Sherry: Johanna, we are now recording.
Thank you so much for agreeing to be interviewed.
It would be helpful to get some background,
so if you could just say your full name and perhaps
spell it as well.
(Johanna chuckles)
Johanna: My full name is Johanna Wilhelmina
Hendrika van Wijk-bos, so the shortest version of the
formal version if Johanna W.H. van Wijk-bos,
and the last names are spelled v-a-n, small letters,
capital W, I-J-K dash B-O-S, one S only.
(chuckling)
Sherry: Thank you, that's great.
Johanna: It bears just a small comment.
I dropped my family name even though in Holland,
I'm originally from Holland, it's customary for women to
have both their family name and their married name.
But the van Wijk of course was so cumbersome that I felt
I couldn't really bear to explain it all the time,
so I did drop it for a number of years.
And then when I wrote my first book that I really had
devised, which Reformed and Feminist, that was not
an assignment, I dedicated it to my parents who were both
deceased at the time, and I wanted to use my family name.
And so after that I have for official purposes always
used my family name.
These days I don't ask people to say it.
I just have it on documents and stuff like that because
to honor them because they were such supportive people
in my career and for my person.
Sherry: Oh, I'm glad you told that.
Names really do matter actually as you said in your book
Reimagining God, and that just proved it again.
Thank you so much.
Johanna: Exactly.
Sherry: Now are you lay or clergy?
Johanna: I'm clergy.
I'm ordained to the Presbyterian clergy.
So as we now say again teaching elder, and I was ordained
in 1977 at the Downtown United Presbyterian Church
in Rochester, New York.
And my husband was on the staff at the time.
That church of course also bears mentioning because it was
a church that not so,
well let's see, 12 years later maybe called Jamie Sparr
to be on the staff, out of which the whole hullabaloo
happened in interdenomination in the early '90s.
So Jamie was of course the one that kind of became the
burning point for that whole controversy,
and we were very much in touch with that church.
We've loved the church there, and so we were very
aware of that.
We were, I'm close friends with Jamie.
It's a great honor I think because (mumbling)
of course was also the Presbytery that overtured the General
Assembly for ordination of women to the ordained ministry.
So you know this is a great history.
Sherry: It is.
Johanna: And we forget our history so often,
so I'm trying to stay aware of that.
It's in the Burntover District, and very close actually
to the Seneca Falls Conference where Elizabeth Katie Stanton
and Susan B. Anthony held force, and I have visited that
museum a number of times.
So in any case that gives you a little bit of depths
to that particular background.
I was ordained to teach at the seminary.
I never had a position as a minister, parish minister,
not for want of trying, but the days were still
a little bit I think closed off to women unless they
really were hard up.
(laughing)
So I did a lot of preaching in the Rochester area,
and I had contacts with a number of congregations,
but then when, my husband's and my decision was that
if I got an offer to teach at a place where the position
was a tenure track position that he would follow me.
So he followed me to Louisville, Kentucky,
together with our three-year-old son who had very little
choice but to follow us.
Sherry: And when would that have been, Johanna,
that you moved to Louisville?
Johanna: In '77, so I was ordained as soon as I
got the call.
I had been ordained, I'm kind of forgetting what the
title of that was.
There was something you could do if you, at the time,
this has completely disappeared, but you could be all
but ordained, which is what I was.
It was like an ABD (mumbling).
(laughing)
I had everything.
I had everything in place.
I had done all my exams.
All I was waiting for was the call, and once the call came
the process went just boom boom boom.
And there was no restriction on where the call came from.
So the call came from Louisville.
I was ordained in the Tennessee Valley Presbytery,
and then I became a member of what was then the Louisville
Presbytery, neighbor to mid-Kentucky Presbytery,
and now the mid-Kentucky Presbytery.
And I think I was maybe one of four women in
the Presbytery in '77, not a lot of us, just very few.
Sherry: Wow, oh that's fascinating.
And Johanna, when and where were you born?
Johanna: I was born on the eighth of August,
about four, five months into the second World War
in Holland or The Netherlands.
The Netherlands is really the official name,
but it's kind of a mouthful so I often say Holland,
except that my husband was born in Holland, Michigan
and raised there, so we usually made the distinction
between Holland the The Netherlands,
but I often will also use Holland.
So I was born in a small town, and the first five years
of my life were spent during the second World War.
I have described that in detail in Reformed and Feminist,
which is really a very personal record also about my
early years, the way I became a feminist and all of that.
Sherry: Yes, oh wow.
And you've already kind of talked about this, but actually
where did you go to graduate school or seminary?
Johanna: I went to a preparatory school in Holland.
There was a classical school where we had to do classical
languages as well as three modern languages,
and I also did Hebrew there because I was attracted to go
and study theology.
So that from that preparatory school which had six
grades in it, you went directly to your field of choice.
So if I had done medicine, I would have gone directly
into medicine.
There was no more, it was sort of a college and a
high school in one, and so I went into theology.
And I had already done two years of Hebrew,
so that was sometimes recommended if students were
interested in theology, and I was interested in studying
theology from a very young age.
Don't ask me why.
It was just what I wanted to do.
I thought there was a lot of interesting stuff there,
and I've not been disappointed.
I have to say that.
So I went to Langdon University, which is one of (mumbling)
mercy state schools.
It's an old school, 16th century.
Sherry: Wonderful.
Johanna: And I lived there, and then I went to Scotland
for a year to study, and then I met my husband which was
fortuitous because his Dutch was not so good,
and my English had gotten to be pretty good, so.
(laughing)
Sherry: So you met in Scotland.
Johanna: He was a Presbyterian pastor, and he was
on his Fulbright, and I met him in Laydon, and we got,
we met in '65, and we were married in,
that's not possible, we must have met in the fall of '64,
but in any case we got married in '66.
Sherry: Ah, that's wonderful.
Well, I knew you were teaching at Louisville at the time of
Reimagining and after, and I know you've written a whole
book about this, but could you give a short description
of when and how you became interested in feminist theology?
Johanna: Yeah, I should mention that I did my PhD
at Union (mumbling).
(laughing)
So I was kind of ABD when I left Holland and went back to
do one more exam there, and then had to choose whether
I would just write a dissertation or whether I would get
a degree in the states.
And I thought it'd be more, it'd be smarter, it'd be more
useful to do it in the States.
And so we lived on Long Island, and my husband was a
community minister there.
