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For calling, or for taking up the phone,
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sorry about that.
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Sure, mhm.
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Well, let's continue, we were talking about,
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we're trying to move probably to Reimagining,
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could you say something about your initial involvement
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in Reimagining, what led to it?
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Well, I had been, as I'd mentioned,
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let me go back a little bit, I finished up my graduate work
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and spent a couple of years in Argentina
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teaching and working on feminist issues in religion there,
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and then came to Washington area and started water
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in the early '80s, and so water has long been part
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of the women church convergence,
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which is a Catholic focused umbrella organization
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working on feminist issues among Catholics.
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And I was also involved with CLOUT,
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the Christian Lesbians Out, which became both
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a Catholic and Protestant kind of group,
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but primarily protestant.
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And I had had my own involvement with Protestant groups
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through my work in Argentina, which was sponsored by
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the Frontier Internship and Mission program,
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which is connected to the World Student
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Christian Federation, all of these are kind of Protestant
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connections that, and in those years, I think there was
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a greater separation between Catholic and Protestant women
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working on these issues because of
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the specific subordination in each
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of our respective denominations.
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All that is to say that when Reimagining came along,
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it was primarily, as I understood it,
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protestant women, and there were a few of us Catholic women
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who were invited to be part of it,
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and then there was a substantial,
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but not by any means large, decent number,
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but not a huge number of Catholic women
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who actually attended.
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So, I was invited as a speaker on issues of sexuality.
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I shared a panel with Susan Thistlethwaite,
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and Frances Wood.
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Yes, thank you, and I wonder if you could say something
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about your memories of that conference.
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I have read your article in Water Wheel,
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and I'm wondering if you could talk some about.
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So, but, what do you recall about it now,
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what moments stand out for you?
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Well, I actually was also looking at the article
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that I wrote in the Remembering and Reimagining book.
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Yes.
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And several things stand out for me,
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and one of the things that I, one of the points
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that I make in the article in the Remember
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and Reimagining was what I call the ordinariness
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of the conference.
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That is to say that in the 10 years between the time
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we founded Water and the time of the Reimagining conference,
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there were lots of these kinds of gatherings
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of different sorts.
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Women church had again gathered in '83, and then '87,
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and in '93, I believe, there were a number
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of women church conferences, the Women's Ordination
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Conference had a number of conferences
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starting in 1975, so I had been to a number of events.
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And this one, in some ways, was, and then there were
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groups of women meeting, it was a very fertile time,
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groups of women meeting locally in different parts
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of the country, and I had been invited as a speaker
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to a number of those.
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So, by the time I got to Reimagining,
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the two things that impressed me were, first,
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the planning and hospitality of the women
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of the Twin Cities, because I think they really
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distinguished themselves as no detail too small
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for making people welcome and comfortable,
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especially since it snowed that weekend.
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And they even had a little basket of mittens.
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So, I remember very well gloves and mittens,
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and I remember very well the depth and breath
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of their hospitality.
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The other thing I remember was that I came away
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from the experience feeling as if nothing terribly new
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had been said, but it was only because I was in
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those conversations as an academic, and as a scholar,
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so that I had, there was literally nothing that I heard
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at Reimagining that I hadn't heard elsewhere.
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What distinguished it was that the Reimagining conference,
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at least in my mind, was that the Reimagining conference
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was not your typical American Catholic religion session,
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it was bringing people, if you look at the list
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of the speakers, then you've probably memorized that by now,
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but if you look at those people, you know,
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people like Hyun Kyung, and Delores Williams,
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and Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, and Elizabeth Bettenhausen,
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and Susan Thistlethwaite, and Frances Wood,
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I've already mentioned among many others,
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they were people who were very well known to me,
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both in their work, and in most instances, personally,
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because we were, that was the work we were doing.
