A Twist of Faith - Chapter 5

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"To return to worship the goddess as sacred female is to reconnect with our own deep powers."[1]  Rosemary Reuther, The Renaissance of Christian Spirituality

"You live in an abundant universe, in which you can co-create resources by the power of thought.... Your thought will utterly control the vibrations of the light waves which are your body." [2] Barbara Marx Hubbard, Revelation

"When a woman has owned her passionate nature... her thoughts grow wild and fierce and beautiful.... She has thrown off crutch and... glimpsed the enchanted kingdom, the vast and magical realms of the Goddess within her."[3]  Marianne Williamson                                                                         

"I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst."  Jesus, speaking to the multitude." John 6:35


A new store has opened in our little suburban downtown. I first noticed it in a newspaper list of local classes. "Women's mysteries, Rituals and Initiation," it said. Then one day, coming out of Peet's Coffee shop, I noticed the sign: Phoenix Earth Store.  I stopped and prayed, then stepped into an occult fantasy world of fragrant incense, tinkling waterfalls, and mystical music as ethereal as the airbrushed pastel-colored mural on the nearest wall.  Around me hung pictures that ranged from sweet animal photographs to eerie paintings of wolf-like spirits hovering over shape-shifting shamans, spiritual mediators who could appear as wolf or man, buffalo or woman.

The shelves were lined with beautiful rocks, crystals, and candles -- the kind anyone would enjoy in a less intimidating context. More obviously occult were the wizards, crescent moons, and goddess figures. "It looks like a museum," commented another first time visitor.

Several women of all ages (no men) were browsing among the bookshelves. I joined them and scanned some of the titles: Dance of Power, A Shamanic Journey, The Circle is Sacred.... All offer tempting counterfeits to God's promises, I thought. Do these women have any idea where these paths would lead?

I asked a middle-aged woman which book she had found most helpful. She pulled down a pink-and-purple paperback titled Healing Yourself with Light: How to Connect with Angelic Healers.

"This one," she said, handing it to me.

I turned it over and read the back cover.  Apparently, this book taught "a method for bringing the healing light of the Solar Angel and the angelic healers into the physical body."[iv]

"I have a guardian angel," she volunteered.

"Does it help you?"

"Yes," she answered. "Actually I have more than one. They encourage me and keep me centered."

I wanted to ask more questions, but the woman left. I replaced the angel book, picked up Phoenix Rising by Mary Summer Rain, and opened it. It invited me to "join in engineering a new harmonious world based upon the beautiful foundation of God's Golden Light."

That "Golden Light" could not belong to the God I know. Instead it fit into a grandiose vision that would transform nations, renew its people, and make us all one -- just what God warned us would happen.

At the counter was a tray of rocks decorated with animal drawings.  "What are those?" I asked the woman. 

"Animal Energy Stones," she answered with a friendly smile.  "They bring whatever energy you need for the day.  Center yourself, then pick out one that feels good to you."

"One that feels good? They all look about the same."

"Or just close your eyes and let the stone pick you."

"How do you do that?"

"Three girls came in here yesterday. They're just fourteen and they're really into this. One girl closed her eyes, and picked out the same stone three times.  It chose her.

"Either that, or..." she picked up a small pink card with tiny letters on it, "look at this card and find the animal strength you need today.  Here's a snake." She held out a flat gray rock with a snake drawing. "That means life force and sexual energy.  And," she picked another, "this little bear stone will bring physical strength."  

"What are these?"  I pointed to a bowl of little leather pouches.  "Are they medicine pouches for the energy stones?"

"That's right."

I thanked her for her help and bought a book for my research. On the way out I scanned the bench covered with free brochures and pamphlets announcing Wiccan events and workshops. "Allow the safety of a circle of women to cradle you as you explore what it means to be a strong woman, a wild woman, a passionate woman," suggested the leader of a program called Tantra for Women. "Universal energy gives you exactly what you need and desire at that moment," promised someone who teaches the Language of Light.

I shuddered, hurried out, and took a deep breath of fresh, unscented air. The Phoenix Earth Store may offer fascinating thrills to women seeking mystical insight, but to me it was oppressive.  "Thank you, my Lord," I whispered, "for showing me the true light. I could so easily have been one of those women."

As always, the lures of the occult promise what our human nature wants: self-discovery, self-healing, self-empowerment, self-determination. You own your body, your mind, your destiny. You direct the energies of nature. Visualize what you want -- and go for it!

