Lundy, Mary Ann
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| - | All right. | 0:00 |
| We are now recording. | 0:02 | |
| Mary Ann, thank you so much for taking the time | 0:05 | |
| to talk to me. | 0:07 | |
| And if you could just start with your name. | 0:08 | |
| - | My name is Mary Ann Weese, W-E-E-S-E, | 0:11 |
| Lundy, L-U-N-D-Y. | 0:15 | |
| - | Thank you very much. | 0:17 |
| Are you lay or clergy? | 0:18 | |
| - | I'm lay, but I'm a graduate of Union Theological Seminary, | 0:20 |
| with a Masters of Divinity, | 0:25 | |
| Union Seminary in New York City. | 0:28 | |
| - | Yes. | 0:30 |
| - | And my degree was in 1957 | 0:31 |
| when there were very few women there. | 0:35 | |
| - | Yes, that's amazing. | 0:37 |
| I just have to ask, what led you | 0:39 | |
| to go to Union in that year? | 0:41 | |
| - | (laughs) What led me to go to seminary? | 0:43 |
| A graduate of West Virginia University, | 0:47 | |
| and nobody in my family ever went to seminary. | 0:50 | |
| They were Presbyterians. | 0:54 | |
| My father was a Presbyterian elder | 0:57 | |
| and took that very seriously. | 0:59 | |
| But when I finished college, | 1:01 | |
| I said I had this, | 1:04 | |
| I had, during my junior year, | 1:06 | |
| decided I wanted to go to seminary | 1:08 | |
| and began to look at seminaries. | 1:09 | |
| Everybody thought I would to go to Princeton, | 1:13 | |
| that's where everybody went, | 1:15 | |
| and McCormack offered me a scholarship. | 1:17 | |
| I got to know about Union. | 1:21 | |
| Some students came through from Union | 1:25 | |
| and convinced me that I ought to be going to Union, | 1:28 | |
| so I really, really had decided. | 1:32 | |
| I turned everything down by then, I wanted to go to Union. | 1:35 | |
| That was it. | 1:38 | |
| - | Wow! | 1:39 |
| - | But then I wasn't sure I could get in, | 1:40 |
| 'cause I had had one religion course in college. | 1:43 | |
| We didn't have a religion department, | 1:48 | |
| so it was a little iffy there for a while. | 1:51 | |
| And I always have had the feeling | 1:55 | |
| somebody, some other woman, | 1:56 | |
| there were five of us in our graduating class, | 1:58 | |
| 65 men and five women. | 2:01 | |
| Phyllis Trible was my roommate, | 2:04 | |
| That gives you some idea. | 2:05 | |
| - | (gasps) Really? | 2:06 |
| - | Vince Harrison was one of my good friends. | 2:09 |
| And then other (mumbles). | 2:13 | |
| So we were a stalwart group, | 2:15 | |
| but still, we were very small. | 2:17 | |
| - | Wow, I just have to ask, Mary Ann, | 2:22 |
| first of all, what led you to think about seminary? | 2:24 | |
| What were you going to seminary for? | 2:26 | |
| - | Well, this is very interesting. | 2:28 |
| It wasn't the church so much as, | 2:31 | |
| I was a part of the student YWCA. | 2:33 | |
| The student YWCA in the 50's was on about 50 campuses. | 2:36 | |
| And they was the Women's Leadership body. | 2:42 | |
| I had joined it as a student. | 2:48 | |
| And then, the kind of social justice issues | 2:51 | |
| that we were dealing with, | 2:58 | |
| we're dealing with women's leadership roles, | 2:59 | |
| and had 400 members in our student Y on Wednesday evenings. | 3:02 | |
| I mean, it was really very, very effective, | 3:08 | |
| student YM was, too. | 3:11 | |
| So I was convinced I wanted to be a lay person | 3:13 | |
| in ministry, and in campus ministry. | 3:17 | |
| So that was why. | 3:21 | |
| And I wanted to do it ecumenically. | 3:24 | |
| I was already very much convinced about that. | 3:26 | |
| So that led me to Union. | 3:30 | |
| If I didn't get in Union, I wasn't going anywhere else. | 3:34 | |
| - | Really? | 3:36 |
| - | Yeah, I was pretty crazy. | 3:38 |
| And my parents were just very concerned. | 3:40 | |
| They thought any seminary was a very conservative place, | 3:43 | |
| and they were really concerned | 3:48 | |
| that I'd come home kind of wacky. | 3:51 | |
| (both laugh) | 3:53 | |
| They said to me, "If you come home on Christmas, | 3:55 | |
| "and you're really over the hill, | 3:57 | |
| "please can we say you won't go back?" | 4:01 | |
| And so I said, "Sure." | 4:03 | |
| (both laugh) | 4:05 | |
| They had no idea what the state of Union was. | 4:08 | |
| - | Wow. | 4:12 |
| Oh Mary Ann, that is wonderful. | 4:14 | |
| (laughs) | 4:17 | |
| - | Little crazy. | 4:18 |
| - | Yeah, yeah. | 4:19 |