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What was different about doing it in Reimagining
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was that the people who were part
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of the participating group, I wouldn't say audience
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in that case, but the participants,
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were what I refer to at the time,
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and I think it's not the best way of saying, but it's,
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to them it's, they were both pastors wives, as it were,
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and women inside the pews.
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And so, just a second, what?
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(mumbling)
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Oh, I don't know what that is, I didn't see that.
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I'm on an interview, sorry.
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We're running into tech problems here.
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We, these, the people who were participants
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were not scholars who were talking about these things
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in a kind of disinterested or disembodied way,
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but they were people who actually lived the life
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of the church, and what was happening,
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and Reimagining, in my view, was that the people
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who were most, who were closest to the ground,
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and who were part of congregations were now taking
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what had become virtually normative ideas
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within academia to heart and to soul
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in the context of Reimagining.
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And I think that was why the challenge
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was considered so profound.
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That on the one hand, on the other hand,
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I think you had kind of sitting ducks for the right wing
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that, what issued later as the enormous backlash
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against the conference, was really a backlash,
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not just about a couple of days in the Twin Cities
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in the snow, but about all the work that had culminated,
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and, or, not even culminated, but that was reported,
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actually, at Reimagining.
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Yeah.
So I had really saw
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Reimagining as a time when people
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who had been, respect for them if you take the same
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as Dolores Williams' statement.
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Yes.
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There was nothing that Dolores Williams said there
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that she hadn't said any place, that she hadn't said
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some place else before.
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The problems that were driven by the media
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in terms of response to her remarks about Jesus
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and so forth, were not things that were unknown to us,
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those were things that we had discussed and debated
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among ourselves as academics.
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What was new was the people who were involved
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in those conversations, or people who still lived
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in the pews and who said, yeah, that makes sense to me.
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Now, what do we do?
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Mhm.
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And I think that's really the heart
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of what was the problem.
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It wasn't that the ideas were new,
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it was that the audience was new.
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Yes.
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That the in-rows, what Reimagining showed was that
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feminist theology had made in-rows.
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Mhm.
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And the in-rows were right to the heart of the church
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because this was now being paid for, at least in part,
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by the Bicentennial Fund, and the Presbyterians,
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and the accommodative staff, and that sort of thing
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for other denominations, and so forth, so.
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That's excellent.
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And I think you are already addressing the question
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of accounting for the backlash.
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Is there anything you would want to add to that
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about why the backlash was so huge against this?
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Well, as I started to say, I think it was not a backlash
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against the conference alone, I think it was backlash
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that had been building.
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I think the issue for...
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Religion and democracy.
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Religion, democracy, yeah, I think they had been,
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they had set their sights on this long before,
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and not to forget that they were also involved
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with the contras in central America, so you know,
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they were a dubious prep to start with.
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The other thing was that the meeting was instrumental.
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I had a woman come to my office
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from one of the local radio stations,
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and one of the people who, there was a person here,
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and she interviewed the person who had been
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at the conference, and so forth, and when we heard
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the interview that was cobbled together,
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it hadn't been for no relationship to what the person
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had meant in the interview.
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So, there was a lot of that kind of cutting and pasting
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of materials to make a point.
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And there was also, I think, a lot of feeding of,
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or, embedding of journalists at a conference
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where they were able to take their own interpretation
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in the most extreme and rigid right wing interpretation
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of something, and that's what happened.
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So, I think there was a lot of, it became an easy target,
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in a very efficient way, to have all kind of in one place,
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and one set of tapes, a lot of materials
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that it would've taken a good deal of time
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to find elsewhere, 'cause this is, remember,
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pre-internet in terms of widespread use of the internet.
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We worked daily up at '93.
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Yes, yeah, good point.
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So, I think, but I think the backlash was,
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the important point was the backlash
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was not just about the conference,
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the backlash was about the fact that mainline Christianity
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was being challenged by women at its root,
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and that would have implications that had implications
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across the board.