 Women who believe the lies don't need to ask God for anything—not His gifts, nor His strength, nor His life. Believing they “own” their source of physical and spiritual sustenance, they scorn the “the living bread which came down from heaven.” Who needs to feed on the life of Jesus, when loving angels and cosmic forces are as available as a genie in a lamp? Why follow His teaching, when the passions of the body create more energy and immediate delights?

I thought of David, God's beloved shepherd-king. "Help, Lord," he prayed in Psalm 12. Sad that his people would trade God's infinite strength for an illusion of human self-sufficiency, he continued, "May the Lord cut off all flattering lips and the tongue that speaks proud things, who have said, 'With our tongue we will prevail; Our lips are our own; Who is lord over us?'"

Eros, Ecstasy and Creation.

The title of Grace Cathedral's 1995 conference on "Christian spirituality" promised lots of fleshly delights but little biblical wisdom. Waiting in line, once again, outside San Francisco's massive Episcopal cathedral, I read the conference program:

"The Renaissance of Christian Spirituality restores the original splendor of Christ's vision: the Divine Eros linking the soul with God.... Restoring this original passion is crucial for the embodiment of sacred wisdom and the essential transformation of consciousness needed to preserve the planet."

The church doors opened and the crowd began to press forward. At the entrance, a woman handed me a program.

"How many do you expect?" I asked her.

"About eight hundred," she answered.

Someone announced that books were for sale in the back of the church. I went to look, and noticed a large book by futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard titled Revelation.  I picked it up, opened it to a page near the center and read a paragraph that began, "Godly children always know they are about God's business."

The words sounded Christian, but the context was occult. The next sentence left no doubt about the source:  "You will be capable of self-healing, telepathy, clairvoyance, clairaudience.... Empathetic love will be a constant state.  A community of natural Christs attuning to the Design of God... suprasexually engaged in conscious co-creation, ever ecstatic, ever new, ever mindful of God."[v]

What a confusing blend of Christian words and occult concepts. A quick survey showed that Barbara Marx Hubbard, or her "inner voice", had reinterpreted the entire book of Revelation piece by piece -- everything except chapter 17 which shows both the return and the destruction of the pagan Babylonian prostitute. The "voice" seemed to be a spirit that called itself Christ. I prayed for the protection only the true Christ can give, then read on. 

"You will be androgynous. You will learn to co-create... You will choose to create another being only on very special occasions when the whole community of natural Christs sees the requirement.... You produce as God does. You heal as God does...."[vi]

Was she saying that new babies would only be born when the whole community agreed? That seemed a strange contradiction to the feminist demand that each woman own her own body and control her own productivity.  It even clashed with her own claim that anyone could be a "natural Christ," empowered to create, produce, and heal "as God does."  Yet, it fit the collective political ideals of radical feminists. Thus, on the one hand, no one would need to ask God for anything, since people would have the power of god. On the other hand, each individual god would have to bow to the collective god -- the "community of natural christs!” 

 "That's the best book I've ever read," said the woman next to me.

I turned to her and smiled. "What makes it so good?"

She thought for a moment. "It's about transformation. It's about hope for the future.  Our collective minds evolving together toward a new unity."

When I handed it to the saleswoman, another woman spoke up. "You're going to love that book." 

A deep haunting sound began to fill the cavernous cathedral, driving us to our seats. It sounded like some kind of horn. On the stage built over the church altar, someone was blowing into one end of a long uneven tube. The other end rested on a pedestal. The strange instrument, I read in the program, was a Didgeridoo, a Eucalyptus tree hollowed by termites and traditionally played by Australian aborigines. Its owner, Stephen Kent, swayed and curved like a cobra dancing to the tune of a Hindu piper. As the eerie, monotonous sound droned on, I instinctively wanted to shut it out, to cover my ears--anything to escape the tremulous sounds.

Nature as guide. 

When the haunting sounds finally melted into the opening chords of a grand organ, the Dean of the Cathedral, Alan Jones, walked to the podium. "There are many voices of Christians in this culture," he began, "and it's time the voices represented here are heard...."  He  introduced Lauren Artress and Robert McDermott as "two great friends and lovers of Christ."  Reverend Artress, director of Quest, Grace Cathedral Center for Spiritual Wholeness, spoke first.    