And I went in and out of the city for years to get my
PhD in Old Testament.
I switched from medieval Dutch history into Old Testament.
So I was very busy.
I mean, we are all busy, and I'm still busy,
but at that point I was an immigrant.
I'd been cut off from my roots.
I was busy I think coping with a pretty deep trauma
from that, and I think the move was more traumatic
than I wanted to acknowledge at the time.
I've gone back into my journals lately and seen how
homesick I really was.
So I think there was a lot to digest for me,
and also a lot to digest in terms of doing my doctorate,
and what I really wanted to do with my life because
that had until that point not been very clear.
So I went to Union in my late 20, well when I was 28
I think I started, so not old, but I was an adult
and married.
And then a few years later we had our son, so marriage,
family, questions of identity, vocation and everything
bore down on me, which is my way of saying that I
came to feminist theology in my own estimation when I
look back somewhat later as a full adult.
So feminism and feminist theology were for me approach
to the door of liberation theology.
There was no liberation theology.
There were no courses in it at Louisville
Presbyterian Seminary.
And one of my students said we have to, don't you think
we should have a course in liberation theology?
And what I knew about liberation theology you could put
in a thimble really.
My husband was the one who had read (mumbling)
and who had read (mumbling) on liberation theology.
And so we talked it over, and my husband was also a
great advocate and person that stimulated me in all
my endeavors.
And he said yeah, that sounds like a great idea,
you should do that.
And liberation, so in the second year in Louisville,
that would have been in '70, probably the winter of '79
I started that course, liberation theology.
And I took it from three perspectives, Latin America,
African American, Black theology.
James Cohn was really pretty hot at the time.
And also feminist theology, so I considered that to be
a liberation theology.
And that was really for me I would say intellectually
the door through which I came to feminist theology
was liberation theology.
And I still feel the most attracted to feminist theology
most broadly conceived in terms of the fact ...
Sherry: Johanna?
Johanna: Short end of the stick and not getting
educated, that violence can swim--
Sherry: Johanna, I'm sorry to interrupt.
There was a break there, and I missed some of what you said.
You said intellectually you came to feminist theology,
and then I lost you.
Johanna: Oh, I'm so sorry.
Through liberation theology, so I still think I think today
there's never really left me that feminist theology
has to be very broadly conceived.
So it's always about not just the middle class women,
not just the white women, but it's about poor women,
women across the globe who are today, you know,
just not really our situation is not good.
And I think that's very important.
I try to teach my students that because sometimes in the
United States the temptation for young women is to think
oh, we've made it.
Well, we have not made it at all, even in the States,
but we need to look at the whole, in a very broad spectrum.
I think like early the writers that I was influenced by
were Rosemary Rousser, of course, and she has such a broad
conception of the lack of really what women are
deprived of, historically and also globally.
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza came a little bit later for me.
Mary Daley was actually hugely influential on me.
I'm not, I was never counted myself completely in
accord with her, but when I heard her maybe four times
in my life.
I mean, actually heard her, and then read most of the
early books especially.
(mumbling) was very influential.
And I always felt that she propelled me a little bit further
down the road.
I mean, she was the one who was out there being the most
radical of us.
You know, she never offended me.
My husband found her very empowering because he thought
it was empowering to listen to a woman who wouldn't
let men speak.
So she was very influential in a very kind of broad
way also, and then so I've always tried to stay up,
I've had to stay up with my field, but I'm also compelled
to stay up with feminist thinking, not just theology,
but also in the secular world.
Dale Spender, the Australian author, rates very high.
Robin Morgan, you know, all the sort of classical.
So I began to, I had to really expand my reading list
pretty widely.
(mumbling) was of course already, you know, was already
way up there, and so all of that I tried to incorporate
in my teaching.
So that's a little bit I think about how I came to
feminist theology.
And then, of course, there's the Bible, right?
There's the Bible.
So in my book of Reformed and Feminist, which was a book
I wrote in the early '90s.
Yes, I wrote it for a big partner, and I was teaching
in France in '89, '90.
And (mumbling) John Knox published that.
And that's pretty much I think a record.
I should say something else here.
So what I just described was the intellectual development,
but I also was emotionally and I think maybe emotionally
is not the right word.
My sentiments as a grown up person were ready,
I was ready to put all kinds of things together.
And what I put together was the experiences that
I'd had in the war, which I was very young of course,
I was five when it ended, but in Reformed and Feminist
I was able to articulate what I think happened in
my consciousness, consciousness is maybe the best word,
that what I had experienced was a victimization on account
of not bad behavior or committing crimes,
but simply on who you were.
So if you were Dutch in my context, you were a victim
because you were in an occupied country.
And then of course, the Jews among us experienced that
10 times more in every country.
It wasn't even a matter of national identity.
And I think this had a deep influence in my psyche,
that I was finally able to understand what oppression
really is and what it's really after.
That it's really a destroying force because of what
I experienced as a young person.
And even though I was only five, of course my whole
formative years were after war years.
And then after war years was when all the news came out
about what had actually happened in the second World War
to the Jewish people and other groups of people like
Gypsies and other people that simply were who they were.
And I think it's just, it marked me for life,
both in the sense of a kind of trauma, but that's kind of
just the personal part of it.
I think also in terms of how I see gender oppression,
heterosexism, all of those ought to be destroying forces,
and they're out to destroy, so none of them are benign.
I think they're not all thought out.
I don't think, you know, all men sit there wanting to
destroy women.
That's not what I mean, but I think the ideology is
extremely deep seated.
(mumbling), whom you probably know, who wrote her
story on the creation of patriarchy was a Jewish immigrant
actually from Austria, and also had an influence on me.
I don't agree particularly on what where she traces
patriarchy from, but she has this great definition
in the back of the Creation of Patriarchy.
She defines a lot of terms that she says that
sexism is the ideology of patriarchy, so even where
patriarchy has been modified, or as we live,
and I think we live in a modified patriarchy in the States
with a lot of progress made by women.
That the ideology of patriarchy has to be tackled because
if it isn't, then things can revert like nothing.
And I think we saw that in the States exactly in
the debates about reproduction and in the debates
about the pill.
I mean, I thought what?
But then I thought yes because all we've had is access.
We've had access, and we've not really changed ideologies.
And not that I'm saying that I'm blaming us or anything.
I think this is a huge task.
It will take a long time before we make progress
on ideologies.
