Fithian, Marylee
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- | And if you could say your name. | 0:03 |
- | My name is Mary Lee Fithian. | 0:07 |
- | And are you lay or clergy? | 0:09 |
- | I'm a clergyperson, retired. | |
- | In your denomination? | 0:12 |
- | United Methodist Church. | |
- | When and where were you born? | 0:15 |
- | I was born April 1st, 1936, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. | 0:17 |
- | Oh okay, where did you go to school, | 0:22 |
graduate or divinity school? | 0:25 | |
- | I did my BS and an MA at the University of Minnesota | 0:27 |
and an M. Div at United Theological | 0:32 | |
Seminary in New Brighton. | 0:35 | |
- | Mm, okay. | 0:37 |
And how and when did you first become aware | 0:38 | |
of feminist theology? | 0:41 | |
- | Oh gosh. | |
Way, way back. | 0:45 | |
When I was in my 30s and 40s, I would go to church, | 0:46 | |
I would come home in tears, and I never knew why. | 0:52 | |
And my family would say, "What's the matter?" | 0:59 | |
And I'd say, "I have no idea what's the matter" | 1:02 | |
but I've been at church and I wasn't there, | 1:05 | |
I wasn't there in what was talked about, | 1:09 | |
what was sung about, anything, and the language really hurt. | 1:11 | |
And my kids said to me, | 1:19 | |
"Well why don't you quit going to church?" | 1:20 | |
Because that's not god that's made me sad, | 1:24 | |
it's the people in the church. | 1:28 | |
And so I stayed in this church for a long time | 1:32 | |
and along with two other women, we tried to get the church | 1:37 | |
to move toward using inclusive language | 1:45 | |
and instead we got shunned, we'd be standing with a person | 1:47 | |
on each side and they'd talk around you | 1:53 | |
as if you weren't there and it finally, | 1:55 | |
it got to the point where I just had to leave, | 1:58 | |
but just left that church, and it was after that | 2:01 | |
that I went to seminary where my friends said to me | 2:05 | |
as we were talking about this, | 2:11 | |
"Well, why don't you go to seminary?" | 2:12 | |
And I said, "Oh okay." | 2:14 | |
But actually I had wanted to be a pastor way back | 2:16 | |
when I was a kid and I couldn't because I was a woman | 2:19 | |
so I guess maybe that was the first time. | 2:23 | |
I could not become a pastor because I was a woman | 2:27 | |
and so I went on to do other things that I considered | 2:30 | |
ministry but they weren't in the church. | 2:33 | |
And so I guess it really goes way back. | 2:39 | |
- | You know, I'm intrigued that you started. | 2:41 |
How did you know about inclusive language to even be able | 2:42 | |
to talk about it at your church, do you remember? | 2:46 | |
- | I probably didn't use that term | 2:51 |
but it was just the feeling that everything that was good | 2:54 | |
was male and everything that was bad was related to Eve | 2:59 | |
and to women and women were discounted | 3:07 | |
and women were, actually it must have gone even further | 3:10 | |
to that 'cause we were at another church for awhile | 3:14 | |
before this one, women couldn't even be ushers, | 3:16 | |
they couldn't serve on the church council | 3:21 | |
and I remember a pastor coming to me, or not coming to me | 3:23 | |
but coming to a group where, I guess it was a bible study | 3:28 | |
and he said, "Oh, we called 200 people this week | 3:31 | |
"and we can't get anybody to usher, | 3:35 | |
"we don't have enough people to usher." | 3:38 | |
And I said, "Well I'd be happy to usher." | 3:40 | |
And he said, "Yeah, but we usually have men," | 3:45 | |
and I said, "Well what difference does it make?" | 3:49 | |
And I said, "If it's a matter of wearing pants, | 3:52 | |
"I'll wear pants, if you need to have matching set, | 3:54 | |
"I'll wear pants," and he hesitated and he said, | 4:00 | |
"Oh, well I'll get back," and he never did | 4:05 | |
and I went to church and I was in the choir | 4:11 | |
and we were lining up to march in and there were four | 4:13 | |
young girls, teenage girls, ushering, | 4:18 | |
and he said, "See," he said, "we're letting girls usher." | 4:23 | |
I said, "Yeah, but what about women?" | 4:27 | |
So I guess there's wild little incidents in my life | 4:31 | |
as I go back and look at it that I probably didn't realize | 4:34 | |
it was theology, it was what was happening to me | 4:38 | |
and what was trying to separate me from god. | 4:43 | |
- | Mary Lee, what denomination was that? | 4:47 |
- | Well that part of it was Lutheran. | 4:49 |
- | Was it? | 4:51 |
- | Yeah, | |
and there was an incident in that church that a lot of us | 4:52 | |
left because of some harm they did to another person | 4:58 | |
and so we went over to the Methodist Church | 5:03 | |
and Jack, my husband, had grown up in the Methodist Church | 5:06 | |
