WEBVTT
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If it won't pick up too much of my blowing my nose,
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and so forth, or coughing.
(laughing)
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Well, it's all part of it, isn't it? (laughs)
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Let me make sure.
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There we go, all right.
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First of all, I need some background
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information from you, your name.
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Okay, Manley Olson.
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And are you lay or clergy?
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I'm this weird thing in the Presbyterian Church
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called an ordained elder, which is lay, but,
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in the Reformed Church, you've got the ordained,
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so I'm an ordained elder.
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And the Presbyterian Church, yeah?
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Manley, when and where were you born?
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Born in Wisconsin in 1936.
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Oh, okay.
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So you're a Midwestern person.
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Where did you go to school?
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Graduate school, Divinity school, any of those things?
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Got a PhD from the University of Minnesota
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in Constitutional History.
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Oh.
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Well, I was in,
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but my dissertation was on Church-State Relations.
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Is that right, I never knew that, really.
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And so what kind of work did you go into?
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Well, I spent 30 years as Dean of Liberal Arts
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at Normandale Community College.
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Okay.
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Great, all right.
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These interviews are great.
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I find out all kinds of interesting things.
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So how and when did you first
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become aware of Feminist theology?
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I couldn't tell you a specific time or place.
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One of the interesting things is that
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a lot of things I've gotten involved in the church
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had been strictly by accident.
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And,
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I had agreed to,
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the Presbytery had a list of committees
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you could get involved with,
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and one of them had to do with higher education,
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so I had checked off that.
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So I end up with a committee,
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somebody made a mistake, obviously.
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I think, I don't know.
(laughing)
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You basically start to say, well, the Holy Spirit works.
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I ended up on a committee that,
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I don't remember what the title was,
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but it was basically dealing with vocation.
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And,
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so we talked about vocation and theology,
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and one of the things we did was officer training
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and elder training and so forth.
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So we started talking about, that was my first
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real discussion with anybody about theology of any kind.
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Oh, interesting.
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Because I went to a public institution,
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and,
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had no background at all in it,
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and got involved in some discussions of that.
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That was one of the two streams.
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The other was that I worked at the University of Minnesota,
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and one of my jobs was, the university was
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the accrediting agency for non-public schools,
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and so I was in charge of going
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and setting up visits with high school,
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this was high schools, of Catholic,
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Missouri Synod Lutheran,
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Seventh-day Adventists,
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prep schools like Blake and Breck.
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Well, Breck is I guess nominally Episcopal,
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but (laughs) it's really pretty secular.
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And so you get involved with these discussions,
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and one of the funniest things was we had a visit.
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You're familiar with North Central Association.
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Yes.
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We had a visit at St. Cloud Cathedral,
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run by the North Central Association,
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because we were a part of it.
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So we're there and we set up.
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The person who was doing North Central
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always forgot to set up a religion committee,
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because they didn't have to worry about that,
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so we put together an ad hoc religion committee.
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So I ended up on most of these
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visits to, we did jointly.
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I ended up on the religion committee kind of thing.
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So I got involved and did some discussions and so forth.
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And it was funny, at one of the schools,
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at the end, everybody's saying thank you for everybody,
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and somebody, "It's nice to have a whole bunch of
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"concerned Catholics at the religion committee."
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And I said, "Boy, if you're gonna fake it,
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"fake it with sincerity," kind of thing.
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So I started getting some interest in those kinds of things.
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My next committee I got on again by accident,
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was a women's committee for the Synod.
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I had put down for something else,
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and I ended up on a women's committee.
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So, fine, I'm on the women's committee.
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And that led to another accident where,
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the National Presbyterian Church had
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a committee called Justice for Women,
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which was just basically what the name implies.
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I get a phone call late at night
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from the person I know who was on the committee said,
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"I just put your name in to be on the
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"National Justice for Women Committee."
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I said, "Well, how come," she says,
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I said "I thought we had nominated so and so for it."
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"Oh, yeah, but I forgot who it was
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"and your the only name I could think of, so."
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(laughs)
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So from there I went to the Ecumenical Decade Committee,
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the national one, again because
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the person who was supposed to serve couldn't,
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so I ended up filling in.
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And so because I was on that I said,
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well, I might as well get involved with the local group,
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which had just started, so I missed probably
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the first two or three meetings
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of the original Re-Imagining group,
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but I got in at the very ground level, so.
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I love it.
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What a circuitous route, and you got there.
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That is wonderful.
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Well, that transitions beautifully
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into your relationship with the Re-Imagining committee,
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which I know has been a long one.
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So could you pick up there, you started on the
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Ecumenical Decade.
So I started on the,
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I was on both the national committee
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and the local committee.
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And the national committee--
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Just to clarify, this is a national committee
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for the Presbyterian Church?
Presbyterian Church.
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Right, for the Ecumenical Decade.
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There was also a United State, well.
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Ecumenical Decade was a World Council of Churches event.
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Then there was a US committee,
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and the US committee was co-chaired by Mary Ann Lundy
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and some bishop from some other denomination,
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I don't remember who it was.
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I was on the US committee which had
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probably 15 people from around the country.
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I remember we had one meeting in Detroit,
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where we met jointly with
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the World Council of Churches folks.
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So I got to meet a lot of those folks.
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So I got involved with a local group,
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and was part of that,
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up through the start of the conference,
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and then once the conference ended,
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and we were gonna fold our tents,
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and we were gonna have a farewell party,
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and all of a sudden the flack hit,
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and so we decided to keep going, so,
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I was a part of it for the rest of its history.
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I wanna talk more about that decision,
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'cause I think it's really important, but.
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So were you involved the whole 10 years?
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And what kind of role--
The whole 10 years.
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Were you on the coordinating council the whole time?
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I was on the coordinating council.
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For the whole 10 years?
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For the whole 10 years.
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I was never on the,
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we had an individual three or four people
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that were in charge of planning each of the local events.
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I was never on one of those.
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I just didn't have time for that,
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but I was on the coordinating group.
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So we met probably, I think most of the time,
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we met about every month, something like that.
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That's quite a commitment for 10 years.
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Were you usually the only guy on the committee?
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Uh, no.
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There were two of us on the committee most of the time.
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Randy Nelson,
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and,
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I don't know if you've heard this story.
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Do you know Elizabeth Bettenhausen?
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Yes.
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Sally Hill tells the story
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of she is meeting with Bettenhausen,
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and,
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they're talking about Re-Imagining.
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I think this is after,
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no, I think it's before Re-Imagining,
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before the conference actually happened,
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and Bettenhausen was surprised.
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"You have men on this committee?"
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"Oh, yes, we have men.
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"Manley Olson and Randy Nelson."
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"Now, wait a minute.
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"I can understand, but names like Randy and Manley?"
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(laughs)
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I love that.
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And about, oh, probably the mid-90s,
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several years after Re-Imagining,
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I was doing a workshop at Ghost Ranch,
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and Bettenhausen was doing one,
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and we ended up doing worship,
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on the worship committee together
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for a Sunday morning worship.
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(laughing)
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She said, "Okay, I'll believe it, there is a Manley."
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There is a Manley, and she got to meet you.
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So I'm just, 'cause ya know,
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10 years, that's a long commitment.
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What kept you on that coordinating council for 10 years?
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Two things, I guess.
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One was there was an awful lot that still had to be done.
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Because we had one conference just scratch the surface,
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and each of the subsequent conferences dealt with something.
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But the other was,
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all the attacks that were coming from the outside,
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and I thought I was in a position,
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given the fact that I was very much
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involved with the Presbyterian Church,
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that I could be part of telling the story
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to the insiders in the Presbyterian Church,
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that a lot of the people couldn't,
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because most of them,
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for whatever reason, were not insiders.
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They were for personal reasons,
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or professional whatever, they were,
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many of the people who were involved,
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were on the margins.
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Involved in Re-Imagining.
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Yeah, were involved in Re-Imagining,
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were on the margins of their own denominations,
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or any denomination, and I was an insider, so.
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A lot of them though were clergy.
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Wouldn't you say?
Yeah, mm-hmm, yeah.
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Yeah.
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But they weren't necessarily people who
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were in the hierarchy kind of thing.
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They weren't very important.
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Mary Ann Lundy, who wasn't clergy was, but,
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a lot of them,
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most of the rest of 'em weren't.
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They did have a position, it was in the women's unit,
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kind of thing, which,
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was not the most important or prestigious kind of thing.
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And so a lot of them were involved
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in the women's part of it.
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They were involved in Presbyterian Women,
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or the whatever, the Methodist women's group,
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and there were a number of Catholic sisters and so forth,
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again, who had no real input into the hierarchy.
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Right.
And so forth.
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Oh, that's fascinating, that makes sense.
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Let's talk about the backlash after the 1993 conference.
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I know you were aware of it certainly.
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Did it affect you directly?
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Yes and no, I mean.
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I caught some of it,
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but it didn't have any impact on me because I was,
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I wasn't working for the church.
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I was working in a Presbytery that
265
00:12:24.259 --> 00:12:27.009
is about as liberal as they come.
266
00:12:29.523 --> 00:12:30.929
In a Presbytery here in--
267
00:12:30.929 --> 00:12:34.776
Yeah, the Twin Cities area is certainly
268
00:12:34.776 --> 00:12:37.834
one of the most liberal, uh-huh.
269
00:12:37.834 --> 00:12:40.584
So, I mean, you were aware of it.
270
00:12:43.710 --> 00:12:44.543
The only,
271
00:12:49.606 --> 00:12:50.856
well, backlash.
272
00:12:52.210 --> 00:12:55.210
I guess, notoriety was probably more
273
00:12:56.849 --> 00:12:58.599
the word I would use.
274
00:13:01.172 --> 00:13:03.172
The Presbyterian Layman.
275
00:13:04.641 --> 00:13:06.482
Jack Adams, who was,
276
00:13:06.482 --> 00:13:09.271
who Parker, you've probably heard the name Parker,
277
00:13:09.271 --> 00:13:11.667
Parker Williamson was a long-time editor of it.
