- Okay. Well Diana thank you so much for being interviewed. I just need some background information if you could say your name. - Diana Butler Bass. - Thank you and are you lay or clergy? - I'm a lay person. - And what denomination do you associate with? - Probably Episcopalian - Thank you, where and when were you born Diana? - Baltimore, Maryland 1959. - Hey. - Too long ago. (both laugh) - Same year as me okay. - And my daughter always says you were born in the 50s? And I say just barely, just barely. - Just barely exactly. (laughs) So where did you go to school? - College and beyond? - Yes. - Okay so college I went to Westmont College which is an Evangelical college in Santa Barbara of California. Then I went to Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts and got my PhD at Duke University. - Wonderful and what work or ministry were you doing at the time of Re-Imagining 93 you were there at the 96. - I was a college professor. And I was working on the sideline doing a weekly column for the New York Times Syndicate on religion and American culture. So, when I was actually at Re-Imagining in Minneapolis, I was teaching as a visiting professor for a year at Macalester College in St. Paul. - Wonderful. - Yeah it was a great year. - So what were you teaching there? - I was teaching religious studies. I was doing American religion. I think I was actually doing a class on women in religion if I remember correctly and church history and a class in reformation. So it was a sort of a large scale church history with a specialization in American religion. - Great and what - And I also did a class on Evangelicalism while at Macalester. - Did you? - Yeah. - That's great. - Which was fascinating cause the kids were so liberal and nobody had ever taught a class on American Evangelicalism and they really were engaged in it as a religious phenomenon. And they always wanted to argue about it so it was a great year. - What an interesting experience for you too to get that reaction. - It was. (both laugh) Especially after I taught at Westmont. - Exactly yeah. Wow kind of opposite poles. - It was very much so. - And what work or ministry did you do after Re-Imagining? - I was still a college professor and I got a full-time tenure track job at Rhodes College where I was for three years. And then after that I basically left formal academia and have become a full-time author. - Wonderful. Now you have a very interesting religious background. I would like to know when and where you first became aware of feminist theology. - Oh my. - Well I was born and raised in the United Methodist Church and became enamored over part of however you want to say it the Evangelical community. When I was 15 years old living in Scottsdale, Arizona and it was just, it was the 70s. (interviewer laughs) What can I say? That's always my excuse it was the 70s and mainline churches were kind of boring. And if you had an active interest in faith in the 1970s, chances were pretty good if you were a teenager you'd wind up in Evangelicalism. And so that's what I wound up doing religiously is that I understood myself to have been born again. And I went to a very conservative Evangelical church. And so it was not there that I learned (both laugh) it was not there that I learned about Evangelical feminism or Christian feminism at all. I went on from the high school experience of the feminist church to Westmont College as a student. And so I was there between 1977 and 1981. And it's interesting because that's when I learned about Christian feminism was at Westmont - Tell me how did that happen? - Well it actually happened because Christian feminism was sort of in the news as it were even though it hadn't gotten in the news to my Evangelical church in Scottsdale, Arizona. I don't remember what year it was that Letty Russell or that Letha Scanzoni and Nancy Hardesty wrote All We're Meant To Be which was kind of the shot across the bow for Evangelicals introducing them to the idea of feminist theology. And Nancy and Letha were arguing that both the Bible and church history pointed toward Evangelical women being feminists. And there were people at Westmont in the 1970s who were brave enough to point that out. And - These are faculty members? - I think that, I'm trying to remember now whether I first heard of that book from a faculty member or in chapel. Because we had a very open even what you might want to call progressive chaplain. He was very Evangelical but he loved Jim Wallace. He loved what was then called The Other Side magazine which was this very radical Evangelical magazine. He was being influenced by folks who would later become incredibly famous Theologians in their own right. Then the young Theologian by the name of Ched Myers who has become a major sort of environmental activist justice person who was very involved in liberation movements in the 1970s. So mostly it was the chaplain's office that was putting these sorts of alternative very edgy ideas in front of us about liberation theologies of all sorts about environmentalism. And I think it was probably there that we somehow got introduced to Christian feminism. And then there was one professor who was a pretty young guy. His name was Kirk Whiteman and he had just gotten out of graduate school. So he was the one who was like cutting his teeth and was certainly willing to engage all these issues that were talking about in chapel. The other professors were not very excited. (Both laugh) If I remember correctly they were like what. We didn't really want to talk about these issues but the students were pushing. - Yes, do you remember how did you react Diana? - Oh I was excited. - Yeah. - I was because it made sense and I was really thrilled that