| - | I have to say I had a distant aunt | 4:21 |
| who was a fundamentalist minister in Peoria, Illinois. | 4:25 | |
| That was on my father's side, | 4:30 | |
| so he had some reason to think, maybe, | 4:32 | |
| I might come home a little goofy. | 4:36 | |
| He was concerned about that. | 4:39 | |
| - | So just to clarify, | 4:41 |
| when he was afraid of you being wacky or goofy, | 4:42 | |
| he was afraid of you becoming fundamentalist? | 4:44 | |
| - | Yeah, uh-huh, yeah. | 4:46 |
| - | My goodness. | 4:48 |
| - | She would come to visit us, | 4:51 |
| and she'd sit on our front porch, | 4:53 | |
| and my bother and I would be coming back from school, | 4:54 | |
| we could hear her a block away. | 4:56 | |
| She talked about her love coach, | 5:00 | |
| and she drove a Chrysler Imperial and wore a big hat, | 5:01 | |
| and had a church, her own church. | 5:05 | |
| Aunt Arlena was some character. | 5:08 | |
| So I think my father thought, "Uh-oh, | 5:11 | |
| "she may end up being like Aunt Arlena." | 5:13 | |
| (both laugh) | 5:16 | |
| - | What was her name again? | 5:17 |
| - | Weese, W-E-E-S-E. | 5:19 |
| - | Okay. | 5:21 |
| Oh, I love that, that's great. | 5:22 | |
| - | My father was a teacher. | 5:23 |
| All my family were educators. | 5:24 | |
| Public school teachers, pre-Revolutionary War. | 5:27 | |
| They all were teachers. | 5:30 | |
| - | Wow. | 5:31 |
| What-- | 5:33 | |
| - | That was-- | |
| - | Go ahead. | 5:34 |
| - | That was thought to be okay, | 5:35 |
| be a teacher. | 5:38 | |
| - | Right, not seminary. | 5:39 |
| What was your experience at Union like, Mary Ann? | 5:41 | |
| - | Well, since Phyllis Trible was my roommate, | 5:44 |
| we had a great time. | 5:47 | |
| I mean, it was hard. | 5:49 | |
| It was extremely hard for me. | 5:52 | |
| But I was also, I just felt like it was the most exciting, | 5:55 | |
| interesting, incredible time | 6:02 | |
| that I could ever have thought it to be. | 6:05 | |
| Every day was just so exciting. | 6:10 | |
| Niebuhr was still there, so we studied ethics with Niebuhr. | 6:14 | |
| Doctor Meilenberg, so I was very, along with Phyllis, | 6:18 | |
| absolutely committed to biblical studies. | 6:22 | |
| They used to talk about, our classmates would say, | 6:26 | |
| Phyllis was the student and I was the people person. | 6:29 | |
| (mumbles) Beverly Harris theories. | 6:34 | |
| (both laugh) | 6:37 | |
| He'd say, "No, you can study, you're good with," anyway. | 6:39 | |
| It was fun. | 6:42 | |
| This is getting a little out of hand here, I think. | 6:43 | |
| - | Oh, it is. | 6:46 |
| But it's really important, it's really good. | 6:47 | |
| What work or ministry were you doing | 6:50 | |
| at the time of Re-imagining? | 6:52 | |
| - | After I was in campus ministry in several places, | 6:56 |
| then we were at the University of Idaho, | 7:00 | |
| the University of Illinois. | 7:03 | |
| Then I was with the national YWCA for five years. | 7:09 | |
| I was the Director of National Student YWCA, | 7:16 | |
| commuting to Minneapolis, where my family, | 7:20 | |
| my husband was a minister. | 7:22 | |
| Then the Presbyterian church was reorganizing, | 7:26 | |
| I guess is the way to say it. | 7:34 | |
| The South and the Northern streams had been separated | 7:36 | |
| at the Civil War. | 7:40 | |
| When they came back together, | 7:41 | |
| they hired new staff persons for the new structure. | 7:44 | |
| I had applied to be director of the women's ministry unit. | 7:50 | |
| I had done a lot of work in the church, | 7:56 | |
| chairing taskforces et cetera. | 7:59 | |
| This made, in a sense, I'd been on national committees, | 8:03 | |
| the Council on Women in the Church. | 8:08 | |
| So I applied. | 8:11 | |
| There were nine positions for the leadership of the church. | 8:13 | |
| I was hired for the women's position, | 8:18 | |
| the director of the women's unit. | 8:22 | |
| We had four groups, women employed by the church, | 8:24 | |
| women of color, justice for women, and Presbyterian women, | 8:28 | |
| which was the traditional group. | 8:32 | |
| This unit brought all of them together. | 8:35 | |
| That was what put me on a national stage | 8:40 | |
| in terms of women's issues and women in the church. | 8:44 | |
| - | Before we move on to Re-imagining with your role to that, | 8:51 |
| which was absolutely crucial, | 8:53 | |
