Interviewer: Joyce, it's a pleasure to talk to you.
Thanks so much for agreeing to be interviewed.
I just would like some background information.
If you could give me your full name,
and spell it as well please.
Joyce: Okay, Joyce Ann Mercer.
J O Y C E, A N N, M E R C E R.
-: Thanks so much, and are you layer clergy?
-: I'm clergy, I am PC rep...
Sorry I'm getting cut off here somehow.
-: Are you still there?
-: Yes.
-: Okay.
-: You're still there too, good.
(laughing)
-: We're having technical difficulties.
-: We sure are, my my.
-: Joyce?
-: Yes.
-: I can hear you, are you getting cut off from me?
-: I now can hear you.
I don't know what happened for a minute there.
We're okay now.
-: Okay.
You are an elder in the Presbyterian Church, PC USA, right?
-: That's right, I'm a teaching elder.
-: Right.
And Joyce, when and where were you born?
-: I was born in Richmond Virginia in 1997, I mean 1957!
-: Okay! (laughing)
You had me worried for a minute there.
(both laughing)
You are so mature for your age. (laughing)
And I know, I know looking at your CV
you've been to several institutions,
so could you just quickly talk about
where you've gone to school?
-: I did my undergraduate work at the University of Virginia,
and majored in religious studies there.
And then I was at Yale Divinity School
where I have an M.Div.
And at the UCONN School of Social Work where I have an MSW.
And while I was in ministry in Minneapolis,
I joined up with a cohort of the Presbyterian minister's
who were doing a demon and urban ministry
true McCormick seminary, so I did that.
-: Wow.
-: And then that gave me courage to go ahead and pursue
PhD studies at Emory university.
-: Wow, that's impressive.
Interesting background. (laughing)
-: Mostly it just means that I like school a lot.
(interviewer laughing)
-: Well, I understand.
What work or ministry were you doing
at the time of Re-Imagining?
Which was 1993.
-: I was in transition at that particular moment.
I had been serving in a UCC parish in Minneapolis.
I was at Mayflower UCC.
I had been there as an associate pastor
for a couple of years,
and an opportunity came for me to go to graduate school,
and so, at the time, I was just in my first year at Emory,
and had only been in Atlanta for a couple of months.
-: Mmm, okay, that's helpful.
What work or ministry did you do after Re-Imagining?
-: When I finished my graduate program,
the portion that I had to do in residency in Atlanta,
I returned to Minneapolis,
and I worked as a social worker at Teenage Medical Services
which was then the Teen Clinic
of Minneapolis Children's Hospital.
I did that while I finished my dissertation,
and after that, moved to the Philippines where my spouse
and I were mission coworkers for theological education.
-: Great, and currently you are professor of practical
theology and pastoral care at Yale Divinity School?
-: That is correct.
-: Good.
Thank you so much.
Joyce, I know you've written about this,
and taught feminist theology,
I'm wondering how and when did you first
become aware of feminist theology?
-: I think I was born aware.
(both laughing)
-: That sounds intriguing, you have to tell me.
-: I mean, it's a little incidental story.
When I was born, I was born prematurely,
and my parents had not picked out any names for girls
because they were so certain that I was gonna be a boy.
Even my naming kind of happened in opposition.
(both laughing)
So it kind of bolted from there.
I think I have
long been aware of feminist thought.
When I got into my undergraduate program
at the University of Virginia of course there were not
courses in feminist theology there,
but there was conversation about liberation theology
and the emergence of feminist theology.
And so I began to read some of that material on my own
I found my way to Letty Russell and Rosemary and Ruether,
and some others.
And it was just deeply resonant.
I sort of read myself into that, and then when I was
choosing places that I wanted
to go for theological eduction,
I thought how nice it would be to go and study where
some of these women are teaching.
That's really how I ended up at Yale,
cause then in school I wanted to come and be in a place
where I could be in conversation about those things.
Which happened.
-: Yeah.
Letty Russell was there, Margaret Farley, is that right?