there was a history of Evangelical women and it wasn't just all about men. And I think it also resonated in some interesting way with my Methodist childhood. - Can you say in what way do you think? - Well the thing was true about the Methodism that I grew up with. Even though it was somewhat spiritually cold or maybe a little nominal even by the time I was a Methodist kid what we had retained was the interest in social justice that Wesley certainly had. And we knew that somehow, at least I got the message somehow that piety and social justice should be connected. Even though I never really saw that connection. But I heard the social justice messages and when I was a little kid living in Baltimore we had pastors who got in trouble about preaching against the Vietnam War. And we also had pastors who got in trouble for saying nice things about Civil Rights Movement about Martin Luther King. And so I remember how those things made the grown-ups in the Methodist Church really upset. And so I thought they were particularly interesting. - Of course. (both laugh) So when I got to college and there was all of a sudden this sort of heritage that I had not been taught in the Evangelical Church or my teenage years about justice and the Bible and God being on the side of the poor. And I was in college when Oscar Romero was shot and that was a big, big freaking deal. The denominations were just at the point where they, I think like the Episcopal church had just ordained women as clergy. And the Presbyterians had women clergy but they were coming into a more prominent position and the Methodist hadn't had women clergy for very long. So all these things were sort of pressing at the Christian community and we had somehow we weren't isolated from that as Evangelicals. And there was a group of people that I went to college with who really embraced it. As a matter of fact, we had when I was in college, an alternative dorm where people who were interested in things like being vegetarians and doing social justice projects in Mexico and who wanted to think about what it meant to be global Christians. Where we lived together and we actually had a rule of life where we followed a little Benedictine rule of life. - Really? - Yeah I mean it was kind of remarkable. It's a sort of a, that period of the 70s, there was this very edgy, very excited social justice form of Evangelicalism that was being like I said sort of manifested by some of our elders. I think Jim Wallace is probably the most well known name of a person who had been leading. But he was 10 years older than we were. And so he felt like an old guy. (both laugh) But yeah we were reading everything he ever wrote. And we read Sojourners and we were reading, I remember reading the first newsletters of like the Evangelical Women's Caucus. And the articles in Christianity Today that were reporting on the controversies over All We're Meant To Be. - Yeah. - And so all that stuff was part of my universe as a sophomore, junior and senior in college at this Evangelical college. And there was probably a group of maybe oh I don't know probably 40 of us that were really in leadership around these issues. And most of those people, one of the guys who was sort of in that coterie of people, a guy named David Batstone who later on founded a human trafficking organization. And is a very well known liberation theologian. There was myself, there was an amazing women by the name of Kathleen Corley who is world class. A New Testament scholar who's written mostly on women in the New Testament. Just it was a fascinating group of people. Phil Clayton who is a process theologian and justice guy in environmentalism and teaches at Clermont now. And so we were all Westmont students together. And we all cared about these issues. And we were encouraging one another to go deeper and try to figure out what faith was really going to mean to people in the late 20th and the early 21st Century. If being a Christian mattered to the kind of change to make the universe a more loving place. - That is fascinating and boy I can see the seeds and the trajectory you have followed from there. - Yeah really I've written about it just a little bit. It comes up in Christianity After Religion. I tell a couple of stories about that community but it's also a lot more strongly written about in Strength For The Journey which was the first trade book that I ever wrote. And you know I think since I wrote Strength For The Journey that was almost that was like 15 years ago, 17 years ago now. I've realized the real germination of my adulthood in that community of people back at Westmont. And also very appreciative of the way that it wasn't just me. It was really these other people. And over the years many of us have reconnected. And to see where people have gone and one of the women, well she was a little bit older than us. I thinK she graduated when I, she was like a senior when I was a freshman. Her name is Bear Ride and her sister was Sally Ride. - Oh my goodness. - And Bear wound up being one of the first ever out lesbian pastors of a PCUSA church in southern California. And she went on to Clermont. And so these are Westmont people. And so all of us felt really kind of funny. In years since, very few of us have ever gone to a Westmont reunion. (both laugh) Cause they don't really want to talk to us. I mean I think that they've never published anything about any of these people's work. - Seriously? - Yeah we've been kind of banished from the institutional memory. But the memory of the place and those people and those really interesting days and how heavy and passionate and powerful they were has shaped a surprising sort of undertow in contemporary liberal Protestantism. (laughs) Who