"There is indeed a renaissance of Christian spirituality," she began. "It's taking on momentum. This is coming in through practices that are coming back into Christianity -- the methods, the way of meditation, the labyrinth. . . . We want to once again discover our path. . . .  Our three themes that we begin to weave together this evening are Eros -- the whole sense of love, love for the divine, for our bodies, for ourselves. . . . The second is Ecstasy . . .  a lost thread, the sense of blissing out on God, being so full of love and divine that you are ecstatic. . . .  The last is Creation. . . .  We acknowledge that we have to have a larger story than we have had in the past -- a story that unites us and incorporates the whole cosmos."[vii]

What an enticing mix, I thought. Who wouldn't want to be "blissing out on God" while writing her own imaginary story about God and His cosmos.

Apparently, in this world of imagined innocence and bliss, the animal spirit within would be free to speak.  We would "go out and howl with our own voices," said Paul Winter, composer of the controversial Missa Gaia musical, which blends the trumpeting of elephants, the howling of wolves, and the sounds of the dolphin into a symphony of praise to mother earth. "We, as a much younger species, would learn something from these elders of ours."

"Wolves are not dangerous to man,"[viii] he assured us. "Join me in a hallelujah chorus  by howling like wolves." Moments later, the cavernous cathedral reverberated with chilling imitations of howling wolves -- some called it a "Howl-eluia chorus."

"...When I fall on my knees, with my face to the rising sun...." sang the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir moments later.

O Lord, have mercy on us!  I had heard that song many times in traditional churches, and it always disturbed me. My mind drifted to pagan cultures where priests or shamans lead their tribes in worship to the rising sun.[ix] 

"I will go in Jesus' name," sang the Interfaith Choir. "I'll spread the gospel in Jesus name...."

"O Jesus," I whispered, "I'm afraid most of these people don't even know you."

Earthy powers  

The next day, the conference moved to the Star King Unitarian-Universalist church. Rosemary Reuther, professor of theology at the Garette-Evangelical Theological Seminary (United Methodist) in Evanston, Illinois, spoke first. At the first glance, her grandmotherly appearance disguised her pagan dreams and impressive titles: theologian, scholar, educator, visionary, and revolutionary.  

"Feminism," she began, "is a complex movement."  She listed some of its "many layers" and demands:

Few would disagree with the first two,[x] but the third and more basic demand requires a total transformation of western culture. Never mind that eastern cultures are far less friendly to feminist ideals than their western counterparts. (Just look at China, Japan and Iran.) The spiritual mastermind behind this movement has aimed his bullets at Judeo-Christian monotheism (one God), not Eastern monism (all is one). In his grandiose plan, injustice toward women is merely an excuse for vilifying Christian influences. He couldn't care less about wounded women.

Small wonder then, that feminists seek far more than equality. They call for a revolution -- a new culture, a new history, new government,  a new form of global socialism, and a new religion. The new religion is essential because, according to Reuther and other feminists, the old "patriarchal religions" caused all the problems in the first place.

"The Western ruling class male," explained Rosemary Reuther, "made God in his own image -- or rather in the image of his aspiration."  Her answer to male domination echoes what the leaders of the re-imagining conference declared: Women must create their own deity -- one that reflects their image and aspirations and brings them back in touch with the earth: 

"There are deep, positive connections between women and nature.  Women are the life givers, the nurturers, the ones in whom the seed of life grows.  Women were the primary food gatherers, the inventors of agriculture.  Their bodies are in mysterious tune with the cycles of the moon.  The tides of the sea.  And it was by experiencing women as life givers, both food providers and 'birthers’ of children,  that the early human communities in fact made the female the first image of worship, the goddess, the source of all life."[xi] 

"Women need to reclaim this affinity between the ‘sacrality’ of nature and the ‘sacrality’ of their own sexuality and life powers," she continued. "To return to worship the goddess as sacred female is to reconnect with our own deep powers." 

Our own deep powers? The tragedy is that Reuther and other would-be historians are telling a lie. The women they present as models didn't exist.  Earth-centered women never did have the powers today's feminist envision. The bane and blessing of the imagination is that you don't have to prove anything. The fact is that ancient women or indigenous women would beg their various gods and spirit for the food and protection we now take for granted. They lived at the mercy of the spirits from whom they bought favors they desperately needed. Indigenous people are still tormented by the spirits they fear.[xii]

The goddess figures archeologists have uncovered are less a testimony to the power of women than a sign of the superstitions that dominated their lives. In pagan cultures, altars and sexual symbols helped pay capricious spirits or demons for basic needs: a fertile harvest, food for the family, a baby.  Fighting life-and-death battles against disease, curses, tempestuous weather, and wild animals, they had little time to seek self-esteem, self-sufficiency, and control over their own life and body.  A good year meant food to eat, and a child that didn't die. Well aware that their lives were driven by forces they could not control, they would plead and appease, not command.

