- Well, Allison, thank you so much for doing this interview, I really appreciate it. And if you could just say your full name. - Allison Stokes. - And are you lay or clergy? - I am clergy, retired. - And which denomination? - I was ordained in the United Church of Christ in 1981 and served for 30 years and retired in 2011. But at this time, I'm identifying as a unitary universalist. - Wonderful, thank you. And when and where were you born, Allison? - I was born on August 17th, 1942 in Bridgeport, Connecticut. I grew up in Fairfield, Connecticut. - Great, and where did you go to graduate or divinity school? - I went to Yale for my Ph.D. in American Studies and to the Yale Divinity school for my M.Div. And graduated with both those degrees in 1981. And then later, I went to Harvard Divinity School for a master of theology. - Great, thank you. So what work or ministry were you doing at the time of Re-Imagining? - I was a pastor of the West Stockbridge congregational church UCC in West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, that's in the Berkshires Highland in Massachusetts. At the same time, it was a part time position, I had founded, with some others, the Women's Interfaith Institute of the Berkshires a year before Re-Imagining in 1992, so I was doing both. - Fascinating, that is great. And what work or ministry did you do after Re-Imagining, Allison? - I went from the Berkshires, after being pastor of this little church for about 13 years, to become a protestant chaplain at Ithica College. From there, I became director of the interfaith chapel at the University of Rochester and also director of the MK Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence Fair. And so I retired, as I've mentioned, in 2011 from the University of Rochester position. - Okay thank you. Well, Allison, I'm very interested to hear how and when did you first become aware of feminist theology? - Well, I've been thinking about that, it was in 1972 when I entered the American Studies program at Yale. At the time, I was 30 years old, a mother, two kids, seven-year-old and four-year-old, and I was a housewife with this very traditional upbringing. And I entered this graduate program and met a whole bunch of feminists. (both laugh) It was quite amazing. A historian, they were very excited that feminists historians were at Yale and doing work. But it wasn't really until 1977, I think, when I became more involved at the divinity school that I became more aware of feminist theology. Before that, it was mostly a feminist historian. But then the theology part, that Yale divinity, and for the very first time, I saw a woman presiding the Eucharist and it sort of blew me away that it was Joan Forsberg at Yale who was in the gallery of male pictures, paintings on the wall, you know, Forsberg, Joan, is the only woman up there, she was for a while, anyway. So yes, it was pretty late into the 70s that I became aware of the feminist theology. - Joan Forsberg is a great woman, wonderful woman. And I'm curious, where were the, how did you encounter feminist theology at YDS, was it professors, students, where was it happening? - Mostly students, but also professors, Letty Russell, particularly. Although, I didn't, I was still, I have to admit I was still very cautious about all this, I never took a course from Letty Russell, which I'm embarrassed to say. It was a long process of getting into this field. - Yes, sure, oh, I understand, yeah. You know, if you don't mind, I have to ask a question, I find it very interesting, how did you go from traditional mother, which is great, to entering a graduate school? - Well, in '72, it was a fun thing to do. I really missed studying, writing, and I chose American Studies because it was interdisciplinary and allowed me to take courses across the board wherever I wanted to. But my husband and I separated in 1976, '77, and divorced, and suddenly, what started as a fun thing to do became very serious and this was gonna be the way I would earn a living. So lots of transitions here. - Oh, interesting. Well, shifting to the Re-Imagining community, could you say something about your, I know you didn't have a direct relationship to the Re-Imagining community, could you say some about what your relationship was? - Yeah, I did not attend the 1993 conference, but that was a year after we had started the Women's Interfaith group in the Berkshires. And three of our members did go, so even though, and I looked back at my records, one of the biggest reasons, although I was well aware of it, but didn't go, that fall of '93, the institute had a very intensive program going, a weekly program that we called women in America, religion and thought, leaders from different faith traditions and groups. And on the Wednesday night before Re-Imagining, 'cause it began on Thursday, November fourth, we had an important program where we had an African American speaker talking about African American, her experience, and so they were all wonderful women speakers and I was totally absorbed in that and so I couldn't go, but we did have these members who did go. Mary Clark Michelle, Pat Patterson, and Ruth Keris. So I knew I would