Interesting article, but minimizes the role of the Blessed Virgin.
She is not "simply [a] unique woman within the pages of the Bible." The feminists are going the long way around to try to get something they think they want, when Mary has been there all along. When Christ said "Behold your Mother" to St. John as He hung on the cross, He was giving His mother to all of us as well.
Interesting article. Of course there are groups that actually believe in a lesser female counterpart to God, a so-called "Mother in Heaven". From the LDS (Mormon) Hymnal:
O My Father, Hymn No. 292 in the 1985 LDS Hymnbook.
Verse 3:
3. I had learned to call thee Father, Thru thy Spirit from on high, But, until the key of knowledge Was restored, I knew not why. In the heav'ns are parents single? No, the thought makes reason stare! Truth is reason, truth eternal Tells me I've a mother there.
"As God is our Father, so the Church is our mother." - Cyprian
"For there is no other way to enter into life unless this mother conceive us in her womb, give us birth, nourish us at her breast, and lastly, unless she keep us under her care and guidance until, putting off mortal flesh, we become like the angels." - John Calvin
To all:
...paganism? Count me out. I don't even condone the most popular and slippery of contemporary, romanticist (and modern, ancient, etc.) paganism. Here's some exposure of the slime beneath the glitter of revisionism, though.
[The Bible Resolution and Susan B. Anthony's comment, NAWSA Convention, Washington, D.C., January 23-28, 1896. Ellen DuBois, Deradicalizing Suffrage, Vote for Women: History of a Feminist Movement (syllabus), 1998.
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/history/dubois/classes/995/98F/doc49.html]
[Draft of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's The Woman's Bible, ca. 1895. (Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers), Words and Deeds in American History, Selected Documents Celebrating the Manuscript Division's First 100 Years, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mcc:@field%28DOCID+@lit%28mcc/049%29%29]
"
Susan B. Anthony wrote, 'Oh dear, dear! If the spirits would only just make me a trance medium and put the rights into my mouth. You can't think how earnestly I have prayed to be made a speaking medium for a whole week. If they would only come to me thus, I'd give them a hearty welcome.'23" (as quoted by Laurel Damsteegt, M.Div., M.S.P.H., in "Prove All Things: A Response to Women In Ministry," from Barbara Goldsmith, "Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull," pp. 38, 39, 48, 435. New York, N. Y.: Harper Perennial, 1998.)
http://www.adventistsaffirm.org/proveallthings/15.01chapter15.html#f022
On Anthony's statement of belief in spiritualism... [The Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, ed. Ann D. Gordon, et al. (Columbia, S.C.: Model Editions Partnership, 1999). Electronic version based on The Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1997) Vol. 1, pp. 196-461.]
...Anthony's "spiritualist meeting" (Christopher Densmore, Friends of Human Progress, North Collins, Meetings, 1855-1930s, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College).
Some have been trying to turn our country into a whorehouse for over 150 years.