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But the conference became a kind of focal point for that,
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but it wasn't the conference because when I had voiced
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for the conference, I must say, it was not my experience
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that it was the kind of, well, I'll put it this way,
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you didn't recognize the conference
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in some of the things that you read
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in terms of the backlash.
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Mhm.
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They weren't at the same event.
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Yes.
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Like the milk and honey, and the way in which the more
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graphic imagery of the text, with regard to the milk
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and honey, were played out, I mean, that was just read
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as a reading, it wasn't, there was nothing to it.
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Yes.
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So, I mean, that's the kind of instrumentalization
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that I'm talking about, that's just sensational,
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and they did a very good job.
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I mean, I can take, you know, that they made it
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to the mainline talk shows, and so forth.
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Do you have in front of you that article,
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and can you tell me what issue of the newsletter it was?
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Yes.
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It was the Winter 1993, '94, and it was titled,
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Reimagining I Wish You Had Been There.
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Okay, and then there's another one which is called,
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Reimagining Reimagining.
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Which you might wanna look up, it's the Summer of '94,
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it's a later one.
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Thank you very much.
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So, look that up, and if you can't find it, let me know.
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I sure will, thank you, I really appreciate that.
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I was wondering what you think...
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And by the way, it's there from, I mean,
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I'm not gonna, I'm assuming that you have those,
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but if you look for Reimagining Reimagining,
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it just starts off, it's official, in the New York Times,
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and McNeil, Lair, and Nightline have weighed in
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on the much valley Reimagining conference in Minneapolis,
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it really happened.
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Watching the aftermath, it is much a lesson
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in how the media creates reality,
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and it is a theological learning experience.
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So, I would recommend you read that,
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I'm not gonna repeat that, but go ahead and read that,
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and do that, okay?
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Absolutely, I will, thank you very much.
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What do you think was the net effect of the backlash?
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I mean, did it really set back feminist theology
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in the churches, do you think?
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Well, I don't think feminist theology has ever really
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had its primary focus in the churches.
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I think that the churches have been the starting point
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of feminist theology, but I think the impact
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of feminist theology has been far broader.
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I mean, there are three things that have happened,
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one is that Christian church membership in general
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has dropped precipitously in the last 20 years.
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And so, is that in some way due to this, yes,
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because I think the bogus nature of patriarchal Christianity
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has been called, I mean, people have simply called that out.
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But what the churches weren't smart enough to do
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was to support the creation of something new,
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which would have shorted them up, I think.
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So, that's one, and I think the second thing is that
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feminist theology is an international, inter-religious,
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and trans-religious conversation.
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In other words, people go beyond religion,
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who are interested in the kinds of things
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that feminist theology is about, if you think of,
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even the early work of Mary Daley to the current work
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of Carol Christen, I mean, these are people who would not
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be considered in the kind of mainstream
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of Christian believers, but there were,
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I have the deepest regards for both, by the way,
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is feminist theology in conversation
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with a much broader audience.
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And I think the third thing is that feminist theology,
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in the context of Reimagining, was still very gender focused
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and it has become much more intersectional in terms
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of anti-racism, post-colonialism, clear work, et cetera,
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and I think that has been enormously important
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in terms of what's next.
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So, if anything, I think Reimagining as,
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the backlash against Reimagining, was helpful for clarifying
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but I don't really think in the long run
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that the losers were on the feminist theology side,
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I think the institutional churches have,
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the numbers are clear, have lost membership
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and market share precipitously.
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So, I don't think that's a problem.
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Feminist theology has grown, you know, on the other side.
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Yes, thank you, that's really helpful.
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In the end, how would you define Reimagining?
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Well, I don't know that I would have anything insightful
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or different to say other than, you know,
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for your own understanding from the history
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of the organization that it was,
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that the term reimagining became a kind of brand for what,
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in my mind, was parallel to what Catholic women were doing
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in terms of women church and other forms
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of re-understanding Catholicism.