-: Right.
-: Yes, yeah.
Oh thank you, that is really interesting.
I love the story about your name, too.
(laughing)
Could you say a little bit,
I know you were on the planning committee for the first,
the 1993 conference.
And I wonder if you could share some of your memories
of that committee, and what that was like.
But first of all actually, I apologize.
How did you first get hooked up with the planning committee?
-: I was a member of the Twin Cities Area Presbytery,
and Sally Hill was the moderator when I was ordained,
in 1985, I guess it was.
Of course we all, my husband was working at Saint Luke's
where Mary Ann Lundy's husband was the pastor.
-: Yes.
-: It was sort of this small world,
and I was in conversation with people at seminary,
and we had a women's gathering,
a women's virtue gathering monthly, women of the presbytery.
And I suppose,
maybe it was Sally Hill invited me to be a partner.
I can't really remember now, but,
-: Sure.
-: I know it was through association of women who were
interested in feminist theology, and feminism in the church.
-: Yes.
And what do you recall about that,
I know it's been a long time,
but what do you recall about that planning committee?
-: A lot of laughter.
(laughing)
It was fun.
I also remember some particular decisions being made
that were significant.
One of them was,
that someone articulated out loud
the good of inviting
what we might call up and coming, or maybe lesser known
women and speakers.
-: Yes.
-: The choice to not just have the same people
that spoke already, had access to really.
But to have some fresh faces
and different voices on the platforms for the conference.
It was a very deliberate choice.
And so that's how we ended up with Mary Bednarowski,
instead of somebody who's out there all the time
talking historically about the church.
Or we ended up with Rita Brock, or others,
cause Rita was just coming in to everybody's consciousness
at that point in time, you know.
It was a very deliberate decision to do that.
I also recall the decision to
fully incorporate art into the conference,
and so having artists working while the meeting was going on
I think that was part of it.
What else?
Gosh.
Choices about
specific conscience elements I don't recall being on the
table at the time when I was involved with the committee.
It was more that shaping the container parts of it,
so things like deciding not to have a
static center or front.
But to have that move around, I think that was, you know,
part of the design work at the time.
-: Do you recall why the decision was made to have the art
going on, and to not have a static center?
-: I know that the issue of the static center was about
opposition to the kinds of hierarchies that get created
just by the way the furniture is set up in rooms,
and how that kind of
arrangement where there is eight fronts,
and the people who are, the speakers are at the front,
and the people who are in the very back have less access,
and maybe are participating differently
by virtue of where they are.
And so a hierarchy gets created implicitly,
whether it's intended or not.
I think the planning group was very intent on thinking about
the structural ways that the
unintended consequences
of things like how the furniture is arranged in a room.
And the reproducing
exclusionary dynamics in social gatherings,
and particularly in church and conference settings.
You know, we're all so used to walking into worship settings
where pews are in auditorium-like rows,
and the important people are up on a podium,
a chancel in the front,
and there are power differentials being expressed.
-: Mm hmm.
-: And it's not that, I mean the committee was not,
as I recall at least,
naive about power or negative about power.
I mean there was a great assertion of
the positive use of power on behalf of women.
But, there was a direct effort
to make intentional decisions
about the way power was structured and set up,
in the implicit design of the meeting.
-: Yes.
And what about the inclusion of art?
And having artists working during the gathering?
-: I think that probably it's most
closely with the whole title and theme,
the notion of Re-Imagining that is really about
envisioning imagination as a way of knowing.
-: Mm hmm.
-: And the tending to the power of the imaginary
in human experience.
Typically, I think this is still largely true,
it certainly is in a lot of university settings
that I have connections with,
there are hierarchies of knowledges,
and artistic imagination,
even we can see that devaluing over time of the humanities,
and of liberal arts as forms of knowing,
as containers for knowledge.
So I think the presence of working artists
during the meeting
was actually an effort to counter the assumptions
that knowledge is about work that speakers are saying
that can be written down in three point outlines.