278
00:13:11.667 --> 00:13:14.837
When he retired, a fellow named Jack Adams took over,
279
00:13:14.837 --> 00:13:17.335
and Jack and I got along very well.
280
00:13:17.335 --> 00:13:21.367
We kind of bandied about at meetings and so forth.
281
00:13:21.367 --> 00:13:25.085
And every time Jack Adams wrote a story
282
00:13:25.085 --> 00:13:27.918
about things it was, Manley Olson,
283
00:13:28.912 --> 00:13:32.016
who is one of the ringleaders in the Re-Imagining group.
284
00:13:32.016 --> 00:13:35.107
I mean, that was sort of his tagline all the way through,
285
00:13:35.107 --> 00:13:37.940
so I got, I mean, the Layman once,
286
00:13:38.873 --> 00:13:42.097
on the pages of the Layman, I got called apostate,
287
00:13:42.097 --> 00:13:46.110
and people said, "How'd you manage that?" (laughs)
288
00:13:46.110 --> 00:13:47.610
So, I mean, I got,
289
00:13:48.955 --> 00:13:50.581
I got noted, but, no.
290
00:13:50.581 --> 00:13:53.331
It had no negative impact at all.
291
00:13:56.380 --> 00:13:58.052
As an, one of the,
292
00:13:58.052 --> 00:14:00.139
involved in the initial conference,
293
00:14:00.139 --> 00:14:01.889
did you have any idea
294
00:14:03.116 --> 00:14:05.588
that it would have this kind of backlash?
295
00:14:05.588 --> 00:14:06.604
No.
296
00:14:06.604 --> 00:14:09.040
I don't think anybody did.
297
00:14:09.040 --> 00:14:10.623
I think that the...
298
00:14:13.222 --> 00:14:14.424
Excuse me.
Sure.
299
00:14:14.424 --> 00:14:16.424
The people who were...
300
00:14:18.236 --> 00:14:20.653
(blows nose)
301
00:14:21.935 --> 00:14:22.935
Well, the...
302
00:14:24.865 --> 00:14:28.799
I can remember when I had heard a little bit about
303
00:14:28.799 --> 00:14:31.607
that this conference was being organized,
304
00:14:31.607 --> 00:14:33.024
because I sat on,
305
00:14:35.790 --> 00:14:37.410
I was on the Presbytery women's committee,
306
00:14:37.410 --> 00:14:38.961
among other things.
307
00:14:38.961 --> 00:14:40.790
But, and, so,
308
00:14:40.790 --> 00:14:44.322
several of the people who were on that committee,
309
00:14:44.322 --> 00:14:46.718
Judy Strauss Clemons was one,
310
00:14:46.718 --> 00:14:49.121
and I don't remember who else was on there,
311
00:14:49.121 --> 00:14:52.253
were involved on that, on the original group.
312
00:14:52.253 --> 00:14:54.037
So we heard a little bit about it,
313
00:14:54.037 --> 00:14:55.668
but we were sort of fighting our own battles
314
00:14:55.668 --> 00:14:58.080
in the Presbytery in terms of,
315
00:14:58.080 --> 00:14:59.912
just getting women more involved
316
00:14:59.912 --> 00:15:02.662
in positions and everything else.
317
00:15:03.774 --> 00:15:04.774
So it was...
318
00:15:08.088 --> 00:15:10.603
Yeah, we heard about it, and then when I got to the,
319
00:15:10.603 --> 00:15:12.956
I remember the first meeting of the Ecumenical
320
00:15:12.956 --> 00:15:15.483
Decade Committee was in Atlanta,
321
00:15:15.483 --> 00:15:16.316
and, so,
322
00:15:17.200 --> 00:15:18.867
I had breakfast with
323
00:15:20.515 --> 00:15:23.932
Mary Ann Lundy and a couple other people,
324
00:15:25.513 --> 00:15:26.346
and, so,
325
00:15:27.340 --> 00:15:30.175
Mary Ann kind of outlined what it was.
326
00:15:30.175 --> 00:15:34.258
And it was very clear that this was envisioned as
327
00:15:35.366 --> 00:15:38.449
a very high-level academic conference
328
00:15:41.661 --> 00:15:45.744
of women theologians, to talk about their issues,
329
00:15:47.516 --> 00:15:51.683
and how those issues affected the Christian Church.
330
00:15:54.193 --> 00:15:55.026
And, so,
331
00:15:56.163 --> 00:15:56.996
as the,
332
00:15:58.467 --> 00:16:01.390
as the conference went along,
333
00:16:01.390 --> 00:16:03.973
and we started getting numbers,
334
00:16:06.952 --> 00:16:09.202
then we started looking at
335
00:16:12.419 --> 00:16:15.586
what other kinds of things might we do
336
00:16:18.591 --> 00:16:22.508
apart from the content, which was this group of
337
00:16:24.386 --> 00:16:29.293
20 or so theologians talking about various issues.
338
00:16:29.293 --> 00:16:33.376
So we started adding various kinds of things, so,
339
00:16:34.852 --> 00:16:37.474
Pam Joy wrote a play, for example,
340
00:16:37.474 --> 00:16:40.009
and we set up a number of mission trips
341
00:16:40.009 --> 00:16:43.676
for people to go out and look at ministries,
342
00:16:44.635 --> 00:16:48.337
particularly involving women in the area and so forth,
343
00:16:48.337 --> 00:16:50.422
and there were discussion groups set up,
344
00:16:50.422 --> 00:16:54.095
and I think there were even, I don't know,
345
00:16:54.095 --> 00:16:56.391
I think there were even exercise groups, or things like,
346
00:16:56.391 --> 00:16:58.352
I mean, there were other kinds of things.
347
00:16:58.352 --> 00:17:01.333
But it was clearly viewed as that,
348
00:17:01.333 --> 00:17:03.828
and I think everybody was surprised.
349
00:17:03.828 --> 00:17:07.555
Nobody expected 2,000 people were going to show up for this.
350
00:17:07.555 --> 00:17:09.722
I think the hope was that,
351
00:17:11.362 --> 00:17:13.850
maybe 100, 150 kind of thing.
Wow.
352
00:17:13.850 --> 00:17:16.277
Do you recall, was liturgy or worship
353
00:17:16.277 --> 00:17:17.428
always gonna be a part of it,
354
00:17:17.428 --> 00:17:19.595
or did that come later on?
355
00:17:22.848 --> 00:17:27.015
There was always gonna be worship as a part of it, and,
356
00:17:28.786 --> 00:17:32.953
I'm not quite sure how the liturgy part developed,
357
00:17:37.079 --> 00:17:40.250
as far as the detail of the program.
358
00:17:40.250 --> 00:17:43.375
You know, I couldn't say.
Sure.
359
00:17:43.375 --> 00:17:45.125
Either Mary Kay or,
360
00:17:47.655 --> 00:17:48.686
Kathi Austin Mahle?
361
00:17:48.686 --> 00:17:51.436
Kathi would probably be better.
362
00:17:53.855 --> 00:17:56.448
Well, how do you account for the backlash, Manley?
363
00:17:56.448 --> 00:17:58.948
What do you think caused that?
364
00:18:05.762 --> 00:18:07.929
The Presbyterian Church,
365
00:18:09.748 --> 00:18:12.515
and the Methodist Church,
366
00:18:12.515 --> 00:18:13.348
had been,
367
00:18:16.454 --> 00:18:18.121
under major tension,
368
00:18:21.451 --> 00:18:22.284
over,
369
00:18:24.583 --> 00:18:26.166
a couple of issues.
370
00:18:27.138 --> 00:18:28.555
The main one was,
371
00:18:31.979 --> 00:18:33.979
the whole issue of GLBT.
372
00:18:35.466 --> 00:18:37.163
Except then, it was just sort of
373
00:18:37.163 --> 00:18:39.934
the gay issue, kind of thing.
374
00:18:39.934 --> 00:18:41.684
And so that had been,
375
00:18:44.425 --> 00:18:48.592
in the Presbyterian Church, had been a major flap at
376
00:18:53.282 --> 00:18:55.782
the 90 or 91 general assembly,
377
00:19:00.155 --> 00:19:02.710
and the Methodists were having their
378
00:19:02.710 --> 00:19:04.457
discussions of the same thing.
379
00:19:04.457 --> 00:19:08.290
So the conservatives were riled up about that.
380
00:19:09.635 --> 00:19:13.552
And I think because most of the women were also
381
00:19:16.523 --> 00:19:18.606
sympathetic to that, and,
382
00:19:21.335 --> 00:19:22.670
a fairly large number
383
00:19:22.670 --> 00:19:25.920
of the women theologians were lesbians,
384
00:19:27.072 --> 00:19:29.489
not necessarily out lesbians,
385
00:19:30.330 --> 00:19:34.247
but at least, I know a number that are or were.
386
00:19:38.153 --> 00:19:39.653
So I think it was,
387
00:19:43.322 --> 00:19:47.105
that's the enemy, in all of these kinds of things,
388
00:19:47.105 --> 00:19:47.938
and,
389
00:19:49.315 --> 00:19:50.962
part of it was also the,
390
00:19:50.962 --> 00:19:54.620
well, the other hang-over issue was abortion.
391
00:19:54.620 --> 00:19:55.453
So you had
392
00:19:57.681 --> 00:19:59.764
these issues of abortion,
393
00:20:01.761 --> 00:20:02.594
GLBT,
394
00:20:04.052 --> 00:20:05.469
and uppity women,
395
00:20:07.504 --> 00:20:11.339
and we had to do something about that.
396
00:20:11.339 --> 00:20:15.086
What was your reaction to the decision
397
00:20:15.086 --> 00:20:18.919
by the general assembly, after the conference?
398
00:20:37.207 --> 00:20:38.689
In one way, it was surprising,
399
00:20:38.689 --> 00:20:41.484
in another, it wasn't surprising.
400
00:20:41.484 --> 00:20:42.484
Because I...