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Reimagining was, in many ways, largely Protestant,
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although what they say, with certain exceptions,
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Catholic, but largely Protestant brand for,
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or umbrella, if you will, for the many efforts
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that people had in mainline Christianity to rethink
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and to re-tool, and I think that to the extent of which
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the issues of sexuality, God language, ministry,
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polity, even, were brought under broad spectrum discussion.
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In other words, it wasn't simply denomination
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by denomination, people weren't vulcanized in that way,
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but they were really brought together in a broader coalition
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that made it much stronger and much,
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had a much bigger impact.
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Mhm, great.
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Now, you mentioned that, you know, a lot of what was done
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at Reimagining wasn't new, do you think it made
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any specific contributions to Christian theology
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or liturgy?
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Well, I think that what was new, I don't wanna,
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I don't want to link the impression that nothing was new,
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but the things that were new to me were, as I mentioned,
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the audience was new, the people from mainline church venues
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were the audience, it was not an academic,
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scholarly audience, or a radical feminist audience,
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it was, mining, but it was mostly people from
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what I would call inside the church,
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whether it was with the ministers, wives of pastors,
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there were a lot of wives of pastors,
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a lot of women ministers, and a lot of women seminarian
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students, at least as I understood it.
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Yeah.
Or, women who had studied
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in seminary, but mostly, there were a lot
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of church women there, and I think that was what was new.
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Secondly, I think that many things we've talked about
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in the literature, and again, my articles,
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both of those, and the one in the book you can look at.
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Yes.
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We talked about the, you know, the way in which the,
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the tables moving in the room made a difference,
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the plexiglass podiums, those speakers were addressed,
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different people up at the front row,
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the way in which we sat at tables with the possibility
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of drawing or coloring, no one will forget
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those little eggs, the little black eggs with the,
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you know, with the rice or whatever was in them
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that made noise.
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And those kinds of things were very new,
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and very, very, very important because they pushed us
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to a kind of right brain activity
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as being equally important.
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They expanded the parameters of feminist theology
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from simply academic content and theory
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to personal experience and spiritual sharing.
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And then of course, liturgical ritual, arena which is
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probably where it was most innovative, you had, again,
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nothing new from those of us who were
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eating it for breakfast, but for people who had
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never had that experience before.
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You could have celebrated by women together,
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bread, and milk, and honey as liturgical elements,
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women from across the board sharing together,
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what you could call a eucharistic meal.
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The Catholic and Protestant women, much less Protestant
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women from a variety of traditions, sharing Eucharis,
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none of the kinds of, and again, this is 20 years ago,
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but none of the kinds of head scratching and hand ringing
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of the male ecumenical movement,
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but women simply sitting down and doing it,
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and I think just that fact of doing it, come what may,
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the use of the goddess chant,
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the blessing of all the speakers as each one began,
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and that kind of reverence and respect,
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just doing those things, I think,
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had a transformative effect on people,
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my life, and in other people's lives.
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We would not do conferences the old way again.
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You know, in that article, you mentioned,
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made a comment I thought was very interesting,
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you described it as "an historic conference
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that future generations will study like Trent and Calceton."
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Almost 25 years later, do you think that is still true?
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Well, you're the proof of it, aren't you?
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Yes.
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(laughing)
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No wonder I like that sentence, right?
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Yeah, no, no, I mean, I think I was right.
399
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I mean, not just that I was right,
400
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but I think it was like the women church conferences,
401
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and ordination conferences, and all of those events
402
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that we shared over in that period of time,
403
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were landmark experiences because of their results
404
00:18:42.093 --> 00:18:44.770
on the one hand, but mostly because of what happened
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to people who were there, who went on to do
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exciting and interesting things,
407
00:18:49.314 --> 00:18:53.153
and changed the defaulted functions about,
408
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for example, what does it mean to do theology?
