Archive: Goddess litany at UM seminary chapel ignites controversy

At United Methodism’s Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary (GETS) in Evanston, Illinois, spring term ended on a controversial note when a May 4 chapel service included a litany offering questions and prayers to more than a dozen ancient goddesses.

The litany, “A Psalm in Search of the Goddess” was taken from Miriam Therese Winter’s Women Wisdom, and followed this pattern:

Caller: Who are You, O Holy One? How have Your daughters named You?

Voice: I am Nut of the sky, of Egypt, Goddess of Affection.

People: Nut, we call upon Your name and long for Your affection.

Caller: Who are You, O Holy One? How have Your daughters named You?

Voice: I am Anath-Astarte, and Lady Asherah of the Sea from the biblical land of Canaan.

People: Anath and Astarte, forgive us, for all we have done to You.

The litany offered such interactive prayers to a number of goddesses including a “Prehistoric Goddess”; “Ishtar and Innanna” from the ancient Near East; “Sophia”; “Isis” of Egypt, eye of Re the sun god; “Hathor”; “Cybele”; “Hera and Athene, Aphrodite and Artemis, Demeter and Persephone—the goddesses of Greece”; “Anath and Astarte and Lady Asherah” mentioned above; and “Gaia,” Earth Mother.

Five days after the service, Garrett faculty member, Dr. Robert Jewett, responded to the chapel by circulating a statement in which he gave historical data about violent and perverse rituals and activities surrounding the worship of goddesses such as Cybele, Ishtar, Anath, and Lady Asherah.

“If worship is the acknowledgment and adoration of what faith communities hold to be supreme,” he wrote, “then praying to such deities should be repudiated as a fundamental contradiction of Christian faith.” He reminded the seminary community that if it wanted to identify a community that “celebrated a deity who had overcome social distinctions between males and females, Greeks and Jews, slaves and free, then look to some branches of the early Christian church, not at the Greco-Roman mystery religions celebrating Cybele or Isis.” Those ancient cultures hold “no promise of liberation for either females or males,” he wrote.

While affirming “the appropriateness of feminine metaphors for God,” Professor Jewett cautioned, “but this does not legitimate praying to false deities. … To revive the adoration of brutal deities in the name of liberation is not only an unfortunate example of historical amnesia; it is also a violation of some of the deepest commitments of Garrett-Evangelical and of the faith we are called to advance.”

Dr. Rosemary Radford Ruether, a faculty member and the chapel speaker at the May 4 chapel, responded to Dr. Jewett’s paper by giving her own views on the controversy. The Jewett and Ruether papers were subsequently copied and placed in the seminary’s Administration Building for general distribution.

In her response, Professor Ruether, who had not seen the litany prior to the service, acknowledged “the planning of the service was poorly done. Elements of the service were thrown together at the last minute in a way that made an incoherent whole.”

She continued: “While I think the use of the Psalm in the May 4 liturgy was a mistake in terms of audience and communication strategy, it is, to my mind, not theologically objectionable” (emphasis in original).

Dr. Ruether went on to explain, “Basically the Psalm [litany] recognizes that true glimpses of the divine have been found in the many female names for deity that have been found in Jewish tradition, in Christianity and in the many religions of the ancient world that have named the divine as female. As we move beyond a Christian parochial exclusivism to including some recognition of world religions, we at GETS cannot continue to assume that only true insights into the divine are found in our Biblical and Christian tradition, while other religions enshrine only idols and demons which teach evil views and practices unworthy of God” (emphasis in original).

Responding to Dr. Jewett’s citing of the violence and war associated with the goddesses named, Dr. Ruether asked, “Can we ignore the enormous legacy of war and violence in Hebrew Scripture and Christianity?” She said, further, “In short, I think we need to get beyond our Christian patterns of religious bigotry in which we see only horror and evil in other religions, while ignoring their good qualities, and refer only to the kindly qualities in our religion, while ignoring its record of violence and injustice.”

On May 18, Professor Barbara Troxell and Dean of the Chapel Ruth Duck called a student forum at which more than 50-60 students and faculty were present for discussion. The purpose was to prayerfully seek discernment and understanding, not to “vilify” or “find fault.”

On May 30, Garrett-Evangelical President Neal F. Fisher issued a statement summarizing how the entire matter had been handled. His statement cited portions of the seminary’s chapel policy, which says in part: “Scripture, which provides the common language and narrative of the church in all its diversity, is central to worship at Garrett-Evangelical.” The guidelines encourage worship planners to use “inclusive language in referring to God, so that exclusive gender reference is avoided.” The guidelines also say, “Always, faithfulness to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ should be sought.”

Fisher also described the seminary’s policy that consultation be held between the student conducting chapel and a faculty member, prior to preparing the outline for worship. “That consultation did not take place in this case,” he said.

Fisher has expressed to many UM leaders and to Good News that the “litany introduced into our seminary chapel on May 4 was not one that I or my faculty colleagues would be willing to defend. Our stated aim is to ‘gather to praise God, to engage the scripture witness to God in Christ, and to encourage one another to live in faith.’ In my view we clearly failed on all counts in this litany. I found it theologically objectionable and completely out of place in our chapel.”

Fisher continued: “As an educational institution, we try to acknowledge a mistake when we make one and to learn from it. I think we have all learned from this incident, and we have done it in a manner that honors fellow member of the Body of Christ and not one that demeans them.”