Sherry Ruth Anderson - The Feminine Face of God: The Unfolding of the Sacred in Women

The Feminine Face of God is as significant as Betty Friedans The Feminine Mystique and Carol Gilligans In a Different Voice were in articulating a growing edge of conscious awareness in women. The Feminine Face of God does for womens spirituality what these two books did for womens roles and womens ethics. I believe it may have an even deeper impact on individual women who, as a result of reading it, will be profoundly changed and quietly empowered to live authentic lives. This is a book that invites women to define for themselves what is sacred, to find an indwelling source of spiritual sustenance in themselves, in communion with others, and with the divine as they know It/Him/Her. The feminine face of God is an aspect of divinity and an approach to the sacred that is not exclusively of women, but women will naturally lead the way because womens receptivity, commitment to relationships, and biological experience provide greater opportunities for this kind of revelation.

Friedans book spoke to us of how women were defined as inferior by social stereotypes and psychological theory, and were expected to live through others and not have an identity of their own. Women who had until then accepted male expert opinions on who they were, and inequality as the way things always would be, broke their individual silences to talk with one another. Consciousness-raising led to the womens movement, and our world changed. Gilligans book described how women made ethical choices, and rather than being inferior to men in their ethical decisions as male experts had determined, differed from men in what guided them. In The Feminine Face of God, Sherry Anderson and Patricia Hopkins provide us with a perspective on the sacred dimension in womens lives, which differs from patriarchal theology. It begins as the womens movement began, with women telling the truth about their lives.

Ever since I wrote Goddesses in Everywoman as a psychology of women, and found it unexpectedly becoming a text on womens spirituality because women found that a sacred dimension enters everyday life when outer life is an expression of inner archetypal life, Ive witnessed a pervasive, quiet, grass-roots evolution in womens spiritual lives that The Feminine Face of God documents and delves into. By themselves, and, in groups, women are exploring the spiritual dimension of their lives, praying, meditating, creating ritual, and paying attention to their dreams, symbols, and metaphors. And for all those who are doing so, I have the impression that countless others yearn to, and will read this book hungrily taking in the experiences of women like them as nourishment and encouragement.

The authors were interested in what constitutes spiritual maturity, or as one woman said, I already know I am a child of God. The question is, how can I be an adult of God? They sought out women across North America from various spiritual paths, interviewed these women in depth, and quote them liberally. There are some common threads. Each woman decided to stop looking to authority figures outside herself for the truth, and to trust that what she experienced as sacred was indeed sacred. Every one found the necessity for solitude, and came to trust an inner source of wisdom. None found it easy, and most found it difficult to both maintain a spiritual path and be in a long-term relationship with a man. The authors raise some intriguing questions, including, Is there a relationship between women saying, I dont know how to pray, and I dont know what it means to be a woman?