409
00:18:56.526 --> 00:18:58.412
It doesn't mean to go to the AAR and give a paper,
410
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only, although, many of us do that,
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it also means to have the kind of exchange on the ground
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with people who really live this stuff out,
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which is what we naturally want,
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and that's exactly what threatened both the right wing
415
00:19:11.160 --> 00:19:12.910
and the media friend.
416
00:19:14.720 --> 00:19:17.144
Yeah, yeah, that's great.
417
00:19:17.144 --> 00:19:18.689
What do you think Reimagining means today?
418
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And by that, I'm not talking about just the conference
419
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or the community, but what needs to be reimagined today?
420
00:19:25.899 --> 00:19:28.524
Well, I think Reimagining, the genius of Reimagining
421
00:19:28.524 --> 00:19:31.571
is that it's, like reformation, it's an ongoing process,
422
00:19:31.571 --> 00:19:34.997
and I think that we certainly are,
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we proficiently take the same agenda.
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And say, well, 20 years later,
425
00:19:38.743 --> 00:19:41.655
how has this process continued on issues of sexuality,
426
00:19:41.655 --> 00:19:44.133
for example, we weren't thinking about trans people.
427
00:19:44.133 --> 00:19:44.966
Right.
428
00:19:44.966 --> 00:19:47.772
We weren't thinking about beyond gender essentialism
429
00:19:47.772 --> 00:19:49.647
in terms of what's a man and what's a woman,
430
00:19:49.647 --> 00:19:51.485
we weren't there, we just weren't there,
431
00:19:51.485 --> 00:19:54.489
we needed that, that needs to be reimagined.
432
00:19:54.489 --> 00:19:56.722
In terms of issue of race, we weren't there
433
00:19:56.722 --> 00:20:00.889
towards understanding the complex inter-structured nature,
434
00:20:01.863 --> 00:20:04.588
what relative adherence, the cause of kyriarchy,
435
00:20:04.588 --> 00:20:06.839
of the ways in which lordship is infrastructured
436
00:20:06.839 --> 00:20:09.363
in a variety of destructive and oppressive ways.
437
00:20:09.363 --> 00:20:12.038
We have much more information about that now,
438
00:20:12.038 --> 00:20:15.469
which means we can reimagine what some solutions
439
00:20:15.469 --> 00:20:17.943
or some next steps might be.
440
00:20:17.943 --> 00:20:20.894
The same thing with economics, that I think we didn't have
441
00:20:20.894 --> 00:20:23.426
at our disposal the same kind of information
442
00:20:23.426 --> 00:20:25.202
that we have now, and certainly, we didn't have,
443
00:20:25.202 --> 00:20:28.170
at least in the US, we didn't have the economic disparities
444
00:20:28.170 --> 00:20:29.003
that we now experience.
445
00:20:29.003 --> 00:20:32.282
So, I think that rather than looking for topics
446
00:20:32.282 --> 00:20:36.308
to reimagine, the thing to do is to see reimagining
447
00:20:36.308 --> 00:20:40.065
as a methodology that is an ongoing one.
448
00:20:40.065 --> 00:20:40.898
That's great.
449
00:20:40.898 --> 00:20:43.149
That each generation takes then on, like reformation,
450
00:20:43.149 --> 00:20:47.955
I mean, always in reformation, notion of Protestantism,
451
00:20:47.955 --> 00:20:50.448
I would say the feminist equivalent is always being
452
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reimagined, that there's this generation,
453
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and the next generation, it becomes a task
454
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of each generation to their own reimagining.
455
00:20:57.399 --> 00:20:58.800
Exactly.
456
00:20:58.800 --> 00:21:01.087
That brings me to my final, very specific question,
457
00:21:01.087 --> 00:21:04.047
which is that we are working on a reimagining website,
458
00:21:04.047 --> 00:21:05.780
which should be ready at the end of the Summer,
459
00:21:05.780 --> 00:21:09.442
and part of that is to preserve this information
460
00:21:09.442 --> 00:21:12.491
and make it accessible for future generations,
461
00:21:12.491 --> 00:21:14.843
but I'm curious if you have specific ideas about
462
00:21:14.843 --> 00:21:17.081
what to include in it, what resources,
463
00:21:17.081 --> 00:21:19.248
who would benefit from it?