so it was kind of a good fit. | 5:10 | |
But anyway, so the part with the shunning | 5:15 | |
and the going home with tears and so forth, | 5:18 | |
that was the United Methodist Church. | 5:20 | |
- | So when and where did you experience | 5:24 |
formal feminist theology? | 5:26 | |
- | Well probably in seminary. | |
- | Yeah yeah. | 5:32 |
- | Yeah. | |
- | Do you remember? | 5:34 |
- | 1984, I went to seminary. | |
- | Do you remember anything that you read | 5:38 |
or something that really grabbed you that made you think? | 5:40 | |
- | Well everything at UTS was you had to use inclusive | 5:44 |
language, it was required at the time, I hear it's not | 5:48 | |
so required now but it was required at the time | 5:54 | |
and everybody talked about it but I don't think | 5:58 | |
I actually took a course in feminist theology | 6:00 | |
but it just was sorta interwoven into everything | 6:03 | |
that we did there at seminary, so yeah. | 6:07 | |
- | If we could move to Re-Imagining, | 6:13 |
that was really helpful, Mary Lee. | 6:14 | |
Could you talk about your relationship | 6:17 | |
to the Re-Imagining community, official positions, planner? | 6:18 | |
- | Okay, when the World Council of Churches | 6:23 |
did their Ecumenical Decade For Women, | 6:26 | |
I was a part of the original planning committee | 6:28 | |
in the Twin Cities and Sally Hill was representing, | 6:33 | |
well she was staffperson for whatever effort | 6:38 | |
came out of that and so that committee had to think | 6:41 | |
about what it was that they were going to be doing | 6:47 | |
to recognize that decade, and we had all kinds of ideas, | 6:51 | |
we'd have hearing sessions around the state, | 6:56 | |
it was all little kinds of things | 6:59 | |
and so then, | 7:02 | |
what's her name, not Sally, but the other Presbyterian. | 7:11 | |
- | Marianne Lundey. | 7:17 |
- | Yeah, yeah. | |
Senior moment there. | 7:20 | |
Marianne Lundey was like the staffperson | 7:22 | |
for the National Council of Churches and we had thought | 7:25 | |
maybe doing some kind of a conference | 7:30 | |
but we weren't really thinking real big | 7:36 | |
but then when they had their committee | 7:38 | |
and they were thinking about doing some stuff, | 7:40 | |
Marianne kinda suggested we get together and talk | 7:42 | |
about maybe ways in which we could work together | 7:44 | |
and they held their meeting in Minneapolis and we sat | 7:46 | |
down and talked with them and they kind of, | 7:50 | |
now this is my interpretation of what happened | 7:57 | |
but as the thing went on, we kinda were getting the message, | 8:00 | |
who do you think you are trying to do something big | 8:05 | |
like this, you're just a small little group | 8:09 | |
and it'll never work and no, we don't wanna work with you | 8:11 | |
and we were stunned, we were stunned. | 8:13 | |
I remember afterwards we just sorta shaking our heads | 8:19 | |
and some almost in tears because they didn't seem | 8:23 | |
to want to work with us and we said, | 8:26 | |
"Well, we can do it anyways," and so then we started | 8:28 | |
planning the conference and it just kept getting | 8:31 | |
bigger and bigger and thanks to people like Marianne | 8:34 | |
and people out of various denominations, we got some backing | 8:39 | |
in different ways from various denominations | 8:45 | |
so we could do something and it turned into being something | 8:47 | |
really international, we sat down down and thought, | 8:50 | |
"Well, what are we gonna call this?" | 8:53 | |
And we came up with the word re-image and Sally wrote it | 8:54 | |
down, but it turned out she wrote the word re-imagine | 9:00 | |
instead of re-image and we liked that better. | 9:04 | |
- | Mhmm, I love that. | 9:07 |
- | Yeah, yeah. | |
- | So really the actual planning was very local. | 9:10 |
- | It was very local, oh yes, yes, it was very local. | 9:13 |
- | And it is amazing that it became, | 9:16 |
that you all had such a huge conference. | 9:18 | |
- | It did and there were over 2000 people there | 9:22 |
and they were from all over, I mean, all over, | 9:25 | |
we managed to raise money so that we could get scholarships | 9:28 | |
to people coming from other countries | 9:31 | |
and it was just amazing. | 9:34 | |
- | And what was the original idea? | 9:38 |
What were you thinking the conference was gonna accomplish? | 9:40 | |
- | It was basically, I think, at least in my mind | 9:44 |
and that's almost 25 years ago so I can't remember for sure | 9:47 | |
but part of it was that we just felt that we needed | 9:51 | |
to bring the woman's voice to the church. | 9:56 | |
And the way to do that | 10:03 | |
was to help people to realize that we're all theologians, | 10:07 | |
