GODDESS WORSHIP IN AMERICA & HOW IT'S AFFECTING THE CHURCH
FROM: http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/newsletters/2016/newsletter20160222.htm; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
Goddess Worship in America and How It’s Affecting the Church
By Maria KneasThe worship of pagan goddesses is most obvious with Wiccans. However, it is also common in universities and nursing schools. It is promoted by the media and is a component of New Age feminism. What’s more, it has infiltrated mainline denominational churches and its influence can be felt throughout our society.
This movement is impacting our culture and especially the younger generation. One troubling aspect of it is that, according to some of its proponents, facts and logic are “patriarchal,” and therefore they are irrelevant. As you will see, some so-called scholars openly say it is all right to make things up and present them as if they were historical facts.
Philip G. Davis is a professor of religious studies at the University of Prince Edward Island in Canada. He wrote the book Goddess Unmasked because he saw that goddess worship was being taken seriously in religious institutions and that myths about the goddess were being taught as factual history on campus. Much of the footnoted documentation in the first section of this booklet comes from his book.
Creating a Goddess-Friendly Culture
The “Age of Enlightenment” gave birth to rationalist materialism. In reaction against this denial of the importance of emotions, a generation of Romantic poets, novelists, artists, musicians and philosophers developed. Many of them were involved with drugs, the occult, Rosicrucianism, or Freemasonry.
Following Darwin’s theory of evolution, they speculated wildly about the evolution of society. Nationalism became a romantic search for pagan roots, as seen in Wagner’s operas and the fairy tales researched by the Brothers Grimm. Womanhood was idealized. The myth of a past utopian matriarchy was developed. Psychologist Carl Jung idealized the concept of the “anima,” the feminine side of man.1
Romanticism even invaded history and archaeology. Bachoven developed a theory of matriarchy openly based on imagination and not on searching for hard facts. Feminist scholars followed Bachoven’s lead. A historic myth was developed in which an ideal, matriarchal, goddess-worshiping society was destroyed by patriarchal invaders who brought with them all the ills of modern society.2
The scholarship involved in these studies of history and archaeology is so faulty that Philip Davis says:
An important lesson of this book is the ease with which patent falsehoods may clothe themselves in the garb of scholarship and masquerade as truth.3Feminist scholars and other academic radicals say objective facts and historical accuracy are not even a valid goal:
A feminist scholar told her audience that it is indeed “ethical” for an historian to ignore historical evidence in order to construct a narrative . . . while still presenting it as history.4In addition to “constructing narratives” (i.e., making up stories and presenting it as history), many academic radicals “explicitly reject the quest for objective truth; they claim that objectivity is not only impossible to achieve in pure form, but actually illegitimate in the first place because it expresses a patriarchal, oppressive mentality.”5
Before full-blown goddess worship developed in the 1950s, American art showed popular imagination being prepared for it. For example, the Statue of Liberty looks like a Greek goddess and is over three hundred feet high. The inscription presents the statue as speaking, and she calls herself “Mother of Exiles.”6 A 1915 poster for the Red Cross shows an American nurse with a billowing, hooded cape that makes her look like a cross between a nurse and a Greek goddess. She carries a placard which says:
I am the Red Cross of Peace. I heal the wounds of war. I am a refuge from fire, flood and pestilence. The love of little children is mine.7The National Academy of Sciences has a Great Hall done in Byzantine architecture designed to look like a “temple of science.” The dome of that hall looks like it belongs in a cathedral, except it has figures that look like Greek goddesses. Science is personified as a goddess, with an inscription that says:
To science, pilot of industry, conqueror of disease, multiplier of the harvest, explorer of the universe, revealer of nature’s laws, eternal guide to truth.8The Wiccan Goddess
Wicca was developed in England by Gerald B. Gardner, the first fully public witch of modern times. He was a spiritualist, a Freemason, and a Rosicrucian, with an extensive background in the occult.