401
00:20:44.590 --> 00:20:47.840
The Presbyterian Church merged in 1983,
402
00:20:51.919 --> 00:20:56.086
and the Southern Church was much more conservative.
403
00:20:58.385 --> 00:21:02.552
And just the nature of the way the reunion came about,
404
00:21:04.285 --> 00:21:07.582
the Southern Church ended up with
405
00:21:07.582 --> 00:21:09.915
a disproportionate amount of
406
00:21:12.769 --> 00:21:15.850
power in the new church, just because
407
00:21:15.850 --> 00:21:18.478
when there was competition for positions,
408
00:21:18.478 --> 00:21:20.770
the Southern Church was small and fairly united,
409
00:21:20.770 --> 00:21:23.984
and their candidates, they tended to have,
410
00:21:23.984 --> 00:21:27.481
their candidates tended to, they had a sort of,
411
00:21:27.481 --> 00:21:30.989
they were much more organized in terms of positions,
412
00:21:30.989 --> 00:21:32.906
so that the church was,
413
00:21:35.196 --> 00:21:38.819
had a very strong conservative wing,
414
00:21:38.819 --> 00:21:41.210
in the Presbyterian Church.
415
00:21:41.210 --> 00:21:43.432
I can't speak for the Methodists,
416
00:21:43.432 --> 00:21:46.099
but guessing they also had that.
417
00:21:47.551 --> 00:21:50.301
And it was also, there were also,
418
00:21:52.373 --> 00:21:54.100
a lot of people from the Northern Church,
419
00:21:54.100 --> 00:21:57.182
particularly from smaller rural areas,
420
00:21:57.182 --> 00:22:01.521
and so forth, who were also quite conservative,
421
00:22:01.521 --> 00:22:03.288
and there had been a big backlash
422
00:22:03.288 --> 00:22:05.955
in the Presbyterian Church over,
423
00:22:06.920 --> 00:22:08.487
I don't know if you've ever heard
424
00:22:08.487 --> 00:22:11.124
of the Angela Davis situation.
425
00:22:11.124 --> 00:22:12.439
Uh-uh.
426
00:22:12.439 --> 00:22:16.020
Angela Davis was a black activist,
427
00:22:16.020 --> 00:22:17.853
who was involved in...
428
00:22:24.419 --> 00:22:27.958
(sighs) I don't remember all the details, but, anyway.
429
00:22:27.958 --> 00:22:31.594
She and several other people were charged with murder,
430
00:22:31.594 --> 00:22:36.125
and the question was, was it racially motivated or not,
431
00:22:36.125 --> 00:22:37.542
and Angela Davis,
432
00:22:38.474 --> 00:22:41.526
the Presbyterian Church voted to spend,
433
00:22:41.526 --> 00:22:45.936
I think it was $10,000 for the Angela Davis defense fund.
434
00:22:45.936 --> 00:22:47.960
Well, and she was a devout communist as well,
435
00:22:47.960 --> 00:22:50.144
or at least a communist sympathizer.
436
00:22:50.144 --> 00:22:53.195
So you had all of this, you had the racial,
437
00:22:53.195 --> 00:22:56.770
the communist, all of these kinds of things,
438
00:22:56.770 --> 00:23:00.760
and the Lay Committee originally was formed
439
00:23:00.760 --> 00:23:03.394
as an anti-communist group.
440
00:23:03.394 --> 00:23:06.278
I mean, to fight the communism
441
00:23:06.278 --> 00:23:09.405
of the World Council of Churches.
442
00:23:09.405 --> 00:23:10.391
The Lay Committee, you mean--
443
00:23:10.391 --> 00:23:11.900
The Presbyterian Lay Committee.
444
00:23:11.900 --> 00:23:12.733
Okay.
445
00:23:12.733 --> 00:23:14.708
That published the Presbyterian Layman.
446
00:23:14.708 --> 00:23:16.112
Oh, I see.
That was their start,
447
00:23:16.112 --> 00:23:19.362
was this anti-communist kind of thing.
448
00:23:22.943 --> 00:23:25.372
And so they just picked up on
449
00:23:25.372 --> 00:23:29.247
all of the conservative kinds of issues.
450
00:23:29.247 --> 00:23:31.247
So you had a group that,
451
00:23:32.914 --> 00:23:36.290
like some of the Republican candidates today,
452
00:23:36.290 --> 00:23:40.034
who jump on any conservative issue.
453
00:23:40.034 --> 00:23:42.012
And so, that--
454
00:23:42.012 --> 00:23:43.485
So you said it surprised you in one way,
455
00:23:43.485 --> 00:23:44.924
and it didn't surprise you in another.
456
00:23:44.924 --> 00:23:46.924
Well, it surprised me,
457
00:23:48.613 --> 00:23:52.780
I didn't think that the leadership would knuckle under
458
00:23:54.706 --> 00:23:57.837
to the degree that they did.
459
00:23:57.837 --> 00:23:59.087
That surprised,
460
00:24:00.435 --> 00:24:02.268
I was not as involved,
461
00:24:06.533 --> 00:24:08.136
at the national level.
462
00:24:08.136 --> 00:24:10.327
I mean, I was involved but it was,
463
00:24:10.327 --> 00:24:13.081
again, it was on the fringe kinds of things.
464
00:24:13.081 --> 00:24:16.740
It was in social justice and women's areas and so forth,
465
00:24:16.740 --> 00:24:20.683
and not in the central kinds of things.
466
00:24:20.683 --> 00:24:22.615
That came later.
467
00:24:22.615 --> 00:24:23.532
So I was...
468
00:24:26.982 --> 00:24:31.149
And so while I knew some of the people and so forth,
469
00:24:32.226 --> 00:24:36.526
as I say, I was both surprised and not surprised.
470
00:24:36.526 --> 00:24:37.786
Yeah, yeah.
471
00:24:37.786 --> 00:24:40.592
Was that similar to Mary Ann Lundy's resignation?
472
00:24:40.592 --> 00:24:42.693
Well, yeah, that was a part of it.
473
00:24:42.693 --> 00:24:44.526
That was a part of it.
474
00:24:47.884 --> 00:24:49.301
In fact, we were,
475
00:24:51.438 --> 00:24:53.551
we were at the assembly
476
00:24:53.551 --> 00:24:55.443
when that whole thing happened.
477
00:24:55.443 --> 00:24:56.324
You were, yeah.
478
00:24:56.324 --> 00:24:58.777
Well, we had not planned on going,
479
00:24:58.777 --> 00:25:01.689
but we started hearing all the reports of
480
00:25:01.689 --> 00:25:04.856
what was gonna happen, and so we went.
481
00:25:05.719 --> 00:25:07.156
Yeah.
482
00:25:07.156 --> 00:25:08.800
And do you remember what your reaction was,
483
00:25:08.800 --> 00:25:11.051
or the reaction of other people at that?
484
00:25:11.051 --> 00:25:14.669
What were the feelings?
Well, again it was,
485
00:25:14.669 --> 00:25:17.002
depending on where you were,
486
00:25:19.075 --> 00:25:20.325
that the whole,
487
00:25:22.854 --> 00:25:24.748
women's part of it,
488
00:25:24.748 --> 00:25:27.926
and the women's unit then was a pretty,
489
00:25:27.926 --> 00:25:29.695
a fairly extensive kind of thing in terms of
490
00:25:29.695 --> 00:25:32.002
numbers of programs and so forth.
491
00:25:32.002 --> 00:25:34.021
But the women, the justice kinds of things,
492
00:25:34.021 --> 00:25:38.104
were aghast that this kind of thing would happen.
493
00:25:39.420 --> 00:25:42.511
The arch conservatives were, well, this is just
494
00:25:42.511 --> 00:25:46.121
the first head that's gonna roll kind of thing.
495
00:25:46.121 --> 00:25:46.954
And,
496
00:25:48.111 --> 00:25:52.028
the guy who was her boss, who acquiesced to it,
497
00:25:55.090 --> 00:25:56.978
the next assembly, he was dumped.
498
00:25:56.978 --> 00:25:58.501
Really.
Yeah.
499
00:25:58.501 --> 00:26:00.513
Or, no, I guess it was two years later.
500
00:26:00.513 --> 00:26:02.596
But, yeah, he had a term,
501
00:26:04.065 --> 00:26:07.357
and his term was not renewed, yeah.
502
00:26:07.357 --> 00:26:08.801
Was it because of this whole thing?
503
00:26:08.801 --> 00:26:11.548
Yeah, in fact, it was the next,
504
00:26:11.548 --> 00:26:15.715
because Mary Ann was dumped in the '94 assembly, and,
505
00:26:19.612 --> 00:26:23.277
was it '95 or '96, Jim Brown was dumped, yeah, so.
506
00:26:23.277 --> 00:26:24.694
And why was he?
507
00:26:28.387 --> 00:26:31.810
Partly because he hadn't been tough enough on women.
508
00:26:31.810 --> 00:26:33.594
Really, okay.
509
00:26:33.594 --> 00:26:35.936
Mary Ann had been the only one who'd been fired.
510
00:26:35.936 --> 00:26:38.428
All these other 20-some women,
511
00:26:38.428 --> 00:26:41.150
or I don't remember how many women from.
512
00:26:41.150 --> 00:26:43.451
The Presbyterian Church paid for people
513
00:26:43.451 --> 00:26:46.038
from the national office to attend,
514
00:26:46.038 --> 00:26:48.227
and none of them were fired.
515
00:26:48.227 --> 00:26:49.060
I see.
516
00:26:50.240 --> 00:26:52.126
Well, you just got rid of one,
517
00:26:52.126 --> 00:26:54.672
but you got all these other people still around.
518
00:26:54.672 --> 00:26:57.667
I see, okay, I didn't know about that piece of it.
519
00:26:57.667 --> 00:27:00.661
Talking about the Re-Imagining community,
520
00:27:00.661 --> 00:27:03.494
how would you define Re-Imagining?
521
00:27:20.240 --> 00:27:22.122
You ever read Animal Farm?
522
00:27:22.122 --> 00:27:22.955
Yes.
