-: And we are now recording, Maryanne we are picking
up the conversation, thank you so much for your time.
And we, I thought it would be helpful to just finish
up with looking toward the future.
We've talked about the past but what, as you look
to the future, what do you think is the greatest legacy
of the Reimagining Community?
-: Well in many ways, I think it wasn't so much what
was said, even though, of course that's crucial
and most important but I think, as one of my colleagues
in of the time, Reimagining showed us a way of being church,
not of doing church but of being.
Relationships, attitudes, a way of looking at the
past, a way of incorporating the past into the present
and the future, a way of helping us be inclusive.
It showed us how to be these things.
It didn't talk about being church, it didn't talk about
theology, it was a living, doing of theology.
And that's why it was so threatening to the church
in many ways because it was so living and it was changing.
By implication, the structures, the worship, liberty
and so it wasn't, it wasn't just something that you
talk about intellectually and let it go.
It was living the lives of those who are there.
And they were committed to it and committed to bringing
it back and living in our midst, in our communities
wherever we were and in many ways that was why it was so,
the impact was so great in local communities.
I think the other thing that was so important was that
it was international, it was so huge and so you couldn't
say, oh, this is just a few women
in a corner doing something.
There were women there from all denominations,
all parts of the Christian faith plus non-Christians,
Jewish persons, some Muslim and people from all over
the world so everybody could see it as going back
into all corners of the world.
And I think that was very threatening to the structures.
In many ways, that is, has been what the legacy has been,
it seems to me, it's what's remembered.
The controversy's remembered but the controversy has stayed.
I mean, we've had more theological discussion of wisdom,
Sofia, what did that mean, what does that mean now.
There's still books being written in terms of my own
denomination that would never have happened without that.
So in a sense, Reimagining's impulses, Reimagining's,
I don't want to make it sound too academic.
But the insights, didn't just live for women,
they were really lived out and lived into the structures of
churches so I think that's what's made the difference.
And I think that because it became a living community,
Reimagining, that also had a huge impact on the,
it didn't die with end of the conference.
It began to live then, so that the conference is
an impetus for other insights
and changes and controversies that happen.
-: Oh that's great, what, as you look around today,
what does Reimagining mean today, what needs to be
reimagined, what is being reimagined?
-: Well, I think in many ways, I guess I need to speak
only for my own denomination but it's become much more,
much less courageous than it ever was before.
And I think Reimagining is the community which is starting
again can become living and wide spread which it has
the possibility of being, then I think we may yet
be able to revive churches that are in so many ways dying.
Mainline denominations that don't speak at all on the
issues of culture and social justice, our voices are
very much dimmed in terms of what they mean
or whether they're listened to and I think that
it's while it's history, in some ways.
People say, oh yes, I know you, you were involved
with Reimagining, nevertheless, there are still impulses
of change and revision, I guess revision, rethinking
that I find in the local churches.
But it's not fearful, it's not awful.
If we really look or ask questions about some of these
things, particularly as women do it.
Now I think the other thing that I don't know
and I am hoping that the
Reimagining Community is revitalized
again that we'll keep in touch with all those small
communities of women that were the result of Reimagining.
Women found each other and went back and formed small
five or six maybe, women, who met, who read, who studied,
who looked at their churches, their congregations
and often the real center of their lives, religious
lives were in these small communities of women.
I'd love to know if they still exist.
I'd love to know how many of those met together,
knew each other in different ways, how much they
shared across denominational lines.
Because we knew from the quarterly publications
that the Reimagining Community in Minneapolis kept doing
for 10 years, we had some handle on where they were,
where these little communities were.
I think we didn't keep as probably as accurate a
record as we should have of those communities.
And it would be, I don't know how we'd find them now
but we've got the names of all the people who
went to the conference so if they're still alive,
20 some years later, it might
be very interesting to find out.
-: Just so you know, yeah, I actually am still
part of a Reimagining small group and I know another woman
who is but I think, those are the only
two that we know of at the moment.
-: Really? -: Yeah.
There was an active one in Sante Fe I know, at one point
but I don't think, most.
-: Yeah, we've had, well, I came here.
Sante Fe were one of the larger groups.
I think there were 10 or 12 women who came from here
and we studied for another 10 years probably.
-: Wow, wow.
-: We're not still going right now but yeah.
But that group saw itself as extremely important
to following up on Reimagining and staying alive
and bringing to the church it's submissions.
Because the church is very receptive to the Reimagining.