Barbara Marx Hubbard, who followed Reuther, also promised imagined power—but with a New Age twist. Instead of a goddess, her story points to a more impersonal New Age force. Like so many others, she cloaks her occult ideas in Christian terms and puts scriptures into a pagan context:

"In the sixties I began reading Teillard deChardin. What is interesting about Teillard is that the evolution of our planet leads to a time on earth which he calls Omega.... Our system, as it becomes more complex, is rising in consciousness, and at some point he felt there would be a quantum jump in which we would empathetically experience ourselves as connected to the whole.... I related it to reading in the Bible, "Behold I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, we shall all be changed, in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye."

"I had an experience of the... field of light.... it had persona and it was real.... I felt enfolded in light and I heard the words, 'My resurrection was real. It is a forecast of what you will do collectively when you love God above all else, your neighbor as yourself, yourself as me, a natural Christ.... You shall all be changed....'"

When the "inner voice" spoke to Ms. Hubbard's heart, she sensed "an overwhelming magnetic love."[xiii]  In silence, she replied, "I choose it, but I don't know how to do it."

Again "the presence" spoke. "You choose it. I'll do it."

This exchange began her relationship with "a Being" that has produced books, lectures and countless followers who continue to spread the illusion of abundant life through a counterfeit Christ.

The "Christ" who spoke to Barbara Marx Hubbard promised a massive change when the global consciousness has reached what many call a "critical mass." In her book, she talks about a violent "Planetary Birth experience" when the "ancient defect of consciousness" will "be corrected forever."[xiv]  At that point -- "when enough of you are attracted and linked"[xv] -- her Christ would return, but not in person as will the true Christ. Instead his "Presence" (his spirit or glory) would appear and draw all people into an ultimate Universal Humanity.

If this occult "Christ" who pulls people to himself with "overwhelming love" -- and will one day appear as a mystical "presence" --sounds like a movement within churches today, you have reason to be concerned. Remember, Satan twists all of God's good things into tempting counterfeits that lure people toward himself.

I own my body. 

"You will be in charge of your body," the Christ spirit told Barbara Marx Hubbard, "maintaining it, discarding it, or evolving it into new forms."[xvi]

Her "Christ" has prophesied the coming of "uncontrollable joy" which will "ripple through the thinking layers of the Earth." It will be as "irresistible as sex," flooding all human "co-creative systems" with "love and attraction."[xvii] 

Who will "awaken this co-creative" genius and prepare the world for "the Second Coming?" "The Holy Spirit,"[xviii] says Hubbard's Christ.  But humans have to help, and this is where Hubbard's evolutionary force joins contemporary neopaganism. To help you evolve, Hubbard suggests standard circle rituals: create a sacred space, light candles, and pass the sacred wine or juice. At this point, Hubbard would "evoke the Presence of the living  Christ"[xix] instead of the Wiccan goddess, but as you know, the label matters little.  For those who want more practical helps, she suggests A Course in Miracles[xx]-- the occult messages channeled by a spirit guide and taught by Marrianne Williamson, guru to Hollywood and Oprah Winfrey.

Do you see the threads that run through all the diverse pagan groups? Do you wonder why God warns us that "false Christ's and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect"?  Or why He tells us to "test the spirits?"[xxi]  

The high-brow spirituality of Barbara Marx Hubbard may contrast sharply with the naked sensuality of the new rage: the "wild" women who join circle covens or worship the goddess in forested groves.  But the difference is superficial. In essence, both forms of occultism spring from the same spiritual source. Both promise love, super sex, ownership of one's own bodies, and answers to personal needs and wants.  Anything goes, no matter how outrageous.

"Snake Power is power-from-within," says Vicki Noble, a feminist and shamanic healer. "Snake Power is moving us toward global female leadership. A woman with Snake Power stands her ground, allowing the fires of transformation to boil up in her and direct her actions."[xxii] 

Who then directs her actions?

You may remember Annie Sprinkle. She stirred quite a commotion some years ago when your taxes helped pay for her obscene video. An earlier live performances had featured Sprinkle chanting prayers to the "spirits of ancient sacred temple prostitutes" and inviting her audience to examine her private parts. The ecstatic Annie then uttered the immortal line, "Usually I get paid a lot of money for this, but tonight it's government funded." [xxiii]

More recently she performed at the Wild Wise Woman Center, "a safe space for restoring the health, wholeness, and holiness of women.... where women can explore the deep wellsprings of female power."