get a wonderful report from it. So I feel as if I was an observer, but also, very definitely, yeah, a beneficiary. Our whole group benefited because what they brought back inspired us all and touched us deeply, and I can say more about that, but, so it was extremely influential, although I wasn't there. And then I would get notices and keep in touch with what was going on in the next decade. And again, in 2003, I had announced a closing and a final conference, I was in Ithica College. And just a year earlier in 2002, we had started, I had started a women's interfaith institute in the Finger Lakes. So we had two sister organizations. And again, it was a year before the last conference and I was totally involved here and unable to go. So I feel like I've missed the whole thing, but actually, I didn't because I was so interested and followed it even though I wasn't actually participating. - Well if there were ever good reasons to miss Re-Imagining, those sound Like good ones, sounds like wonderful events. You know, actually, either now or later, would now be a good time to ask about what you heard from those women who attended or why it was so powerful? - Yeah, they talked a great deal about the liturgy and how different they were. And Pat Patterson had a special, she's a poet, and she had a special gift for liturgy. And so she brought that back, and in her interfaith group, we were devising new liturgies partly inspired and led by Pat. And they were very, very important and it was largely because of the Re-Imagining. So that was one of the most important things. Apart from the feeling of sisterhood here, a solidarity, they talked about how inclusive Re-Imagining was. And that was especially important to us because as a multi-faith group, we had a woman rabbi with us, we had a woman cantor. Later, we had a muslim woman who then was already involved at the Berkshires at the time of the terrorist attacks in 2001. So she was all over this as a member of the women's interfaith institute who attempted to educate people about muslim life. And so this sense of inclusion and solidarity that was, as I understand it, very much a part of the Re-Imagining experience. - Yes, oh, that's really helpful, that's great. I wanted to talk to you because you're coauthor of the book, one of the coauthors of the book Defecting In Place, and you wrote a really excellent paper, Re-Imagining and women's spiritual support groups, their challenge to the church. And in that paper, you talk some about the backlash. And one of the things you said in there was that you thought it was not about heresy versus orthodoxy, but about gender. So I wondered if you could say more about what you knew about the backlash and why you said that, or how you would evaluate that now almost 25 years later. There's a lot there, Allison. (both laugh) - Okay, well I knew about it because Pat Patterson and Ruth Keris, partners, lived in New York City, they had a summer home in the Berkshires, so they were involved in our Berkshire group. But they were still, at that time, based in New York City and had worked for the church nationally and even internationally. And so they were close, they were United Methodist women, laywomen, both laywomen, but deeply involved in church structure, not only in the Methodist church, but were close to friends in the other denominations, the Presbyterian church specifically, and of course, we heard a lot about the backlash in the Presbyterian church. And Mary Ann Lundy, other names of people I know you're interviewing or have interviewed, they were close friends, so we were learning about this and they would come back and share horrible stories. And I say in my paper about a program that they did on international women's day the next year, I believe, that was so powerful. So we kept in touch and it was partly that way that I understood that this was about gender. And at the time, I was, when I had first gone to the Berkshires in the United Church of Christ in 1989, '88, '89, I was astonished at half of the congregational churches. And there was one in every little town throughout the Berkshire county in Massachusetts. Half the churches were pastored by women. And so having been a researcher at the Harvard seminary, I thought this would make a really interesting research project. And I called the national office of the churches and discovered that only 12% of the churches nationally had women pastors, but 60% in the Berkshires. So we gathered monthly to, decided to write a book about this and try to explore the impact. So it was all about gender. And that was when, as a matter of fact, what led to this interfaith group was that we UCC women were having such an intense great time together that other people wanted to join us. (both laugh) But we'd published a book and then chapters where we each told our story. And Adero Homis at the Harvard seminary helped to devise a questionnaire, and we sent it to, gave it out at all of our congregations with an astronomical level of response, an unusual level of response, so we were really intensely aware of gender at the same time that the backlash after Re-Imagining was going on. So, and because