And to know instead that our imaginations are
forms of knowing that are valued and important,
and in fact are
intimately tied up with the way we know the sacred,
how we have access to God and the holy is
an imaginative way of being in the world.
-: Well said.
Before you move on, I wondered if you could tell me
some of your memories about Sally Hill.
As you know she is no longer with us,
and she was so instrumental in this.
It's helpful to hear people's memories of her.
-: Well, one of my memories of her
actually is not from the conference.
She used to sit in the Presbytery meetings and do her,
can't remember all of the sudden if it was weaving,
or needle work, anyway,
she had a hand towel fabric art that she did all the time,
and she would bring that, you know,
and it used to really irritate some of the men
(laughing)
Because they assumed that she was,
I don't know what they assumed.
But it seemed like perhaps they assumed that
she was not paying attention, or that she,
the little old lady on the sidelines or something like that.
Clearly she wasn't.
She became the moderator of the Presbytery.
She was very active in church governors,
and decision making, and creative things that were happening
All sorts of stuff.
I just remember her doing that as kind of a
refusal to
be cooptive by a way of being in a meeting
that she didn't want.
And after her, I have taken that up.
I frequently take my cross-stitch into meetings,
because I find that it helps me to think,
to stay focused on what we're talking about
when I'm kinesthetically engaged with my hands
doing something else.
She's got that.
The other thing that I recall is how
Sally had a kind of dry humor about her at times.
And in that Re-Imagining group, in the planning group,
I just remember a lot of laughter, and a lot of it came...
She set it up that way (laughter)
Her name is on my ordination certificate.
I have memories of her because
she was the moderator at that time.
Being involved in that, which I did with some trepidation.
It was a little bit hard for me to take that step,
and she helped to see that through,
along with Liz Heller and some other important women
in the presbyterian
-: Yeah.
May I ask why it was hard for you to take that step?
-: I was coming in to a specialized ministry.
I was being ordained to a chaplaincy position in
adolescent chemical dependency treatment in
what was then Fairview Deaconess Hospital in Minneapolis,
and so I was coming into a ministry that didn't have
a church community attached to it.
And I was really feeling the absence of that sort of
sponsoring community.
And that just made it a little hard for me.
-: Sure.
-: Women in the presbytery stepped up,
and other people stepped up,
and we kind of made community around that occasion.
But it was just psychologically difficult for me to
be doing something that I understood as an athlete about
leadership and community,
without a concrete community.
-: Yes.
-: We can theologize about the way that specialized
ministries like chaplaincy are where one is sent by the
ecclesial community into the wider community permission.
So it's not that there's not a community there,
it's just not as readily visible
as if you're going into parish ministry.
-: Right, oh that makes sense, yes.
Well I love that story, I especially love that story
of her doing that fabric art, and that you've continued it.
That's lovely.
So you were at the 1993 conference,
and I would love to hear your memories of that event.
What moments stand out for you?
What was your overall impression?
-: I remember entering,
I don't know what other people call it,
I think of it as the Sophia blessing.
That happened as we came into the space,
and the tables were all arranged in a kind of big circle
with a podium somewhere.
And that blessing was something about
dreaming visions and sharing with,
and I don't really remember this word but,
-: That's it, you got it.
-: Okay, that passed in my compass
I remember that.
I remember probably one of the most powerful moments for me,
and this is unexpected, or was for me at the time.
There was a point when one of the speakers
invited LGBTQ folks who wanted to,
and were comfortable being out publicly,
to come up to the podium and claim their space there,
and be prayed with and for.
And also acknowledge that some people who are not at liberty
to do that, that they can't be safe,
and be known in the fullness of their identities.
And inviting others to stand on their behalf.
And I remember just being moved to tears,
oh gosh it touches me even now,
to think of the church as a comfortable place where
a liturgy could be deeply inclusive,
where leadership could be deeply inclusive,
where people's different identities could be celebrated.
To sort of have a visual bodily experience of that
in that very simple action.