would have thought it? (both laugh) I know really. - Boy the spirit does amazing things. - No I don't know how good they did on creating Evangelical megachurch pastors (interviewer laughs) but Westmont did a fair, handsome job creating feminists, Liberationists and Panantheists and process Theologians. (both laugh) - I love it. - So they're good at it. (interviewer laughs) But they don't let anybody know. (interviewer laughs) - You're telling the story though. So to move to Re-Imagining you were at the 1996 - I was. - Re-Imagining which was about power and Letty Russell. First of all, what brought you there? You were at Macalester. - Right I was at Macalester as a, you know like I said my side job was writing for the New York Times Syndicate at that moment. And so every week I had to get a column out about religion and culture. And I'd always been sort of fascinated about what was going on with Re-Imagining. I mean that was my job, paying attention to what was going on in American Christianity. - Exactly. - And so I knew that they were in trouble and I knew that they were very controversial. And I, by that point in time, I was pretty out and committed about feminism. But I think I still had some of this sort of Evangelical stuff kind of pulling me back. And I was sort of wondering well maybe these women really have gone too far. I mean there was part of me that really wondered did they really deserve it. Maybe they're really obnoxious. And so I wanted to see it for myself. I wanted to witness history. I was curious about what my own response would be. So there was a personal piece to it. But then I just knew it would be a good column. - Yeah. - You know it was news worthy, people cared about it and I told my editor I was going to go and he said oh that's great. And in 1996, I'd written about Promise Keepers. I had written about the Republican National Convention. So I was really kind of looking at those big ticket, public controversy issues. And a lot of them were related to gender. So this just seemed like it was in a continued flow from those columns that I had already written that year. And they were in town, perfect, so I went. - And I know it's been a long time but what do you remember. - 20 years. - I know, we're coming up on the yup 25th anniversary. - 1993. - What were the actual dates? - 1993 was the first one, you were at the 96, the community lasted until 2003. - Okay. - So 2018 will be the 25th anniversary of the first one. - So this was in Fall of 96. - It was, it was exactly. So what do you remember about that conference and your reaction? I'd love to hear that. - The two things that stand out in most of my memory were one Heather Elkins Murray who got up and did a academic, sort of presentation. But it was more than that, it was almost like a sermon too on milk and honey being the original, sort of how Christians use milk and honey as eucharistic elements in the early church. And I can actually remember, I was sitting in the back of the room with the media. See this is one of the parts of my life at that moment, so I was always in the back of the room. And I was with other people who were media people and so they were supposed to be skeptics. I have some very funny Promise Keeper stories about that. (Both laugh) - I bet you do. - I really do actually. But so here I was in the back of the room and I was with the rest of the media people. And I was kind of the big rank media person cause I was working for the New York Times. And there was somebody from the Startrib and there was I think a Christian Century person. And the person from IRD Institute of Religion Democracy was there. And there were some denominational press people as well. So I was in the back and I was watching Heather give this speech/sermon. And it was brilliant. I, she was just, I mean as an academic what I knew is she was right. And I had never really heard anybody approach early church liturgy in quite the way that she did. But she was approaching it through the lands of the Bible. She was very faithful to the textual evidence and I can just sort of remember feeling this kind of oh my gosh what is so controversial about this. That was my inner territory was I knew it was academic, I knew it was correct. I knew she had done her homework. It was beautifully presented. And it was presented not in the kind of in your face sort of stereotype angry feminist sort of thing. It was a really smart woman telling the truth about her research. And doing it in a way that had a sense of passion and meaning about it. And I just sat there and I thought this is nothing like I have heard from the rest of the media. And I thought, I kept thinking over and over again I kept thinking what in the world could possibly be controversial about talking about early church history. - Exactly, yeah. - And that was my big response. And she was, for whatever reason, the speaker I remember the best. And there were some pretty big name speakers, like I had forgotten Letty Russell was there. (interviewer laughs) Sorry Letty. I think I went to hear Letty Russel but then the big surprise was this speech by Heather. And I think it was because I was just so personally impacted by it because here was another person who was a church historian. And I knew we were speaking such the same language. And I also knew that she was so deeply committed to the church. And so anyway I listened and I was impressed and I talked to her afterwards and I thought it was pretty amazing. So that was the piece of the conference in terms of the presentations that I remember the best. The other piece of the conference that I remember really well was again here I was sitting in the back. And they did a liturgy of milk and honey that was