| could you talk about when | 8:56 | |
| and how you became aware of feminist theology? | 8:57 | |
| - | Oh, yeah, well, I think it was as much through the YWCA | 9:01 |
| as it was through the church. | 9:04 | |
| You know, the Y doesn't get the credit | 9:07 | |
| for being an incredibly important religious lay body. | 9:10 | |
| So a lot of the reading I had done, | 9:20 | |
| a lot of the work in terms of social justice, | 9:23 | |
| had been through the Y. | 9:26 | |
| The term "feminist theology," | 9:29 | |
| when we had been at the University of Idaho, | 9:33 | |
| I had led a group of women studying Betty Friedan | 9:35 | |
| and The Feminist Mystique. | 9:39 | |
| Those conversations, and then being on taskforces for women | 9:45 | |
| within the Presbyterian church, | 9:50 | |
| working on issues of ordination and placement for women, | 9:53 | |
| I was also of the General Assembly in 1956, | 9:56 | |
| when the Presbyterian church voted in General Assembly | 10:00 | |
| to ordain women the first time as clergy. | 10:05 | |
| They had ordained women as lay leadership from the '30s. | 10:08 | |
| Actually, that General Assembly was | 10:15 | |
| in Minneapolis, St. Paul, interestingly enough. | 10:17 | |
| Part of it, my commitment was very strong | 10:25 | |
| to the nature of social justice, | 10:29 | |
| and then moving that into racial justice | 10:31 | |
| and feminist theology and feminist studies. | 10:37 | |
| Yeah, by the time I took the job | 10:41 | |
| for the Presbyterian church, I'd been pretty much involved | 10:45 | |
| in regional and national taskforces on women in the church. | 10:48 | |
| - | Great, thank you. | 10:53 |
| Well, that brings us to, you were absolutely crucial | 10:55 | |
| in the formation of the Re-imagining Conference. | 10:58 | |
| Could you say, talk about how that happened? | 11:02 | |
| - | Yeah, it happened when we got involved | 11:05 |
| with the Ecumenical Decade of Churches | 11:07 | |
| in Solidarity with Women, which had been set up | 11:09 | |
| by the World Council of Churches in 1988, | 11:12 | |
| trying to bring a realization to the churches | 11:18 | |
| of feminist theology, of the place of women, | 11:22 | |
| and to make that more crucial, really, | 11:27 | |
| with churches worldwide. | 11:29 | |
| That committee was set up, | 11:34 | |
| we as Presbyterian women knew that we needed to be | 11:37 | |
| an important part of that, | 11:43 | |
| particularly since the Presbyterian church | 11:45 | |
| had sort of been a theological backbone, | 11:47 | |
| the reform churches had been, | 11:52 | |
| of the World Council of Churches | 11:53 | |
| and the ecumenical movement. | 11:55 | |
| So we started to look at what could we do, | 11:57 | |
| what were we as women who were Presbyterian and reform, | 12:02 | |
| what could be our place? | 12:07 | |
| What could be our best contribution? | 12:09 | |
| Right away, we said, "Theology!" | 12:13 | |
| That's always-- | 12:16 | |
| (interviewer chuckles) | 12:16 | |
| So, what could we do that would be unique, | 12:18 | |
| that would be a gift to the church? | 12:22 | |
| We were just moving from the old structure | 12:28 | |
| as the United Presbyterian Church | 12:31 | |
| into the Presbyterian Church USA. | 12:33 | |
| The former staff were still there, | 12:37 | |
| Aurelia True-lay, (mumbles) Virginia's details and I | 12:40 | |
| met in an office. | 12:44 | |
| We were still in New York. | 12:45 | |
| We hadn't gone to Louisville yet. | 12:46 | |
| One afternoon, I called them together and said, | 12:50 | |
| "We need to decide, what could we do | 12:53 | |
| "that would really be wonderful for the ecum-?" | 12:56 | |
| And they knew about the Decade, | 12:59 | |
| but none of us had worked on it. | 13:00 | |
| This must have been 1988. | 13:04 | |
| Yeah. | 13:08 | |
| We came up with this idea of the theological colloquium. | 13:10 | |
| We wrote up a proposal. | 13:15 | |
| We were in the midst of a bicentennial campaign | 13:19 | |
| to raise capital funds for the church. | 13:22 | |
| We submitted that. | 13:26 | |
| I wrote the proposal, we went over and over it, | 13:27 | |
| I submitted it, and it was accepted. | 13:31 | |
| There were a number of, | 13:38 | |
| I think we sent seven proposals, actually. | 13:39 | |
| There were three of them, I think, were accepted right away. | 13:45 | |