523
00:27:24.174 --> 00:27:27.258
You've got me intrigued. (laughs)
524
00:27:27.258 --> 00:27:30.501
Well, they finally end up at the very end,
525
00:27:30.501 --> 00:27:33.898
the sign on the barn that says, "All animals are equal,
526
00:27:33.898 --> 00:27:36.035
"but some are more equal than others."
527
00:27:36.035 --> 00:27:36.868
Yes.
528
00:27:38.495 --> 00:27:42.578
Re-Imagining basically, was to try to carry out
529
00:27:44.131 --> 00:27:47.714
the idea that all people are equal, period.
530
00:27:50.094 --> 00:27:53.261
And that was basically the gist of it.
531
00:27:56.908 --> 00:27:59.658
And because that wasn't the case,
532
00:28:03.527 --> 00:28:06.610
people involved in Re-Imagining were,
533
00:28:07.509 --> 00:28:11.040
I think for the most part, motivated by
534
00:28:11.040 --> 00:28:14.290
not just bemoaning how bad things were,
535
00:28:16.133 --> 00:28:19.215
but what can we do to change it.
536
00:28:19.215 --> 00:28:22.497
So I think it was basically a group motivated
537
00:28:22.497 --> 00:28:26.164
to try to change the position and perception
538
00:28:27.275 --> 00:28:30.358
and influence of women in the church.
539
00:28:31.335 --> 00:28:32.733
Nice.
540
00:28:32.733 --> 00:28:34.293
You alluded a little bit to this,
541
00:28:34.293 --> 00:28:36.883
but I'm really fascinated with how and why
542
00:28:36.883 --> 00:28:39.018
the Re-Imagining community was formed.
543
00:28:39.018 --> 00:28:42.601
Could you say a little bit more about that?
544
00:28:46.108 --> 00:28:48.412
You said something about the celebration.
545
00:28:48.412 --> 00:28:50.306
You were supposed to have a celebration at the end.
546
00:28:50.306 --> 00:28:52.473
Well, I think there are,
547
00:28:54.261 --> 00:28:58.178
there are a couple of Re-Imagining communities.
548
00:28:59.428 --> 00:29:03.579
One of the things that happened after Re-Imagining,
549
00:29:03.579 --> 00:29:07.742
is that in a number of communities, little groups
550
00:29:07.742 --> 00:29:11.971
coalesced and kept meeting and doing things.
551
00:29:11.971 --> 00:29:14.314
I mean, the only one I really had
552
00:29:14.314 --> 00:29:17.478
anything to do with was Santa Fe.
553
00:29:17.478 --> 00:29:19.580
There was a group in Santa Fe,
554
00:29:19.580 --> 00:29:22.135
and because I was out in Ghost Ranch a lot,
555
00:29:22.135 --> 00:29:25.549
I was out there, but there were something like
556
00:29:25.549 --> 00:29:29.716
eight women from Santa Fe, who came to Re-Imagining,
557
00:29:33.776 --> 00:29:38.010
and when they went back, they were enthused,
558
00:29:38.010 --> 00:29:40.225
and they set up their own little community.
559
00:29:40.225 --> 00:29:42.362
So there were a number of these little
560
00:29:42.362 --> 00:29:44.295
Re-Imagining communities around,
561
00:29:44.295 --> 00:29:45.855
and there were a number of them in the Twin Cities,
562
00:29:45.855 --> 00:29:48.340
and there were a few that are still hanging on.
563
00:29:48.340 --> 00:29:50.286
So I mean I think you've got that
564
00:29:50.286 --> 00:29:53.395
kind of Re-Imagining community.
565
00:29:53.395 --> 00:29:56.728
But then I think you have the people who
566
00:30:01.169 --> 00:30:03.669
were part of the organization,
567
00:30:05.991 --> 00:30:09.908
which included two dozen people who were on the
568
00:30:11.372 --> 00:30:14.455
main committee, plus all of the other people
569
00:30:14.455 --> 00:30:17.955
who worked on various kinds of committees,
570
00:30:18.980 --> 00:30:22.730
and about the time, I suppose it was January,
571
00:30:25.298 --> 00:30:26.131
we,
572
00:30:28.381 --> 00:30:29.214
had a,
573
00:30:34.205 --> 00:30:36.546
I don't remember if we had a meeting to plan the party,
574
00:30:36.546 --> 00:30:41.107
or if we just were gonna have a party, but anyway,
575
00:30:41.107 --> 00:30:44.190
I can remember talking to Sally Hill,
576
00:30:45.835 --> 00:30:50.002
and Sally was showing me just all the correspondence
577
00:30:52.263 --> 00:30:54.596
she was getting from people.
578
00:30:56.396 --> 00:30:59.813
I mean, negative letters from people that
579
00:31:04.499 --> 00:31:07.370
were reacting to this horrible event that happened,
580
00:31:07.370 --> 00:31:11.475
and letters from people who had been at Re-Imagining,
581
00:31:11.475 --> 00:31:15.642
who were passing on what the flack they had gotten,
582
00:31:17.064 --> 00:31:19.147
and everything else, and,
583
00:31:22.035 --> 00:31:23.202
so anyway the,
584
00:31:25.406 --> 00:31:26.764
we had,
585
00:31:26.764 --> 00:31:28.399
and the event was just for people
586
00:31:28.399 --> 00:31:29.712
who were involved in planning,
587
00:31:29.712 --> 00:31:33.947
so I don't know how many people were there, but,
588
00:31:33.947 --> 00:31:35.947
it was pretty clear that
589
00:31:38.004 --> 00:31:41.087
there was just so much misinformation
590
00:31:42.148 --> 00:31:44.065
being spewed out there,
591
00:31:46.182 --> 00:31:47.015
that
592
00:31:49.595 --> 00:31:53.141
we decided that we need to figure out
593
00:31:53.141 --> 00:31:56.308
some ways to respond to that at least.
594
00:31:57.274 --> 00:32:01.191
And so initially, it was to support Sally Hill,
595
00:32:03.223 --> 00:32:06.890
and Mary Ann Lundy and Jeanne Audrey Powers,
596
00:32:09.852 --> 00:32:13.381
who were the people who were getting the flack,
597
00:32:13.381 --> 00:32:18.112
as well as maybe a few others that we knew about.
598
00:32:18.112 --> 00:32:18.945
But,
599
00:32:20.635 --> 00:32:24.552
I don't know exactly at what point, we decided,
600
00:32:25.457 --> 00:32:27.387
one of the things that we started getting was,
601
00:32:27.387 --> 00:32:29.887
"Are you gonna do this again?"
602
00:32:31.048 --> 00:32:32.608
So we did.
603
00:32:32.608 --> 00:32:36.775
And so we started doing another series of conferences,
604
00:32:39.178 --> 00:32:42.999
and all of a sudden, started shifting the mechanism from
605
00:32:42.999 --> 00:32:45.746
well, let's see now, how do we wind down all this,
606
00:32:45.746 --> 00:32:48.371
and what do we do with all this stuff,
607
00:32:48.371 --> 00:32:50.755
to let's keep going, and so we did.
608
00:32:50.755 --> 00:32:53.876
And so we ended up opening an office
609
00:32:53.876 --> 00:32:56.043
in the church center, and,
610
00:32:57.276 --> 00:32:58.799
Going on for 10 years.
611
00:32:58.799 --> 00:33:01.890
Going on for 10 years.
Mm-hmm.
612
00:33:01.890 --> 00:33:04.265
How would you say, how did Feminist theology
613
00:33:04.265 --> 00:33:08.432
affect the structure and functioning of the community?
614
00:33:15.411 --> 00:33:16.828
I think it was,
615
00:33:19.650 --> 00:33:21.867
tried to be as much as possible,
616
00:33:21.867 --> 00:33:24.450
a nonhierarchical organization.
617
00:33:25.643 --> 00:33:27.618
I mean, it was,
618
00:33:27.618 --> 00:33:31.808
obviously, there were people who were making decisions
619
00:33:31.808 --> 00:33:34.847
because of the necessity to do so,
620
00:33:34.847 --> 00:33:38.009
but it was certainly an attempt to
621
00:33:38.009 --> 00:33:41.342
get as many people involved as possible.
622
00:33:42.687 --> 00:33:47.087
I think one of the failings was that it became,
623
00:33:47.087 --> 00:33:49.254
for the most part I think,
624
00:33:52.391 --> 00:33:55.224
a group of privileged white women.
625
00:33:56.485 --> 00:33:57.792
And a few white men.
626
00:33:57.792 --> 00:33:59.342
Right, yeah.
627
00:33:59.342 --> 00:34:01.591
Do you have any idea why that was?
628
00:34:01.591 --> 00:34:04.605
I mean, that was a concern along the way, but.
629
00:34:04.605 --> 00:34:07.188
Well, I think part of it was,
630
00:34:09.716 --> 00:34:12.966
part of it was (sighs)
631
00:34:15.720 --> 00:34:18.387
the structure in the Twin Cities
632
00:34:20.221 --> 00:34:21.054
of,
633
00:34:24.627 --> 00:34:26.627
there were not a lot of,
634
00:34:30.597 --> 00:34:32.807
at least, I don't think people were aware of,
635
00:34:32.807 --> 00:34:35.345
the number of, that there were a lot of people
636
00:34:35.345 --> 00:34:38.012
outside of the main, mainstream,
637
00:34:40.453 --> 00:34:44.620
denominations and so forth, who were interested in this.
638
00:34:46.704 --> 00:34:50.121
And so while there were some involvement,
639
00:34:54.796 --> 00:34:57.164
it was that those were the people who
640
00:34:57.164 --> 00:35:00.124
sort of gravitated to it kind of thing.
641
00:35:00.124 --> 00:35:02.707
And even though there had been,
642
00:35:03.555 --> 00:35:05.600
and at a national level,
643
00:35:05.600 --> 00:35:09.881
well, there were really wasn't a national,
644
00:35:09.881 --> 00:35:12.615
there was the local organization,
645
00:35:12.615 --> 00:35:16.434
which did conferences and drew in people from the outside,
646
00:35:16.434 --> 00:35:20.601
but the people who were invited to conferences and so forth
647
00:35:22.869 --> 00:35:24.452
didn't have a long,
648
00:35:26.948 --> 00:35:29.365
an ongoing relationship with,
649
00:35:33.687 --> 00:35:34.955
with the organization.