kind of a follow-up, I believe to her speech. And so it was this kind of eucharistic celebration. And people were dancing in the room. And it was cool. (both laugh) And I remember feeling like I wanted to dance too but I wasn't allowed to dance cause you know when you're in the media and so you're not allowed to dance. And so I didn't dance. But on every table they had a centerpiece and part of the centerpiece were these apples. And when people were dancing around the room, they had picked up these little apples and they were like dancing around and it's just way kind of like in your face Eve kind of thing. - Yes. - And I just, I was laughing so hard, I thought it was beautiful, it was energizing. It was kind of just this glorious kind of spiritual and emotive revolt against the traditional reading of Eve and it was so happy that while they were dancing around the room I snuck up to a table and I took the apple. And that apple has hung on my Christmas tree as a Christmas tree ornament every single year. And after my daughter was born and she got to be old enough and I pull out the apple. And I tell her the story - Oh Diana. - of stealing the apple. (interviewer laughs) - I'm so glad you did. - I'm stealing this apple from the table at Re-Imagining after I realized that Eve a hero of the story. And that women should never feel out of place in Christian community because we've always had a place at the table. And so that has become a kind of a family ritual. And I do that still every year. Every time I take those ornaments out and I see that I get this tender, amazing feeling about that day and Heather's speech and the milk and the honey and the reclaiming of Eve. And seeing all those women dancing around the room and not being able to join them but joining them in my heart by stealing the apple. (laughs) - Oh that is so fantastic. - And it's best but those are my sort of two big memories. - Yes. - So it was very personal and there was a kind of a freeing that went on for me there that I didn't know that I really needed. But that did occur. Even though I was not really supposed to express that because of the role that I had that day. But then there was also this just sort of puzzlement. I mean really just deep puzzlement as a professional - Yes. - that I didn't understand why these women were upsetting other people so much. Because it just seemed to me like it was good scholarship. - So what is your theory? Do you have an idea about what accounts for that backlash? Do you have any ideas about what it came from? - The strangest moment I think of the whole, the whole episode for me, after I'd felt so personally moved and I thought that Heather's speech was so completely convincing. That I went out to lunch with another person who was in the media. And I had forgotten her name until you just reminded me of it, Kirsten I guess. - Right. Katherine Kirsten. - Katherine Kirsten who I never met her before and she seemed like she really wanted to talk. And I believe she was an Episcopalian. - Oh okay. - So I think that we shared that I mean if my memory serves me correctly which it might not after all these years. But she was nice and she seemed like she was taking good notes. And she was really interested in what was going on. And so we went out for lunch and we talked about it and I shared with her how basically what I was going to write and how impressed I was with the scholarship. And you know that I was really worried a bit at that point still about the Episcopal church was not dealing with gay and lesbian stuff. But there were a lot of people really angry in the Episcopal church about the recent consecration of Barbara Harris as the first woman bishop. And so the Episcopal church was sort of reeling from this because even the people who might have been somewhat resistant to women's' ordination had put up with it as long as there were no women bishops. Because the idea that the bishop holds authority and that Barbara Harris as bishop would hold authority over men, was very worrisome to the conservatives in the Episcopal church. And so what was happening, at least for Episcopalians is that Re-Imagining was playing into this great achievement of Barbara Harris being elected as a woman bishop. And the whole of the Anglican Communion, I believe Barbara was the first elected but the second consecrated because New Zealand snuck in there. (interviewer laughs) And after Barbara I think was elected they elected somebody and then consecrated her before Barbara was consecrated. Or something like that. But within a year, the Anglican Communion globally had two female bishops. And this had conservatives going crazy. And so here was Re-Imagining for Episcopalians sneaking along side of this shift in pastoral authority. And they're thinking oh my god is this, are we going to be doing eucharis with milk and honey next. And are people going to be dancing in our aisles which would be horror for Episcopalians. (both laugh) People dancing oh my god in church. (interviewer laughs) And I think a lot of people were really horrified by the reinterpretation of the Bible, what they saw as reinterpretation of the Bible. Instead of I mean what's been going in scholarship of course is a deep re-engagement with the text as we find better text, as we have more historical evidence about what the early church was like. As we understand more about ancient Greece and Rome and gender issues and sexuality and all this sort of stuff. And so the idea with conservatives is that truth is truth once delivered. And all of this scholarship was upsetting what they understood to be the truth. So that was upsetting. And they thought Re-Imagining was part of that what they call revisionism. And then in their