| And this one was the one that we followed through with, | 13:48 | |
| which was a international theological colloquium | 13:51 | |
| that would have more women, | 13:57 | |
| as many women speakers from abroad | 14:00 | |
| as there were women from our own country. | 14:03 | |
| It was an effort to say, "We need to listen to women | 14:06 | |
| "in the rest of the world. | 14:09 | |
| "What is it that they're doing theologically | 14:11 | |
| "that (audio skips) to us?" | 14:15 | |
| And then, "How can we speak also," | 14:17 | |
| the real emphasis was that we were there to hear, to listen, | 14:24 | |
| become a part of the worldwide | 14:31 | |
| feminist movement in the churches. | 14:34 | |
| We were particularly aware of the women in Africa. | 14:37 | |
| We weren't sure about other areas, as in Eastern Europe. | 14:42 | |
| But that was why we wanted to get people who could come, | 14:48 | |
| women who could come and help us. | 14:51 | |
| It was to be an all-women's conference. | 14:54 | |
| Our proposal was that it would be a small group, | 14:56 | |
| maybe a couple of 100 people, and we would meet, | 15:00 | |
| we had some interesting ideas in the beginning | 15:06 | |
| that we would all meet in families, at round tables. | 15:10 | |
| That part, that was carried over | 15:14 | |
| in the final feminist theology, | 15:16 | |
| in the Re-imagining Conference. | 15:19 | |
| But we said that was absolutely necessarily. | 15:24 | |
| Then we took the recent proposal | 15:28 | |
| to the Bicentennial Commission. | 15:32 | |
| It was accepted. | 15:34 | |
| Then we decided that if it was gonna be really effective, | 15:36 | |
| it needed to be given to a local Decade Committee. | 15:42 | |
| There were four that I approached, I visited. | 15:48 | |
| There was a Decade Committee | 15:52 | |
| in the Bay Area in San Francisco, | 15:53 | |
| there was one in Atlanta, there was one in Detroit, | 15:56 | |
| and there was one in Minneapolis. | 15:59 | |
| I met with some, you know, talking about | 16:03 | |
| what the possibilities were, | 16:07 | |
| what they were interested in doing. | 16:08 | |
| The one in Minneapolis was, | 16:11 | |
| it turn out to be the best organized. | 16:14 | |
| It was all ready and going. | 16:17 | |
| The one in Atlanta was, too. | 16:20 | |
| Detroit had already chosen what it was going to deal with. | 16:23 | |
| Sally Hill was a good friend of mine. | 16:29 | |
| Sally and I've worked together | 16:31 | |
| and known each other for a long time. | 16:33 | |
| She was the Council of Churches staff. | 16:36 | |
| So I called her and I said, "Sally, I have this proposal. | 16:40 | |
| "What are you doing with Decades Committee?" | 16:43 | |
| And we talked a long time. | 16:45 | |
| She said, well, they were more interested | 16:46 | |
| in doing something local, that they were going to send teams | 16:48 | |
| out through the Presbyterian, make some decisions | 16:52 | |
| about what the possibilities would be. | 16:55 | |
| I said, "Well, in the meantime, | 16:59 | |
| "let me send you this proposal, | 17:01 | |
| "because it seems to me this may be something, | 17:02 | |
| "knowing the Twin Cities and knowing how I'd lived there | 17:06 | |
| "and the general feeling and commitment, | 17:09 | |
| "maybe this would work for you." | 17:16 | |
| So I sent her the proposal. | 17:18 | |
| We talked several times on the phone. | 17:20 | |
| She said she had sounded out some other people | 17:24 | |
| and she thought they would be interested in it. | 17:27 | |
| I had said, then, that we would supply the seed money | 17:32 | |
| to start it, that the Presbyterians would. | 17:35 | |
| So that's how the whole thing got started. | 17:39 | |
| Then their committee was already organized, | 17:41 | |
| but not fully. | 17:44 | |
| They were still deciding what to do. | 17:45 | |
| They took it and ran. | 17:49 | |
| I would go when I could. | 17:53 | |
| I was based in Louisville. | 17:55 | |
| So when I either would go home to see my family, | 17:57 | |
| I have a son and a daughter in the Twin Cities, | 18:01 | |
| then we would make some more decisions. | 18:05 | |
| I would sit with the planning committee. | 18:08 | |
| They sent me, through Sally, all their written reports. | 18:12 | |
| I'm not sure the committee ever knew that, | 18:15 | |
| that I would receive their written report, | 18:18 | |