you don't have to go to seminary to be a theologian | 10:13 | |
and when I was dealing with those women in that church, | 10:16 | |
I was being a theologian and I didn't know it | 10:18 | |
and part of, at least my part of it, because I at one time | 10:22 | |
got told I was dumbing it down, was that I wanted to do it | 10:28 | |
in a language that people could understand. | 10:32 | |
'Cause when I went to seminary the first time | 10:36 | |
and they started using words like hermeneutics | 10:37 | |
and whatever else, all those theological words, | 10:40 | |
I thought, "What am I doing here? | 10:43 | |
"I don't understand any of this." | 10:45 | |
And so we weren't planning on doing a conference, | 10:48 | |
I think, that was just for clergy, it was meant to be | 10:56 | |
for mostly women and to celebrate women. | 10:59 | |
And to realize that when we talk about being made | 11:06 | |
in the image of god, that god is female too, | 11:09 | |
male, female, none of it, all of it, | 11:15 | |
because it has more to do with soul and spirit | 11:20 | |
than it has to do with gender. | 11:24 | |
- | And when did you, do you remember, as a planning group, | 11:26 |
when you started to realize that this was going to be | 11:29 | |
2000 people and it was gonna be large? | 11:31 | |
Did you anticipate that? | 11:35 | |
- | I don't think we did | |
initially but when we had to start putting people | 11:37 | |
on waiting lists. | 11:41 | |
- | That's when, yeah. | 11:42 |
- | Because at first we were thinking, | 11:46 |
wow, here we are committing to contracts | 11:47 | |
with the convention center, we're working with hotels | 11:52 | |
and saying, well we'll have this many people | 11:55 | |
and what if it doesn't happen because we'll be stuck | 11:57 | |
for all of this expense and then we also weren't sure | 12:02 | |
about speakers, were they gonna be interested enough | 12:08 | |
in doing something like this and we had some rules | 12:12 | |
that no matter what kind of a speaker you were, | 12:15 | |
whether you were one that talked in a plenary session, | 12:18 | |
in a big session, or one of the workshops, | 12:21 | |
you got paid the same, that we weren't, | 12:24 | |
and I think people were curious and one of the things | 12:30 | |
that really delighted me, 'cause I was in charge | 12:34 | |
of registration and one of the things that really delighted | 12:36 | |
me was seeing that some of the people from that church | 12:39 | |
where I'd been shunned came, I don't know what | 12:42 | |
their response was but when I saw them there, | 12:46 | |
they were very excited to be there | 12:48 | |
and I don't know how they felt when they left but. | 12:50 | |
So we were reaching some of the very people | 12:54 | |
that needed to be reached. | 12:57 | |
- | And I'm curious, | |
do you remember how you came up with the speakers | 13:01 | |
and how many of them accepted? | 13:03 | |
- | I don't remember how many accepted, | 13:07 |
however many were in the program. | 13:09 | |
- | Did you get a pretty good percentage of acceptance rates, | 13:12 |
do you remember? | 13:13 | |
- | Well Sally Hill | |
would have been the one to ask about that because she was | 13:15 | |
responsible but we did a lot of brainstorming | 13:17 | |
as are we representing the whole world, | 13:23 | |
is there a diverse voice, | 13:29 | |
not just white middle class theologians, | 13:30 | |
are we looking at a lot of different kinds of things, | 13:35 | |
the way theology addresses different aspects of life? | 13:43 | |
- | Meaning for example god, Jesus, community, | 13:51 |
is that what you mean? | 13:53 | |
- | Well we said re-imagining | |
god, re-imagining the church, re-imagining Jesus, | 13:55 | |
that was what re-imagining was referring to. | 13:59 | |
Yeah, so there were just those, and also the lesbians. | 14:03 | |
We had a large contingent of lesbian women there | 14:09 | |
and one of the most exciting parts of it was when so many | 14:12 | |
of them came out at that conference, | 14:16 | |
they were invited to come forward and they did. | 14:19 | |
- | Now, how did that happen? | 14:22 |
- | I don't even know, because I was out | 14:25 |
at the registration desk. | 14:26 | |
- | I was gonna ask about that, | 14:28 |
your experience of the conference. | 14:29 | |
Before I do, though, I wanted to ask one more question. | 14:31 | |
You said re-imagining was the word that grabbed people. | 14:33 | |
Do you remember why for you or for anyone else, | 14:37 | |
why re-imagining, what did that mean to you? | 14:39 | |
- | I think because most of us have imagined god | 14:42 |
and the church and so forth in a masculine way, | 14:45 | |
the old man with the white long beard is god | 14:48 | |
and the ones made in god's image are the men | 14:51 | |
