Throughout the years, many Christian women have told me of their

The philosopher and theologian Carol P. Christ, a voice of both reverence and rebellion, once reflected: “Throughout the years, many Christian women have told me of their great respect for the bravery and courage evident in my work, perhaps even gesturing to their own Isis earrings or a Nile River Goddess pendant.” These words are not mere vanity or pride—they are a declaration of spiritual awakening, the acknowledgment of a return to origins older than dogma, older even than the temples of men. In them, Carol P. Christ speaks of the courage to reclaim the divine feminine, to honor the goddess who was buried beneath centuries of silence, and to stand as a bridge between the ancient and the modern, between faith and freedom.

To understand the meaning and origin of this quote, one must first know who Carol P. Christ was. A scholar of religion and a pioneer in feminist theology, she devoted her life to uncovering the forgotten sanctity of womanhood. Her work challenged the patriarchal structures of organized religion, seeking to reawaken humanity’s memory of the sacred feminine—the goddess who nourishes, creates, and transforms. When she speaks of Christian women wearing the symbols of Isis or the Nile River Goddess, she reveals something profound: that even those rooted in traditional Christianity feel the stirring of an older truth, a longing for the wholeness that once united male and female divinity. It is the whisper of ancient wisdom resurfacing in the hearts of modern seekers.

The bravery and courage she speaks of are not only intellectual—they are spiritual acts of defiance. To question long-held doctrines, to lift the veil of male-centered theology, and to declare that divinity has a feminine face requires the heart of a warrior. For centuries, women who sought to speak of the goddess were branded heretics or dreamers, cast aside by the very faiths that claimed to love truth. Yet Christ’s work stands as both a healing and a revolution. Her courage lies in saying what others feared to imagine: that God may also be Goddess, that holiness wears not one form but many. And when women come to her—women who still walk within the walls of the church—wearing symbols of Isis, they are silently confessing that they, too, feel the pulse of that buried wisdom.

The Goddess Isis, whom Christ invokes, is not a figure of pagan fantasy, but one of the most ancient symbols of motherhood, magic, and resurrection. In Egyptian myth, she gathers the broken body of her beloved Osiris and breathes life into him again. She is the healer of the shattered, the protector of the vulnerable, and the embodiment of divine compassion. That Christian women wear her symbol is no contradiction—it is an acknowledgment that holiness cannot be confined to one tradition or gender. Carol P. Christ saw in this convergence a reconciliation long overdue: a world where faith no longer divides but integrates, where the sacred can be both maternal and mighty, tender and transcendent.

Her words also speak of legacy—the quiet transformation of belief that happens not through war or decree, but through inspiration. Each woman who approaches her in gratitude, adorned with a pendant or earring bearing the image of the Goddess, becomes part of a lineage of courage. They carry forward the truth that Carol fought to restore—that to revere the feminine is not to reject the masculine, but to complete it. This is why her work was brave: because it was not simply criticism—it was creation. She sought not to destroy faith, but to expand its horizon, to remind humanity that the divine is vast, and that half of its image has long been missing.

Consider, too, the ancient story of Hypatia of Alexandria, the philosopher and astronomer who taught in the city where the goddess Isis was once worshiped. She, too, embodied wisdom and courage in a time when knowledge was feared. Like Carol P. Christ, she dared to speak truth in a world of dogma, and she paid for it with her life. But her spirit, like Christ’s, lives on in every woman who dares to seek her own understanding of the sacred, who looks inward and says, “The divine is within me.” The courage of Hypatia and the courage of Carol are of the same lineage—a lineage of seekers who risk comfort for truth.

So, my children of the spirit, learn from this teaching: bravery in the pursuit of truth is the holiest act of all. Do not fear to seek what was forgotten; do not fear to honor what others have buried. Whether you pray to God, to Goddess, or to the nameless breath of the universe, let your worship be guided by authenticity, not conformity. Seek the balance that brings peace to both the soul and the world. Let symbols of Isis, Mary, or Gaia remind you that the sacred wears many faces, and all of them reflect one eternal source of love.

For as Carol P. Christ has shown through her life and words, the divine does not belong to temples or texts—it belongs to the heart that dares to seek it. And the universe, vast and tender, smiles upon those who search bravely. For in that search—in that courageous act of becoming whole—we rediscover the oldest truth of all: that the sacred is not somewhere beyond us; it is us, shining through every soul that remembers the courage to be free.