| their meeting reports. | 18:21 | |
| So I felt like I was a part of the planning of it. | 18:24 | |
| But I didn't see specifically | 18:28 | |
| things like the worship services. | 18:30 | |
| I would get snippets. | 18:34 | |
| Then I'd come, and I was at the meeting, | 18:36 | |
| the time that we decided to call it Re-imagining. | 18:39 | |
| We were meeting at the church center | 18:43 | |
| and Sally was writing on the board. | 18:45 | |
| I used to kid her, because I said, "Sally, you can't spell." | 18:49 | |
| She wrote re-imagining instead of reimaging, | 18:54 | |
| which, we were talking about using reimaging. | 18:57 | |
| Then we said, "Well, is that a word, re-imagining? | 19:00 | |
| "Well, gosh, maybe that sounds good, doesn't it?" | 19:03 | |
| "Yeah, that'd be better, and that's more visionary." | 19:05 | |
| So that was how that happened. | 19:10 | |
| - | Oh, that is great. | 19:13 |
| How did that, how did it evolve? | 19:14 | |
| I mean, it started out, was gonna be 200. | 19:16 | |
| How did it keep going to become what it did? | 19:19 | |
| - | We started talking about it, and we wrote, | 19:24 |
| it really came more to the vision | 19:29 | |
| of the committee there, in Minneapolis. | 19:33 | |
| Part of it was also when we began to ask speakers | 19:38 | |
| and when we realized what we might wanna do. | 19:42 | |
| When we thought about worldwide speakers, | 19:46 | |
| actually, I sent Sally names | 19:49 | |
| and we talked with people in seminaries then | 19:53 | |
| in terms of the international people who want to be there. | 19:57 | |
| That's how the beginning of it. | 20:02 | |
| I would send her names and then they would vet them | 20:07 | |
| in some way and decide if that was the way they wanna work. | 20:11 | |
| Then we paid for 22 international participants. | 20:16 | |
| That is the Presbyterian church, the women's unit. | 20:24 | |
| Some of them couldn't come, of course. | 20:30 | |
| We did a lot of back and forth. | 20:32 | |
| But Sally was our main contact through that. | 20:35 | |
| She and I pretty much, | 20:38 | |
| I don't know from her, but the two of us | 20:41 | |
| would make the decisions | 20:45 | |
| on which people should come and speak. | 20:47 | |
| And then pretty much the format was sort of laid out | 20:49 | |
| in that original proposal. | 20:53 | |
| The committee tried to be careful, it being a colloquium, | 20:56 | |
| that is, a real sharing of information. | 21:03 | |
| Then the other thing that we, as Presbyterians, kept to was, | 21:07 | |
| we had said in the original proposal | 21:14 | |
| that all the papers would be published, | 21:16 | |
| and that we felt that we really wanted them | 21:20 | |
| to be used in local communities, | 21:23 | |
| that that was the most important thing, | 21:25 | |
| was being able to, as widely as we could, | 21:28 | |
| send out the information study guides. | 21:33 | |
| Of course we had no idea how many people would come. | 21:39 | |
| And it just kept growing. | 21:42 | |
| Then it was to have been a couple of years earlier, | 21:43 | |
| and we weren't ready and the committee wasn't ready, | 21:48 | |
| the committees there weren't ready. | 21:52 | |
| So the date got changed. | 21:55 | |
| Then we began realizing it was gonna be huge, | 21:58 | |
| that there were a lot of people who wanted to come. | 22:01 | |
| Then it moved from the original proposal | 22:04 | |
| of having it really be printed papers | 22:07 | |
| to being a huge gathering. | 22:11 | |
| And that's worked. | 22:14 | |
| We, in the national office of the church, | 22:18 | |
| had some concern about that, | 22:20 | |
| because we really had thought | 22:23 | |
| it would be much easier to disseminate things more widely | 22:27 | |
| if they were a smaller group. | 22:32 | |
| But you know, I think, of course I think it turned out. | 22:36 | |
| It also turned out, I was chairing the US Committee | 22:41 | |
| of the Ecumenical Decade | 22:44 | |
| with a Bishop of the Methodist Church, male. | 22:47 | |
| We met, I guess maybe every three months or so. | 22:53 | |
| I preferred (audio warps) most of the denominations. | 22:58 | |
| It was the great concern, should they become | 23:04 | |
| one of the chief supporters? | 23:11 | |
| And we had some interesting conversations about that | 23:14 | |
| before there was a decision | 23:19 | |