They're very ingrained I think still in all our contexts,
the church, the society, the classroom, the way we teach,
you know, everything.
Anyway, so that's an earful, but you get a bit of a sense.
I have described a lot of that in Reformed and Feminist.
If you wanna take a quick look at that, I'm sure they
have it in some library there.
It's still in print, so it's still, it was surprising to me.
Reformed and Feminist, you know, I may not today,
if I wrote it today I might say some things a little
differently, but it is a book I'm pretty proud of.
And I was amazed at how many people hooked into it.
I thought this would be so personal because I described
the war years, how I became a Calvinist, my whole adoption
of the paradigm where the Bible is in the center.
And I thought this is gonna sound so alien.
And then I found out in the mid '90s that there were
college kids that were reading it and liking it,
and it was just stunning to me.
But I think it sort of managed to be both personal
and also universal in the sense that it describes
experiences lots of people can have if they wake up
to what's going on in the world.
Anyway, that's a lot about that, but it has a lot to do.
I think Reformed and Feminist was for me the expression of
my formative years of actually embracing feminism,
articulating it where it came from.
I give a lot of credit in the book to the women students
who put pressure on the administration to hire
woman faculty.
I was the only woman on the faculty for a while.
And also too United Presbyterian Wwomen.
UPW gave me my first platform, and I love speaking.
I love presenting, I'm sort of a ham, you know,
it's kind of good.
Some people in my professional are, some are not.
I'm not saying it's bad or good, but it's just the way I am.
And so I did a lot of speaking for UPW, and they gave me
also a writing assignment.
I wrote Weaving the Fabric of Faith, which was the biblical
background for the Apostle's Creed.
So you know, and then when you do that,
they invite you to speak everywhere.
So they did that, and then when I really became a feminist,
and I felt then in the late, let's say the late '80s,
mid to late '80s when I would go out to speak somewhere
that I would have to say that.
I would introduce myself and say I'm a Christian feminist.
You know we all, that became such a big thing that we
locate ourselves, right?
And today I would say even more, I'm White,
and blah blah blah.
So they took some distance from me.
I've always regretted that.
I felt that that was too bad.
It may also just be that when I came through there were
very few women, and that they had plenty of women
to choose from, but I think there was some real
distance taking.
And then also I joined so fociferously in the struggle
for the ordination of gays and lesbians.
And I think that there was a bit of a cost there
in terms of, I still got to speak in places, but you know,
I think it was a little bit too edgy.
I became a little too edgy for them, which is fine.
You know, I have no feelings of hardship at all,
and I think it's a great organization.
Sherry: Thank you, Johanna.
Boy, that is fascinating.
It's so helpful, thank you.
If we could move to Reimagining, this was an important
context for it for sure.
You spoke at the '93 gathering, and you talked about
Reimagining language, and I'm wonder if you could say
a little bit about how you initially got involved.
Maybe we could start there.
Johanna: Yeah, they invited me to speak there,
so I was one of the afternoon speakers.
I still have the booklet with my picture in it
and all the songs and everything.
I didn't bring it with me because I have to watch out
toting too many books, you know, when you go on a
long trip like I am.
But I have it still, and I remember they invited me
I think, you know, conferences like that, people must have
told you, but they were years in the planning of course,
as they should be.
And they invited me early on, and I was so excited
about being invited.
Now I must have heard something about it, but I accepted,
and I had it a year earlier than it was gonna take place.
I was gonna turn up a year early.
(laughing)
Gives you a sense of the eagerness with which
I did participate.
Sherry: Wow.
Johanna: I loved being a part of it.
Maryann Lundy was a good friend of my husband and me
at the time because she worked at the offices, of course.
And I don't know whether she was the one who proposed
my name, but that's how I got involved.
That how I got invited to, somebody sent me a letter
asking whether I would be willing to speak,
and I jumped at the chance.
I can only tell you that.
Sherry: Yes, and what do you remember about
that experience at the '93 gathering, Johanna?
Johanna: I thought it was extraordinary.
We went with, and invigorating, we went with seven people
from Louisville I think.
And there were two men, my husband went also,
and one male student, and then there were five women,
four students and myself.
And I'm trying to think of whether we rented a van
or something or how we did this because we wanted to
always keep the cost down for the students.
I thought the whole set up was fabulous.
I loved being seated around the round tables.
I loved the idea of doing art.
I still have the picture that I made on the table
up on my office wall.
Sherry: Really?
Johanna: Yeah, I never done any of that.
I had never done anything with crayon, and they had these
wonderful oil-based creypas, and ever since then I've
used that in my teaching.
In my smaller seminars we do, we make pictures,
we do the same thing.
People draw, not taking time out, but just sitting there
while we're talking and drawing and making pictures.
Sherry: And that's because of Reimagining.
That's great.
Johanna: Because I think, well of course that became
something really well known, drawing of the different
intelligences, right?
Sherry: Yes.
Johanna: And so that's what that was.
And of course it loosens something in your brain,
so I think people do better in discussions when they
have something to do with their hands, as long as they know
this is not going to be graded.
Some are very good at it, some are not too good at it,
it doesn't matter, so we do that.
I loved all the singing.
I'm a singer and love singing, and singing I have probably
always done in my classes, but I was more encouraged,
so we do a lot of that also.
And kind of shocking you out of a rigidity I think
of presenting.
I liked the way people were in the center,
and the platform moved around.
I think physical space is so important, and I thought the
physical set up was very enlivening and promoted
good discussion, and so we had good discussions around
that table.
There were some presentations of the main presenters
that I remember better than others, but that's just
my memory.
Bernice Reagan Johnson, who sang part of it.
It was just absolutely great.
And there were some others.
There's a young person, well she's not young anymore,
Christine.
I think she's in Minneapolis, she's in (mumbling),
and she did a really good job on the title Phoenician Woman.
I remember that.
Sherry: Yeah, Christine Smith probably.
Johanna: Pardon.
Sherry: Christine Smith, I think?
Johanna: Yeah, that may have been.
She had been at Princeton, and moved to St. Paul.
She was at, yeah, so she was wonderful.
There were lots of them.
I can't remember a speech, but I really hooked off and said
you know, this is lousy.
So the speeches were great.
The art was great.
I liked all that.
I like weaving the music in doing, really honestly I mean
you'll think I'm just crazy because there wasn't anything
that I found negative.