650
00:35:34.955 --> 00:35:38.872
I mean, the African American women for example,
651
00:35:40.508 --> 00:35:42.717
Katie Cannon did not have.
652
00:35:42.717 --> 00:35:45.293
Rita Brock had some, because for a while,
653
00:35:45.293 --> 00:35:48.210
she was in Hamlin, so she was here,
654
00:35:49.877 --> 00:35:53.809
but there wasn't an ongoing kind of thing,
655
00:35:53.809 --> 00:35:55.559
so it was pretty much
656
00:35:57.325 --> 00:36:00.992
an older, middle-class, white women's group.
657
00:36:02.795 --> 00:36:04.880
So the speakers were often women of color,
658
00:36:04.880 --> 00:36:06.371
but they didn't--
Oh, the speakers were I mean
659
00:36:06.371 --> 00:36:08.132
the speakers, there was an attempt
660
00:36:08.132 --> 00:36:11.715
to try to get as broad a range as possible.
661
00:36:14.594 --> 00:36:16.094
And even from the,
662
00:36:17.772 --> 00:36:20.672
at the first one, there certainly was an array,
663
00:36:20.672 --> 00:36:24.633
and there was an attempt to get them down.
664
00:36:24.633 --> 00:36:26.960
And then there was a flap at the beginning one,
665
00:36:26.960 --> 00:36:31.740
as to whether or not there was enough diversity.
666
00:36:31.740 --> 00:36:35.907
And some of the women were pretty critical of that.
667
00:36:40.030 --> 00:36:42.780
Joan Martin and Delores Williams.
668
00:36:43.702 --> 00:36:45.381
Joan Martin particularly I think
669
00:36:45.381 --> 00:36:49.214
was pretty concerned about that kind of thing.
670
00:36:50.373 --> 00:36:51.881
Diversity among the speakers?
671
00:36:51.881 --> 00:36:53.469
Diversity among the participants?
672
00:36:53.469 --> 00:36:56.898
Well, just the whole nature of things.
673
00:36:56.898 --> 00:36:59.577
I think there were speakers but the,
674
00:36:59.577 --> 00:37:01.944
the issues seemed to be white women's issues.
675
00:37:01.944 --> 00:37:04.366
Yeah, mm-hm, mm-hm.
676
00:37:04.366 --> 00:37:06.236
Were there efforts during the 10 years
677
00:37:06.236 --> 00:37:09.620
to try to address those issues of race?
678
00:37:09.620 --> 00:37:14.254
(sighing) I, well, from the,
679
00:37:14.254 --> 00:37:18.421
The Re-Imagining committee basically was doing two things.
680
00:37:22.598 --> 00:37:25.545
It was doing annual conferences,
681
00:37:25.545 --> 00:37:27.266
or just about annual conferences.
682
00:37:27.266 --> 00:37:30.293
I don't know if we had 10 conferences,
683
00:37:30.293 --> 00:37:34.210
but there were probably at least eight I think.
684
00:37:35.523 --> 00:37:36.953
I think there were six more.
685
00:37:36.953 --> 00:37:38.466
Okay, yeah, okay.
Yeah.
686
00:37:38.466 --> 00:37:40.423
So there were the original and six more.
687
00:37:40.423 --> 00:37:41.895
Okay, so there were seven, okay.
688
00:37:41.895 --> 00:37:44.181
But that was about,
689
00:37:44.181 --> 00:37:46.961
and so there was a lot of work on those,
690
00:37:46.961 --> 00:37:51.128
and then there was the newsletter that was published.
691
00:37:52.512 --> 00:37:53.845
And beyond that,
692
00:37:55.372 --> 00:37:58.955
there wasn't a lot being done I don't think
693
00:37:59.905 --> 00:38:02.841
by a central group or anything.
694
00:38:02.841 --> 00:38:03.881
Right.
695
00:38:03.881 --> 00:38:05.803
Were there other challenges
696
00:38:05.803 --> 00:38:09.553
the organization faced during those 10 years?
697
00:38:10.424 --> 00:38:13.591
Well, it was just how to keep going.
698
00:38:15.006 --> 00:38:17.006
Finances, kind of thing.
699
00:38:19.830 --> 00:38:20.663
That was,
700
00:38:22.981 --> 00:38:26.438
and keep the interest up and so forth,
701
00:38:26.438 --> 00:38:28.021
and to some degree,
702
00:38:33.390 --> 00:38:37.190
the Presbyterians spun off their own group,
703
00:38:37.190 --> 00:38:39.901
which lasted a little bit longer.
704
00:38:39.901 --> 00:38:40.734
Voices of Sophia?
705
00:38:40.734 --> 00:38:42.317
Voices of Sophia.
706
00:38:47.497 --> 00:38:49.421
And you were involved in that as well.
707
00:38:49.421 --> 00:38:51.338
Yeah.
Mm-hm, mm-hm.
708
00:38:53.471 --> 00:38:56.638
I did not make the original meeting.
709
00:38:57.602 --> 00:38:59.935
My wife still is upset that,
710
00:39:01.080 --> 00:39:02.634
they had this organizing meeting,
711
00:39:02.634 --> 00:39:04.270
I got invited, she didn't.
712
00:39:04.270 --> 00:39:06.189
Really. (laughing)
713
00:39:06.189 --> 00:39:08.315
I wasn't at the pre-meeting.
714
00:39:08.315 --> 00:39:10.275
I was actually in Detroit for
715
00:39:10.275 --> 00:39:14.096
the meeting with the World Council of Churches.
716
00:39:14.096 --> 00:39:17.096
But then we had a meeting and we had
717
00:39:19.042 --> 00:39:22.434
50-some people, I think four or five men.
718
00:39:22.434 --> 00:39:26.072
We had, Jeanne Audrey Powers was there,
719
00:39:26.072 --> 00:39:28.655
and there was an Episcopal nun,
720
00:39:30.605 --> 00:39:34.317
and a couple of other people from outside things,
721
00:39:34.317 --> 00:39:36.767
but it was pretty much a Presbyterian kind of thing.
722
00:39:36.767 --> 00:39:39.350
And again that group basically,
723
00:39:40.618 --> 00:39:44.785
for the most part, did events at general assembly.
724
00:39:47.158 --> 00:39:51.129
And had a breakfast meeting and a booth,
725
00:39:51.129 --> 00:39:52.883
and that kind of thing.
726
00:39:52.883 --> 00:39:55.459
Did they choose the name Sophia because of Re-Imagining?
727
00:39:55.459 --> 00:39:59.214
Oh, sure, yeah.
Mm-hm, mm-hm, mm-hm.
728
00:39:59.214 --> 00:40:00.455
Neat.
729
00:40:00.455 --> 00:40:03.749
Talking about the significance of Re-Imagining,
730
00:40:03.749 --> 00:40:05.211
what aspects of Re-Imagining
731
00:40:05.211 --> 00:40:08.294
were most significant to you and why?
732
00:40:11.929 --> 00:40:13.096
At the time,
733
00:40:16.023 --> 00:40:18.273
I suspect it was just being
734
00:40:20.929 --> 00:40:23.512
sort of overwhelmed by how many
735
00:40:29.024 --> 00:40:33.191
extremely talented women there were doing theology.
736
00:40:37.354 --> 00:40:39.728
I mean, I was a novice to the area.
737
00:40:39.728 --> 00:40:43.895
I know a heck of a lot more about it now than I did then.
738
00:40:45.467 --> 00:40:48.634
I was just amazed by who was out there
739
00:40:51.189 --> 00:40:54.557
and how talented they were, and,
740
00:40:54.557 --> 00:40:58.716
how strong they were in terms of what they were doing.
741
00:40:58.716 --> 00:41:00.145
And at that time, were you mostly
742
00:41:00.145 --> 00:41:03.497
introduced to them through the conferences?
743
00:41:03.497 --> 00:41:06.481
Yeah, most of them, I didn't,
744
00:41:06.481 --> 00:41:09.648
I didn't really know very many of them
745
00:41:11.229 --> 00:41:13.596
from other kinds of things until later.
746
00:41:13.596 --> 00:41:15.179
I later got to know
747
00:41:19.686 --> 00:41:21.103
a number of them.
748
00:41:26.021 --> 00:41:30.522
Beverly Harrison and Carter Heyward for example,
749
00:41:30.522 --> 00:41:35.388
I got to know them in North Carolina and so forth.
750
00:41:35.388 --> 00:41:37.389
And they had a little house church,
751
00:41:37.389 --> 00:41:39.067
and I've been there a couple of times,
752
00:41:39.067 --> 00:41:41.900
and so forth, before Beverly died.
753
00:41:43.885 --> 00:41:46.872
And so I got to know some of the others as well
754
00:41:46.872 --> 00:41:51.120
in various other kinds of capacities, but at the time,
755
00:41:51.120 --> 00:41:55.047
I really didn't know a lot of them and so forth.
756
00:41:55.047 --> 00:41:59.047
So I think that was sort of my initial reaction.
757
00:42:00.182 --> 00:42:01.848
What was the question?
758
00:42:01.848 --> 00:42:04.117
How was it significant to you and why?
759
00:42:04.117 --> 00:42:05.784
Well, I think the,
760
00:42:10.252 --> 00:42:13.169
the other is that I could see cases
761
00:42:14.789 --> 00:42:17.654
where it was seemingly making a difference
762
00:42:17.654 --> 00:42:19.944
in some parts of the church.
763
00:42:19.944 --> 00:42:24.111
People were raising these kinds of questions and so forth.
764
00:42:25.379 --> 00:42:27.185
One place where it was happening,
765
00:42:27.185 --> 00:42:31.352
I think it happened for a while, was in Presbyterian Women.