| that they would become one of the main sponsors, as well. | 23:20 | |
| - | To clarify, who is "they"? | 23:23 |
| - | US Committee of the Ecumenical Decade. | 23:26 |
| - | I see. | 23:29 |
| - | There were about 27 of us, I think, | 23:30 |
| were members of that committee. | 23:33 | |
| Represented Latter-Day Saints, | 23:36 | |
| most of the major denominations were represented. | 23:42 | |
| Then in Minneapolis, I mean, the Roman Catholics | 23:46 | |
| had bought into it. | 23:50 | |
| So that was really important to us. | 23:53 | |
| Then, in the end, we had a large group | 23:56 | |
| of lay women of the Catholic church. | 24:00 | |
| I don't mean nuns, I mean lay women in the pews. | 24:03 | |
| They came to me at the end of the conference and said, | 24:08 | |
| "We wanna search you out. | 24:12 | |
| "We want you to understand, this is the first time | 24:13 | |
| "we feel we've been accepted in a major conference. | 24:15 | |
| "And this has just changed our lives." | 24:21 | |
| That was really powerful, | 24:24 | |
| the last morning of the conference. | 24:27 | |
| That's one of those things that happened | 24:33 | |
| and you didn't know it was gonna happen. | 24:34 | |
| - | Right, right. | 24:36 |
| - | Part of that was the planning committee in the Twin Cities | 24:38 |
| had included so many Roman Catholics in the planning. | 24:42 | |
| It just became incredibly important. | 24:47 | |
| - | As you were in that planning process, | 24:51 |
| what were the hopes, or were there any concerns? | 24:53 | |
| What were people thinking about the conference | 24:57 | |
| as it was taking shape? | 24:59 | |
| - | Well, at first, it grew, too. | 25:03 |
| At first we didn't think of it as being so large. | 25:06 | |
| I think the concerns, there were some concern | 25:13 | |
| about some of the worship material that was being developed. | 25:15 | |
| I wasn't as aware of that. | 25:19 | |
| It wasn't so much, it was Soo-side Martin | 25:22 | |
| who was chairing that group. | 25:27 | |
| It was just incredibly exciting. | 25:30 | |
| The rules of the conference, in a sense, | 25:35 | |
| came out of that planning. | 25:38 | |
| The local women could talk to you more about that, I think, | 25:40 | |
| than I could, 'cause I wasn't involved in their meetings. | 25:44 | |
| Afterward, I wish I had been, | 25:48 | |
| because I think it would have helped dispel | 25:50 | |
| some of the concerns about the language of the worship, | 25:53 | |
| the sexuality, the images of sexuality | 25:59 | |
| that caused us more problems later. | 26:04 | |
| You know, I'd still affirm 'em. | 26:09 | |
| But I think that we would have been able to see, perhaps, | 26:11 | |
| that some of the images were pretty graphic | 26:14 | |
| for the religious communities to deal with. | 26:18 | |
| - | Do you think if you'd been involved, | 26:22 |
| you would have wanted to kinda tone them down a little bit? | 26:23 | |
| - | I don't know. | 26:29 |
| Yeah, I think I would have been able to see | 26:33 | |
| what some of the later ramifications would be | 26:35 | |
| in the national church lobbies | 26:39 | |
| and in presbyteries, for instance. | 26:42 | |
| Yeah, I think because I was living, | 26:46 | |
| we in the women's unit were living, | 26:51 | |
| in a male dominated structure. | 26:52 | |
| The church was trying, but still very, very male. | 26:57 | |
| And I think the Presbyterians in this would at that, | 27:02 | |
| (stutters) yeah, we just had some knowledge | 27:06 | |
| that that's gonna happen. | 27:09 | |
| I think that's one of the only things | 27:10 | |
| that I talked about later, | 27:13 | |
| and the consensus of being of concern, | 27:16 | |
| was one of the images. | 27:18 | |
| - | Like, for example, the milk and honey ritual, for example. | 27:21 |
| - | The milk and honey ritual didn't bother us, | 27:26 |
| because we knew the difficulties of worshiping ecumenically | 27:29 | |
| and celebrating anything like the Eucharist, | 27:34 | |
| you can't do it in ecumenical circles | 27:38 | |
| because Roman Catholics, for example, | 27:42 | |
| don't celebrate the Eucharist with other denominations. | 27:45 | |
| So we developed and had a ritual (audio warps). | 27:48 | |
| It really was misrepresented totally. | 27:56 | |
| And a picture of me was sent out by the Presbyterian, | 28:00 | |