I can't remember anything that I really didn't like.
And my students loved it.
Sherry: Did they?
Johanna: I know my students became radicalized.
I know that (mumbling) of course was very stimulated.
And I had a Korean woman student with me, and she,
her life just changed I think after that.
And then saying at the end (mumbling) I'm singing
we're marching in the light of god, which had been one
of the songs I've loved, I had loved for a bit.
And doing that in such a large group was so great.
I thought I'd gone to heaven, I mean, it was great.
Sherry: Oh, I love it.
That's so many great memories, Johanna.
You mentioned you took students back to the other
gatherings, and I'm just wondering if there are specific
moments from those that particularly struck you
or were important.
Johanna: It's a little harder I think because I was
so involved with Voices of Sophia at the time too,
so that probably does stand out a little more in my memory.
But the one that I remember the best was when Mary Daley
spoke, and there was a bit of an altercation between
her and Alice Walker's daughter.
Sherry: Rebecca Walker.
Johanna: It was a kind of gen, were you there?
Sherry: I was there, yes, yep.
Johanna: And there was a sort of generational conflict,
and Mary Daley felt that she was spoken about as if
she were dead, and she said that actually,
don't talk to me as if I am dead.
And I thought that was interesting.
I mean, was that second, third rate feminism thing
going on, and I think it may also, how many of those
were there?
Were then two of them, or how many of them?
Sherry: There were six more after the '93,
a total of seven.
Johanna: Seven, so I probably went to three of those,
but that's the one I remember the best because that was
pretty lively, I thought. (laughing)
But students were, or the students, they weren't all
my students, but there were students there that I knew
were somewhat taken aback by Mary Daley.
She could have that influence on people.
I never had that.
I always thought she was a kick in the pants.
She was just something else.
(laughing)
so I talked to her there.
I will not recall when she amused me the most
because you do not want that on your tape.
It was on the opening of the, when she opened,
gave the major speech at the Society of (mumbling)
Literature Conference in San Francisco.
That was something else, and you know, I spoke with her
a couple of times.
She came to Lexington once for a women writers conference,
and students and I went there, and she was just so nice
and ordinary.
We talked to her, we carried her backpack for her.
She was, I thought she was an extraordinary person.
I truly do.
I'm sure that she was not the easiest person to have
in your surroundings, you know, somebody who was so odd,
but she always had thoughts that were, she was so much
her own person, and would think about things that you had
maybe not thought about before.
The last time I heard her it was cloning that was
on her mind, and she had some very, very I think
some words of warning against all of that.
She was the one who pointed me in the direction of
the military, the phallic expressions of the military.
I think she was very good about that, how much of the
military is really an expression of what she would
call philocracy, you know, that was her word.
Yeah, an amazing person.
So that's what I remember the best about the (mumbling)
communities, but that's not really a good comment on
how good they were, how bad they were because I'm,
I was more involved I think in trying to be supportive
and helpful in the Voices of Sophia movement in the
Presbyterian church, which also directly came out of that,
Reimagining.
Sherry: And I wanna get to that.
Before we do, could we talk about the backlash
and how it affected you personally?
Johanna: Yeah, so the backlash came pretty much
hard and fast.
I had backlash at my seminary.
I received correspondence from, there was one church
in Texas that sent me copious letters, I think urged on
by maybe their pastor.
I was accused of heresy in the letters.
They wanted to burn my books.
There was total madness actually that went on.
I stopped opening them because it became so depressing.
They wanted to, they wrote to my president, to the president
of the seminary, John Mulder at the time, wanting action
against this heretic.
And actually he was in public pretty good.
He was not so good in private, but he was pretty good
in public because he defended my right as academic freedom.
He felt as an academic I had the right to speak
the way I wanted to, so he was pretty good about it.
So where I was fairly safe is that I was a
tenured professor.
And so that of course was unfortunately not true
for Maryann Lundy.
We were close to that situation, and you know one of my
colleagues was actually quite instrumental in getting
her fired, so it was a very difficult time, yeah,
in terms of that.
I wouldn't say that personally I suffered.
I just got mad because, you know, people said these
idiotic things.
I just couldn't believe them.
And I wrote a letter to our president telling him that
if the seminary had lost money on my account,
then I would be happy to refund whatever they had lost.
And so he sent me a note saying that they lost $130
to his knowledge, and thought yeah, well then I think
you're just fine (laughing)
with your millions of dollars in endowment.
I don't think that I'm gonna refund $130,
so it was funny.
My board, the board at the seminary, a couple of
members got mad.
They listened to my speech, and they didn't like the fact
that I had called patriarchy a pissing contest.
I think I already told you that, and I thought of all the
things to get mad about, what is wrong with you,
you got mad about that?
But you know, Presbyterians, they like to be nice and ...
Yeah, they like to be respectable, and that's not
respectable, and so that kind of got up their nose,
but that's as far as it went.
There was an extensive correspondence.
There was also something interesting happening.
One of my more conservative colleagues wrote a letter
to the layman.
You know, the layman also took us all to task.
You know all that.
I'm sure you have in the archives of that.
Sherry: Yes.
Johanna: And he wrote a letter taking up for me
even though he did not agree with me on the content
of what I said he felt that I had the right.
Again, it was that principal of academic freedom that
I had the right to speak the way I wanted to speak.
I have to say that the president also said some positive
words actually about my speech before he caught on that
the board didn't like the words because they got that
(mumbling),
he took a couple of steps back.
But yes, so I think what I experienced was psychological
pressure.
I got some letters from former students who were
disappointed.
I got into kind of an extended discussion with one of them
whom I had liked and whom I respected.
I thought a lot of them, they haven't been there,
so they all were talking about what they didn't
know about really.
(laughing)
But they became very mad.
He was very angry also.
I just sort of in the end just hooked off and thought well,
there's not much I can do here.
You know, I can't make much progress here.
I think, I'll tell you what I've always said what part of
what made people mad was that we had such a good time.
Sherry: Say some more about that.
Johanna: Feminists are not supposed to have a good time.
They're not supposed to be laughing together.
They're supposed to be dower and have a bad sense of humor
and be real battle ax's, and we had just such a good time.
And that I think really got up people's nose.
I mean psychologically, you know, not in their heads
not thinking and so, but I truly think it did.
And I think the other thing I think in the questions
that you have here you ask how I would account for it?
Sherry: Yeah.
