'Goddess' Worship Troubles Churches

by Frances Meeker                                                                                Vol. VII, No. 2, February 1994

[Condensed from the Nashville Banner of 17 January 1994, p. B-1.]

"Our mother Sophia, we are women in your image;

With the milk of our breasts we suckle the children;

With the knowledge of our hearts we feed humanity.

Sophia, Creator God, let you milk and honey flow. "

– Communion blessing at women's theological conference in Minneapolis, Minn.

Reports of goddess worship at an international ecumenical meeting of church women are being met with shock and disbelief by local women church leaders of the United Methodist and Presbyterian Church U.S.A. denominations.

However, the meeting in November in Minneapolis, Minn., where the worship included prayers to the goddess Sophia as "our maker" and "creator," drew nearly half of its participants from United Methodist and Presbyterian women.

The conference, called "REimagining," was sponsored by Minnesota ecumenical groups and attended by about 2,200 participants, including 83 men, from 49 states and 27 countries. The conference marked the midpoint of "Ecumenical Decade – Churches in Solidarity with Women," initiated by the World Council of Churches.

The Presbyterian Church U.S.A. contributed $66,000 from its Bicentennial Fund to help finance it. Other funding agencies listed in the official conference program included agencies of the United Methodist Church, entities of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, American Baptist Churches, Sisters of Mercy, Sisters of St. Joseph, United Church of Christ, and Church Women United.

Some who attended the meeting said it focussed on the growing interest in the goddess Sophia as a manifestation of divinity that is underway among feminist theologians and some female churchgoers.

One of the liturgies repeated during the worship read in part:

Our maker Sophia, we are women in your image ...

With the hot blood of our wombs we give form to new life ...

With nectar between our thighs we invite a lover, we birth a child;

With our warm body fluids we remind the world of its pleasures and sensations ...

We celebrate the sweat that pours from us during our labors. "

Earlier, retired United Methodist Bishop Earl Hunt, in an address to the denomination's Congress on Evangelism, referred to worship by Christians of the goddess Sophia as a heresy that "staggers the religious mind" and "must be eradicated from Christian thinking now."

Critics of the conference, including the conservative United Methodist Caucus, the Wilmore, KY-based Good News, say they are disturbed by activities at the meeting, which they regard as "goddess worship" and "heresy."

They objected to:

– A spontaneous "celebration" led by lesbian and bisexual women.

– Self-avowed lesbians as speakers.

– Liturgies using sexual images to express the divine.

– The remarks of Christina Smith, an ordained United Church of Christ minister, who rejected the atonement doctrine, the belief that God and humanity are reconciled through Jesus' sacrifice on the cross.

– A speaker who said Jesus was guilty of violence against women and what "we really need is a promised land where women will be free to love other women."

[Editorial Comment: The above is a dramatic demonstration of what happens when an individual, a group, or a denomination begins to substitute human judgment for the authority of God's Word. Your attention is called to the participation of the American Baptists because it is this denomination with which the BGAV voted last November to explore establishing a relationship.]