| I should say, the Presbyterian Layman was the group | 28:05 | |
| that attacked us, attacked us from the beginning. | 28:08 | |
| And they had been trying, | 28:12 | |
| I was on their pages all the time, | 28:15 | |
| being this director of the women's unit | 28:17 | |
| because we were criticized for, | 28:19 | |
| we wrote a lot of materials on women and ordination, | 28:23 | |
| women and language we'd written, | 28:29 | |
| and language about God, language of people of God. | 28:32 | |
| And they were very, very, very critical | 28:37 | |
| of anything like that, | 28:42 | |
| anything that smacked of feminism for them. | 28:44 | |
| So I was already under attack by that group. | 28:47 | |
| That's just what they needed. | 28:53 | |
| They had their cameras there. | 28:54 | |
| They were all ready. | 28:56 | |
| That was the first thing that came out | 28:58 | |
| that was part of their attack plan, | 29:02 | |
| was a picture of me at a round table. | 29:05 | |
| What we were doing was saying goodbye to each other. | 29:09 | |
| They used this to say it was milk and honey | 29:14 | |
| and it was a substitute for communion, | 29:16 | |
| how pagan it was. | 29:19 | |
| That sort of became the head image of Mary Ann, | 29:23 | |
| her pagan group. (chuckles) | 29:28 | |
| And the (mumbles) language, yeah. | 29:31 | |
| I knew this was happening on the last day of the conference. | 29:34 | |
| I knew we were gonna be paying for it. | 29:38 | |
| - | How did you know? | 29:41 |
| - | Well, for one thing, the woman who wrote all the articles | 29:43 |
| and followed me all the time | 29:47 | |
| was in all our meetings that they could get in, | 29:50 | |
| in terms of the women's unit. | 29:53 | |
| Her name was Susan Fire, and she followed me. | 29:55 | |
| She was the one who was assigned | 29:57 | |
| to just tag me all the time. | 30:00 | |
| I had been in conversations with her. | 30:04 | |
| We had not, I wouldn't say we learned to respect each other, | 30:08 | |
| but we acknowledged each other in meetings | 30:14 | |
| and national gatherings. | 30:19 | |
| So she just followed me. | 30:21 | |
| She was following me even to the restroom | 30:22 | |
| at the Re-imagining Conference. | 30:25 | |
| So I knew immediately. | 30:27 | |
| And the people at my table at the conference said, | 30:29 | |
| "Who is this person that keeps | 30:33 | |
| "sticking his camera in our face?" | 30:34 | |
| I said, "Oh, that's a Presbyterian layperson." | 30:39 | |
| You see, we had said we would not have cameras. | 30:44 | |
| We had made that decision not to have video | 30:48 | |
| or anything like that. | 30:53 | |
| So there they were, taking pictures. | 30:54 | |
| So I knew by the end of the conference | 30:56 | |
| in was in deep trouble. | 30:59 | |
| And I knew that they would certainly | 31:01 | |
| not report it as it was. | 31:05 | |
| Then I knew, also, that the gathering of the women | 31:08 | |
| in the conference around the lesbian issue | 31:13 | |
| and the whole issue of homosexuality, | 31:18 | |
| the leadership had called me from the table and said, | 31:22 | |
| "Come meet with us. | 31:28 | |
| "We have to decide what we're gonna do around the issue, | 31:29 | |
| "because a group of lesbians are here | 31:32 | |
| "and want to have some kind of acknowledgement | 31:35 | |
| "that they're here." | 31:37 | |
| So I went to that meeting with the leadership. | 31:40 | |
| I think, I don't know whether Mary Kay or Kathy was there. | 31:45 | |
| I think there was only one of us that was there. | 31:52 | |
| That had been a problem. | 31:55 | |
| It was a kind of hurried up "let's decide what to do." | 31:56 | |
| I had said yeah, we ought, | 32:01 | |
| there should be some kind of recognition. | 32:04 | |
| (audio skips) knew when I did that | 32:09 | |
| it was gonna cause big, big problems from Presbyterians. | 32:11 | |
| But that was okay. | 32:16 | |
| It was the right thing to do. | 32:18 | |
| - | I apologize, apparently I'm getting another call. | 32:21 |
| Hopefully that will stop. | 32:24 | |
| - | Should we hang up and? | 32:26 |
| - | No, no, I think it will stop if I don't answer it. | 32:27 |
| So we should be okay. | 32:29 | |
| I really wanna know, what led you, | 32:31 | |
| 'cause that was quite a decision, | 32:33 | |
| what led you to affirm that decision, about the lesbians? | 32:35 | |