Johanna: I think what had happened, or what still is
perhaps the case is that what was pretty commonplace
for people up to date on feminist theology,
in fact none of us were all that radical in some ways,
not like Mary Daley, that this had not filtered through
to the pew, and I do feel that the clergy is responsible
in terms of educating our people.
We are teaching elders, so that needs to be done,
and I don't think that happened enough, and so it came
as a big surprise.
That's one part I think how I account for it.
And the other is that really we had not made as much
headway ideologically as perhaps some of us thought we had.
And so the church is still back there somewhere,
and I think unfortunately, whether I don't know,
I'm not holding the Reimagining conference responsible,
but now I feel that we have taken 10 steps backward
in terms of the language for god in the church,
and we're losing people.
We're now losing people because they no longer can
reconcile the either neutral language or totally
partriarchal language with their view of god, and we're
losing really good people, and in concerns me deeply.
I think many of my students are just hanging on by
their fingernails.
Many don't want to go into ministry because they don't,
they see this as an abusive environment or just too
tricky to enter into, and it's not a good,
I don't think we're in a good place as it,
not so much the Presbyterian, you know, I think we're just
part of the mainline denominations.
And it has sorted itself out a little bit since
Presbyterians at least came on board in terms of lesbian
and gay ordination, but I think we're sort of trundling
behind the culture, you know.
The Supreme Court passed it first.
Same sex marriage came first there,
so I think what are we doing?
So we're just sort of keeping up with the culture,
and some of the mainline denominations aren't even
doing that, and not thinking things through in terms of
making progress on our, on the image we have of god.
It's depressing.
Sherry: You know, you said you weren't blaming
Reimagining.
Do you think however that the backlash of Reimagining
is in part what caused this regression in terms of
inclusive or expansive language in the churches?
Johanna: Maybe.
The cause and effect thing is a little hard for me.
It could be also that it's this wave, this ebbing and
flowing just like at the end of the 19th century and
the opening of the 20th century, you know,
the vote for the franchise was stalled, right?
It was totally stalled until Alice Ball took everything
in hand and started to rouse the old guard again.
So maybe we're looking for new leadership.
I'll be there, I'll be onboard, I'm telling you,
(laughing)
for a totally, you know, an awakening, new awakening
I would say.
And I think the new awakening, if it happens,
will take a different form.
The Reimagining conference was after all under the
auspices of the World Council of Churches.
It was a Christian conference.
I think that we need to move more in the direction of
interfaith relations and movements and thinking with
Muslims, Buddhists, Jews, because we may have more
in common with one another than we have in common with
our own, people in our own faith community.
Sherry: Yeah, yeah.
Johanna: So I'm looking, so I think we need to be
looking for something new actually in that direction.
I don't know whether you agree, but with the Louisville
group we are deliberate about making this an interfaith
effort, whatever anniversary we're going to have,
because we don't want to make compromises on language.
We want to be sort of past that.
I don't wanna be mired in that struggle again
about language.
It's time to move, and we haven't moved.
We've moved backward if anything, don't you think?
Sherry: Yeah, oh that's been a common reaction.
Yes, I agree.
I just wanna clarify something which is really
interesting here.
In moving the interfaith direction, did you say that
that's getting away from the language issue,
moving beyond it?
Johanna: I think that would be with people who all have,
I meant moving past in the sense that we're all on board,
that we cannot live with a totally masculine language,
not with a totally masculine product in our heads.
It's just not going to move us forward.
And there are people in Judaism and people in Islam
I think that are completely on board with that.
That's where we need to go.
We need to move forward together, and just you know,
I'm still a Christian, and I'm still part of a faith
community you know, but that's not where things are
going to happen I think.
Sherry: Yeah yeah.
Johanna: And maybe that's okay.
Maybe something new will be born out of all of this.
So that's kind of what I was, that's what I meant.
Sherry: So we're not still gonna fight that battle,
just move beyond it.
Johanna: Right, in the sense that the battle,
that battle is past.
I mean, Reimagining God was published in '95.
Elizabeth Johnson wrote the phenomenal book She Who Is,
a phenomenal book in the '90s, that reimagining god
also begins with that, also the (mumbling).
I mean, this has all been done.
We're not gonna go over all that ground again,
and so we should just wake up and smell the coffee,
you know, that's what I think.
(laughing)
Just get on with it.
I'm not gonna talk about, I think what's gonna be
fascinating is looking at contributions of women in the
different faith communities and how we learn from
one another, how we are not just victimized but
contributors, how we can construct theology together.
That's exciting to me.
So anyway, that may all just sound totally utopian, sorry,
but whatever.
I'll live into the utopia, that's what I'll do.
(laughing) Sherry: I love it.
And it sounds as if you're saying that the way forward
is not to continue this discussion within the Christian
community, but to link up with feminists,
interfaith feminists, and that's where the movement
forward is gonna happen.
Johanna: That's what I think.
If there is forward movement in the denomination,
I'll be the first on board with that, of course you know,
but I don't see it happening.
I mean, even in the most progressive, I mean part of a
more light congregation, even in the most progressive
of our congregations, certainly in what I am,
which is the Bible Belt, it could be that things are
different in some other parts, and I'll totally allow
for that, but as a denomination I think we're not,
we're not really ...
We're not really joining the battle where it should
be joined.
I'm saying all the arguments have been made.
We've done all that.
We don't need to go over that ground again.
I don't wanna make the arguments again.
It's like making the argument over and over again
that women ought be ordained.
Who want to do that, right?
Sherry: Yes.
Johanna: So you can't stay stuck there, but I don't mean
to say that it's not important also for the denomination
to move forward.
Whether that will happen or not, I don't know.
I think the new hymnal in the Presbyterian church is
an out and out disaster.
I hope that's on my tape that I said this because it's--
Sherry: Tell me why, Johanna.
Johanna: Because of the language.
It has maintained all the lord language, all the king
language, all the strong patriarchal images that are also
images of power.
It isn't just that they're masculine images.
It's also images of power.
And if you're coming those two, it think it's ...
a total regression.
I think the new hymnal, The Praise, whatever it's called,
Praise the Lord I think.
(laughing)
I can't remember what it's called.
(laughing)
Sherry: A mental block.
Johanna: I had a block on board.
I was actually because my dear husband died five years ago,
and he was such a wonderful feminist and such an activist,
and I was gonna dedicate a hymnal in my congregation
to him, you know, you could do that, and put his name in
one of the front.