That really stands out to me today.
It's one of the most moving things that happened.
Of course the final closing liturgy,
the infamous milk and honey.
-: Yes. (both laughing)
-: Who doesn't remember that?
-: Right?
-: I guess I never have really understood
why people were insistent that this had to be a
replacement Eucharist, because it wasn't offered that way,
it wasn't presented that way.
It was a liturgy inclusion.
-: Mm hmm.
-: That was in my memory and understanding,
of course memories elaborate things.
So who knows if this was actually what was going on but
my memory of it was that it was in part a way of saying
we come from different traditions,
and the safe community that can not officially all honor
each other's liturgies and leadership,
and practices in a way that makes us able to participate.
So what we're gonna do here is create
a closing liturgical action that everyone can be a part of
that is grounded in a scripture tradition
about milk and honey as, you know,
really substances that are common and that are
extravagant in their own way, and that are sweet and lovely,
and that are in many places connected within,
and in experiences.
And so, also connected with, you know there's psalm imagery
about sweeter than milk and honey,
God's law being sweeter than milk and honey.
I think that takes all my pain,
and other places where that figures in scripture.
I understood that liturgy to be about
a celebration of inclusion,
and a closure, a ritual closure to the event.
And of course then the parish that got a hold of it,
and went crazy with it.
Which was so disappointing.
-: Yes.
Well that does bring us to the backlash,
which I know you know about.
First of all, were you directly affected by it at all?
-: The only way that I was...
I was pretty removed at that particular moment in time
because I was a graduate student.
I was not in a church as a minister.
I was not leading a congregation.
Of course I participated in a church,
but you know, in the immediacy of Re-Imagining,
the churches that were removed from Minnesota context
were not all that involved in it.
They didn't have the presbyterian layman
in their face about it.
They weren't necessarily hyped up about it.
So the church that I was part of in Atlanta
wasn't really paying attention to that.
It wasn't a thing for them.
I wasn't in ministral leadership,
and I, as a graduate student I really was not very involved.
I kept my membership in the presbytery of the Twin Cities.
But of course I was absent, excused absent,
from most of the things that went on there,
because of the geographical distance.
So I wasn't in those conversations so much.
The backlash that I experienced was more on the level of...
Ideas I guess.
And also of distress at watching friends,
who were directly affected, or you know,
clergy who were having to make decisions about
whether to keep this event on their
on their CV's as continuing the education that they had done
because of the reputation that it had,
and what that would mean, et cetera.
-: Yes, yeah.
How did you react to the backlash?
First of all, were you surprised by it?
-: I was a little surprised at the vitriolic nature of it.
It was...
It really came on strong.
And for instance, for Mary Ann Lundy
to end up losing her position
in the women's desk at the national church,
that was just crazy.
Mary Ann had done good and faithful and important work
in that position.
And her involvement and participation and sponsorship
of the conference was an act of affirmation and leadership
on behalf of community to women in the church.
It was as if she got demonized and tagged with
somehow being responsible for bringing the anti-Christ
into the PC USA.
-: Mm hmm.
Yeah.
-: And so she had to go, you know,
it was the kind of scapegoating mechanism
that was set into place.
And that really surprised me on an immediate level.
Upon deeper reflection, well,
maybe it's not so surprising that when
energy, intelligence, imagination, and love take shape
in ways that people aren't expecting,
that the forces of repression come out
and try to push it back down.
-: Mm hmm.
So that's how you would account for the backlash?
That's what was going on you think?
-: I think there is just so much fear about an inclusive
church that we don't know what looks like right now.
You know, Re-Imagining is about...
It's an eschatological hope.
-: Mmmm.
-: The ability to reimagine the church as a fully
inclusive community means being able to think something
we can't yet fully grasp,
even in our metaphors and our artistic imagination.
But we lean toward it, and strive toward it.
And for some people that's gonna feel really dangerous
because it threatens the status quo.
-: Well I think you just defined...
Oh sorry, I think you just defined Re-Imagining beautifully.