of my training in American religious history with Sydney Alstra, I was involved, I had a dual perspective on this. I was a pastor, active as a pastor, but at the same time, taking a look at the whole situation as an observer as an historian. And why I'm so excited about what you're doing now is collecting this history because it's so very important. But it was that historical perspective that helped me to see that this was really a great deal about gender. - Yeah, it said in your paper, you know, you referenced Ann Hutchinson and the witch hunts, so you had a broader historical perspective on what was happening. - And the reason we did this as UCC women was that we could go back to the history of our denomination and if we had written it from many different denominations, we wouldn't have been able to have this historical piece in the book to show how that had developed over one very progressive denomination. - So Allison, how would you define Re-Imagining? - How would I define that? - Yes. - Oh my goodness. (both laugh) You know what, I think I wanna leave that to the-- - Okay, that's fine, that's fine. (both laugh) - 'Cause I was an outsider looking in, I wanna leave that to the insiders. - Fair enough, fair enough. Good, so what aspects of Re-Imagining, although you were kind of getting it secondhand and you started talking about the liturgies, what were most significant to you and why? - One of the liturgies that we used a lot was Mary Bednarowski's when she had described the experience of 21 women on a holocaust tour. And I have it in front of me because it was such an important, I wanna read the first couple of statements and then the concluding statement because I think that many people who were involved certainly recognize this. She writes that on this tour, they said to one another that, quote, we will be together in these places, we will watch out for women of Earth, we will listen to whatever needs to be said, we will not be fearful or anxious or prodding when it seems that silence is the only possible response, we will wait for the slowest, we will sooner or later catch up with the fastest. And then she concludes we will do our best to stir in each other the courage to act with love and justice in our own particular lives. We said to each other we will be together in these places. And so we have that entire, and I haven't read it all, the entire piece printed out and often said that together. It was just extremely insightful and inspiring. And told us, it said who we wanted to be and how we wanted to do this, and this was a re-imagining of ways to be together, that's what we felt. So that was one of the liturgies that we, part of the liturgies that we used. - That is wonderful. By the way, do I have your permission to email Mary Bednarowski and tell her that? - Oh, sure. - I'm sure she would love to know that. - Yes, I never met her, but I think at one time, years ago, and it's been at least 20 years, I think I did contact her and asked for permission. And it could've been maybe at the time that I gave this paper in St. Louis that you've referred to. And yeah, but it was always a disappointment. I didn't meet her, so I'd be thrilled to have this as part of this historical record and for her to know how much she impacted our group. - Great, I will definitely do that, that is wonderful. Although you weren't directly involved in Re-Imagining, did it kind of indirectly change your perspective on feminist theology or the church? - Oh, it really did for sure, for sure. The whole issue of inclusive language was enormous at the time that UCC was, I think one of the first groups to reproduce a hymno, it was very exciting when an inclusive language hymno came out. And my friend from Harvard seminary who you've mentioned is writing a book, Defecting In Place, with Miriam Therese Winter, she does a couple of hymns in that UCC hymno. We felt it was a time of pioneering, of breaking new ground, and the inclusive language was a huge piece of it. I'm trying to go back to your original question, make sure I'm covering it. - Oh, did it change your perspective on feminist theology or the church? - For me, one of the problems I had with Re-Imagining, this is personal, there was much talk about the goddess and I think people were feeling they were breaking new ground by thinking of, we had inclusive language, all kinds of different ways of speaking of the holy and of the deity and goddess was part of it and maybe what did feel heretical to many Christians. But I had trouble with it a different way because it seemed to me as a female talking about the normally god language with goddess made both feel very anthropomorphic. And I know that people in the Re-Imagining community wanted to move away from that, you know, god in the sky, but saying goddess didn't help. - yeah, well, you know-- - But it was just personal. - Sure, sure, well, what's interesting is a lot of the goddess language actually came from the media and from the right wing because-- - Is that right? Oh, wow. - That is. See, the Sophia language in the newsletter and in the comments afterwards, people said we were using the Sophia language as a biblical term