churches there was a lot of fear about the authority of a female bishop or even worse I suppose, from their point-of-view getting a female clergy person in their own parish. And there were plenty of parishes that would never, I mean there still are parishes now 20 years later that still have not had women. So all of that was coming to bare on this. And so anyway, Katherine and I had lunch together. And we talked about all this stuff about the conference and about what was going on with global Anglicanism. And I thought we had a good conversation. And then whatever it was two weeks later, my piece had been published through the New York Times Syndicate. And her piece had been published wherever it had been published in the Institute of Religion Democracy's letter or whatever it was. And they were exactly the opposite. It was literally like we had been in two different rooms and had never had any conversation at all. - So she never gave you a clue of what her reaction was when you had - No. - Wow. - She was like a cipher. - Ahh. - And not only was she like a cipher but she was asking me questions, she kept saying well is this what is going on in academia. And I was like saying, in this very sort of enthusiastic way that I have, (interviewer laughs) which is always how I am. - Yes. - I was like well yeah you know there was this amazing sort of set of discoveries about women's roles in the early church. And there's this new archeological evidence and there's this kind of, we're re-thinking about there's textual evidence and there's all this stuff that's going on with coptic studies. And so that's not my area of expertise but I have great friends. I was telling you Kathleen Corley's name for example. Kathleen was one of my best friends while we were all in this period of time together from college and seminary and graduate school onward. I lost track with her a little bit in recent years. But she and I would talk about this stuff and that's her area. - Yeah. - And it was just amazing to me what was going on in New Testament studies around gender. Since my PhD is in Theology and church history, I'm smart enough to know what that's all about. And so I was telling this in this wonderful way, you know exciting biography and showing how Heather's point-of-view was right in line with the way that we are moving and understanding the deep history of the Bible. And I thought she understood me. - Wow. - I mean I thought, what I thought it was was having a conversation with a reporter who didn't have the same background that I had and that she wanted to be educated about a subject. And then when I got to the other side of it, actually it appears, when you lay the articles side by side, it appears that she was actually sort of fishing around to try to find out how I was a heretic. - Yes. - And I don't believe she mentioned me by name. - She did not. - Cause that would have been really unprofessional. - Yeah. - Because you're not supposed to do that to another journalist. - And I even mentioned her in my article. - Right. - But that conversation between us did happen. And like I said I was really shocked afterwards to see that it was literally like two people had not even been in the same room together. She saw something so entirely different than I saw. - That's amazing. - It was amazing. - Yeah - It was kind of a lesson in post modernism. - Exactly, exactly. (Diana laughs) - It was a perspective and what you bring into a room really does account for an amazing amount of journalistic interpretation. - Yeah exactly. I loved your article in the New York Times. You said so many good things. And there's a quote. And I know it's been a long time but I wondered if you could react to this. You wrote for the first time, I could imagine the power of Christianity fully inclusive of women. Does that spark any memories or any reactions? - Yeah I think that was the dancing. (both laugh) - Was it? I love it. - I really do I think it was that liturgy because I had never seen a liturgy that was all women before. - Yeah. - I had been in Episcopal church where there had been women presiding over the table. And I had even I think by that time probably been in a church when it had been all women presiding, like a priest, maybe a deacon. And the readers that day were all women, you know for some quirky reason. But in those settings, there were still a lot of men around. - Yes. - And even if there was no man up front there were the men in the congregation, the ushers and the Sunday school teachers. So I'd never been in a liturgy that was written by, presided over by and participated in all by women. And that was the piece that was so powerful that I stole the apple off the table. (interviewer laughs) And wrote that really nice line. (laughs) - You did, oh my goodness. - But I didn't talk about stealing the apple in the article. - No, so I'm so glad that I know that. - Well now it's in the background. - Yes it's public, it's great and it's so important. - And if anybody every finds it amongst my remains (interviewer laughs) bury me with the apple. (both laugh) - Oh I love it. There were so many great lines. There's another quote you gave that I wanted to know how you would reflect on now. Feminist theology and liturgical reform was officially banished in the margins of American main line Protestantism. What would you say now about that? - Yeah that's a great, that's really interesting because back then that's how it felt because those women for everything they were doing that was so smart and so powerful and so beautiful they were losing their jobs. - Exactly. - And the other thing that was horrifying to me is that people were not paying attention to my article, they were paying attention to Katherine's