and I wanted to re-imagine that because my life | 14:55 | |
was affected by it and it had hurt me so much. | 14:57 | |
And part of that hurt is still there because my children | 15:02 | |
have rejected the church, claim themselves to be atheists | 15:06 | |
and I hear that from a lot of my friends too, | 15:13 | |
that they saw me be hurt by the church, | 15:18 | |
being hurt by people who represented god, | 15:22 | |
being hurt by people who were supposed to be in community | 15:26 | |
with me because of our relationship to god | 15:29 | |
and they didn't want any part of it. | 15:32 | |
So it still kinda hurts, you know? | 15:35 | |
- | Yeah, yeah. | 15:38 |
How about the 1993 conference, | 15:41 | |
what was your experience of that? | 15:43 | |
- | Well it was mostly at the registration desk | 15:45 |
but one of the things that was interesting to me | 15:49 | |
was that we assigned people tables | 15:54 | |
because we didn't want friends sitting just with friends, | 15:59 | |
we wanted to expand the community and so that was, | 16:01 | |
people would say, "Well why can't I sit with so and so?" | 16:06 | |
And we tried to explain to them | 16:10 | |
and I think as the conference went on, | 16:12 | |
that wasn't as much of an issue, but that first day | 16:15 | |
kind of was, and then the tables got moved | 16:18 | |
in different places in the room. | 16:21 | |
I'm not an artistic person and so if I had been sitting | 16:28 | |
in there doing the stuff at the table, | 16:32 | |
I probably would have been a complete flop. | 16:35 | |
(laughs) | 16:38 | |
But to me that was exciting because it was letting, | 16:42 | |
women have a way of being creative, well so do men, | 16:46 | |
but I mean differently than men do, I think, anyways. | 16:49 | |
I look at my husband and we both are creative creatures | 16:55 | |
in our own way but we aren't the same | 16:58 | |
and so round tables was exciting, doing the artwork | 17:02 | |
and then the other part of it was having to deal | 17:11 | |
with the people who were there to cause trouble. | 17:13 | |
- | Was that part of, did you end up doing that? | 17:16 |
- | The backlash. | 17:18 |
- | Oh you mean after | |
the conference. | 17:19 | |
- | No, in the conference. | |
- | Oh, say something about that. | 17:21 |
- | Wanted to be in there and we let them come as press, | 17:22 |
we had a place for press but no, they wanted to be | 17:28 | |
at the table and we knew at least one person | 17:30 | |
who was representing a real fundamentalist | 17:36 | |
anti-re-imagining group that we ended up moving | 17:43 | |
and sitting with Gina Powers. | 17:47 | |
- | Really? | |
- | Yeah, who knew her and was able to keep that under control | 17:50 |
and I think it was that one or maybe it was one | 17:54 | |
of the following ones where I actually had to go out | 18:00 | |
on the floor and ask somebody to leave. | 18:02 | |
- | Really? | 18:05 |
- | Yeah. | |
And somebody from the IRD who registered, | 18:06 | |
wanted to register as a participant but we said no | 18:12 | |
because people were promised that there'd be some | 18:15 | |
confidentiality and we knew if they were there, | 18:19 | |
they'd be writing about it and so forth. | 18:21 | |
And we sent them their money back and said, | 18:23 | |
"You can come as press and it won't cost you anything," | 18:26 | |
but they still tried to get out on the floor. | 18:29 | |
- | Do you remember why the person was asked to leave? | 18:33 |
- | Because they were press and they were supposed | 18:36 |
to stay in the press. | 18:39 | |
- | And they were sitting | |
at the round tables? | 18:42 | |
- | Trying to. | |
- | They tried to, I see. | 18:43 |
- | Yes, yes. | |
- | Do you remember, were you expecting that these groups | 18:48 |
would come? | 18:55 | |
- | We were expecting | |
something but we didn't really know what | 18:56 | |
because when some of the publicity went out, | 18:59 | |
there was a reporter here in town, also United Methodist, | 19:05 | |
by the way, was a religious reporter for the local paper | 19:09 | |
and she published some of the words of one of the rituals | 19:13 | |
that talked about the women's menstrual flow, et cetera, | 19:15 | |
part of what it means to be a woman | 19:21 | |
and that just caused this explosion from the right wing. | 19:23 | |
And so we figured because they're already, | 19:28 | |
even before the thing had started, | 19:33 | |
we were getting that kind of thing. | 19:35 | |
- | And was that a surprise, do you think? | 19:40 |
How did people feel or react to that? | 19:44 | |
- | I don't think we went into it thinking we were gonna have | 19:46 |
people, what should I say, | 19:48 | |
react in the way that they did. | 19:53 | |
It's just something, and it was, | 19:57 | |