to talk about an attribute of god that they never actually said it was goddess. And that was part of what the message that got out early on, that they actually said was not the intention of what they were doing. But it was very prevalent, that's how it was framed. - Well, that's so interesting because it shows the power of the media to change my own thinking. - And everybody's. - Yes, right, but that's what I mean, to really mess it up. - Well, and to give you a quick, oh, I'm sorry, Allison, the problem with the phone is we're talking over each other, I can't see you, and I always apologize about that. - No, no, go ahead. - Well I was just gonna give an example of that that's really powerful. The Minneapolis Star Tribune published an article before the Re-Imagining conference, the first one, and the article itself was completely accurate, but the headline that the reporter was not responsible for used the term goddess worship. So it started even before the conference. - Oh my gosh, okay. Yeah, well that's, all right. I'm glad, this conversation is very important. - Yeah, and part of it is setting the record straight because that is the story that was told, and that's, yeah. So what do you think is the greatest legacy of the Re-Imagining community. - Oh my goodness, the empowering of women to, and the inclusiveness where we value difference and wanted to be together in solidarity, but also recognizing our differences. The fact of the womanist theology and the, how do you pronounce-- - Mujerista, yes. - Mujerista, you know, we, it was an inclusive vision and we valued our differences and wanted to be together and break new ground and support one another. And to challenge patriarchy, that was huge. Most of us UCC women in the Berkshires, I think every one of us was the first woman leader of the church she was serving, the congregation in which she was serving. And people, it's hard to, even now, when it's become so much more common, people didn't know what to call us. And especially, for instance, I went to a wedding or a funeral and there would be people there, many Roman Catholics, and they said "Do I call you mother?" (both laugh) I mean, we were breaking new ground and it was very exciting. And re-imagining how to empower all that made us feel that even if we weren't there, it was part of the whole, the culture, changing culture. - Yeah, in your paper, following up on the significance of Re-Imagining, you talked about Re-Imagining as an early warning flag that signals the fall of Christian patriarchy, and many people felt that at the time. Now almost 25 years later, what would you say about that? (both laugh) - Well, the very fact that it's so common now, at least in the mainline, for women to be pastors, here in Seneca Falls, the Methodist pastor, the Presbyterian pastor, the Episcopal director, they are all women. Yeah, I think Christians are not surprised anymore to have, in fact, in Seneca Falls, the Methodist has its third woman pastor since I've been here. So I think that's very big, but I also think that in those years since the Re-Imagining conference in '93, we all are recognizing a shift in the religious culture of our country in the growing numbers of people who are not identifying with Christianity although that would be their religious background, who say they're spiritual but not religious. And maybe Re-Imagining helped open the way for that, to say, you know, to explore and to be bold about whether people are spiritual but not religious. Maybe having trouble with some of Christian doctrine. For me, and I believe you told me that one of the Christian doctrines that they talked a lot about at Re-Imagining was the atonement. And people were not happy with the atonement and it was something of a malfeasance. I was a child. So, and for me, it was the trinitarian doctrine and then I began to identify more as a unitarian, universalist. And the whole universalist perspective are all in Christian faith. And the people asking lots of questions. And the more interconnected our world is and the more people experience people from different religious traditions, they're questioning. So it's very, very interesting to me as an historian to see this happening and to try to make sense of it. And, yeah. (both laugh) Is that a good answer to the question? - Oh, it is, it definitely is, and I think you're actually starting to move to another question I wanted to ask you which was what does Re-Imagining mean today, and I don't mean in the limited sense of just the Re-Imagining community, I mean what is being or needs to be re-imagined today about religion and/or spirituality? - Well, I do think that because of the fact that atheists are being more and more outspoken about where they are and why people are identifying as either atheists or humanists, which is actually where I'm moving toward, the issue becomes at the same time what is so important to people is community and music, and I talked to any number of people who are still attending church regularly even though they'll say to me "I can't say the creed, "I just can't do it. "But I love the music and I am there for the people." And so for me, I figure the