Amy: Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy! I’m Amy McPhie Allebest. If you are a listener who loved our episode on The Gospel of Mary Magdalene or Mary, Mother of God, then you will love the texts we are discussing today: WomanSpirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion, and Weaving the Visions:New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality, both edited by Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow. These books contain essays that were written in the 70’s 80’s and early 90’s, and they reflect a movement within feminism that was grappling with the patriarchal aspects of religion, and rather than rejecting religion altogether as so many feminists were doing at the time, these authors were working to retain the spiritual, the mystical, and the ritual parts of religion while still confronting and challenging patriarchy. As an introduction I’m going to read just a couple of sentences from the 1992 version of WomanSpirit Rising. It says that some feminists... “are convinced that religion is profoundly important. For them, the discovery that religions teach the inferiority of women is experienced as a betrayal of deeply felt spiritual and ritual experience. They believe the history of sexism in religions shows how deeply sexism has permeated the human psyche but does not invalidate human need for ritual, symbol and myth. While differing on many issues, the contributors to this volume agree that religion is deeply meaningful in human life and that the traditional religions of the West have betrayed women. They are convinced that religion must be reformed or reconstructed to support the full human dignity of women.”   And no one better to discuss this issue with than the magnificent Maxine Hanks! Welcome back, Maxine. [Hi Amy -- thanks for inviting me to read this book with you, it holds a lot of meaning for me personally.

This project has already been so enriched by your wisdom and experience! You’re an expert on many Women’s Studies texts, but my understanding is that in the tradition of the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and the Letters on the Equality of the Sexes by Sarah Grimke, you are a person of faith and most at home in feminist theology. Is that right?

Maxine:  Yes, I’m a feminist theologian and historian, focused on women’s studies and women’s history in religious culture, mainly in LDS/Mormon culture and in Christianty.  My spiritual path, personal faith journey and my scholarly path, scholarly work are very intertwined.   My work on recovering feminism in Mormon history and culture overlapped with my own personal work to find feminist voice in Mormon culture, and my own path through feminist theology, clergy formation and ministry overlapped with my scholarly work on feminist theology in Christian tradtion and LDS tradition.  So as I found my way in life and work as a feminist, I found my way as scholar in feminist work, the two were interdependant.  I’m a deeply spiritual person, I rely on my relationship with god for decisions about both my life and professional path. I’m a minister, chaplain, and theologian, historian, and I see spirituality as one lens, one approach, one hermeneutic method among others, so my work brings spirituality and scholarship together.  I think it requires multiple approaches, interdisciplinary work to adequately assess the situation of women in religion --  gender studies training, historical method, and theological/religious studies, so I trained, took degrees in all three to use in my work.

Amy: If you’re comfortable, I’d be grateful if you could talk about your own journey as a feminist theologian, including your book, Women and Authority: Re-emerging Mormon Feminism, and the ensuing events after the publication of that book.

Maxine:   Sure, the main thing to mention about my work, my book and WSR, is that they parallel each other, taking a very similar approach, and with similar results, but ten years apart.  WSR came in...