Annie called her show Sacred Sex. "Explore sexual energy as a vehicle for enlightenment and healing," beckoned her ad. "Learn Tantric, Taoist, and Native American techniques... Explore the mysteries of the sacred slut. Oh yes."

Once again the world's religions are blending together in a universal expression of the untamed self: the wild woman. The Wise Woman Center Gazette describes her well. It defines wild as "free, untamed, not under man's domination, virgin." 

The wild woman is a virgin? Yes, for "virgin" has also been redefined. Carol Christ, former Associate Professor of Women's Studies and Religious Studies at San Jose State University, gives her version in her book, Laughter of Aphrodite. She writes:

"Fully and joyously sexual, Aphrodite remains Virgin in that her sexuality is unbridled, untamed, and her own. Though married to Hephaestus.... she is neither submissive or faithful to him. Though she is a mother, her child Eros, Love or Desire, is but a reflection of her sexuality....[xxiv]  (Emphasis added)

Aphrodite also represents the "cosmic life force, associated especially with the transformative power of sexuality." So does the goddess in Marianne Williamson's popular books. "Like every aspect of the cosmic energy of which she is a part," writes the famous author, "she permeates the cells of those who have invited her in. She gives us new life, that we might give it to others. Through her power within us, we redeem all things."[xxv]

Ponder the above sentence. If "we redeem all things," there's no need for Jesus and His gifts. If "our life is our kingdom,"[xxvi] there's no need for His life. And if women accept her lie that it is good to "grow wild and fierce" by "owning their passionate nature," they will surely hate the cross which frees us from bondage to that capricious nature.  

Like Barbara Marx Hubbard, Ms. Williamson often refers to a Christ who opposes everything the Bible teaches. Yet, bearing this horrendous message, Ms. Williamson became a rising star on the television circuit and a welcome overnight guest at the Hillary Clinton White House.[xxvii] Few seem to care that her message was channeled by a spirit guide and first packaged as A Course in Miracles.

"If we truly believed in an internal light, we... would not be so easy to dominate and control," says Williamson, bringing us full circle back to Grace Cathedral and the cosmic force behind its "Renaissance of Christian Spirituality: Eros, Ecstasy and Creation." 

She is wrong. The next three chapters will show that the deeper the journey into the occult, the stronger is the domination. Women may visualize a sweet, lovely goodess, but her dark side is cruel beyond the imagination of our still-civilized Western world. It may take little more than a generation to revive the basic depravity of pagan wildness. No longer tempered by Judeo-Christian civility, it will soon be free to express itself in all its natural fury.

That’s hard to believe in today's politically correct atmosphere. Blinded by noble  educational sentiments, we don't want to consider the fact that certain earth-centered cultures were destructive both to its human victims and its land. Missionaries saw the pain of occult bondage and scientists have documented the erosion and pollution that  followed destructive life-styles, but those are secrets well hidden from the general public. Instead we learn from Disney's Pocahontas and Lion King which tell us the new-paradigm version of history -- the one that will raise our consciousness and usher in the new paradigm world.

The lie is believable because it sounds so good. You want self-esteem? Self-knowledge? Listen to Starhawk who has a way of turning the old-paradigm evils into new-paradigm virtues.  "Witchcraft is a religion of self-celebration..." she writes in The Spiral Dance. "Desire is the glue of the universe... So fulfillment becomes, not a matter of self-indulgence, but of self-awareness."[xxviii]

Witchcraft looks good to women who equate their natural desires with social virtues. Symbolic art, simplified lifestyles, and environmental concern blend with sexual freedom and the dream of power. Together they draw seekers who are rightly offended by today's blatant consumerism. But the promising paths lead to disillusionment and bondage, for Satan never lets his human victims own his power. Remember, he who masquerades as an "angel of light"[xxix] said to Barbara Marx Hubbard, "You choose. I will do it." He may use a long leash, but -- whether his victims know it or not -- he, not they, holds the reel.

Most of them don't know. That's part of the scheme.

Give us this day. . . . 

Feminists accuse Christianity of stirring "hostility toward sexual pleasure."[xxx] That's a lie. God invented both sex and pleasure. Satan can only twist what God has given for our delight. He takes God's greatest gifts—motherhood, a beautiful sunrise, a new spiritual insight, sexual enjoyment—and perverts them into lures that bring social and personal destruction.