Gardner was a member of the Golden Dawn. Aleister Crowley (a satanist) initiated Gardner into the fourth degree of the O.T.O. (Ordo Templi Orientis). Gardner was acquainted with a witch named “old Dorothy Fordham” and claimed to have been initiated into a coven. He used various occult texts in developing his rituals, including texts that were written by Aleister Crowley.9
Aiden Kelley, a Wiccan trained in biblical criticism, applied his critical skills to Gardner’s archive. Based on Kelley’s findings, Philip Davis concludes that:
First, [Kelly’s] identification of Gardner’s literary sources leaves little doubt that Gardner’s own witchcraft texts were his personal creation and not something handed on to him from an ancient tradition.10Therefore, it is difficult to know how much Gardner’s Wicca resembles ancient witchcraft.
Doreen Valiente was Gardner’s High Priestess. She was informed enough to spot the passages from Crowley in the rituals, and she rewrote them so that Crowley’s name would not discourage potential inquirers.
Initially, the male, horned god and the High Priest were preeminent. By the mid-1960s, the goddess was the supreme deity in Wicca, and ritual authority was vested in the High Priestess.11
Through Wicca, goddess worship has infiltrated our American culture:
The appearance of the Goddess in other radical feminist circles, and then in churches and universities, did not occur until after the establishment of modern witchcraft as a viable new religion.12Wicca presents itself as a wholesome worship of a gentle, benevolent goddess. It’s motto is, “An ye do none harm do what ye will.” However, in real life the results of Wicca are not wholesome at all.
Goddess spirituality seems well on the way to becoming the most successful of all these neopagan manifestations in the English-speaking world.13
The Goddess and Mainline Churches
In November 1993, a Re-imagining Conference was held in Minneapolis. Most of the 2,000 participants were women.14
This was an ecumenical church conference attended by Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, Roman Catholics, and members of almost a dozen other denominations. They invoked Sophia, the goddess of Wisdom, calling her their Creator. Prayers and liturgies were addressed to this goddess. Communion consisted of milk and honey instead of bread and wine.
They openly rejected the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Atonement. “Christian” lesbians were applauded for coming out of the closet. They encouraged “sex among friends” as a norm.
This conference was initiated by, sponsored by, and attended by representatives of the major American churches.15
Re-imagining was an unprecedented event: an interdenominational assembly of Christians openly bent on destroying the historic Christian religion root and branch, and steering the churches into wholesale neopaganism.16Neopagan and Wiccan themes are amazingly prominent within older religious establishments. One reason for this is the quest for “inclusive” language and the attempt to apply more female imagery to God. Liturgy reform and revised hymnals have featured feminine imagery and metaphors for God the Mother.17
The Unitarian-Universalist church developed a ten-session workshop on feminism, which encourages goddess worship and even endorses witchcraft. This workshop is called Cakes for the Queen of Heaven. It has been circulated through the major denominations and adopted for use in many mainstream churches.18 The following quotation from Jeremiah gives God’s perspective about this:
Do you not see what they are doing in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead the dough and make cakes of bread for the Queen of Heaven. They pour out drink offerings to other gods to provoke me to anger. (Jeremiah 7:16-18, emphasis added)A Canadian television station ran a five-part series titled Return of the Goddess, which introduced many people to goddess worship. The National Film Board of Canada produced Goddess Remembered, which became one of their most popular productions ever, being featured by public broadcasting TV stations in the United States as well as in Canada. Cakes for the Queen of Heaven and Goddess Remembered have both become staples for study groups in some major denominations.19
The Goddess and the University
The credibility of goddess worship has been increased by its acceptance by university professors and its incorporation into textbooks.20
[T]he doctrines of a new religion are being packaged and promoted as factual material for use in publicly funded and accredited institutions of higher education.21
The broader plans of gender feminism seem to have been most fully articulated, promoted, and implemented among academics. Some feminists have even demanded that the goddess be given parity with the God of the Bible in university religion programs. This will impact our entire society because universities and colleges are training most of our future leaders, including government, health care, and the clergy.22
[R]adical professors are . . . using the classroom for recruitment, turning students into political activists. The campus, therefore, is a natural place to look for signs of the radical feminist New Age as it emerges.23
The Goddess and Health Care
Goddess worship has become strong in the field of health care, particularly nursing. Health care professionals are actively promoting New Age practices. For example, the occultic “therapeutic touch” (passing one’s hands above a patient’s body in order to manipulate auras and energy fields) has reportedly been taught to thousands of nurses in eighty North American nursing programs..24
Goddess worship has been overtly promoted, as can be seen from the following quotation from the National League for Nursing, which is an accrediting agency for nursing schools:
Women’s wisdom is ageless and timeless, and passes from generation to generation primarily by oral tradition. . . . These origins are grounded in women’s experiences, female symbolism, and the spiritual roots of the Triple Goddess.25
In Ray Yungen’s book, A Time of Departing, he discusses Sue Monk Kidd, who was once a conservative Southern Baptist Sunday School teacher. She began practicing contemplative prayer (a “Christian” mystical prayer practice similar to eastern meditation) and eventually turned away from the God of the Bible to worship the “goddess Sophia.”26 And while what has happened to her is very obvious, many Christians still read her books!