article. And Heather got into real trouble after that conference. And I don't believe she lost her job. - She did not. - But that she was under great pressure. - She was. - And nobody ever asked me what I saw there. But instead they used Katherine's article as evidence against her. And that really hurt me. And I remember I believe, it'd be interesting to see if Heather remembers this or not. I met Heather again on the other side on a couple of different occasions. But I do believe I called her up when I heard that she was in trouble and I just commiserated with her. And I said I can't believe that this is going on. Because from what I saw everything you said and did was perfectly within the parameters of orthodoxy. And that's really what was shocking to me at the time is that I couldn't see how anything she did deviated from orthodoxy. Now there was some other stuff that was a little bit more challenging including the dance and the apples and stuff. But that was just done in fun. That wasn't really anybody standing up there saying we're going to now violate the whole purpose of Christianity by committing some sort of burning crosses or whatever. There was certainly a pushing at the edge. But it wasn't Heather. - Yes. - And a lot of the intellectual stuff really wasn't very much pushing the edge. But yet everything was being interpreted as being heretical or dangerous or outside of the boundaries of orthodoxy. And that's what the part was that really puzzled me. And that's why I called, I'm sure I called Heather up and talked to her about that. And that was the choice it seemed that the denominations were making at that time. Is that they were going to believe the Institute of Religion and Democracy and not believe people like me. And I should have been a credible voice as credible as the other person sitting there in the room. But no. - Where do you think mainline Protestantism is today on inclusive language, feminist theology? - Well, that's the interesting thing in 20 years retrospect I think a lot of people who might have participated in some of the, let's use the language, I mean that was an intellectual and sort of Ecclesiastical witch hunt that went on against those women. - Yes. - And a lot of their lives were almost ruined because of what happened. I do think that there would be people who participated in that then that might regret that now. Because now we've had 20 more years of women in ministry. And I think one of the things that we can fairly say is that yeah the churches are all smaller than they were 20 years ago. But that was not the women's fault. (laughs) What happened was the women were the inheritors of an institution that was already in a state of disarray. And I think you can equally make the case that whatever is left of mainline Protestantism that women have saved it. - And how have women saved it would you say? - Well I think women saved it by being willing to go in and take parishes that no man would have ever taken. You know that where they got half the pay and still loved the people there and cared for them and marry their grandchildren and baptize their family members and buried them. Women took a lot of really crappy jobs. - Yeah. - That no guy would ever take graduating from seminary. And then, and I would I think be more like the first maybe decade, first 15 years of women's ordination, the Episcopal church certainly. But then people began saying hey this isn't so scary. She was actually a really good priest. She was there for me when I was sick. And so then those women started getting into somewhat better jobs and then they begin to move into more and more places of influence. And started becoming professors at seminaries. And I think there was just this kind of slow acceptance of women that became almost a real enthusiasm in many quarters for the ministry of women and saying hey she was actually really a lot nicer than any of the guys we ever had in this place before then. Or wasn't it fun when our priest was pregnant and it was Christmas time. And so that people began to really see these amazing kinds of things that women did because one sometimes they just had to if they were going to exercise their ministry. Or that they did because they loved. Or that happened just because they happened to be women. You know being pregnant at Christmas gives a whole different spin to the Mary story. - It does. - You wind up being a character in the Christmas pageants. (both laugh) - That's a good way to put it. - Rather than just a king. (interviewer laughs) - You get to be Mary and so I think that was really very powerful. And then those women started sort of saying they would just more naturally kind of read the liturgy in different ways. Or you know some were simply introducing bits of liturgy. And then overtly introducing liturgy. And that changed things. And I know Presbyterian and UCC and Episcopal and Lutheran churches that use very much things that happened at Re-Imagining 25 years ago they use now in Sunday services. - Really? - Yeah. - Yeah. - Now they might not use it in every Sunday service - Rignt. - but I would say that there's a significant number of I'd probably put it 30 to 40% of mainline congregations on a somewhat regular basis use bits and pieces of liturgy that were, would have been comfortable at Re-Imagining in the 90s. And some, there's probably about 20% of mainline churches that I suspect that use that liturgy a lot. And if not, some of them even as regular liturgies. - You mean actual liturgy from Re-Imagining - Oh yeah. - Yeah. - Well I don't know if it's the actual liturgy from Re-Imagining but like there's a wonderful Episcopal church that I was a member of in Santa Barbara, California. And I visit that