766
00:42:32.498 --> 00:42:36.623
Presbyterian Women was the women's group,
767
00:42:36.623 --> 00:42:37.456
and it was
768
00:42:41.491 --> 00:42:42.908
a combination of,
769
00:42:46.113 --> 00:42:49.137
somebody said, pastor's wives and sewing circles,
770
00:42:49.137 --> 00:42:51.470
and that kind of thing, and,
771
00:42:52.415 --> 00:42:55.637
there were some agitators in the group,
772
00:42:55.637 --> 00:42:58.387
but for the most part, they were,
773
00:42:59.437 --> 00:43:03.187
they were content to do things from the back,
774
00:43:04.187 --> 00:43:06.760
from the back of the room kind of thing.
775
00:43:06.760 --> 00:43:09.420
And one of the things that I think Re-Imagining did
776
00:43:09.420 --> 00:43:13.087
was to energize that group to start getting,
777
00:43:15.150 --> 00:43:18.583
taking more stands on issues and so forth.
778
00:43:18.583 --> 00:43:20.670
Is that because some of them attended Re-Imagining?
779
00:43:20.670 --> 00:43:21.850
Some of them attended,
780
00:43:21.850 --> 00:43:24.601
and they saw other women out there doing things.
781
00:43:24.601 --> 00:43:28.768
I think a lot of the women who were involved, and speakers,
782
00:43:29.794 --> 00:43:33.515
probably had very little to do with Presbyterian Women.
783
00:43:33.515 --> 00:43:36.848
They were the academics, they weren't...
784
00:43:38.551 --> 00:43:40.051
And so I think it,
785
00:43:41.319 --> 00:43:44.223
I don't know that that lasted terribly long,
786
00:43:44.223 --> 00:43:48.061
but I think it brought women together
787
00:43:48.061 --> 00:43:52.108
from a variety of perspectives in the church.
788
00:43:52.108 --> 00:43:54.075
And what kinds of things did Presbyterian Women
789
00:43:54.075 --> 00:43:56.742
at that point get involved with?
790
00:43:58.575 --> 00:44:00.242
Their conferences,
791
00:44:03.025 --> 00:44:07.108
I think had more sessions that dealt with issues.
792
00:44:11.116 --> 00:44:13.366
The Presbyterian Women was,
793
00:44:15.053 --> 00:44:17.840
up until that point I think their issue was mission,
794
00:44:17.840 --> 00:44:20.529
broadly defined, whether it was overseas mission
795
00:44:20.529 --> 00:44:23.059
or a local mission and so forth.
796
00:44:23.059 --> 00:44:27.226
And it seemed to me that there was a lot more emphasis
797
00:44:29.191 --> 00:44:32.108
in discussions about women's issues
798
00:44:34.989 --> 00:44:39.156
and getting women involved in all levels of the church.
799
00:44:44.637 --> 00:44:46.026
Very interesting.
800
00:44:46.026 --> 00:44:47.905
How did your involvement in Re-Imagining change your
801
00:44:47.905 --> 00:44:52.072
perspective on Feminist theology and/or the church?
802
00:45:03.976 --> 00:45:05.530
Well, as far as Feminist theology,
803
00:45:05.530 --> 00:45:07.732
I learned a heck of a lot more about it.
804
00:45:07.732 --> 00:45:09.734
Yes. (laughs)
805
00:45:09.734 --> 00:45:13.901
That's the quick and easy answer, kind of thing.
806
00:45:16.615 --> 00:45:20.782
I was involved in these kinds of discussions that,
807
00:45:23.448 --> 00:45:27.615
you had to know something about it to be involved.
808
00:45:29.201 --> 00:45:31.284
But as far as the church,
809
00:45:37.470 --> 00:45:40.303
when I got involved in the church,
810
00:45:47.368 --> 00:45:51.207
it was pretty obvious that the Presbyterian Church
811
00:45:51.207 --> 00:45:54.207
was pretty divided on social issues.
812
00:45:59.100 --> 00:46:01.767
Social justice, broadly defined,
813
00:46:04.253 --> 00:46:07.836
racial issues, ordination issues, abortion.
814
00:46:09.902 --> 00:46:12.841
And I think one of the things that being involved
815
00:46:12.841 --> 00:46:15.758
in Re-Imagining made me aware as to
816
00:46:20.203 --> 00:46:23.798
how divided the church really was.
817
00:46:23.798 --> 00:46:25.799
Both in terms of the Presbyterian Church
818
00:46:25.799 --> 00:46:29.049
and the Christian community as a whole.
819
00:46:30.711 --> 00:46:31.878
And I started,
820
00:46:36.635 --> 00:46:39.013
attending events where there are people there
821
00:46:39.013 --> 00:46:42.447
from other churches and so forth,
822
00:46:42.447 --> 00:46:44.982
and you start talking to people
823
00:46:44.982 --> 00:46:46.735
who come from different perspectives,
824
00:46:46.735 --> 00:46:50.343
and you just understand the depth of that,
825
00:46:50.343 --> 00:46:53.436
of those differences that exist
826
00:46:53.436 --> 00:46:56.103
on so many kinds of issues as to
827
00:46:59.564 --> 00:47:02.314
what is the church and what is...
828
00:47:05.555 --> 00:47:08.472
Well, I guess it's the old focus on
829
00:47:10.298 --> 00:47:14.465
is the prime concern the salvation of the individual's soul,
830
00:47:15.866 --> 00:47:18.366
or is the emphasis on justice?
831
00:47:20.973 --> 00:47:24.140
And it seems to me that on that issue,
832
00:47:26.649 --> 00:47:30.399
is where an awful lot of the divisions exist,
833
00:47:31.355 --> 00:47:34.539
and I'm sure teaching at a Catholic institution,
834
00:47:34.539 --> 00:47:39.076
you get hit with another set of issues relating to that.
835
00:47:39.076 --> 00:47:40.909
Mm-hm, mm-hm, mm-hm.
836
00:47:42.260 --> 00:47:46.280
And one of the side kinds of things is that,
837
00:47:46.280 --> 00:47:50.030
I got involved in the Catholic Church from...
838
00:47:54.652 --> 00:47:55.902
Bit of history.
839
00:47:57.269 --> 00:48:01.550
I grew up in a community where we joked about
840
00:48:01.550 --> 00:48:04.987
the one minority family in our school
841
00:48:04.987 --> 00:48:08.963
was the one Catholic family, so I mean it was,
842
00:48:08.963 --> 00:48:13.702
it was Scandinavian, Lutherans, and New England
843
00:48:13.702 --> 00:48:17.821
Congregationalist and Methodists kind of thing.
844
00:48:17.821 --> 00:48:20.308
Now, there was a primarily German community
845
00:48:20.308 --> 00:48:22.882
10 miles away that had a Catholic grade school,
846
00:48:22.882 --> 00:48:26.311
and a Catholic church, but we didn't have any,
847
00:48:26.311 --> 00:48:29.698
so I didn't really know anything about
848
00:48:29.698 --> 00:48:31.571
Catholicism or anything like that,
849
00:48:31.571 --> 00:48:34.309
or Catholics (laughs) kind of thing,
850
00:48:34.309 --> 00:48:37.164
as my Swedish neighbor used to talk about.
851
00:48:37.164 --> 00:48:40.725
When I got to the university and I ended up
852
00:48:40.725 --> 00:48:43.892
dealing with accreditation of schools,
853
00:48:47.149 --> 00:48:50.482
I mean, I was on a first-name basis with
854
00:48:54.309 --> 00:48:57.392
Roach and Jim Habiger and Ray Lucker.
855
00:49:02.961 --> 00:49:06.628
So I got involved with a lot of those folks.
856
00:49:11.219 --> 00:49:14.407
Terry Murphy, who was St. Thomas.
857
00:49:14.407 --> 00:49:17.307
Colman Barry at St. Johns.
858
00:49:17.307 --> 00:49:22.128
So I worked with those people, but knew them as individuals,
859
00:49:22.128 --> 00:49:26.295
not as necessarily church officials kind of thing.
860
00:49:28.009 --> 00:49:31.639
So I got to know quite a bit about that,
861
00:49:31.639 --> 00:49:35.362
and as I got involved in writing my dissertation
862
00:49:35.362 --> 00:49:37.862
on Church and State Relations,
863
00:49:39.947 --> 00:49:42.527
there's a very strong Catholic
864
00:49:42.527 --> 00:49:45.360
presence in that whole discussion.
865
00:49:47.528 --> 00:49:52.213
And so I got into some very interesting discussions
866
00:49:52.213 --> 00:49:53.630
with some of the,
867
00:49:56.047 --> 00:49:58.128
well, at that time, there was an organization
868
00:49:58.128 --> 00:50:00.946
called Citizens for Educational Freedom,
869
00:50:00.946 --> 00:50:03.186
which was essentially a group that was
870
00:50:03.186 --> 00:50:06.936
advocating for public aid to private schools.
871
00:50:10.344 --> 00:50:12.177
And so I got involved,
872
00:50:14.209 --> 00:50:16.755
And most of the leadership were Catholic.
873
00:50:16.755 --> 00:50:20.091
There were a few Missouri Synod,
874
00:50:20.091 --> 00:50:23.591
but not a lot, most of them were Catholic.
875
00:50:26.581 --> 00:50:28.182
In fact, yeah, I think,
876
00:50:28.182 --> 00:50:29.866
no, I was gonna say the one Lutheran,
877
00:50:29.866 --> 00:50:33.123
but I think he was Wisconsin Synod, kind of thing.
878
00:50:33.123 --> 00:50:35.790
So I got to know something about
879
00:50:37.624 --> 00:50:40.588
them and their perspective and so forth.
880
00:50:40.588 --> 00:50:42.894
So I basically read America
881
00:50:42.894 --> 00:50:45.360
and Commonweal on a regular basis,
882
00:50:45.360 --> 00:50:49.527
and have National Catholic Reporter on my computer.