464
00:21:20.549 --> 00:21:22.282
Yeah, I'm not sure if I understand what it is.
465
00:21:22.282 --> 00:21:24.723
Is it to be an archival website?
466
00:21:24.723 --> 00:21:27.868
Or is it to be a live kind of community?
467
00:21:27.868 --> 00:21:28.944
What are you imagining?
468
00:21:28.944 --> 00:21:30.820
Actually both, it's starting as archival,
469
00:21:30.820 --> 00:21:33.391
but the idea is to add resources to it
470
00:21:33.391 --> 00:21:36.216
and to have it be ongoing.
471
00:21:36.216 --> 00:21:40.133
Well, I would certainly urge you to link with
472
00:21:41.140 --> 00:21:43.141
both other archives of women's history.
473
00:21:43.141 --> 00:21:45.349
For example, the Water's archives are at
474
00:21:45.349 --> 00:21:46.753
the finest fit collection.
475
00:21:46.753 --> 00:21:47.586
Yes.
476
00:21:47.586 --> 00:21:50.052
The finest fit of collection, the finest collection
477
00:21:50.052 --> 00:21:53.524
has lots of women's archives in religion.
478
00:21:53.524 --> 00:21:55.629
You know, one has Margaret Sanger, it has Gloria Stein in it
479
00:21:55.629 --> 00:21:59.081
and it has Mary Daley, it has Judith Glasgow,
480
00:21:59.081 --> 00:22:00.762
and there's lots of stuff there.
481
00:22:00.762 --> 00:22:01.595
Yeah.
482
00:22:01.595 --> 00:22:03.948
Duke, I know has a women's history archive
483
00:22:03.948 --> 00:22:06.908
that would be important, and I that Schlesinger Radcliffe
484
00:22:06.908 --> 00:22:09.901
Harvard has a women's history archive,
485
00:22:09.901 --> 00:22:12.212
is having some renewed interest in women and religion.
486
00:22:12.212 --> 00:22:14.695
So, those are, and the Gannon Center
487
00:22:14.695 --> 00:22:16.663
for Women and Religion, for women's leadership
488
00:22:16.663 --> 00:22:20.075
at Loyola would be one Catholic equivalent.
489
00:22:20.075 --> 00:22:23.265
The Gannon, G A N N O N Center for Women and Leadership,
490
00:22:23.265 --> 00:22:25.563
their archives would be an excellent source.
491
00:22:25.563 --> 00:22:27.747
So, I would link archives.
492
00:22:27.747 --> 00:22:31.539
I would also link with contemporary groups like
493
00:22:31.539 --> 00:22:33.491
Jeanette Stokes' Center for Women and Ministry,
494
00:22:33.491 --> 00:22:37.734
and the sound, can be water, women church conversion.
495
00:22:37.734 --> 00:22:40.931
The problem is, and I know, Evangelical and Ecumenical
496
00:22:40.931 --> 00:22:45.014
women, too, but what to call, Christianity today,
497
00:22:45.965 --> 00:22:47.494
Evangelical and Ecumenical women's caucus.
498
00:22:47.494 --> 00:22:48.659
Right.
I think those people
499
00:22:48.659 --> 00:22:50.568
are great.
Yup.
500
00:22:50.568 --> 00:22:52.981
Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, who was one of the speakers
501
00:22:52.981 --> 00:22:56.348
at Reimagining, I actually talked to Lisa Scanzoni
502
00:22:56.348 --> 00:22:58.905
and make sure that you're connected to their stuff.
503
00:22:58.905 --> 00:22:59.939
I mean, I don't think there's any need
504
00:22:59.939 --> 00:23:00.772
to reinvent the wheel.