What aspects of Re-Imaging were most significant to you?
And why?
-: I think that, you know, as a feminist theologian
who also cares deeply about the life of the church,
it was really a empowering and hopeful sign to me
that we could gather, whatever it was,
2,000, 2,200, I don't remember, women, how many was it?
-: It was 2,200 total, yup.
-: Okay.
And who were involved in some ways,
participating in some way in
the life of the church ecumenical.
And could come together and hope for something more,
different, other, in addition.
In my work in my life, church and feminist theology
were often bifurcated from each other.
Even when I was looking for an academic job
post graduate school,
I was finding myself falling through the cracks.
I would be too feminist for some church-related conditions,
and too church for some feminist or religious studies
related positions and,
Re-Imagining for me was at least a place where I could
join with others who were being both of those things
at the same time.
-: Yes.
Yeah.
Did your involvement in Re-Imagining change your
perspective at all on feminist theology and or the church?
-: Hmm.
Let's see.
I was trying to think about this earlier and...
I think that it made me more aware
of the dearth of imagination in a lot
of the ways we do church.
And so it really engendered in me a deeper commitment to
nurture imagination...
Through the kinds of narratives that we tell about
who God is, and who we are in relation to God,
and the ways that we seek to form
people, to apprentice them into faith,
the imaginative act of, for instance,
even engaging in some
small move towards justice
is really an imagination that things could be different
than they are now.
-: Mm hmm.
-: And I think that knit it together for me.
The conference helped to knit that together for me because
of the way that, well, for instance,
even that moment that I described earlier
that was so moving to me, and was a very concrete
act and gesture of a larger social issue
affecting the church that just by the physicality of it
gave a kind of visual metaphor to that kind of inclusion.
And I began to think a lot about the way that
church liturgy and ritual and education and care
need to engage imagination more.
-: Mm hmm.
-: And transcend the kind of boundaries and stuck places
where we get caught up in things.
-: Yeah.
In certain ways you're already answering this question,
but I'll ask it to see if there's anything you want to add.
Do you think that Re-Imagining made specific contributions
to feminist theology or liturgy?
-: I think we're still sort of living out the...
What do you call this?
What it means to have liturgies of inclusion
in our churches that also affects policy.
Because of course, the ways that we pray
shape who we are, and how we go about being church...
Ultimately the ways we are structured in our lives together.
And so I think there's been,
actually some hidden links between
some of the movements toward more spontaneity,
and liturgy, and some other things like that.
I will say, I think this is important,
although it sounds like I'm talking
out of both sides of my mouth when I say this.
When I show up in meetings like Re-Imagining
I often feel like the local conservative.
I'm not, but I can feel that way because
I'm not really into the goddess stuff.
-: Mm hmm.
-: I'm really contained to believe that the church can be
a vital and important institution.
As a means through which Christians work in the world.
I'm pretty Trinitarian in my faith,
and my expressions of faith.
I like and use the traditional language,
even as I like the disruption of traditional male language
about God and about people.
-: Mm hmm.
-: But for me, not just anything goes.
So I don't like, I don't tend to
be one of these feminists who is comfortable
making it up on the fly,
and just substituting any two words for any other two words.
-: Mm hmm.
-: I think liturgical language has deep meaning that
transcends the particularity and the words themselves,
and needs to be attended to that way.
Part of what Re-Imagining means,
and continues to mean for some people,
is a way to throw out the tradition
and put in something new where we can say anything we want.
Disrupt the tradition by throwing it out.
And that's not what it is for me, and I...
-: Can I interrupt for one second?
I'm sorry there's someone outside
that's making a lot of noise.
-: Sure.
(door closing)
-: Thanks Joyce, I apologize.
I'm sorry, so you were saying it's
not just substituting anything.
By the way, I'm curious, I know it's been a long time,
did you feel that was happening
at the 93 Re-Imagining conference?
-: You know, I think it depends a little bit
on how you look at it.
There are...