church every year at least once. And I've watched them over the last two decades go on this long journey. And in the 1990s, they were using fairly standard Episcopal liturgy that now I think of as sexist. But now they use liturgy that there's snippets of it that are still the traditional liturgy but they use the inclusive language liturgy of the Episcopal church. They use the New Zealand liturgy which was very much rewritten in a non-sexist, non white privilege way. They use that liturgy. They use Janet Morley's Catholic liturgies that are now, the Episcopal church just this past year has officially permitted Janet Morley's Catholic feminist liturgies to be used in main Episcopal services. - Wow. - Yeah and those were certainly influenced by Re-Imagining all those years ago. And so some bits and pieces of all of that work that was done that was so controversial and got people fired and caused such a stank and fill the coffers of the Institute of Religion Democracy with donation money that's become fairly standard practice in a significant portion of mainline Protestantism. And that's a portion of mainline Protestantism that is growing. That's not the part that's in decline. - Yeah. - You go into those churches and like All Saints Pasadena or Trinity Church Wall Street in New York City. Or Trinity Church in Santa Barbara those are congregations that are big and stable and even growing congregations. And if not necessarily growing by leaps and bounds. There are certainly congregations that are not going anywhere cause they have very dynamic memberships that are Evangelistic and justice-oriented. And they're some of our best congregations that have made this term. And I think that's true for the Lutherans and the Presbyterians as well. - Yeah, you know in you're recent work Grounded you do a great job of talking about spirituality and the importance of nature and community. And I wonder if you see any connections to Re-Imaging in any of that. - Well you know I don't personally know, Re-imagining was that moment that sort of I think for me crystallized where I had been going and sort of just said hey don't be afraid of this. You know all this stuff from graduate school, you've already been a part of a congregation that's starting to experiment with this. And I was friends with a lot of people in the mid 90s at Clermont School Of Theology. And so they were, they had a lot of bugs in my ear. And plus I had all this experience about Evangelical feminism which was still very much a conversation that was going on and the connections that I retained in Evangelicalism which was mostly through fuller seminary I think at that point - Yeah. - and some of the more liberal Evangelical organizations. So all of that was already in play - Yes. - sort of in my own life and Re-Imagining just sort of was a moment of underlining that. And saying you know hey this is just part of the tradition. This is just part of reading the Bible. This is who you are. And this is the future. And it's okay. - Yeah. - And I think that for me that was the moment where I just sort of said name it and claim it. (both laugh) It's an old adage I would say. So I think that the trajectory in terms of my work is a cumulative trajectory in which Re-Imagining was sort of one pause or one moment on that path. That was important certainly but not maybe formative. - Yes. - The other things were already in place that were formative. But Re-Imagining underscored it. - Yeah, that's great. - And I do meet Heather later. - Oh you did. - Yeah she actually when I was looking for a job, she brought me to Drew and I interviewed for a position there and we had a great time. And it was really wonderful to think that at some point I might have worked undner her as her being my dean. But I guess I came in second for that job. (interviewer laughs) - They probably always regretted that. (laughs) - No it went to a really cool guy, out gay, really amazing American religion scholar and hey I - YOu've done pretty well for yourself. - I'm fine and he's fine and he's done great work. - Good. - So all is good. - Well I have just two more questions for you. I really appreciate your time. What do you think Re-Imagining means today and I don't just mean the Re-Imagining community? Think what needs to be re-imagined today in church, in society. - One way I think Re-Imagining probably it's most long term impact on me was to think about theological imagination and the importance of theological imagination. And that it's a never ending task is that we are always bring the sacred imagination to play in our texts and our practices and the ways that we gather as community and the ways we worship. And to understand how beautiful and precious and what a creative process that is. And so I think that Re-Imagining just sort of reminded, it taught me first of all that imagination was necessary in the life of the church. And it's also for me, it's really pushed me to the edges as a writer. I really take that seriously as part of my call. And so for me in a sense Re-Imagining never ends which I'm reminded of with that apple. - Yes, yes. - When I pick that up every Christmas time and hang it on my tree, it's like okay well there was the Re-Imagining conference back when and a lot of people got in trouble but the task of re-imagining is continuous. And it's beautiful. And it is really the life of any faith community, that constant call to enter into creativity. Now I would talk about it as co-creation. The co-creation of both the beloved community of the church, the co-creation of just the beloved community of humanity, the priesthood of all of us of the whole human family. In living in a keen sense of awareness of God's presence, with and in and through