Yeah, the learnings and that group, the women who
read theology together is still doing theology in
different configurations but it would be interesting
to know where they, and I travel sometimes I'm in the
church or in churches or local congregations,
somebody will say oh yeah, I was at Reimagining
and uh huh, we're still or groups of us.
And the other significant thing I'd like to know
is what's happened to the Roman Catholic Women
who came in groups and they were parts of these local,
small groups of women, I'd love to know if those were
still happening, I think we still have a lot of follow
up to do, I mean, we think we ended but.
(laughing)
-: I think you're right, ya know.
Is there anything else that we haven't discussed
that you would like to add, Maryanne?
-: I, well, one of the other things I'd like to know
is what happened in the seminaries afterward.
Because I think the most impact that took place
on women who were up for nomination in the various
denominations and I don't know whether it was true
in other denominations but in the Presbyterian Church,
those women were really given a hard time since
they came up for their oral ordination exams.
And they were harassed about it in some cases.
They weren't sure that they were going to make it through.
Just because in some cases, they were, the questioning
went on for hours and hours. -: Wow.
-: It really was just like an inquisition.
And I think in most cases, they were finally ordained
but they surely had to have stalwart backbone if they
succeeded because they, men and others who would,
had gone to Seminaries and graduated and who had followed
a kind of regular tract were not given the same kind
of inquisition or questioning or really critical.
It was very, very unfair and I felt for those young women
because in many cases, they didn't have a community as such.
They were from Seminaries all over the country.
-: Maryanne, do you know if the women were,
how did they know they had been to Reimagining?
Did that become a question?
-: They asked them right away. -: They did.
-: Every women who came up for ordination in the Presbyterian
Church, the year following Reimagining was asked that.
-: Wow. -: I have no doubts
about that, I know that many of the Presbyterians
grilled them about what they thought about the conference
before they ever even began the ordination questions.
-: Wow. -: And when you talk to
Rebecca Todd Peters, she'll know about that because
she was one of those people who was, who came up
for ordination in I think, North Carolina.
And she, because she keeps in touch with a lot of
those young women, theologians, I think she'll know.
-: Yes. -: But I felt one of the things
we didn't do was follow up with the court for
particularly the younger ones who were there at the
conference that we as a Reimagining Community could've
been better at so that's one of the areas that I
and I have no, I don't know whether we can trace those
women, we have the list of the women.
Well, yeah, we do, we have the list.
So we've never, I don't think we've ever done a mailing,
a follow up mailing to all those people who were there.
-: You mean like a, 'cause we did initially,
you mean like in recent years?
-: Yeah. -: Yeah, yeah.
No, it's been. -: Did we initially?
-: Yes, we did, I mean, I'm saying we.
I was not actually part of it but I understood
that they sent out a mailing afterwards to everyone
who was there talking about what happened.
-: Well, they must have because they got a lot of
positive feedback on the conference itself
and that must've been the way they did that.
-: Yeah, yeah. -: Yeah.
So I think, it would be interesting too.
My feeling is so much because there was negative,
immediate negative response that we didn't find many
of the positives kinds of things that came out.
-: Yes. -: We simply didn't
follow up enough on that as individuals
within our denominations. -: Yeah.
-: I'm not, the Reimagining Community in Minneapolis may
have done that, the other problem for me was of course,
I left the country for four years, so.
-: What was your title at the, it was the World
Counsel of Churches, right?
-: Yeah, the World Counsel of Churches.
I was Deputy General Secretary.
-: Okay, great.
-: The General Secretary's the head
and then there were two and I replaced a woman
who was at Reimagining and down there,
a theologian named Mercy Aduaway.
-: Yes, oh, okay. -: Yeah, I replaced Mercy.
She left and then she taught at Seminaries for a while
and so and so I think part of it, my job at the
World Counsel of Churches was not to follow up on the
Reimagining Conference, that was not why I was hired.
I was hired because of my positions in the Presbyterian
Church, particularly I left as Associate Director.
The General from the Counsel said that man that I was
working in areas of coordination, planning, staffing,
staff issues, personnel issues.
So those I was really hired to do that with the
World Counsel of Churches.
So I didn't feel, I did find, the one area follow up
was I made, the World Counsel made ecumenical
decade visits to all of the, how did they decide which
countries, I guess they asked permission to come
and they sent teams of four or five persons to spend
four or five days and we had a set of questions that
we met with the heads of the communions.
Like I went to Estonia and Lavia.
And what was the head of our delegation was a
bishop, an African bishop from Tanzania.