What Can We Do?
This booklet is just an introduction to goddess worship in America. I could give many more examples of how this has affected our society and the church. We need to be informed so we can help people we know who have become confused by these things. God may show us practical things we can do. Above all, we need to take the following Scripture seriously,and apply it to our daily lives.
If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. (James 1:5) (See Part 2 Below)To order copies of Goddess Worship in America and How It’s Affecting the Church, click here.
Endnotes
1. Philip G. Davis, Goddess Unmasked: The Rise of Neopagan Feminist Spirituality (Dallas, TX: Spence Publishing Company, 1999), chapters 2 through 12.
2. Ibid., chapters 2, 11 and 12.
3. Ibid., p. ix.
4. Ibid., p. 360.
5. Ibid.
6. Information obtained by phone from the Public Information Office of the Statue of Liberty.
7. This poster is in the Valentine Museum in Richmond, Virginia. A picture of it appeared in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, September 29, 1998, p. D-1.
8. The National Academy of Sciences—The Main Foyer and the Great Hall: This says that the architect wanted to create a “temple of science,” www.nasonline.org/about-nas/visiting/nas/nas-building/the-main-foyer-and-the-great.html; The Great Hall: This shows pictures of some of the goddesses. You can see that the ceiling looks like a cathedral rather than a science building, www.nasonline.org/about-nas/visiting-nas/nas-building/the-great-hall.html.
9. Philip G. Davis, Goddess Unmasked: The Rise of Neopagan Feminist Spirituality, op. cit., p. 334.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid., pp. 336-337.
12. Ibid., p. 341.
13. Ibid., p. 343.
14. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re-Imagining_(Christian_feminist_conference).
15. Philip G. Davis, Goddess Unmasked: The Rise of Neopagan Feminist Spirituality, op. cit., pp. 3-4, 28-29.
16. Ibid., p. 29.
17. Ibid., pp. 24-25, 27.
18. Ibid., pp. 24-25.
19. Ibid., pp. 25-27.
20. Ibid., pp. 29-31.
21. Ibid., p. 31.
22. Ibid., pp. 361, 363.
23. Ibid., p. 361.
24. Ibid., pp. 31-33.
25. Charlene E. Wheeler and Peggy L. Chinn, Peace and Power: A Handbook of Feminist Process (New York, NY: National League for Nursing, 3rd edition), pp. xi-xii. Quoted in Goddess Unmasked, p. 32.
26. Ray Yungen, A Time of Departing (Eureka, MT: Lighthouse Trails Publishing, 2nd edition, 2006), pp. 135-136.
To order copies of Goddess Worship in America and How It’s Affecting the Church, click here.
PART 2: The Shack—Father-Goddess Rising
By John Lanagan
Many Christians have credited the New York Times best-seller The Shack, (the novel by William P. Young) with revolutionizing their faith. With themes of overcoming loss, working through anger, and restored relationship between man and God, Young’s novel has excited many within the Body of Christ.
The Shack was on the New York Times best-seller list for 52 weeks at #1 (over 170 weeks all together), and has sold over twenty million copies in 40 languages. It continues to sell briskly to a mostly Christian readership. Yet, in the midst of such enthusiasm, does The Shack, glorify Jesus Christ—or does it contradict the Bible with a false image of the Lord our God?
