Carol Patrice Christ

Carol Patrice Christ was a feminist historian, thealogian, author, and foremother of the Goddess movement. She obtained her PhD from Yale University and served as a professor at universities such as Columbia University and Harvard Divinity School. Her best-known publication is "Why Women Need The Goddess". It was initially a keynote presentation at the "Great Goddess Re-emerging" conference" at the University of Santa Cruz in 1978. This essay helped to launch the Goddess movement in the U.S. and other countries. It discusses the importance of religious symbols in general, and the effects of male symbolism of God on women in particular. Christ called herself a "thealogian" and as such, made important contributions to the discipline of theology, significantly helping to create a space for it to be far more inclusive of women than has historically been the case. The term "thealogy" is derived from Ancient Greek θεά + -logy.