883
00:50:53.338 --> 00:50:56.834
Very Ecumenical Presbyterian. (laughs)
884
00:50:56.834 --> 00:50:58.268
Would you say,
885
00:50:58.268 --> 00:51:00.254
are there certain specific contributions you think
886
00:51:00.254 --> 00:51:04.421
Re-Imagining made to Christian theology and/or liturgy?
887
00:51:06.384 --> 00:51:10.134
Oh, I think it has opened up liturgy a lot.
888
00:51:11.395 --> 00:51:12.812
I think just the,
889
00:51:16.328 --> 00:51:17.936
and hymnody.
890
00:51:17.936 --> 00:51:20.739
And those aren't necessarily divisible,
891
00:51:20.739 --> 00:51:22.156
but I think that,
892
00:51:25.739 --> 00:51:27.072
created a lot of
893
00:51:30.508 --> 00:51:33.175
diversity in terms of the images
894
00:51:34.332 --> 00:51:36.665
that we use in liturgy and--
895
00:51:38.112 --> 00:51:40.671
Do you think that made it into
896
00:51:40.671 --> 00:51:44.338
the individual congregations, into churches?
897
00:51:46.261 --> 00:51:50.291
Only to the degree that there was a catalyst,
898
00:51:50.291 --> 00:51:52.791
either a pastor or some people
899
00:51:54.327 --> 00:51:57.244
on a worship committee that did it.
900
00:51:59.424 --> 00:52:00.341
And I mean,
901
00:52:01.625 --> 00:52:05.792
I attended a church that was liberal Presbyterian.
902
00:52:10.734 --> 00:52:14.151
I mean, we had 10 people at Re-Imagining.
903
00:52:15.668 --> 00:52:19.335
But yet when one of the pastors talked about
904
00:52:23.728 --> 00:52:26.647
praying to our father and our mother,
905
00:52:26.647 --> 00:52:30.480
a few people got very, very incensed about it.
906
00:52:35.062 --> 00:52:37.812
What do you think that's about?
907
00:52:46.453 --> 00:52:50.620
I think for a lot of people, religion is an anchor.
908
00:52:53.438 --> 00:52:54.271
And,
909
00:52:56.892 --> 00:52:58.618
it's a central kind of thing,
910
00:52:58.618 --> 00:53:02.451
and if you start chipping away at that central
911
00:53:04.994 --> 00:53:07.577
set up of beliefs and so forth,
912
00:53:10.417 --> 00:53:13.500
what else is there we can believe in?
913
00:53:14.850 --> 00:53:18.513
And I mean, these were not people who were
914
00:53:18.513 --> 00:53:22.672
biblical literalist or anything like that,
915
00:53:22.672 --> 00:53:26.589
but they just, there are certain things that...
916
00:53:29.614 --> 00:53:31.823
And I used to have a lot of arguments
917
00:53:31.823 --> 00:53:35.156
with some fairly close friends who were,
918
00:53:36.138 --> 00:53:39.638
he was a self-proclaimed Kentucky redneck.
919
00:53:42.146 --> 00:53:46.214
And we used go around and around on it kind of thing.
920
00:53:46.214 --> 00:53:47.494
And yet you were still friends.
921
00:53:47.494 --> 00:53:49.471
We managed to, you know.
922
00:53:49.471 --> 00:53:52.137
There were a lot of other things I didn't like about him,
923
00:53:52.137 --> 00:53:56.117
but he was an interesting guy and you know,
924
00:53:56.117 --> 00:53:59.618
and his wife were friends and everything.
925
00:53:59.618 --> 00:54:00.701
Yeah, neat.
926
00:54:01.843 --> 00:54:03.239
Well, to end with,
927
00:54:03.239 --> 00:54:05.173
we still have a few minutes if that's okay.
928
00:54:05.173 --> 00:54:07.269
Sure, we got plenty of time as far as I'm concerned.
929
00:54:07.269 --> 00:54:10.028
Good, well, this is very fruitful and helpful.
930
00:54:10.028 --> 00:54:12.165
Looking toward the future,
931
00:54:12.165 --> 00:54:14.705
what do you think is the greatest legacy
932
00:54:14.705 --> 00:54:17.205
of the Re-Imagining community?
933
00:54:19.538 --> 00:54:21.472
The term Re-Imagining. (laughs)
934
00:54:21.472 --> 00:54:23.859
Yeah, oh, interesting, yeah.
935
00:54:23.859 --> 00:54:27.859
Well, you don't have to go very far to see it,
936
00:54:31.655 --> 00:54:34.238
and I don't know whether or not
937
00:54:35.711 --> 00:54:39.294
that term was used before the 1990s or not,
938
00:54:42.875 --> 00:54:45.375
but everybody is re-imagining.
939
00:54:52.447 --> 00:54:54.460
The Catholics are re-imagining,
940
00:54:54.460 --> 00:54:56.752
the Lutherans are re-imagining,
941
00:54:56.752 --> 00:54:59.058
the car dealers are re-imagining.
942
00:54:59.058 --> 00:55:01.141
(laughs)
943
00:55:05.226 --> 00:55:09.466
So that was sort of a flippant kind of response,
944
00:55:09.466 --> 00:55:12.966
but I think it did put the word out there.
945
00:55:22.537 --> 00:55:26.068
From what I gather, it has made a difference
946
00:55:26.068 --> 00:55:29.651
in terms of, at least in the Presbyterians,
947
00:55:32.632 --> 00:55:36.739
and probably in some other denominations,
948
00:55:36.739 --> 00:55:40.906
has made some difference in terms of seminary curriculum,
949
00:55:45.250 --> 00:55:49.235
at least it seems to be out there more
950
00:55:49.235 --> 00:55:52.033
than there are people talking about it.
951
00:55:52.033 --> 00:55:53.304
Now, it's not new.
952
00:55:53.304 --> 00:55:57.054
I can remember at the height of Re-Imagining,
953
00:55:58.115 --> 00:56:01.606
Tom Gillespie, who was the president of Princeton,
954
00:56:01.606 --> 00:56:03.125
and Tom was a pretty conservative guy,
955
00:56:03.125 --> 00:56:05.375
and I know Tom pretty well,
956
00:56:08.733 --> 00:56:10.020
Tom said once,
957
00:56:10.020 --> 00:56:13.049
in the debate about Re-Imagining he said,
958
00:56:13.049 --> 00:56:16.913
"There isn't a single idea that was raised with Re-Imagining
959
00:56:16.913 --> 00:56:18.968
"that hasn't been espoused in some class
960
00:56:18.968 --> 00:56:21.720
"at Princeton in the last five years."
961
00:56:21.720 --> 00:56:23.853
Tom was much more,
962
00:56:23.853 --> 00:56:26.725
Tom's issue was much more ordination.
963
00:56:26.725 --> 00:56:30.892
He was totally and completely opposed to GLBT ordination.
964
00:56:33.060 --> 00:56:35.893
But as far as the women's issue...
965
00:56:38.899 --> 00:56:41.816
I get the sense that if you look at
966
00:56:43.261 --> 00:56:45.844
the mainline denominations that
967
00:56:47.699 --> 00:56:51.322
there is much more of an equality,
968
00:56:51.322 --> 00:56:55.388
it isn't equality yet, but at least things are moving
969
00:56:55.388 --> 00:56:58.428
in terms of women's perspectives.
970
00:56:58.428 --> 00:57:00.397
And I think there are a lot more
971
00:57:00.397 --> 00:57:02.730
women faculty in seminaries.
972
00:57:05.082 --> 00:57:08.424
As far as, but on the other hand,
973
00:57:08.424 --> 00:57:10.757
I think that to some degree,
974
00:57:15.079 --> 00:57:18.776
we're losing ground with the younger generation.
975
00:57:18.776 --> 00:57:20.524
I'm not sure how many, and I think that's
976
00:57:20.524 --> 00:57:23.259
one of the key things that I think is so important
977
00:57:23.259 --> 00:57:26.759
about what we're doing now, is to just get
978
00:57:29.508 --> 00:57:33.743
the generation who grew up that didn't know Joseph.
979
00:57:33.743 --> 00:57:34.832
Before I move on to that,
980
00:57:34.832 --> 00:57:36.601
and I think that's really important,
981
00:57:36.601 --> 00:57:37.874
in terms of worship,
982
00:57:37.874 --> 00:57:39.843
I think part of the purpose of Re-Imagining
983
00:57:39.843 --> 00:57:44.010
was to bring Feminist theology to churches, to the pews.
984
00:57:44.853 --> 00:57:47.651
What is your perspective on inclusive
985
00:57:47.651 --> 00:57:50.440
or expansive language, in terms of Feminist theology
986
00:57:50.440 --> 00:57:52.619
and worship in mainline churches,
987
00:57:52.619 --> 00:57:54.304
maybe specifically Presbyterian church?
988
00:57:54.304 --> 00:57:56.887
Where do you think it is today?
989
00:58:00.800 --> 00:58:02.853
Speaking of the Presbyterians,
990
00:58:02.853 --> 00:58:05.353
it's clearly there in terms of
991
00:58:07.331 --> 00:58:10.831
the official prescribed kind of situation.
992
00:58:15.114 --> 00:58:17.531
And I think it shows up a lot
993
00:58:20.862 --> 00:58:23.445
in local churches and so forth,
994
00:58:25.376 --> 00:58:29.114
particularly if there has been a woman pastor,
995
00:58:29.114 --> 00:58:33.281
and just the growth in terms of number of women pastors.
996
00:58:34.282 --> 00:58:35.865
I think it's there.
997
00:58:41.279 --> 00:58:42.196
It's still,
998
00:58:45.094 --> 00:58:46.761
for those people who
999
00:58:51.402 --> 00:58:55.475
aren't really sure that that's a going thing, it's,
1000
00:58:55.475 --> 00:58:59.142
well, we'll do it kind of thing, grudgingly.
1001
00:59:00.905 --> 00:59:04.724
We say a lot of things we don't necessarily believe.
1002
00:59:04.724 --> 00:59:05.753
Just to clarify something.
