If something as improbable as the Goddess movement can experience such striking success, we must acknowledge that large numbers of people are ready to turn away from established patterns of life and thought and embrace truly radical alternatives. It is still true that the benefits of modernism primarily physical and materialistic have offered very little for the soul and spirit. The goddess movement is the only new religion which has made sexuality and gender politics, two of the dominant social concerns of the late twentieth century, central to its very existence and claims. They have cast the circle, they have evoked the spiritual powers, they have chanted and sung. Now the librarian, the counselor, the artist, the entrepreneur and the others within the circle grasp each other s hands.
Eyes locked together, the women whisper the joyous affirmation.
As the traffic builds and the smog rises from the streets up the walls of the office towers, the driver searches in vain for a place to pull over. A few minutes later, the car safely deposited, she goes about her business. As the two thousand delegates to the conference listen and applaud, one speaker after another points towards their shared vision of a beautiful new world. It is an ecumenical church conference, and the audience contains Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, Roman Catholics and members of almost a dozen other denominations, eager to take the vision home with them and pass it on. We are here together in order to destroy this patriarchal idolatry of Christianity, they hear.