In this audio, EnlightenNext's Elizabeth Debold speaks with medieval scholar and feminist author Carol Flinders about the history and possible future of feminism and the spiritual liberation of women. Flinders draws us into the world of medieval women saints and the Beguine, a lay sisterhood active throughout the 12th and 13th centuries across Europe considered to be the spiritual precursor of the modern women's liberation movement. Flinders and Debold then fast forward over 600 years to explore the condition of women's spirituality and social liberation today. Both realists and idealists, they conclude that although the next stage in women's quest for spiritual freedom will require an elite core of radically inspired leaders, the possibility of a real and lasting revolution in women's liberation—not just from patriarchal society but from the constraints of gender itself—is a lot closer than we all might think.
BIO
Carol Lee Flinders received a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California at Berkeley, specializing in medieval studies. She then spent fifteen years writing about natural foods, co-authoring the popular Laurel's Kitchen cookbooks, and writing a weekly syndicated newspaper column.
In 1990 Carol returned to her field of study and wrote Enduring Grace: Living Portraits of Seven Women Mystics. Subsequent books include At the Root of This Longing: Reconciling a Spiritual Hunger and a Feminist Thirst and Rebalancing the World. . She has taught courses in mystical literature at UC, Berkeley, and at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. She is currently a Fellow of the Spirituality and Health Institute, Santa Clara University. She will be teaching a graduate seminar this fall at the Sophia Center at Holy Names University in Oakland.
Carol's latest book is Enduring Lives: Living Portraits of Women and Faith in Action (Putnam/Tarcher). It profiles four contemporary women that she believes live and work in the "spiritual mother-line" of women like Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint Catherine of Genoa.