and we knew that they were going into some of the workshops. | 20:02 | |
I have a friend that happens to be a lesbian pastor | 20:07 | |
and she got outed because somebody went into the workshop | 20:11 | |
and they were talking about the United Methodist | 20:14 | |
self-avowed practicing homosexual and she laughingly | 20:16 | |
joked, "Well, who's practicing?" | 20:20 | |
And she got outed to her congregation. | 20:24 | |
- | And what happened? | 20:26 |
- | Well she got moved, she ended up having to go | 20:27 |
on honorable location. | 20:30 | |
And so, you know. | 20:33 | |
- | Yeah, yeah. | |
- | That kind of thing already was starting there, | 20:40 |
it was starting there and then it just kinda got more | 20:42 | |
and more as the Presbyterian laymen and IRD | 20:45 | |
and the Good News folks started doing their publishing | 20:49 | |
and it just was an interesting phenomenon, | 20:54 | |
I really don't think we were expecting it. | 21:00 | |
- | Yeah, well did the backlash affect you directly? | 21:02 |
- | No, and I think the reason is because | 21:07 |
I was looked on within the conference as being that radical. | 21:12 | |
I was Chair of the Methodist Federation for Social Action | 21:18 | |
chapter here and when we would put in legislation | 21:21 | |
at annual conference, we believed that people should know | 21:25 | |
who it was that was putting in the legislation | 21:29 | |
and we put in Methodist Federation for Social Action, | 21:31 | |
Mary Lee Fithian, Chair, and so everybody thought | 21:34 | |
I was writing it but I wasn't, we just wanted to know | 21:37 | |
who the people were, and so I was looked on | 21:40 | |
as kinda radical by a lot of people. | 21:43 | |
And so, no, it didn't. | 21:48 | |
The one thing I did have was that our bishop had been | 21:50 | |
on the advisory committee, just for names of important | 21:52 | |
people and one of the people in the Minnesota Good News | 21:57 | |
group called me on the phone and said, | 22:02 | |
"I see our bishop was on your advisory committee," | 22:05 | |
and I said, well yeah, she's listed there, | 22:08 | |
but I can't think of a time we ever asked her for any advice | 22:11 | |
and he said, "Oh, thank you," and he hung up. | 22:17 | |
So no, personally, it didn't, because they knew | 22:21 | |
how I would respond. | 22:26 | |
- | Yes, yeah. | |
So how did you react when this was happening? | 22:29 | |
- | Well I was annoyed, I was angry, | 22:32 |
and I was sad because, and it goes on today yet | 22:39 | |
in the church, because we should be, even if we aren't | 22:44 | |
of one mind, as John Westley said, you know, | 22:49 | |
can't we love one another, can't we get along? | 22:52 | |
And obviously, the answer is no. | 22:56 | |
And we had intended just to have one conference | 23:01 | |
and that was gonna be it, and then with this backlash, | 23:07 | |
we knew we couldn't let it go. | 23:12 | |
- | I wanna hear more about that, Mary Lee. | 23:14 |
- | Well. | 23:17 |
There was a lot of discussion about how we should respond | 23:21 | |
by the committee. | 23:25 | |
- | This was the committee | |
that planned the conference. | 23:29 | |
- | Yeah, well at that point, | |
that's what there was. | 23:31 | |
- | Yes, right. | |
- | When we were evaluating and doing the thing | 23:34 |
and it was finally decided that we were not going to | 23:38 | |
respond in the same way they were responding to us, | 23:42 | |
that what we were going to do was what you do | 23:45 | |
when you're nonviolent, you respond with love, | 23:48 | |
you love your enemy, you love people that are attacking you | 23:50 | |
but we also saw what was happening to people, | 23:54 | |
people who lost jobs, people who were suddenly | 23:59 | |
a litmus test if they wanted to be ordained, | 24:03 | |
did you attend that conference? | 24:05 | |
Well sorry, we're not going to ordain you. | 24:07 | |
Just real problems, particularly, in particular | 24:10 | |
denominations I remember somebody who'd been on | 24:15 | |
the planning committee who didn't want anybody to know | 24:17 | |
she had been on the planning committee | 24:19 | |
'cause she was just going into a new job out east | 24:21 | |
in a kinda conservative area, her husband had just been | 24:23 | |
called to a church and she was afraid of what was gonna | 24:26 | |
happen, and so that should not happen to people, | 24:30 | |
life shouldn't be that way, and I'm still kinda angry | 24:34 | |
and annoyed at it, so what we'd decided to do | 24:38 | |
was to become an organization | 24:41 | |
and we formed the Re-Imagining community, we got a 5013C, | 24:45 | |
we met on a regular basis, we had a steering committee | 24:51 | |
or a board, whatever you wanna call it, and officers | 24:55 | |