And I've been there a couple of times singing from it,
and I thought oh my god, I'm not gonna do that.
My poor David would turn around in his grave
if I did that, so I'm not doing that.
And I'm either, so I think I should say this.
I don't think that language in itself will
save us and will create total equality for women,
but it is a given that I think we do need to do this.
It's one of the things that you have to do without
which you're not gonna make the progress you need to make.
And I think an Reimagining conference was a breath
of fresh air.
It was not beholden to this old images,
and maybe when there are more new images,
when there is more freshness in the reimagining,
the old images don't have to die.
It's just that we keep hanging onto them.
(laughing)
Well, I think in Reimagining I actually am, I'm usually
pretty surprised when I read that myself when it says that
we have crucified god on the cross of patriarchy,
and that it's an actual violent deed against god.
I think I say that at the end, and I'm always kind of
surprised.
It's a pretty radical thing to say, but I totally believe
in that, so why are people at my institution, for example,
even asking me to join in a debate about this?
(laughing) I mean, I thought we had got
beyond that more than 20 years ago.
I'm 75 bloody years old.
I still need to make the arguments?
Sherry: Yeah, yeah.
Johanna: Well, in a teaching institution of course
you do, you need to educate students.
I try to educate, you know, as gently as I can,
and I model a different way of speaking.
I'm hoping that sometimes pays off, and maybe it does.
Sherry: But you haven't progressed in
all those years.
We've even gone backwards from where we were.
Johanna: Exactly, yeah.
Sherry: I did wanna ask you briefly about your
wonderful book, Reimagining God, and if you can say
a little bit about, you write about it in the book actually,
the connection to Elizabeth Johnson and your publisher,
and then you do mention the Reimagining conference, too.
And I wondered if you could say a little bit about the
connection to the gathering, to Reimagining in that book?
Johanna: I think that the publishers, David and
Agnitovich, that they actually had the idea that because of
the Reimagining conference it would be great to do a book
by a biblical scholar on images, especially from the
Hebrew Bible, which is so often in the Christian imagination
supposed to be less loving, blah blah blah,
than the New Testament.
So they knew me, I had done Reformed and Feminist with them,
and so they met with me and actually commissioned it.
And I do think that the conference, I have a feeling
that probably Stephanie was certainly at the conference.
I don't know whether you ever heard of her or knew her.
She died untimely early of cancer,
but it was very exciting for me that they wanted to do this.
And it was a good project for me to be in.
I really enjoyed mining what was there in the Hebrew Bible.
I have since done more on the name of god, the holy name
that the Jews don't say, and I don't say either.
And I've made more progress with that, so in that next book
I did more, there's an article out on that,
which is actually the reason I'm in Sweden because
my colleague here read my article on,
it's called Writing on the Water, the Inevitable Name of God
and it was published in a book called
Theology of Jews and Christians, and it's Jewish and
Christian scholars on the Hebrew Bible.
Sherry: Oh, that's wonderful.
Johanna: It's called Writing on the Water,
and I think I made more progress with my thinking about
how to name god.
So it's been more going on in my thinking about it,
and more settling I think on a particular way.
I think I use Adonai in Reimagining for a holy name.
Sherry: You do, yes.
Johanna: So anyway, so I was very excited to do it.
It was a good project.
I'm still happy with it.
I got to know Brian Wren a little bit, and he let me use
two of his poems for free, which was very kind of him.
And of course, he's a phenomenal hymn writer,
and wrote a great book called What Language Shall I Borrow?
It's a male about language, about god.
I mean, this is all way back now, right?
We're all talking 25 years ago.
Sherry: I know, and it is amazing that Westminster
John Knox approached you this.
This was '95 the book came out, and there was so much
controversy in the Presbyterian church about this.
Johanna: Right, so they approached, they must have
approached me right after the conference.
Sherry: Yeah yeah. Johanna: Yeah.
Oh, they probably thought it would sell, Sherry, you know.
Sherry: True, good point.
Johanna: Because publishers are interested in
selling books.
I have no objection to that.
I understand all that.
So it's not a very long book.
I think it's accessible.
It's still, I would stay it's still, it's something I'm,
I'm not ashamed of it at all.
I think I did a solid job with it, and I'm glad that
the press did that.
So I have since started to write with some, with Eerdmans,
so my book making life is simple.
I fled to Eerdmans,
(laughing)
because Eerdmans has ...
They let you do footnotes on the page, so.
Sherry: Ah, yes.
Johanna: That was not the reason, but in any case,
they have been a good publisher for me, and I'm currently
writing for them so.
So here in Sweden I was originally invited to a conference
in 2011 called Stereotyping the Other.
And I kind of fell in love with, learned with the place,
and I met my colleague that invited me a couple
of times more.
And then I asked whether I could be here and teach
with him in his course, so this has been exciting.
And he's a lovely man.
He's very, very forward looking and inclusive,
and we're taking, the students here are almost all young,
so we're taking this group of young people to Jerusalem.
And the Swedes have an institute there, the Lutheran
Church does, called the Swedish Theological Institute.
And they will be inundated there with stuff about Islam
and Judaism and Christianity.
The course is called The Children of Abraham,
and I'll be very much a part of that, and also give a
public lecture in Jerusalem, so I'm in heaven.
I think it's great.
I am a personal high point here.
Sherry: Oh Johanna, it sounds wonderful.
Oh, I'm so happy for you, and happy for your students too
that they get to experience this.
Johanna: Yeah, these are all Swedes, but everything is,
well they're not all Swedes.
There's also a Dutch student and an Italian student,
so everything is in English, thank god because my
Swedish is extremely weak.
So I'm lecturing tomorrow on Rahab.
I can't wait.
Sherry: Oh wow, I wish I could be there.
I bet it's gonna be great.
(laughing)
Johanna: I'm hoping that they're gonna be entertained
as well as enlightened.
Sherry: I can tell they are.
Johanna: I had fun doing it.
I mean, I had fun preparing.
I haven't done the thing yet.
Sherry: You know, Johanna, I also wanted to ask you
about Voices of Sophia and your involvement in that.
Johanna: Right, so I was pretty much, after they
organized, because one of the organizers was Virginia
Coppenheffer, who was the local person.
She and her husband, then her husband Jack, who died also
after that, were very involved in the founding of
Voices of Sophia.