505
00:23:00.772 --> 00:23:04.618
What I worry about is that in the '90s,
506
00:23:04.618 --> 00:23:08.927
there were a whole lot more, at least in my perception,
507
00:23:08.927 --> 00:23:11.619
programs and projects focused explicitly on women
508
00:23:11.619 --> 00:23:12.927
than there are now.
509
00:23:12.927 --> 00:23:13.760
Yeah.
510
00:23:13.760 --> 00:23:15.434
So, if I were looking, for example,
511
00:23:15.434 --> 00:23:19.293
things like the Women's Theological Center is no more.
512
00:23:19.293 --> 00:23:21.838
Grailville, which has had, Grail, the Grail,
513
00:23:21.838 --> 00:23:25.579
Grail is still, but the Grailville is being sold.
514
00:23:25.579 --> 00:23:28.248
Or, there's a talk of selling Grailville.
515
00:23:28.248 --> 00:23:31.486
They're not doing programs there anymore.
516
00:23:31.486 --> 00:23:34.901
The, you know, the number of the, it's more I can take off
517
00:23:34.901 --> 00:23:36.972
the places that are on than the places
518
00:23:36.972 --> 00:23:38.797
that have risen anew.
519
00:23:38.797 --> 00:23:41.471
I think some of the specific work, for example,
520
00:23:41.471 --> 00:23:43.105
The Faith Trust Institute, that works,
521
00:23:43.105 --> 00:23:45.954
that's actually domestic file, it's Marie Fortune's work,
522
00:23:45.954 --> 00:23:47.421
that would be critical to include.
523
00:23:47.421 --> 00:23:49.021
Yes.
524
00:23:49.021 --> 00:23:53.120
But there really, and once that's said,
525
00:23:53.120 --> 00:23:56.455
I can't, oh, for example, the Center for Women
526
00:23:56.455 --> 00:23:58.185
and Religion in Berkeley, which is no longer,
527
00:23:58.185 --> 00:24:02.352
I can't point to centers connected to theological schools
528
00:24:04.279 --> 00:24:05.899
in a ways that I could before.
529
00:24:05.899 --> 00:24:08.148
Harvard still has a good program in terms of women
530
00:24:08.148 --> 00:24:11.517
and religion gender studies, and so forth,
531
00:24:11.517 --> 00:24:13.910
but I don't know that they have an office
532
00:24:13.910 --> 00:24:15.597
that deals with women's programs.
533
00:24:15.597 --> 00:24:17.514
The Boston Theological Institute had an office
534
00:24:17.514 --> 00:24:18.963
that dealt with women's programs, I don't know
535
00:24:18.963 --> 00:24:21.033
if that still exists, you'd have to find out.
536
00:24:21.033 --> 00:24:23.275
But those kind of things, but there are fewer
537
00:24:23.275 --> 00:24:27.423
of these resources now than there were then, even.
538
00:24:27.423 --> 00:24:29.944
At least in my perception, I could be wrong.
539
00:24:29.944 --> 00:24:33.095
I'd love to be proven wrong, but I just, you know,
540
00:24:33.095 --> 00:24:37.721
many of the groups that existed are no longer.
541
00:24:37.721 --> 00:24:40.623
I appreciate that, those are great suggestions.
542
00:24:40.623 --> 00:24:42.164
Including Reimagining, by the way.
543
00:24:42.164 --> 00:24:43.880
I mean, you were talking about revising Reimagining,
544
00:24:43.880 --> 00:24:47.108
but what would, you know, think about Church Women United,
545
00:24:47.108 --> 00:24:49.764
I mean, how vital are they at this point?
546
00:24:49.764 --> 00:24:51.188
Right, right.
547
00:24:51.188 --> 00:24:55.186
How, you know, where are the people in the bureaucracies
548
00:24:55.186 --> 00:24:59.274
of the UCC, the Lutherans, the disciples, you know,
549
00:24:59.274 --> 00:25:01.658
who are really working women's issues in a particular
550
00:25:01.658 --> 00:25:04.184
and portfolio way, I don't know.