The novel’s main character, Mack Phillips, has lost his daughter. She has been murdered, her bloodied dress found in an isolated shack. Four years later Mack receives an invitation from God to spend time with the Trinity in the very shack where the dress was found.
Even though there is nowhere in the Bible where the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit simultaneously assume physical forms on earth, The Shack portrays Jesus as a carpenter, the Holy Spirit as an Asian woman, and God the Father as a large black woman named Papa.
The Shack’s “God” comes to Mack in a form he is willing to accept. While the novel’s feminization of the Lord is as trendy as it is Babylonian, the reader rapidly becomes used to descriptions of God as “she” and “her.” At one point, the book’s version of Jesus praises the fictional Father-goddess, exclaiming, “Isn’t she great?”1
Malachi 3:6 states, “For I am the Lord, I change not.” God is Spirit. In the entire Bible, there is not one single reference to Father, Son, or Holy Spirit—or to any of His angels—as female. Is it wise then to go beyond what has been presented in Scripture?
Unfortunately, this seems a frequent occurrence in The Shack. The Father-goddess character tells Mack she appears in female form “to help you keep from falling back so easily into your religious conditioning.”2 The author and his publishing team apparently assume Christians believe the Lord is an old white man with a beard and have produced the book in part to help straighten out the church’s perception of God.
There is an apparent dismissal of the importance of Scripture, which is reflected in slippery theology found throughout the novel. Young writes, “Nobody wanted God in a box, just in a book. Especially an expensive one bound in leather with gilt edges, or was that guilt edges?”3 Guilt edges? A not-so-subtle suggestion that we should not feel guilty or convicted about our sins.
The Father-goddess of The Shack, it seems, is never about guilt or punishment. She benignly informs Mack, “I don’t need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment, devouring people from the inside. It’s not my purpose to punish it; it’s my joy to cure it.”4
That sounds wonderful. And, yes, sin enslaves. However, the The Shack’s “God” contradicts the Bible. Jesus “shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power (2 Thessalonians 1:7-9).
Although most sermons these days skirt the issue, Christians do receive punishment (i.e., disciplining) during our time on earth:
[T]he Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? (Hebrews 12:6-7)But, this is not the message of the Father-goddess, simply because this is not the God of Scripture. Young, a gifted writer, plays to emotion and touches on legitimate hurts and concerns, excelling at imbuing his “God” with attributes of love, forgiveness, and mercy, and this is what many people have responded to.
Increasingly in novels and movies, the Lord is blithely used as one of the characters and given words from the mouth of man. In this sense, the author of The Shack, is simply following the culture.
But something else is going on here—
Universal Reconciliation (UR) is the belief that Jesus’ sacrifice allows Christians and non-Christians to spend eternity with God. In other words, in UR theology, everybody goes to heaven, not just followers of Jesus. Some in this camp even believe this includes the devil and his demons. And as one New Ager pointed out (Neale Donald Walsch) in his highly popular book Conversations with God, even Hitler will go to Heaven!5
Co-author of The Shack,Wayne Jacobsen, acknowledges that UR was included in earlier versions of The Shack. Jacobsen explains:
While some of that was in earlier versions because of the author’s partiality at the time to some aspects of what people call UR, I made it clear at the outset that I didn’t embrace UR and didn’t want to be part of a project that promoted it.6So why did Jacobsen proceed to join forces with Young? He writes:
To me that was the beauty of the collaboration . . . the author would say that some of that dialogue significantly affected his views. . . . Holding him to the conclusions he may have embraced years earlier would be unfair to the ongoing process of God in his life and theology.7Perhaps, but this allegedly former theology even now seems to explain some of the content of the book.
The Bible clearly teaches the only way to God the Father is through Jesus Christ, who loved us enough to die for us. Early in The Shack, Mack’s daughter asks if the Great Spirit, the Native American god, is another name for the Father of Jesus. Mack tells her . . . yes. He may as well have told her that Allah (or any other false patriarchal god) is also the Father of Jesus.
Of course, if everybody is going to heaven because of UR, what does it matter? God, Great Spirit, Allah, what’s the difference?