1003
00:59:05.753 --> 00:59:07.850
When you say it's prescribed, how is it prescribed?
1004
00:59:07.850 --> 00:59:11.183
If you look at the Presbyterian Church
1005
00:59:13.061 --> 00:59:17.583
at a national level and at the Presbytery level,
1006
00:59:17.583 --> 00:59:21.250
at policies about use of inclusive language,
1007
00:59:26.761 --> 00:59:29.145
and the question is how far it goes.
1008
00:59:29.145 --> 00:59:32.812
And it's both inclusive language for people,
1009
00:59:34.651 --> 00:59:37.084
and expansive language for God.
1010
00:59:37.084 --> 00:59:38.857
Yeah, right.
1011
00:59:38.857 --> 00:59:43.338
I think there is probably more in terms of
1012
00:59:43.338 --> 00:59:45.842
the inclusive language for people,
1013
00:59:45.842 --> 00:59:49.259
than there is expansive language for God.
1014
00:59:51.926 --> 00:59:52.785
Good.
1015
00:59:52.785 --> 00:59:55.028
I wanna get back to what you were talking about today.
1016
00:59:55.028 --> 00:59:58.768
I mean, a minute ago about Re-Imagining today.
1017
00:59:58.768 --> 01:00:00.627
You were talking about younger people.
1018
01:00:00.627 --> 01:00:03.260
What does Re-Imagining mean today?
1019
01:00:03.260 --> 01:00:05.343
What needs to happen now?
1020
01:00:13.975 --> 01:00:16.558
Again, I'm not as up on this,
1021
01:00:17.549 --> 01:00:21.716
but as I listen to people who are involved in seminaries,
1022
01:00:23.036 --> 01:00:24.119
and so forth,
1023
01:00:25.290 --> 01:00:28.123
it sounds like Feminism is sort of
1024
01:00:32.847 --> 01:00:36.347
accepted as, well, something that's there,
1025
01:00:37.363 --> 01:00:38.196
but,
1026
01:00:41.390 --> 01:00:45.057
nobody's really paying much attention to it.
1027
01:00:48.201 --> 01:00:51.119
So it's this generation, that it needs to be passed on?
1028
01:00:51.119 --> 01:00:53.869
Yeah, it needs to be passed on.
1029
01:01:03.092 --> 01:01:07.092
I was on a committee for the Presbyterian Church
1030
01:01:07.958 --> 01:01:11.892
that was a national fundraising kind of thing,
1031
01:01:11.892 --> 01:01:15.309
and one of the things we were looking at,
1032
01:01:17.115 --> 01:01:19.782
in terms of a target population,
1033
01:01:20.655 --> 01:01:23.488
were churches over a certain size.
1034
01:01:26.007 --> 01:01:28.231
And I don't remember how many we had on the list.
1035
01:01:28.231 --> 01:01:30.899
I think it was something like 150 churches.
1036
01:01:30.899 --> 01:01:35.085
I think three of them had women as the senior pastor.
1037
01:01:35.085 --> 01:01:35.918
Wow.
1038
01:01:38.374 --> 01:01:42.604
I think those are the kinds of things that
1039
01:01:42.604 --> 01:01:44.771
have not yet come to pass.
1040
01:01:48.938 --> 01:01:50.417
It's the kind of thing that I think
1041
01:01:50.417 --> 01:01:53.084
people believe is possible, but,
1042
01:01:56.784 --> 01:02:00.784
haven't necessarily seen it with their own eyes.
1043
01:02:02.512 --> 01:02:04.629
I don't know if there are a lot of
1044
01:02:04.629 --> 01:02:07.171
young women in seminary who's goal
1045
01:02:07.171 --> 01:02:10.921
is to be the pastor of a 3,000-member church.
1046
01:02:17.052 --> 01:02:18.521
That's good.
1047
01:02:18.521 --> 01:02:21.233
You know, we're working on a Re-Imagining website.
1048
01:02:21.233 --> 01:02:23.035
Do you have any ideas about
1049
01:02:23.035 --> 01:02:25.374
what you think should be included,
1050
01:02:25.374 --> 01:02:28.085
or who would benefit and why?
1051
01:02:28.085 --> 01:02:30.301
Any thoughts about that?
1052
01:02:30.301 --> 01:02:34.218
I think the big thing about websites is that,
1053
01:02:36.092 --> 01:02:37.778
the audience that you end up with
1054
01:02:37.778 --> 01:02:40.695
is often not the intended audience.
1055
01:02:42.454 --> 01:02:45.780
That you end up with people just
1056
01:02:45.780 --> 01:02:48.705
browsing websites and finding things.
1057
01:02:48.705 --> 01:02:51.538
Good point.
So I think it's...
1058
01:02:55.352 --> 01:02:58.102
You have to somehow steer between
1059
01:02:59.173 --> 01:03:02.960
having it so simple that it insults people,
1060
01:03:02.960 --> 01:03:06.960
versus having it get bogged down in jargon, and,
1061
01:03:12.705 --> 01:03:16.872
something people don't understand what you're talking about.
1062
01:03:18.616 --> 01:03:19.545
That's a good point.
1063
01:03:19.545 --> 01:03:20.782
It's a broad audience, isn't it?
1064
01:03:20.782 --> 01:03:24.282
It's a broad audience, and people end up
1065
01:03:25.529 --> 01:03:27.029
visiting websites,
1066
01:03:29.093 --> 01:03:29.926
probably,
1067
01:03:33.426 --> 01:03:36.698
an awful lot of 'em just are either sheer accident
1068
01:03:36.698 --> 01:03:39.036
or they're kind of searching for something
1069
01:03:39.036 --> 01:03:42.453
in a vague way and they hit on something.
1070
01:03:43.877 --> 01:03:48.044
I think that certainly the history of what has happened
1071
01:03:52.582 --> 01:03:55.829
and how it's connected to where things are now,
1072
01:03:55.829 --> 01:03:59.079
I think it would be very useful to have
1073
01:04:09.359 --> 01:04:10.671
people who have,
1074
01:04:10.671 --> 01:04:13.921
women who have made it as, in churches,
1075
01:04:15.932 --> 01:04:18.849
either as professors or as pastors,
1076
01:04:20.457 --> 01:04:22.707
to just talk with them and,
1077
01:04:25.710 --> 01:04:29.127
what impact did they make, and because of
1078
01:04:31.680 --> 01:04:34.195
Feminism and these kinds of things,
1079
01:04:34.195 --> 01:04:37.528
or did they make it sort of in spite of?
1080
01:04:40.780 --> 01:04:44.947
I think of women that I know who are in key positions.
1081
01:04:49.900 --> 01:04:52.817
Most of them are strongly Feminist,
1082
01:04:56.609 --> 01:05:00.776
but it's not necessarily a point of emphasis with them.
1083
01:05:05.813 --> 01:05:08.862
Is that what you mean by in spite of Feminism?
1084
01:05:08.862 --> 01:05:10.462
What does that mean?
Yeah, yeah.
1085
01:05:10.462 --> 01:05:13.379
That they make it because they were
1086
01:05:16.139 --> 01:05:20.056
good strong intelligent people who got through,
1087
01:05:21.227 --> 01:05:25.227
figured out how to work the system and so forth.
1088
01:05:29.533 --> 01:05:32.159
So how much did their Feminism actually influence?
1089
01:05:32.159 --> 01:05:33.870
Yeah, yeah, I mean,
1090
01:05:33.870 --> 01:05:36.287
I think that any time you get
1091
01:05:39.678 --> 01:05:42.845
an organization that feels pressure to
1092
01:05:51.770 --> 01:05:53.270
provide diversity,
1093
01:05:55.045 --> 01:05:58.174
and a lot of organizations are
1094
01:05:58.174 --> 01:06:01.424
being pressured to become more diverse.
1095
01:06:03.525 --> 01:06:07.711
And whether there's a commitment to it or not,
1096
01:06:07.711 --> 01:06:11.878
we've at least got to have the visible symbols of diversity.
1097
01:06:13.955 --> 01:06:16.625
I think part of the problem in Minneapolis public schools,
1098
01:06:16.625 --> 01:06:19.292
is they were looking for a particular,
1099
01:06:19.292 --> 01:06:21.670
superintendent with particular characteristics,
1100
01:06:21.670 --> 01:06:25.337
and didn't look very much further than that.
1101
01:06:26.851 --> 01:06:29.934
And I have seen some horrendous hires
1102
01:06:33.753 --> 01:06:37.779
of people who were hired because they were
1103
01:06:37.779 --> 01:06:41.529
women or minorities or whatever the case was.
1104
01:06:43.941 --> 01:06:47.774
People looked on them with one characteristic.
1105
01:06:52.415 --> 01:06:55.748
That one maybe wasn't enough to overcome
1106
01:06:58.107 --> 01:07:00.274
all sorts of other issues.
1107
01:07:02.707 --> 01:07:04.833
Just like the Catholic Church has found out,
1108
01:07:04.833 --> 01:07:06.548
just because somebody's male doesn't mean
1109
01:07:06.548 --> 01:07:10.864
that they don't have a bunch of other flaws.
1110
01:07:10.864 --> 01:07:13.007
Is there anything we haven't discussed,
1111
01:07:13.007 --> 01:07:16.073
that you would like to mention?
1112
01:07:16.073 --> 01:07:18.002
Oh, I don't know, I've wandered all over the place--
1113
01:07:18.002 --> 01:07:19.478
(laughs)
1114
01:07:19.478 --> 01:07:21.619
Well, it's been very productive wandering.
1115
01:07:21.619 --> 01:07:23.792
It's been very thoughtful answers,
1116
01:07:23.792 --> 01:07:26.914
and you provided really useful context for a lot of this.
1117
01:07:26.914 --> 01:07:28.099
Thank you so much, Manley.
1118
01:07:28.099 --> 01:07:29.580
Oh, well, thank you.
I really appreciate it.
1119
01:07:29.580 --> 01:07:30.707
And thank you so much for doing all this.
1120
01:07:30.707 --> 01:07:31.576
Oh, I'm--