ABSTRACT
Goddess feminism is the only religious feminism that breaks idols of the feminine by a series of archaeological and psychological excavations that reinstate those female ‘idols’ long-broken or otherwise repudiated by the Abrahamic religions. This chapter argues that early Goddess feminism used these images in ways that allowed the development of a non-realist thealogy that would realize a spiritually-politically female self radically undetermined by patriarchal categories of time, space, production, or will. It argues that feminist critics of Goddess feminism are therefore wrong to charge it with having reintroduced essentialist images of the feminine. Thealogical biophilia is not to be confused with prescriptive patriarchal notions of a putatively ‘natural’, sub-cultural woman. Thealogy’s distinction between deadly idols and generative icons of the feminine is illustrated with reference to images made by Monica Sjoo and Luisah Teish. The chapter ends by discussing how a conflict over images and ideas of the feminine led to a parting of the ways between the biblical and post-biblical feminist traditions.