and we began advertising that we were still around | 24:58 | |
and we started this wonderful newsletter | 25:03 | |
that Nancy and Pam did and eventually was basically Nancy | 25:07 | |
and again, a thing that helped women realize | 25:14 | |
that they were created like god, in the image of god, | 25:20 | |
that they could do theology even if they weren't | 25:23 | |
professional theologians and that was just, | 25:26 | |
and that went on for 10 years. | 25:33 | |
- | And just one other thing, was it a fairly easy decision, | 25:35 |
did the committee quickly come to the decision that we need | 25:39 | |
to form an organization, we need to do more conferences? | 25:41 | |
- | I think we did a lot of discussion about | 25:44 |
how we were gonna respond, but the thing that we did | 25:46 | |
decide, definitely, is we weren't going to do | 25:52 | |
what they were doing to us, we weren't going to attack back. | 25:56 | |
- | Yes, yeah. | 25:58 |
- | And so I can't even remember exactly how we ended up | 26:01 |
becoming an organization, but we did, | 26:04 | |
and so I was on that board for awhile and then at one point | 26:07 | |
I became one of the co-chairs. | 26:09 | |
- | Oh, do you remember, did you help in planning, | 26:12 |
do you remember roughly when you would have been a co-chair? | 26:15 | |
- | It was probably | 26:19 |
end of the '90s or early 2000, I think. | 26:22 | |
I left in 2003 because we were moving to California | 26:25 | |
and that was the year that they decided to disband | 26:28 | |
because we were all getting older, we just, | 26:31 | |
somehow or other, young people tend to think | 26:37 | |
that after the fight's been fought, that the fight's over. | 26:39 | |
Sorry to use that kinda language, | 26:46 | |
but it doesn't, if you don't stay on it, it just comes back | 26:47 | |
and so we had a hard time involving younger women | 26:54 | |
and just to go outside of Re-Imagining, | 27:02 | |
I have daughters, so my own daughters, when they went on | 27:09 | |
to college didn't think that they had to deal with anything | 27:13 | |
to do with feminism anymore, it was all done, | 27:17 | |
our parents had done this, our mothers and so forth | 27:22 | |
had taken care of, everything was okay now and then | 27:26 | |
my oldest daughter when into biochemical engineering, | 27:29 | |
she wanted to be a biochemical engineer | 27:33 | |
and she hit the classes where they would say, | 27:36 | |
"Well what's a beautiful girl like you doing here?" | 27:39 | |
And all of a sudden, she's starting to see, | 27:43 | |
no, it hasn't been solved, it's just sorta underground now | 27:47 | |
and she went out of there and ended up into biochemistry | 27:52 | |
and got her degree there and ended up in law school. | 27:55 | |
- | Wow. | 27:57 |
- | But that's a jump, | |
but what I'm saying is that generation | 28:00 | |
just wasn't ready to do anything | 28:03 | |
and by the time the rest of us got to 2003, | 28:07 | |
we're in our 70s, most of us, not all of us, but most of us | 28:10 | |
and you just get tired after awhile. | 28:17 | |
- | And you were involved the whole 10 years of the community. | 28:20 |
On the committee or co-chair. | 28:24 | |
- | And I also volunteered in the office | 28:26 |
when we didn't have staff, we only had part-time staff | 28:28 | |
so I was in the office answering questions | 28:32 | |
and answering the phones. | 28:34 | |
- | Were you actually able to participate in some | 28:37 |
of the later conferences? | 28:39 | |
- | Yeah, yeah, I did, | |
one or two of them, I didn't go to all of them | 28:42 | |
but I went to one or two of them. | 28:44 | |
- | Yeah. | 28:46 |
- | Yeah. | |
- | Well you have a lot of experience here | 28:48 |
so it would be really helpful to hear what aspects | 28:53 | |
of Re-Imagining were most significant to you and why. | 28:56 | |
- | Well one was that we were able to reach so many women | 29:02 |
who were out there alone and I mean, there are still | 29:10 | |
some of the small groups that we had formed that are going, | 29:13 | |
have been for almost 25 years | 29:16 | |
and that's significant, I think, | 29:20 | |
I think that's really significant | 29:25 | |
and that there began to be movement even among | 29:27 | |
male clergy, et cetera, to be thinking more | 29:32 | |
about what the language was in the church, in the services, | 29:35 | |
and so forth, I think they've gotten away from that | 29:39 | |
a little bit now, but starting to see | 29:41 | |
that there were things happening in churches, | 29:45 | |
at least the more progressive churches, that were positive | 29:49 | |
and when I say positive for women, | 29:52 | |
I really mean it's positive for everybody, | 29:54 | |
'cause if it's positive for women, | 29:56 | |