The head of the Welsh, the Church of Wales.
Another woman and it all had to have a young woman.
They were very versatile groups.
That report, I have the book of the report to that.
And then they came together at the end which would've
been two years, I think two years after Reimagining
had a conference and Todd Peters was there.
She was one of the young women who planned that,
Rebecca Todd Peters so she'll have and she's still
on the Division of Faith
and Order of the World Counsel of Churches.
-: Oh okay so just to clarify, Maryanne,
what was the point of the report?
Was the report to find out what these different
places had done for the ecumenical decade?
-: Uh huh, it was to follow up, what difference had a
decade for churches in solidarity with women,
what had that meant? -: Wow, okay.
-: Yeah so it's a follow up report in a book that I have.
And if you can't find that, which you might not,
it was published overseas.
I'm pretty, I know I have it so I can get that to you.
-: Good, I'll look and see if I can find it
'cause that would be very interesting, yeah.
-: Yeah, yeah, yeah, because you know, that had been
our intent in the beginning, this is a world conference.
These women were coming from overseas to tell us.
And that kind of got lost in some ways.
In certainly did when the criticisms came,
not only in my own denomination was this not seen
sometimes as an ecumenical conference.
It certainly was not seen as an international conference
where we were receiving many
cultural aspects of Christianity as well.
-: Yes. -: So that made it a very
different, that would have made it a very different critique
and we could've learned instead of critiquing so much.
So I think that's probably about where I am now.
Let me look at one more.
Yeah, I ended up with that about the international
aspects of the conference and in those other
countries, they did have a backlash about the conference.
-: Really? -: Which is why
I think, I don't know this for sure but I think I was
hired by the World Counsel because the women,
many women all over the world who'd been at this conference,
when they found out I had lost my job said
then you must have her in the World Counsel of Churches.
That conference was, so I think the impulse
to hire me came from what had happened.
And it was a, Conrad Riser who is the Executive,
General Secretary, who's German, very, very competent
theologian in his own right and so he was very much
aware and up on top of it and courageous.
No body could tell him who to hire, so.
(laughing)
Except the women. (laughing)
Conrad's a very strong German theologian too.
So Elizabeth would've told him but he didn't need
to have anybody tell him, he was at the
General Assembly when the report came in.
-: Yes. -: He was the ecumenical
representative, we always have one.
And he happened to be that year, the ecumenical theologian
when the report of the conference came, so.
-: Maryanne, I'm just curious, do you have a
theory as to why there was not a backlash
against Reimagining other countries the
way there was in the United States?
-: Well, I think because there were fewer
in each country, when we chose people to come
and be speak throughs particularly, because we
paid their way, that was the 66,000 from
the Presbyterians covered that and we usually chose
one, I think we had three from Africa.
We had two from the East so they weren't, they didn't
go back to a lot, clearly, the represented a whole country.
African women theologians met all the time
but they'd never been a threat in
the African church in the same way.
The African women theologians, very strong group,
usually the churches begin to adopt or maybe not
in recent years but they did in the '90's.
So I don't know, that's another interesting question.
And Mercy Aduaway, I think we spoke about that.
I heard her once in Lu Abul after I had left and come back.
And so there were several of them, Chung Chun, of course,
spoke always in the theological communities.
So they were already known but they also had
very strong credentials, it wasn't like the person
who sits next to me in the pew.
It was somebody who knew more than I did.
(laughing)
A lot of people, a lot of heads of, well, I shouldn't say
that, people high up in the structures realized that.
So they had kind of competency already.
But they were fearless too. -: Yes.
-: So and the World Counsel's very supportive
of that kind of theological investigation, so.
That's another reason. -: Yes.
-: Okay. -: Well, thank you.
Maryanne, this has been so wonderful and so important.
Thank you so much for your time.
-: You're very welcome and I will look up some of
these things that I think might, you might not
necessarily have seen and maybe.
-: And I'll turn off the. -: I had mentioned
the Christian Century, I just found an article
in which they talked, they did a piece on me.
They never talked to me about it, I don't know
who they talked to, but. -: Really?
-: Yeah, so it's in, I have the date written down.
I'll send you that. -: Great.
-: I can't tell you, I don't see it right now
in this stack of papers but yeah, I'll go through
these things and just think and see things that
you might be interested in 'cause I have your address.
-: I appreciate this, I'm gonna turn off the recording now.
-: Yes. -: And let me do
that real fast, great and. -: Okay.