Changing of The Gods: Feminism and the End of Traditional Religions [Paperback]

Naomi Goldenberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 31, 1980

Feminism and the End of Traditional Religions

Editorial Reviews

Review

Goldenberg, a psychologist of religion and also a feminist theologian . . . envisions directions in the next decade that will transform authority from its current patriarchal personification. . . . Hers is a challenging, controversial view of the stirrings of religious feminism. —Publishers Weekly

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Press (March 31, 1980)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807011118
• ISBN-13: 978-0807011119
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.4 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #275,011 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Strong, Utopian, Feminist Classic in Religious Studies, March 16, 2005

By 

Christopher W. Chase "Christopher W. Chase" (East Lansing, MI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Changing of the gods: Feminism and the end of traditional religions (Hardcover)

Naomi Goldenberg's 1979 Beacon volume, published in the same year as "The Spiral Dance" and "Drawing Down The Moon", is a strong, powerful manifesto for feminist power in the religious realm. "Changing of the Gods"is concerned to demonstrate that as more and more feminists become involved with religion, whether in the dominant Western fields of Judaism and Christianity, or in feminist witchcraft, there presence and power would irrevocably change the nature of religion, overthrowing Yahweh and Christ. Yet this overthrow for Goldenberg is not a *complete* destruction, but rather allows for their eventual return, once they have learned their place alongside female divinity.

It is important to point out that Goldenberg also makes a strong case against the ability of feminists to reform, rather than destroy, Judaism and Christianity. For she sees, along with Mary Daly and others, an irreducible elements of sexism in the nature of Christ as male, or in the Torah and Talmud in Judaism. While somewhat respectful, perhaps her harshest criticism is reserved for reform feminists, whom she calls "naive" and "deluded." Rather, she re-reads and enlists Freud as exposing the essential father-son relationships at the heart of Judaism and Christianity in "Totem and Taboo", as well as "Moses and Monotheism." While sympathetic to Carl Jung, she openly takes him to task for his racism and essentialization of the "feminine."

Interestingly, she extends the same argumentation against valorizing alleged "ancient matriarchal societies," lest those same models limit futures for women. But she does encourage dis-covering of experience over text and the formation of psychic mysticisms based on women's experiences as religiously important, and in turn this imgined "psychological polytheism" must be brought into tangibility--the imagination (including dreams), as so often it is in the Western esoteric tradition, must be seen as an organ of perception, rather than deception.

Also, Goldenberg's notion of religion deserves clarification--it is not that she sees herself prophesizing literal death of powerful deities, rather she is a psychological reductionist--religion is a projection of psychology. But for her, this is no less powerful and meaningful for existing in the mind only, and so her work turns toward those recovering and re-visioning religion internally, individually, so that people begin to share the creative process of poesis rather than sharing the same myths and symbols. In this she points to the feminist thealogy and practice of witchcraft, as articulated by Starhawk and Z Budapest, as prophetic religion in action. Goldenberg's specifc contribution is to outline 12 phenomenological qualities of feminist witchcraft that challenge scholars and others who seek to examine it.

in the end, these again are related to larger political concerns--men's distance from acts of child-rearing, feeding, and other early somatic aspects of parenting inculcate a distance and transcendence of the world that results ultimately in actions such as polluting, excessive logging, and environmental destruction.

Goldenberg's work is a classic in the field, and stands as an early, unapologetic work delineating contours and areas of concern with feminist experience, thealogies, and religion, without avoiding conflict and confrontation with other feminists over these same issues.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars paradigm shift, October 22, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Changing of The Gods: Feminism and the End of Traditional Religions (Paperback)

This book will forever change the way women from the Christian tradition understand their relationship to the divine and the institutional church. In clear and succinct arguments, the author demonstrates why ameliorating strategies such as changing gender-biased language and opening the ordained priesthood to women will not change the nature of a church that has developed along patriarchal and misogynist lines rather than following the example of Jesus in his teaching concerning the equality of men and women in the eyes of God.

5.0 out of 5 stars AN EARLY BOOK ABOUT THE RISING OF "GODDESS/WITCHCRAFT" RELIGIONS, July 28, 2011

By 

Steven H. Propp (Sacramento, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Changing of The Gods: Feminism and the End of Traditional Religions (Paperback)

Naomi Goldenberg is professor at the Department of Classics and Religious Studies of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ottawa. She is also the author of Returning Words to Flesh: Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Resurrection of the Body and End of God: Important Directions for a Feminist Critique of Religion in the Works of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.

Here are some quotations from this 1979 book:

"The feminist movement in Western culture is engaged in the slow execution of Christ and Yahweh. Yet very few of the women and men now working for sexual equality within Christianity and Judaism realize the extent of their heresy." (Pg. 4)

"(S)ince introspection does follow the death of fathers, then the death of father-gods could mean the onset of religious forms which emphasize awareness of oneself and tend to understand gods and goddesses as inner psychic forces." (Pg. 41)

"However, even though Catholicism has myth and mystery, it is a dying religion." (Pg. 49)

"However, as an endpoint, androgyny appears insubstantial---veiled in heavenly fluff---a rather important label for two sexes alive in this world." (Pg. 81)

"My own respect for feminist witchcraft has grown over a two-year period of association with contemporary witches. I have come to understand that modern witches are using religion and ritual as psychological tools to build individual strengths. They practice a religion that places divinity or supernatural power within the person. In a very practical sense they have turned religion into psychology." (Pg. 89)

"It seems highly likely that the West is on the brink of developing a new mysticism---post-Christian, post-Judaic. It will most probably be a type of mysticism which emphasizes the continual observation of psychic imagery." (Pg. 120)

"It is difficult to say more about the mysticism we will know in the new age of new gods. Only one thing seems certain---it will be a mysticism with guts!" (Pg. 127)