it's gonna be positive for men as well. | 29:57 | |
But our target audience was those women who just thought, | 30:00 | |
"My place in the kitchen, in the Sunday school, | 30:05 | |
"and in the choir." | 30:09 | |
- | How do you think Re-Imagining helped with that, | 30:10 |
what did Re-Imagining do? | 30:12 | |
- | I think it stirred | |
the hearts of people, I think it stirred the hearts | 30:15 | |
of people both negatively and positively | 30:19 | |
but it did, it stirred something in the lives of people, | 30:22 | |
in the hearts of people that caused them to think | 30:27 | |
differently about their relationship to god, | 30:30 | |
relationship to Jesus Christ, the relationship to the church | 30:33 | |
and to one another. | 30:36 | |
- | And did it do that | |
for you? | 30:39 | |
- | Pretty much. | |
Yeah, and I was in churches where sometimes I had to | 30:44 | |
deal with that from this angle. | 30:49 | |
- | The underground, the resistance. | 30:55 |
- | Yeah, but always managed to say, "Well we're not singing | 30:56 |
"that hymn because look at the language." | 31:03 | |
That doesn't reflect my understanding of god | 31:08 | |
and I'm the boss today. | 31:11 | |
- | And how do people respond to that? | 31:13 |
- | Most of them would say, "Oh okay," | 31:17 |
but then we would talk about it and explain, | 31:21 | |
and one church I was in, they'd had a woman pastor | 31:23 | |
at one point, but that must not have been a good experience | 31:29 | |
because she ended up going out of ministry, | 31:33 | |
at least parish ministry, so then there were several pastors | 31:37 | |
in between and some of them had been bad experiences | 31:43 | |
for them so when they got this woman, they didn't know, | 31:47 | |
this lady came up to me and she said, | 31:49 | |
"What do we call you?" | 31:52 | |
I said, "Well what did you call," | 31:56 | |
and I named one of the former pastors. | 31:58 | |
"Well we called him by his name." | 32:01 | |
And I said, "Well that's what you do me." | 32:03 | |
"We don't call you ministress?" | 32:04 | |
And I looked at her, I said, | 32:08 | |
"If you ever do, I'm gonna kick you in the butt." | 32:09 | |
And then I walked away. | 32:11 | |
And that was my exact language. | 32:13 | |
And she appreciated that, and I never got called ministress. | 32:15 | |
And they were people who were really supportive | 32:19 | |
of my ministry, they'd say to me, | 32:22 | |
"Mary Lee, you're working too hard. | 32:26 | |
"Don't work so many hours," I mean, they really watched out | 32:28 | |
for me but there still were areas where it didn't | 32:32 | |
necessarily be women but it would be other groups | 32:40 | |
like LGBT people in the church and so forth | 32:43 | |
that we really had to start working on too. | 32:47 | |
And I think this helped us in a sense to get a handle | 32:49 | |
on that and to begin to do that. | 32:53 | |
- | Re-Imagining did? | 32:56 |
- | Yeah, I think so. | |
- | Yeah, yeah. | 32:58 |
- | Yeah, yeah. | |
Got us past some of the fears. | 33:02 | |
- | So despite the backlash, you feel like the end result | 33:05 |
wasn't, it got past the fears, | 33:08 | |
could you say a little bit more about that? | 33:11 | |
- | In some churches, I think that they probably were | 33:12 |
churches where there was a sense of progressivism already, | 33:16 | |
maybe not real actively progressive but they were not | 33:21 | |
real fundamentalist and literal bible interpretation | 33:27 | |
and that sort of thing, and yeah. | 33:32 | |
I think it's had an impact but then over the last few years, | 33:39 | |
I think that some of that's gone kind of by the wayside | 33:43 | |
'cause we haven't been able to keep the movement going. | 33:46 | |
I saw it as what we ended up with as a movement | 33:50 | |
and we just haven't been able to keep that going | 33:54 | |
and I'm hoping that this new thing will start | 34:01 | |
some of that again and some of the ways in which | 34:05 | |
we're thinking about doing things will put us in a position | 34:07 | |
where it isn't a bunch of old ladies | 34:11 | |
talking down to young women. | 34:12 | |
- | And as you think about moving forward with Re-Imagining, | 34:16 |
what do you think are the contributions in theology | 34:20 | |
or liturgy, what contributions can it make | 34:24 | |
to the next generations? | 34:26 | |
- | Well I think that, whatever the contributions | 34:29 |
would be with language because language is a big thing | 34:32 | |
that affects people kinda without their knowing it. | 34:36 | |
When I would go home and I'd be crying and it took me a long | 34:44 | |
long time to figure out what was going on. | 34:48 | |
There was something deep inside of me | 34:52 | |