big issue is re-imagining people coming together regularly for the same thing the church has been. So a justice, justice, social action, that's another big piece of it, that if folks are starting to stop attending churches, how do they come together unless it's in purely secular ways, when they are saying "But I'm spiritual". So for me, that seems to be what's needed now, is how to bring the people together who don't feel that they can embrace the theology of the church, but still have a need for the kind of community. What was the piece that I read from Mary Bednarowski that we will be together, there's no reference to the holy, really, that I remember, but it's what we value and saying that together and embracing it together is so important. And it reminds me of the Quakers, who saw the holy in one another, and the light. And that's where Elizabeth Cady Stanton lived, was in Seneca Falls. Elizabeth Cady Stanton's home was here. The first women's rights convention in 1848, and I've been doing research on women who spoke at the first parliament of religions, which was held in 1893 at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. Stanton wasn't there because by that time, it was toward the end of her life and she was working on the women's bible. But she wrote a paper for the parliament of religions and because she couldn't travel to Chicago, Susan B. Anthony read it. And I printed it out, we have a record of all the women's speeches and there were some 19 of them, eight of them were ordained clergy. And anyway, Stanton's paper reads as if it could've been written yesterday. She was so far ahead of her time and this is where she was in terms of seeing god within humans, seeing god within others. But it does recall the 1893 event and the fact that eight of the speakers, and the lecture hall where they spoke and they were packed lecture halls, had a seating capacity of 3,000. I mean, these women were reaching many, many people who had come from all over, even beyond our country, from other countries. It was history that was lost. And I'm now working on getting it out there because it's not in the history books. And what's so striking to me about Re-Imagining, and I include it at the end of the paper that you mentioned, that I gave in 1995, is the remark that we have now come to a place in women's history where what women are doing today, including the Re-Imagining and especially the Re-Imagining where it can't and won't be lost, we've turned the corner. And this is again something that I pulled out because I wanted to underline it in my talk with you because I quote Gerda Lerner in the creation of feminist consciousness. She talks about how the wheel had to be reinvented generation after generation. Women lost their history, they had to keep finding it again, but she says that we're now experiencing this paradigm shift where the woman's point of view has entered the common discourse instead of going backward. Let me read to you just quickly what she writes. She said "Once the basic fallacy of patriarchal thought, "the assumption that a half of humankind "can adequately represent the whole "has been exposed and explained, "it can no more be undone "than was the insight that the Earth is round, not flat." And then the last paragraph, the concluding paragraph of my paper, I go back to the words, I wrote "From my perspective "as an historian of American religion, "a gender-based analysis is inescapable. "From my perspective as a Christian feminist and pastor, "the holy spirit is moving mightily. "Increasing numbers of men no longer have any interest "in representing the whole. "They understand that when women's point of view "enters the common discourse, all humanity is served." and I think that Re-Imagining was a huge piece of that, that it went way beyond the numbers of women who were originally involved, that we truly have turned a corner. And as I told you earlier, I really applaud you for capturing this history and all testimonies of women who either were there and very involved or like me, who were nevertheless deeply impacted. So you're doing great work with this project. - Thank you, and believe me, it is such a delight and so exciting, it really is. And I have to say I'm really excited to hear about you covering the world parliament, the 1893 meeting and Elizabeth Cady Stanton's role in that, that is exciting. And once again, it's part of keeping women's history alive and not letting it get lost. And so I'm glad you're doing that. - Well what was so surprising to me was that when I entered divinity school in the late 70s, and learned that Joan Forsberg and Letty Russell had been ordained in the 50s, I thought this is mind-blowing, they were pioneers. Can you imagine in the 50s, they were ordained. And so when I discovered not so many years ago, I think it was back in 2008 or 2009, that there were women ordained in 1893, I thought I was such a novice, I thought that the pioneers were from the 50s, not the 19th century. And I did know, yes, that Antoinette Brown Blackwell, a very big name in the congregational church of the UCC, she had been ordained in 1853, I knew that. But to me, that was kind