WIE'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.

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