And it seemed to me a really good logical follow up.
It was very feminist.
I needed I think something else, you know, and there were
local people involved in the organizing.
That was good.
I went to all the conferences except I think the very
last one or maybe the last two.
I think it ...
I'm not sure why it didn't continue.
I don't know whether someone else gave you a bead on that,
whether someone else had insight in it.
It was very white, it was too white.
Sherry: Yeah.
Johanna: That may have been an issue,
but our church is white.
That's another thing about breaking out of the denomination.
I think we need to break out of our color barriers,
and we're not gonna do that by just, most of what you
try to do feels artificial.
I think one conference we did try to address racism,
so we worked very hard on that, but ...
I think it was great.
I loved voices of Sophia.
We had these, what did we call them?
Not the hundred theses because--
Sherry: Ninety-five illuminations.
Johanna: The illuminations, yes, I talked to those.
And we proclaimed them at the general assembly,
and we sang our songs in the booth and we carried on,
and it all tapped into my zeal for making noise and ruckus
and stuff like that, and really kind of putting
the denomination on notice.
And being honest, I don't know, our denomination became
so stuck I think in the struggle over gay-lesbian
ordination, it was just awful.
I went to general assemblies and spoke and testified
in the '90s, I think maybe the whole decade,
and I just had to stop.
It felt like they were torturing my friends, you know.
I couldn't do it anymore.
Sherry: Yeah.
Johanna: And so I think the denomination suffered,
we suffered,
and Voices had a great role to play at the time.
I think it was a fine organization.
I'm not sure either though that annual conferences
are the way to go.
They do have an elitist aspect because it's expensive.
It's expensive to go, to travel, and so when we're dreaming
about anniversary celebrations of the Reimagining conference
we were dreaming about different locations.
I think I told you that because one annual conference,
that may just not be at the moment anymore what we
need to do.
Sherry: Right.
Johanna: And I just found out that there is a Muslim
initiative in Louisville.
There is a friend mine who is a feminist Muslim,
a Dr. Rifat Hassan, and they invited me to be a part
of that, and they also will have Jewish participants.
So there is a kind of interfaith effort underway.
This has mostly to do with perspectives on Islam, you know.
It has to do with creating a positive Muslim presence
in our context, in our local context.
And I can't be a part of the first meeting because I'm here,
but I will be a part of it.
And I think it's great that that's happening because
that will be a natural for us to hook up with.
And Dr. Hassan is certainly a feminist,
strong Muslim feminist.
So I think, you know, that will be,
so there are some things, some signs I would say of things
happening that, where there's life.
That's what we need to look for and look into
and tap into and continue with, and see what,
what transpires, what comes out of all of that,
out of the shoot of Jesse, you know.
(laughing)
Sherry: Oh, I love it.
Johanna: Something will happen, I know.
I know that the spirit lives, and we will, you know,
there will be something.
But I'm getting older, so I sure hope it happens
before I die, I tell you that.
(laughing)
Sherry: Me too, for many reasons.
Well, Johanna, as you look back, what aspects of
Reimagining were most significant to you and why
would you say?
Johanna: I think it was directly influential on
my teaching, that I was encouraged to, I always have been
pretty participatory in my teaching, but even today I think
I'm still making progress, which I hope one always does
anyway, but I make changes all the time in the way I teach.
I think that's directly coming out of that conference.
Well, I felt we were really, even though there were speakers
in the central platform, we were all participating.
And if you're not all participating in the thinking process,
then it's not really good teaching.
Part of that is the art.
Part of that is the,
drawing on different intelligences.
I'm also I have not spoken about that because we would need
a whole other hour, but we have a womens center at
the seminary that's 25 years old, which is independent
in the sense that we raise all our own funds.
And there's been there, I was one of the founders
with students.
I don't know that it will survive my retirement.
I have a feeling it will not, but that may be also things
have to die so something new arises.
The womens center is really also a part of,
I'm trying to think, 25 years.
So if you're thinking 25 years back, that was also all
about the same time.
So I think the inspiration for that initiative,
the courage to try this out, to do things like that
very much were connected to the Reimagining conference.
So I give it credit for so many things in my own
personal life, and then in how that spilled over into
the context where I work.
And one of the programs that we have that the womens
center devised is called An Artist in Residence.
And every other January, I think we've done it for the
past 10 or maybe 12 years, every other January we invite
an artist to teach a course.
It's a course students will take for credit,
and it has to be a woman artist, and it has to be someone
who is interested in feminism.
It does not have to be a theologian necessarily.
We've had I think maybe two people who were not theologians.
One was a visual artist.
One of those people was a (mumbling), and also the fields
are different, so we're not having all one thing.
It's always been different.
We've had singers, songwriters, potters, dancers,
theater persons, and I was very, because of some intra
bureaucratic issues at the seminary,
what happened is that they could not make them adjunct
professors unless they had a degree in theology
beyond the MDIV.
And at first I thought that was a negative.
Then I thought no, we have to take advantage of this
because basically it meant we could invite anybody that
really had an interest in doing this,
and then it would fly as I say under my flag.
I would co-teach it with them, and it would be a biblical
theology course.
So that's what we've done in the last three years actually.
We've done a course on art, women in art,
and the Bible in the early Renaissance, and that was a
travel seminar.
We went to Italy and France to look at the art of
the Renaissance.
And we had one person who was also very influential for me,
and she is a theater person.
She was an ordained minister, but had a community theater
her whole career at FC worked after seminary.
She's just now retiring, and she did a course for us
on the Abram-Sarah-Hagar cycle.
And we did a performance actually on the basis of that.
It was a two-week deal, and she got me more into,
so I had already incorporated a lot of artistic expression
as you might want to call it into courses,
the smaller courses.
And she taught me how to also do more with the body
in your courses, so it's this whole, and I've learned
more and read more about that.
So there's a whole movement where there is actually
we can do, it's not fancy, it's not dancing,
but you can do a lot with your body so that you get
the students involved with their body.
The soul loves the body, they are one, they are one.
The soul loves the body, my body, my soul, my own.
Our first artist in residence taught us that.
She was a fabulous dancer who did just such a
marvelous job.
And then the theater person just taught me that
all over again, so I do more with the body.
I have students move, and in the very large classes
this is a little harder, but I split the Hebrew classes.
So in Hebrew we always do a lot of singing, a lot of moving,
a lot of sort of expression where your whole body
is involved.