I'm fine being in a gathering like the 93 conference
where a lot of people are getting really jazzed about
goddess and dream goddess language,
because if that's, you know, you go be you.
If that is a helpful thing,
and helps make sense of what sacredness is for you,
then do that.
What I don't like is if...
Is assume that I have to do that in order to be
feminist theologian, right?
Or feminist via church.
-: Right.
-: And at any gathering where there's a disruption
of status quo, with alternative imagery and language,
there is going to be a lean toward
"Oh let's do this instead of that"
-: Yeah.
-: Let's do goddess instead of God.
Let's do some instead of
traditional Trinitarian language about God.
Let's do, whatever.
I don't think there was any kind of insidious pressure,
it's just that what you feel in those kinds of gatherings
when people are excited about something
new that they're doing.
-: Yeah.
Well you know it's interesting because
the charges of goddess worship were brought by the
presbyterian layman in good news.
And the people who organized Re-Imagining
said that that's not what they were doing.
-: That's right, that's right.
But, there were a number of places in the conference where
I think speakers used goddess language either in prayer or
in the conversations around the tables,
which were part of the design.
-: Ahhh.
-: People of course were free to speak
whatever they wanted to, and for some of them they were
in that space of talking about that.
Yes it is the case, but there was nothing in the formal
actual liturgical practices or...
Or the topics or anything like that.
That was about goddess worship.
That's very clear.
But, when you get 2,200 people interested in
feminist theology together,
-: Yeah.
-: In 1993 as well as now, there's gonna be some of those
other imagery of the sacred, including goddess imagery
is most useful and prominent.
-: Right.
Yes, thank you, you're right, yes, thanks.
I'm getting near the end here, I appreciate your comments.
In the end, what do you think is the greatest legacy
of the Re-Imagining conference and community?
-: I think a lot of people individually
experienced uplift, and that's a good legacy.
I think that,
ironically,
the repressive effect in communities of faith like
the presbyterian church and having to deal with the layman,
and the crack-down on staff people and all that stuff,
is the via negativa of the legacy.
It's the on-going...
The backlash is itself a legacy.
It's not a positive legacy, but it is part of the story
of how the church received alternative perspective,
and how it tries to maintain it's homeostasis
in the face of new stuff.
So that's important.
The positive aspects of legacy
are more the things that we've talked about, I think.
The things about an awakening of
possibilities of imagination, that church can be different,
that people can be together across various
kinds of identity differences that are present.
Certainly the movement for LGBTQ justice in the churches
and the, you know, the social movement, for example,
marriage equality movement and other things.
Those all don't have...
They don't happen in isolation from each other.
And I think something like Re-Imagining
in its own small way participates in moving the church
in a new way there.
Maybe even we could say some of the...
I'm not a huge emerging church fan,
but I will say that it's probable to me,
it makes sense to me that some of the
kind of gestures toward openness and
spontaneity and the kind of joy of
the Re-Imagining conference lends themselves to
re imagining church in some of the ways that emergent
churches are talking about.
-: Oh interesting, okay.
You know, some of the goals of Re-Imagining were to
bring inclusive or expansive language and feminist theology
to churches to kind of bridge that gap between
the academy and the churches.
How would you evaluate where we are today in that regard?
-: Yeah.
(laughing)
In some ways it feels like we've gone
a little bit backwards, actually.
And maybe that's the effect of the backlash.
There's a generation of young women in churches
and in society today who
say I'm not a feminist but,
-: Right.
-: Who choose to use other language to identify the
libratorian causes that they
that they are and feel, and that's okay.
-: Mm hmm.
-: What it does, however is
sometimes to not acknowledge the,
the way we all stand on each other's shoulders.
I stand on Letty Russel's shoulders,
and I stand on Rosemary Ruether's shoulders,
and I am here in my position at Yale Divinity School because
of the trouble that other women engaged in.
And I think...
Yeah, and so far as there is
a broader expanse of use of language or
of structure, or of white in the churches.