and I think you could talk about it in a lot of places now | 34:58 | |
where you couldn't have talked about it before, | 35:01 | |
could say, "Hey, isn't there a better way of saying this?" | 35:03 | |
And I think that it can contribute to the fact | 35:09 | |
that people can start to question, they can question | 35:14 | |
the theology that's being preached in their church, | 35:18 | |
they can question what's happening, are we a church | 35:21 | |
that's sitting back and just being comfortable | 35:25 | |
and coming to church on Sunday and having our bible study | 35:29 | |
on Wednesday and so forth, and not doing anything | 35:34 | |
outside the walls? | 35:38 | |
- | Mhmm. | |
- | I think that all of that. | 35:41 |
- | How would you compare where we are today | 35:44 |
to where we were in 1993? | 35:45 | |
- | Well I think we're way ahead of 1993. | 35:49 |
- | In what ways? | 35:53 |
- | I don't think I'd be shunned. | 35:55 |
I think we're at a point where women just need to be | 36:00 | |
reminded and other people need to just be reminded. | 36:04 | |
- | Reminded of? | 36:10 |
- | That this isn't an all-man's world, | 36:12 |
man's church, man's god, | 36:16 | |
we can bring it up pretty much without fear, | 36:20 | |
at least in some places. | 36:26 | |
- | Yeah, yeah. | |
What do you think is the greatest legacy | 36:30 | |
of the Re-Imagining community? | 36:31 | |
- | The greatest legacy is having women's voices heard. | 36:36 |
- | And when you say women's voices, | 36:45 |
are you thinking of the speakers? | 36:46 | |
- | I'm thinking of that, but I'm also thinking | 36:49 |
that from that has expanded into those who weren't speakers | 36:51 | |
but are now able to say, "Hey, what about this?" | 36:58 | |
or "Hey, I'm not so sure about that thing." | 37:03 | |
Or, "Do we always have to use that kind of language?" | 37:08 | |
Women's voices can be heard. | 37:11 | |
- | Mhmm, mhmm. | |
How did your involvement in the Re-Imagining | 37:16 | |
change your perspective on feminist theology | 37:18 | |
and/or the church, if it did? | 37:20 | |
- | It probably didn't because I think I was already | 37:23 |
pretty much there, but I did, probably heard more, | 37:25 | |
different voices than I would have if it had just | 37:33 | |
been up to me to read, because it was all there | 37:35 | |
in one place or it led me to things that I could read | 37:39 | |
and that I could hear in other venues | 37:44 | |
that I wouldn't have otherwise. | 37:48 | |
- | There's talk about a Re-Imagining website | 37:54 |
and do you have any thoughts about what we should include, | 37:58 | |
who would benefit, and how could they find out about it, | 38:02 | |
any thoughts about the website? | 38:05 | |
- | I think we wanna list resources for people. | 38:09 |
- | Such as? | 38:14 |
- | Well if somebody writes a really good article someplace, | 38:16 |
a lot of us won't know about it unless there's somebody | 38:22 | |
who tells us and so the website can do | 38:24 | |
that kind of education, I think it can maybe | 38:28 | |
a question-answer kind of format somewhere along the way. | 38:35 | |
- | And who would do the answers? | 38:41 |
- | Well that could come and we could say, | 38:43 |
"Oh, well what do you think?" | 38:46 | |
and we could say, "Well here's what we think." | 38:47 | |
- | Okay, yes. | 38:50 |
- | Somebody else may have another viewpoint, | 38:51 |
here's a resource, you could go, I mean, you know, | 38:53 | |
I don't know, just thinking. | 38:56 | |
- | Good! | |
No, this is good, brainstorming is good. | 38:59 | |
- | Brainstorming is good. | 39:01 |
Yeah, I haven't really done a lot of thinking, | 39:04 | |
you've probably done a lot more thinking about it | 39:05 | |
than I have at this point. | 39:07 | |
- | Who do you think would benefit from it? | 39:09 |
- | Would would benefit from it? | 39:12 |
- | Yes. | |
- | Well, I think women in seminary, one place, | 39:14 |
women who don't go to seminary. | 39:19 | |
I think, I remember the newsletter where we had interviews | 39:23 | |
of people and there was always a theological discussion | 39:29 | |
going on someplace, kind of a little more academic | 39:35 | |
but theology talked or said in a way | 39:38 | |
that the common person can understand it. | 39:45 | |
That's, we have a father of the month or something. | 39:48 | |
(laughs) | 39:53 | |
I don't know. | 39:54 | |
- | Yeah! | |
Oh this is good, this is good, creative, yes. | 39:56 | |
This has been great, is there anything we haven't talked | 40:00 | |
about or haven't discussed that you would like to add? | 40:03 | |
- | I don't think so. | 40:08 |
- | Mary Lee, thank you so much. | |
- | Yeah, you're welcome. | 40:10 |
- | Really appreciate it. |
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