of an anomaly, and amazing, but to learn that there were so many women, and most of them were either unitarian or universalist in the 1890s, about Anna Howard Shaw and others. Anyway, it's fascinating to see these women, but it's not gonna be lost anymore. And Re-Imagining, and Gerda Lerner says we turned a corner, that's right. And it's just begun, she says men are there too, it's men who feel it that's very important, it's not just women, that you know, that 50% or more, 51%, (laughs) of the perspective in this world to be heard. - Absolutely, yes. I had one specific question that you may or may not feel that you wanna answer is we are working on a Re-Imagining website and do you have any ideas about what would be helpful to include or who would benefit from it or how they would find out about it. Do you have any thought on that? - Oh my goodness. Wow. Well, it would seem one of the, an important thing to include on the website would be to have links to other websites. - Yes. - Where you feel that it would be useful for women to connect, ways for helping women to connect and learn what's out there, yeah. - Absolutely. - Real quickly on the parliament, because it may be of importance, especially as you think about the website, quick history, the first parliament in 1893, it was a hundred years before the second parliament and it was 1993, also in Chicago. And I wanted to go, same year as Re-Imagining, I wanted to go and I couldn't. So they decided that they couldn't wait a hundred years, it was too wonderful, they had 7,000 people come from all over the world to 1993, so they had a parliament of world religions, the third one was held in December 1999 in Cape Town, South Africa. And I went to that conference hoping that I would meet other women who were doing interfaith work, working across faith traditions, not just within Christianity. And I was very disappointed because it was largely male. And after that, I became aware that the 1893, it was so many more women leaders participating, what I realized was that we had gone backwards and I became interested in that as a subject and began doing research. So the next parliament, the fourth parliament, was in 2004 at Barcelona, Spain. And I didn't go to that one, but a student of mine from Ithica College went, he's now a leader at Marsh Chapel at Boston University finishing his Ph.D. But so then the next parliament, the fifth one, was in Melbourne, Australia in 2009. And I gave a powerpoint presentation there of everything I had learned about its history. And people kept saying why don't I know this, why don't we know this. Well, they finally held, and then the parliament headquarters is in Chicago and they wanted, after Melbourne and my presentation there, they really wanted the board to learn more about its history. So they invited me to come and give a presentation in Chicago to the board and others as part of a celebration they were having, I believe it was the 120th anniversary of the parliament. So I did that, and as a result, at this last parliament, the sixth parliament was held in Salt Lake City, Utah in November. October, October. (both laugh) 2015 in October. And it began, pardon me for telling you this history, they decided that it was time now to bring women together and the first, the opening day, the whole day was a women's assembly. And the numbers of women on the stage and in that program was absolutely phenomenal. It was huge, it was huge. And so that was, it's called the women's inaugural assembly. So connecting with that, I think what the, because that's what these women are doing, is Re-Imagining on a multi-faith international scale. So that's what I wanna have to offer for the website, is to connect with women who are involved in the inaugural assembly and in the parliament will be shaping and working on parliaments in the future. Because the ambition now is to hold them every two years, but I don't know how they can do it because there were 10,000 people at Salt Lake City. And the logistics of pulling off an elaborate program, a multifaceted program for those numbers is just, you know, it takes years. - Allison, that is incredibly exciting. And we can talk about this later in email, but any links you have would be wonderful. Also, you don't have to give an answer now, but you mentioned you're getting a website going, we can think about whether you'd wanna link to Re-Imagining or not. You're doing some great stuff and this is exactly the kind of thing that we wanna do, this is great. - Okay, good, yeah, I hope it didn't go off on a tangent here. - No, it's directly relevant, it's exciting. - Good, okay, okay. - Is there anything that we haven't discussed that you would like to add? - I can't think of anything except, again, to just underline how thankful I am to you for this. It's just an important project, it's wonderful. And I'm glad to be interviewed and to contribute in whatever way I can. So yeah, thank you. - Thank you. And one of the best parts of this whole process is getting to get in touch with people like you and find out what you're doing, so thank you. I'm gonna turn off the recording at this point, so just give me one second.