Moments like the Re-Imagining conference in 1993
don't cause them, but they certainly
participate and assist them.
So I think what I'm saying is,
where that occurs, it makes sense to me that it's
funded in some way by a little nomative.
-: Mm hmm.
-: Of libratory, emancipatory experiences
in a conference like that.
But there also is a lot of backlash,
so it's uneven, I guess that's what I'm saying.
-: Yeah, yeah.
I have two final questions, I appreciate your time.
One is a big question.
Given your writings, your position in pastoral care,
I would love to hear what you see as needing,
or re-imagining today, and I mean that in the broad sense.
I don't just mean the Re-Imagining conference.
What in the church needs to be re-imagined,
or is being re-imagined today?
-: I would put racial justice issues at the top of my list.
I think across the board in the way we educate for faith,
in the way we care for people in the community and the world
The way we engage one another across differences
of race and ethnicities,
the way we've learned whiteness,
and the meanings of whiteness that, you know,
the capacity to re-imagine what it means to be white,
without having that being mired in
it's legacy of blind privilege.
That's a really big step, and I think that's kind of the
fulcrum right now.
As many movements have made us more aware in recent days,
such as Black Lives Matter.
-: Mm hmm.
-: I would say the continuing search to understand
what God is
saying to us in scripture and how we,
how we make sense of scripture, what it means to us.
To talk about a text as authoritative in our lives.
That continues to open around questions of
who the interpreters are,
and all sorts of things like that.
That question's premial estate is there all the time.
But it's one that matters in this place.
Of course, always the big inclusion issues remain.
-: Mm hmm.
Thank you, that's great.
My last question is very specific.
We are working on a new Re-Imagining website,
and part of it would be historical.
We'll have a digitized version of all the conferences,
a lot of other historical materials.
But we'd also like to include resources for people today.
And I'm wondering if you have any ideas about
what should be included, and who would benefit from it?
-: Certainly would be good to include a link to
Mary Tutt and Diane Newman's center water.
-: Yes, mm hmm.
-: And some of their many many resources.
They have for instance, Diane has written this great...
It's available in a little packet of prayers for people
dealing with cancer, specifically for women, it's great,
that I use a lot in pastoral care work,
and the language is grounded and in reality,
and it's good stuff, it's powerful.
I would say a link there.
Gosh, there's so many, there's so many.
It would be interesting to have
some way of perioditizing bibliographies.
-: Mmm.
-: Because feminist theology, and feminist thought
happen in relation to the wider social movement
in which they're located.
I don't know if we would want to do it in terms of
language, first wave, second wave, third wave.
But at least to locate particular...
And scholarship of feminist theology in its context in time
would be helpful, for instance,
if you look at Letty Russel's very first published book,
-: Mm hmm.
-: She's writing as efficient educator,
and she uses male gendered language and pronouns throughout.
-: Yes.
-: By the time she wrote
Human Liberation, she has had a transformation there,
and is really calling on people to notice
the way that language and other things function
to create the realities that we know.
-: Yes.
-: Those two sources are part of a process
that feminist theology has been in.
-: Mm hmm.
-: And so if we had a way of reading things in their context,
I think it would help us make better sense of
some of the differences, and just the change across time
of feminist thought.
Because the central issue is that all feminist thought
is not the same thought.
-: Right.
-: All feminist theology does not say the same thing
about who God is, about the personhood, about church.
Evidence near daily.
-: Right.
-: So I think if we have the containers in a website
that offers people resources,
that it help them locate the various kinds of things
that they're looking at.
-: Oh that's a great idea.
Thank you.
Before we go, is there anything that we haven't discussed
that you would like to add, Joyce?
-: I'm glad you're doing this.
-: Thanks, me too.
-: It's pushing my memory, you know?
I have to reach back there a long way...
(laughing)
To remember what happened back then, but...
Yeah (laughs)
-: Well thank you, I'm gonna stop the recording now.
I really appreciate it, what a great interview.
Hold on one second.