
Well, Father, I think you’re overlooking the early history of the feminist movement. Susan B. Anthony and other prominent suffragists were pro-life. I won’t venture to explain the historical turn of feminism towards abortion other than to speculate that widespread contraception has something to do with it.Anyway, yes, the most joyful women I know wouldn’t have anything to do with a movement to ordain women as Catholic priests.
Yeah, your comment about feminists being pro-choice from their inception is totally off-base. The earliest feminists like Wallstonecraft etc deplored what they rightly saw as violence against women, an exploitation of women.In the past, abortion was part and parcel of the double standard which made it socially acceptable for men to have extramarital sex. Prostitutes and “kept” women were extremely vulnerable and would lose their only livelihood if they stayed pregnant.The early feminists, through Cady Stanton and Anthony, universally deplored this violence.Pro-choice ideology did not become entwined with feminism until the 20th century, when the feminist movement decided that the only way for women to succeed was to be “like men”.
Perhaps pro-choice ideology has actually been entwined with an unspoken feminism throughout history. In the past, witches were always the ones to make concoctions for woman to abort their unborn child. Early forms of contraception were various, ranging from chemical to outright strange ritual. These were all “trade secrets” among certain women. A primitive form of feminism.
Dear thesheepcat and dustthouart,I suspect that Fr. Longenecker is referring to what Christina Hoff Sommers calls the “gender feminists” who emerged from the women’s movement (like a virus) in the late 50’s to early 60’s, and subsequently hijacked the “feminist” moniker.This, in contrast to what Sommers calls the traditional, or “equity,” feminists; women whose motivation was, and continues to be, social justice.Regrettably, the vast majority of people today associate the term “feminism” with the former.
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Fr. Longenecker,I found the reference I was looking for (I almost reacted negatively to your post but realized it was probably not the post you’d promised on god-as-mother):Paragraph 239…, God’s parental tenderness can also be expressed by the image of motherhood, which emphasizes God’s immanence, the intimacy between Creator and creature. ,…, We ought therefore to recall that God transcends the human distinction between the sexes. He is neither man nor woman: he is God. He also transcends human fatherhood and motherhood, although he is their origin and standard: no one is father as God is Father.Joe Cecil, though he is far, far more liberal than you (and with whom you’d likely only sporadically agree) speaks to this in an article. I suspect that you would generally agree with this one…:http://godismom.blogspot.com/
I wondered what you’d make of this if you haven’t seen it already. Some of us are still hanging in here..http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1053502/Pictured-Lager-loving-punk-dresses-dominatrix-appointed-village-curate.htmlFantaastic !
Okay, I think I see your train of thought, Father. Thanks.
Niggle:I think you are way off base about witches and abortificiants. Not that I am defending witches, if there were any witches. Many people over the centuries have been accused of being witches, but that doesn’t mean that they were. But it IS true that people who would provide such things were often women, and not very respectable women either. That doesn’t make them witches or proto-feminists. You should not project current political or philosophical ideas on people centuries ago, that is bad history.
Gail,A woman who was expert in brewing concoctions would be called a witch, whether she was really an ‘initiate’ or not, of course. And who could blame them? Where did the brewing of such concoctions originate? Pharmaceuticals had its origins in alchemy. The very word ‘pharmaceutical’ has original meanings that included not just medicines but poisons.And well, it apparently still does include both to this day.Am I projecting – or were there merely early forms of what goes on today?One thing is sure: abortion and contraception in the past has been intimately bound with the occult, with paganism – and the secrets of these things circulated among certain women.But the feminism we know today (I refer not to the “good kind of feminism”, whatever that is) which seeks to emasculate men may simply be the outer shell that results from the huge expansion of…abortion and contraception – or contraception and abortion.Notice how the whole deal has gotten to this day through the same old “secretive” manner, but just enlarged into a kind of public consciousness that is the reverse of the past only in being accepted: IT’S A WOMAN’S BODY and so forth…
Hi Fr Dwight :-)I’m so confused about this post of yours. I come from a Protestant background, and I attended college with the original intent to become a Youth Pastor. I have never been a feminist or a pagan, but I do believe a woman can care for and minister to a group just as well as a man. I’m completely against abortion, I support male leadership, and I’ve never been into nature-worship. How does being a minister and a female relate to those things? Sure, some women may embrace these things, but should you not question that particular woman as to whether she is indeed your sister in Christ? I’d like to talk to you more about this, please.Elizabethchickonamission86@yahoo.com