us. And that we are not only called to just re-imagine theology but we're called always to re-imagine what it means to live with justice. And to live in such a way that every human being has dignity. And I think that for me that that's what re-imagining has really come to mean. It's a life commitment of the dream of God and us participating with and in and through that. And God with us doing it. And so I'm really kind of grateful for the language to re-imagine. Cause it's a never ending task. It's just a never ending task. - That was beautiful. - I have one last question for you. - Okay. - The Re-Imagining community has reincorporated and - I did not know that. - Yes, yes. - Oh wow it's a never ending task. - it is, it is. (Diana laughs) and we jump back in again. And one of our works is developing a website. And part of it is historical, we're digitizing the conferences, we're collecting history so it's not lost but we also want to collect resources and make connections for people. And I'm just wondering if you had any thoughts about resources we should include, who would benefit from it. Any ideas about what to do with the website. - Oh gosh, oh, I'm terrible with technology. (interviewer laughs) Although I love social media which is kind of weird. I think of a lot of websites now as libraries. One of the websites that I'm really impressed with that I think is doing great work about continuing a legacy of someone that we love is the Frederick Buechner community and website. And they've done kind of some astonishing work in keeping, you know Buechner is 90 now. - Yeah. - I guess they're just getting ready to celebrate his 90th birthday. And what they're trying to do through both a website and conferences through social media is making sure that the legacy of his words live. - Wonderful. - And so I can easily see Re-Imagining trying to figure out how to do that. How do you make this legacy sing. And I could certainly think of a lot of people who need it. Increasingly, I'm struck as I know so many millennial adults now which is so funny cause they were the millennial kids (interviewer laughs) for a long time but now they're the millennial adults and I'm really glad that we're all together on this journey right now. Cause I feel like as a baby boomer, I feel like my life is so enriched by my millennial kids and I have a step son who's a millennial and my daughter's 18. And my incredible number of friends who are in their 20s and 30s. And one of the really precious things about so many of those journeys is that those young adults grew up in Evangelicalism in the 1980s when it was not like the Evangelicalism that I describe that I knew in my 20s in the 1970s. For them Evangelicalism that they were born to in the 1980s was the religious right it was Jerry Falwell, it was narrow patriarchy. It was anti-feminist. It was against gay people. That kind of Evangelicalism was horrifying. And they were raised with it. And so what's happening now is there's so many people from the Evangelical tradition who are having to leave. And they don't know any of this history. As a matter of fact, they were taught that people like me I know I've had friends who are now in their 20s or 30s who said that their parents actually warned them not to read books that I had written because I was dangerous. And hey I went to college with those people. (both laugh) Or seminary and their parents or their pastors think I'm dangerous. - Wow. - And so then they find their way to something that I've written and it's like they've gone oh my gosh this is beautiful. This is what I think Christianity is. And so I think what we have now is we have this whole beautiful, amazing generation of young adults who are on a journey who have been so shaped by a really negative form of Christianity that they don't even know if they're Christian anymore. And so the more I think we can put the stories about a different sort of Christianity out there, especially in places where they make community like the internet. That hopefully people will find their way there. And realize that they have friends and that there's different ways of seeing these things. And that a lot of the work has been done. That they can just pick up and if some of the younger leaders that I know understood that that and power of this work, I do think that it could make their jobs easier. - Yes. - Cause they can build on it. And they can just go further. I don't want our work to colonize them. - Yes. - What I dream of, is having the work that we've done and that we've left behind as simply one more layer of a foundation. That they can build something on that would be beyond my wildest imagining. That they can pick up the process of this creative re-imagining, this co-creation. And build just something that's so beautiful. And that's more truly Christian than what even I can imagine. And that's why we need each other. And so I think that having places where these resources and these stories are preserved are just a way of laying that foundation. So that people can take it and build more. - You express beautifully what the Re-Imagining community is hoping. Thank you. - Oh that's wonderful. - It's beautifully expressed, that's exactly what - Well I always just watching or on edge and I did steal your apple. I suppose I owe you. (both laugh) - Oh no we owe you, we owe you please. And I love that, people will be thrilled to know that at Christmas, we'll be thinking of you at Christmas when you put that apple on the tree. - Aw well thank you. - With gratitude, enjoy. - It's always there. - I love it. - Is there anything we haven't discussed that you would like to add Diana. - Oh, no. - This was great. - Yeah thank you so much. - Thank you so much.