His daughter asks the question because Mack tells the story of an Indian princess who willingly died so her people could be delivered of an illness. According to an Indian prophecy, it could be ended only through her sacrifice. The author states, “After praying and giving herself to the Great Spirit, she fulfilled the prophecy by jumping without hesitation to her death on the rocks below.”8
When his daughter calls the Great Spirit “mean” for making both Jesus and the princess die, Mack never clarifies that Jesus’ Father is not the Great Spirit or that God the Father has nothing to do with this pagan legend.
Some may ask if Young still has UR leanings? In his article, “The Beauty of Ambiguity,” it is not his character Mack but Young himself who speaks to the Father-goddess. He denies being a universalist and proclaims “faith in Jesus is the only way into your embrace.”9
In the article, Young is having a conversation with Father-goddess, who asks, “I take it that it wouldn’t bother you if I decided to save every human being that ever lived?”
“Nope. I actually hope you’ve figured a way to do just that,” he replies.10
Young’s goddess Father will save everyone through Young’s belief in Universal Reconciliation. This directly contradicts Jesus Christ:
Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. (Matthew 7:13-14)Although Young then proceeds to voice acceptance of the reality of hell, he complains to his fictional Father-goddess:
[W]hy couldn’t you have made things clear? People go to the Bible and find all these ways to disagree with each other . . . Everybody seems to want to acquire their little piece of doctrinal territory . . . Some find support for Universal Reconciliation; some find proofs for eternal torment in hell.11Young continues with his list. Issues run the gamut from Calvinism to eschatology and, having inserted Universal Reconciliation into the mix, his fictional Father-goddess never corrects him. No surprise there. Is this perhaps an attempt to at least infer valid consideration of UR by including it amongst a hodge-podge of doctrinal concerns?
Incredibly, Young’s Father-goddess clarifies (?) that she made much of the Bible ambiguous on purpose! I find it chilling that the author, or any person, would dare present doctrinal confusion as the intended plan of God—and via a fictional character at that. But, that’s the way it is these days.
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears. (2 Timothy 4:3)It’s going to get worse. Goddess worship, false christs, and many other heresies will continue to rise. Movies, novels, and TV will become increasingly blasphemous.
Readers of this novel would do well to examine biblical teaching about the Trinity, sin, repentance, communication with the dead, and much else.
Many in the Body of Christ have run to get a copy of The Shack. Far better, brothers and sisters, to just run.
To order copies of Goddess Worship in America and How It’s Affecting the Church, click here.
Endnotes:
1. William Paul Young, The Shack (Newbury Park, CA: Windblown Media, 2007, ISBN: 978-0-9647292-3-0, printing: 50 49 48 47), p. 90.
2. Ibid., p. 95
3. Ibid., p. 68.
4. Ibid., p. 122.
5. Warren B. Smith, “If Neale Donald Walsch (Conversations with God) and the New Agers are Right, Then Hitler Will Be in Heaven!” (http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/blog/?p=6090).
6. Wayne Jacobsen, “Is the Shack Heresy?” (Windblown Media, http://web.archive.org/web/20080714200042/http://www.windblownmedia.com/shackresponse.html).
7. Ibid.
8. William Paul Young, The Shack, op. cit., p. 30.
9. William P. Young, “The Beauty of Ambiguity” (The Clarion Journal, http://www.clarion-journal.com/clarion_journal_of_spirit/2008/03/the-beauty-of-a.html).
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
To order copies of Goddess Worship in America and How It’s Affecting the Church, click here.
A Chart on Goddess Worship
by Berit Kjos (www.crossroad.to)
Praying to God Affirming the goddess
Our Father in heaven Our Mother, the Earth
Holy is Your Name Sacred and perfect am I
Your Kingdom Come My vision come
Your will be done My will be done
Give us . . . daily bread Don’t give . . . I own . . .
Forgive us . . . as we forgive I choose to forgive—or curse
Lead us not into temptation Temptation? I form my own values
Deliver us from evil There is no sin or evil
For Yours is the . . . power Mine is the power
. . . forever! Nothing is permanent or absolute
