Theologians frequently assert that God has no body, no gender, no race and no age. Most people state that God is neither male nor female. Yet most people become flustered, upset or even angry when it is suggested that the God they know as Lord and Father might also be God the Mother, or Goddess.

The mother must socialize her daughter to become subordinate to men, and if her daughter challenges patriarchal norms, the mother is likely to defend the patriarchal structures against her own daughters.

The simplest and most basic meaning of the symbol of the Goddess is the acknowledgment of the legitimacy of female power as a beneficent and independent power.

Subversive language, however, must be constantly reinvented, because it is continually being co-opted by the powerful.

The simple act of telling a woman's story from a woman's point of view is a revolutionary act: it never has been done before.

I first became interested in women and religion when I was one of the few women doing graduate work in Religious Studies at Yale University in the late 1960's.

If we do not mean that God is male when we use masculine pronouns and imagery, then why should there be any objections to using female imagery and pronouns as well?