Now you could say that has nothing to do with the
Reimagining conference.
I think all of those things were kind of built into it,
and in that sense it was really an ideal conference.
I go to a lot of conferences, because you know,
I'm part of the Biblical Guild, and they're deadly.
They're just killers.
None of them are inspiring.
A conference can be inspiring if it's very small.
That was the conference I went to here in Sweden.
There were only 60 people, and that was also a marvelous
conference because there was true interchange and
conversation between people, and a meeting of minds
even if we didn't totally agree.
That Reimagining conference was not small.
It was a large conference.
Well you know, not as large as the American Academy
of Religion, but 2,000 people is a good amount of people.
Sherry: Yes.
Johanna: And to make that the way it was, to make that
so inspiring, and my husband completely agreed with me,
by the way.
I mean, we both were just blown away by it.
It was something that will stand the test of time
in my opinion, and you should be very proud of it.
And Maryann Lundy of course just, that was a tragic thing.
She lost her job over it, but then that's,
and that's so telling.
That's still we pay these prices for it, you know.
These things shouldn't happen, but that's happened.
That alone I think, that fact testifies also to
its significance.
It was hugely significant, can't be underestimated.
And it was visually attractive, you know?
Ernest Paul did these great marches, right, where everyone
was beautifully dressed and costumed,
and it was kind of like that.
It was visually so beautiful with the artists (mumbling)
beaming on the side and women coming in drumming and
carrying these platters with, it was great.
Very inspiring.
I think more than just my words of enthusiasm,
this conference will, yeah, it will stand the test of time.
It will be there.
It will be there as something that all the people who
organized it, all the people that were involved in it
should be very, very proud of.
Sherry: Um hmm, thank you so much.
So I think you've already been talking about this,
but I'd like to hear your answer to what do you think
Reimagining means today?
And by that I don't mean just the conference or the
community, but needs to be reimagined?
Johanna: Did I lose you?
Sherry: I just lost you, but we're trying to
get it back.
Johanna: Okay, I did not say anything because I lost you.
Your face froze, so I thought that's a sign they're
trying to cut us off. Sherry: Perfect.
Johanna: I think I did speak to that a bit about
what it means is that we need to step out of our
denominational fortresses and our face fortresses
and that we need to think more broadly and probably
more daringly, and more daringly than what I've said.
I think there are people out there who are willing
to do that.
We need good leadership or good voices, voices that will
raise themselves and that we will support,
and they will happen.
I'm sure they will come, and I hope it's not too late
for the people that are really yearning I think for
something that they feel speaks to their religious impulse.
You know, people like us have a religious impulse
or a talent for religion or what a lot of people call
with the word I have no track with, but I'll just,
the word spirituality. (laughing)
That's a word that I don't use, but it's you know,
whatever you want to call it.
I would call it a religious impulse or the talent
for religion.
Well, that needs to find expression, and if it's no longer
finding expression,
if your ordinary place where you practice that impulse
and that talent is, makes you angry every time,
then there needs to be something else that happens.
Then if it's deadening every time, then life needs to
happen somewhere else.
And life will happen.
It will go where it needs to go I think.
And I see it more in the direction of an interfaith
movement I would say, a movement of people that have
probably more in common with one another.
Not that we all have to agree on every aspect or every
conviction or even all our ideas about god,
but that do want to take on the partriarchal hegimony.
I don't know, I think I,
I was going to send, who is the person who sent me
the notice about the meeting?
Mary somebody?
Sherry: Mary Kay, yes, Mary Kay Sauder.
Johanna: Okay, so I was gonna send Mary Kay,
but I feel the group has to be a little bit behind that,
and I'm doing everything via email at the moment because
my iPhone is not the most reliable here.
Europe is always a little bit off the grid,
other states is off the grid, whatever,
so communication doesn't happen.
And then the time difference is hard, as you know.
You're working day is in the morning.
My working day is kind of ending.
So I sent, I think my friend Courtney Hookster is working on
setting up a meeting, so she was just doing a doodlebug.
And I sent them notes from our last meeting and the vision,
and I think what I wanna ask them is whether we could
pass that on to you all, the vision statement at least,
unless my son can do it.
He can do a pretty fast website build, so he might be able
to build us a website pretty quickly, and then we'll
be up there, but I think I'll suggest one other person
to be a contact person so it's not just me because
I don't need to be, you know, I have been active,
and it's a very small group still, but we need to work
on diversifying.
That's our next step is getting people from other faiths
involved in our, from the ground floor up because if you
get them, if you do that at too late a stage it's not
gonna be good.
We need to have that from the ground floor, so that's,
it all takes a lot of work, and we're all busy of course.
As you know, you are too.
I'm so glad you're doing this, Sherry.
I think this is great.
We need to preserve all this.
Sherry: Yeah, I'm glad I'm doing it too,
and it's so exciting and so important and plain enjoyable.
It's just delightful.
Johanna: You hear all these crazy people talking to you.
(laughing)
Sherry: I love it.
They're creative, smart, wonderful, generous, including you.
Is there anything else you wanna add before we
end the interview?
Johanna: I put a couple of things.
What would you include it says in the current
Reimagining website?
Sherry: Yes, I wonder if you had ideas about that.
As you know, we're working on that, but it won't be coming
out until the end of the summer.
Johanna: Right, and let's just say that we'll stay
in touch, and if I think of something that I think is
really crucial, then I'll send it to you.
So I think you asked the specific question what does
reimagining mean today, and I think I've said that now
a couple of times, that I think we need to get out of
our denominational and even our particular faith constructs
to construct new frameworks together.
That's what I think, that's what I think,
and I may be totally wrong.
I mean, we can all be wrong, and there's nothing wrong
with being wrong as Catherine Schultz wrote.
I hope you've read the book Being Wrong.
It's one of the greatest books of all time.
Sherry: I have it.
I have to read that now, Johanna, thank you, Being Wrong.
Johanna: But it's great, it's great.
Catherine Schultz, oh she's wonderful, Being Wrong.
It's one of the best books, and it's so funny.
She's a wonderful writer, and it makes you feel so good
about being wrong, I tell you.
You get over yourself so quickly after you read that book.
All right, I really enjoyed this.
I know you've been listening to me for a long time.
Thanks for all your energy in doing that.
Sherry: Oh, it's been delightful.
I'm gonna turn off the recordings now.
Johanna: Okay.