551
00:25:04.184 --> 00:25:05.970
Yeah, yeah, yup.
552
00:25:05.970 --> 00:25:07.286
That's what I mean by different.
553
00:25:07.286 --> 00:25:09.432
People say, well, that's been folded into justice,
554
00:25:09.432 --> 00:25:11.368
or that, yeah, the fact of the matter is
555
00:25:11.368 --> 00:25:15.080
that having that presence, it's not there.
556
00:25:15.080 --> 00:25:16.330
Right, right.
557
00:25:19.511 --> 00:25:21.965
Is there anything that we, this has been extremely helpful,
558
00:25:21.965 --> 00:25:23.609
Mary, is there anything we haven't discussed
559
00:25:23.609 --> 00:25:25.859
that you would like to add?
560
00:25:26.975 --> 00:25:28.107
Oh, I'm sure there are lots of things,
561
00:25:28.107 --> 00:25:30.633
but like I said, this is plenty, I think this is plenty
562
00:25:30.633 --> 00:25:32.658
for now and certainly feel free to get back to me
563
00:25:32.658 --> 00:25:35.273
if you have further questions or, you know,
564
00:25:35.273 --> 00:25:38.932
this is just one person's view of this, what,
565
00:25:38.932 --> 00:25:42.306
20 plus years later, but I could still say
566
00:25:42.306 --> 00:25:43.957
that it was a very important event.
567
00:25:43.957 --> 00:25:46.957
I congratulate and thank the people who
568
00:25:46.957 --> 00:25:50.608
put it together, and who, some of whom paid fairly steeply
569
00:25:50.608 --> 00:25:52.808
for what they did.
570
00:25:52.808 --> 00:25:55.141
But certainly the overall...
571
00:25:57.681 --> 00:26:01.665
Result, I think, of the conference was wildly positive,
572
00:26:01.665 --> 00:26:04.106
and that the backlash in some ways only helped
573
00:26:04.106 --> 00:26:07.714
to focus tension on that, and now that the backlash
574
00:26:07.714 --> 00:26:11.087
has kind of faded into history, but the fact of the matter
575
00:26:11.087 --> 00:26:14.414
is that many of the contests that were discussed
576
00:26:14.414 --> 00:26:17.364
at Reimagining are now normative
577
00:26:17.364 --> 00:26:19.947
within mainstream Christianity,
578
00:26:20.983 --> 00:26:22.483
including things like inclusive language,
579
00:26:22.483 --> 00:26:24.307
although it's not, it's honored in the breech,
580
00:26:24.307 --> 00:26:27.115
but everyone knows that there's no,
581
00:26:27.115 --> 00:26:28.955
you can't get away from that.
582
00:26:28.955 --> 00:26:32.086
You can try, but everyone knows that the backlash
583
00:26:32.086 --> 00:26:34.099
only indicates how important that is,
584
00:26:34.099 --> 00:26:37.495
or women in ministry with denominations now approaching
585
00:26:37.495 --> 00:26:40.329
parity, if not more women ministers.
586
00:26:40.329 --> 00:26:44.377
Or issues of sexuality, I mean, look how far we've come on,
587
00:26:44.377 --> 00:26:47.626
on issues of sexuality in 20 years.
588
00:26:47.626 --> 00:26:49.589
So, I think there's no question that the,
589
00:26:49.589 --> 00:26:51.609
that Reimagining was moving in the right direction,
590
00:26:51.609 --> 00:26:56.303
I think that the backlash brought attention to that,
591
00:26:56.303 --> 00:27:00.262
but certainly didn't succeed in stopping it.
592
00:27:00.262 --> 00:27:02.721
Thank you, I'm gonna turn off the recording now,
593
00:27:02.721 --> 00:27:04.208
this was excellent, really helped.