In every battle between the two opposing spiritual forces, God wins hands down. Satan is only a created being, and God holds his leash. But He won't win the battle for those who twist His truths and dance with His enemy. Caught in the awesome slide described in Romans 1, they  become victims of the very desires they feed.

You saw the new definition for the wild woman. Actually, the Wild Woman Center Gazette gave a second list of meanings: "Wild is 'unruly, abandoned, full of chaos, lunatic.' Like a wild animal, like a river at flood...." In other words, turbulent, raging, destructive and deadly. That's what we see in Romans 1:18-27. Remember the downward progression that begins when people "suppress the truth," so that they can't tell right from wrong?

"They become futile in their thoughts.... Their foolish hearts are darkened. Professing to be wise, they become fools...."           

Three more devastating results follow. Each starts with the words: "God gave them up to...." indicating that God pulled back His needed resources and left them -- both individually and collectively -- to face their capricious human nature. You saw the first one at the end of Chapter 4. Here is the second one:

"For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men... burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. (Romans 1:26-27)

All kinds of personal struggles, obsessions, addictions, and misery can be explained simply by understanding what happens when people turn from God to the seductions of paganism.  Unlike God who loves us, Satan loves no one, nor does he hesitate to inspire and energize the worst in human nature -- with the agonizing results we will look at in the next two chapters.

Oswald Chambers said it well: "If I enthrone anything other than God in my life, God retires and lets the other god do what it can."


Endnotes:

[i]Rosemary Reuther speaking at the San Francisco conference, "Eros, Ecstasy and Creation: A Renaissance of Christian Spirituality," March 25,1995.

[ii]Barbara Marx Hubbard, Revelation (Greenbrae, CA: The Foundation for Conscious Evolution), 111-112.

[iii]Marianne Williamson, A Woman's Worth (New York: Ballantine Books, 1993), 11.

[iv]Launa Huffines, Healing Yourself with Light (Tiburon, CA: H.J. Kramer, Inc., 199 ); back cover.

[v]Hubbard, 154. Her interpretation of Revelations 10:5-7.

[vi]Ibid., 154-155.

[vii]Renaissance of Christian Spirituality conference, March 24, 1995. Transcribed from tape.

[viii]This is not true, as Finn's and Norwegians know well. Allowed to freely multiply, at the cost of ranch animals and children's safety, the wolves in Wyoming may soon prove less friendly than their friendly photographs suggest. (See Jeremiah 5:6; Matthew 7:15; Acts 20:29)

[ix]John 6:35, 48.  Sun worship characterized ancient Middle Eastern, Egyptian, and Roman civilizations as well as Indo-European,  Meso-American, and some Native American cultures. In their pantheon of gods and spirits, the sun god reigned supreme as the all-seeing all-powerful source of life and wisdom. He usually required human sacrifice.

[x]On the surface, the first two points seem generally acceptable, but some of the feminist interpretations involve deeper implications with regard to workplace quotas, gender education, and change in social consciousness.

[xi]Rosemary Radford Ruether, "Healing Violence to Creation," a keynote address given at the Renaissance of Christian Spirituality conference, March 25, 1995.

[xii]Misson stories about demon oppression and curses.

[xiii]Hubbard, Revelation, 75.

[xiv]Ibid., 242.

[xv]Ibid., 62.

[xvi]Ibid., 92.

[xvii]Ibid., 234.

[xviii]Ibid., 287.

[xix]Ibid., 313.

[xx]Ibid., 335.

[xxi]Matthew 24:23-24 and 1 John 4:1.

[xxii]Schedule of events, Wise Woman Center Gazette, February 17, 1994.

[xxiii]James F. Cooper, "Art Censors: A Closer Look at the NEA," New Dimensions  (June 1991): 26.

[xxiv]Carol P. Christ, Laughter of Aphrodite (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987), 176-177.

[xxv]Williamson, 33.

[xxvi]Ibid., 10.

[xxvii]Leah Garchik, "Personals," San Francisco Chronicle, December 20, 1994. Confirmed in "Marianne Williamson Is Full of It" by Lynda (November/December 1997) at www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1997/11/gorov.html

November/December 1997 Issue

[xxviii]Starhawk, The Spiral Dance (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979), 99. 

[xxix]2 Cor. 11:14.

[xxx]Sara Solovitch, "New book links sex to religion," San Jose Mercury News, July 29, 1995.


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