| - | Sorry, say that part again? | 32:39 |
| - | I'm sorry, yes. | 32:40 |
| What led you to say yes to affirming the lesbian presence | 32:41 | |
| at the conference, knowing that it was gonna cause | 32:44 | |
| so many problems? | 32:47 | |
| - | Well, we in the women's unit'd been dealing with the issue | 32:48 |
| and all of the issues of inclusivity, | 32:51 | |
| on very many levels. | 32:56 | |
| I mean, I knew that the women's unit was, | 33:00 | |
| we were together on that issue. | 33:05 | |
| There was never any question about that. | 33:07 | |
| And that recognition of the presence | 33:09 | |
| in a sense was the same thing we as women had experienced | 33:15 | |
| in a male dominated church, in churches, | 33:20 | |
| which was to make us invisible and then we'd go away. | 33:24 | |
| So, you know, we were very much aware | 33:27 | |
| of being able to say, "These are our sisters. | 33:30 | |
| "They are with us, we are all one." | 33:34 | |
| That was important, just from what we were all doing | 33:37 | |
| in the women's ministry in the Presbyterian church. | 33:42 | |
| And the church was coming to that. | 33:46 | |
| But it was pretty slow. | 33:47 | |
| - | Mary Ann, you've written some about this, | 33:51 |
| but I would really love to hear about some of you. | 33:53 | |
| That's an important memory from the '93 Conference. | 33:56 | |
| What were some of your other really strong memories | 33:58 | |
| of being there at that conference? | 34:01 | |
| - | Well, I was very much around a table, | 34:04 |
| just being a part of a group. | 34:08 | |
| I was just thrilled from the minute I walked in. | 34:12 | |
| There were some funny things that happened. | 34:15 | |
| One of the funny things was that Sally, | 34:17 | |
| when I walked into the convention center the first night, | 34:21 | |
| Sally said, "Mary Ann." | 34:26 | |
| I said, "Sally, is there anything you need me to do?" | 34:29 | |
| 'Cause she just looked frantic. | 34:31 | |
| And she said, "Yeah, there is. | 34:33 | |
| "You could do something for me." | 34:35 | |
| She said, "I have a woman who are here from, | 34:37 | |
| "she's, I think, from the University of Michigan. | 34:40 | |
| "She says she will not sit at a table where there's a man. | 34:43 | |
| "And there is a man at her table. | 34:47 | |
| "She came to this conference, she will not share her life. | 34:50 | |
| "You know, she's very threatened by that." | 34:53 | |
| So I said, "Okay, you want me to go talk?" | 34:56 | |
| She said, "Yeah, at the table, you'll see (mumbles). | 34:59 | |
| "Go see who it is, talk to him | 35:02 | |
| "and see if you can get someone else | 35:05 | |
| "to trade with this person | 35:07 | |
| "and put her at another table." | 35:10 | |
| So I walked into the table. | 35:12 | |
| The person at the table was Dick Lundy. | 35:14 | |
| (interviewer laughs) | 35:17 | |
| I said, "Dick, there's a woman here | 35:20 | |
| "who really can't be at a table with a man." | 35:23 | |
| I said, "Could I move you to a table?" | 35:27 | |
| I found Donna Blackstock, who wrote that paper | 35:32 | |
| that was so good, and I said, | 35:34 | |
| "Donna, you need to go to this table. | 35:36 | |
| "Will you exchange with Dick?" | 35:39 | |
| And she said, "Well, yeah." | 35:40 | |
| I said, "Well, that's fine. | 35:43 | |
| "Just do it as quietly as possible." | 35:44 | |
| So thank goodness. | 35:47 | |
| And then I stayed, Donna came to me and she said, | 35:48 | |
| "What was that all about?" | 35:50 | |
| They never figured that out. | 35:52 | |
| (both laugh) | 35:53 | |
| So we succeeded in making everybody happy. | 35:56 | |
| Anyway, it was so funny. | 35:59 | |
| I just couldn't believe it when I went in | 36:00 | |
| and that was Dick sitting there. | 36:02 | |
| - | I get it. | 36:03 |
| - | Sally and I thought that was really | 36:05 |
| the hand of God somehow. | 36:07 | |
| - | Yes, yes. (laughs) | 36:09 |
| - | The conference itself, I was just so thrilled with it. | 36:12 |
| I just couldn't get over it. | 36:15 | |
| Just so incredible. | 36:17 | |
| And Mary Bednarowski was the first speaker. | 36:20 | |
| Oh, I just thought she, I used a lot of her material | 36:23 | |
| in that first speech | 36:27 | |
| when I went to the World Council of Churches later | 36:29 | |
| and was asked to speak at various kinds of things. | 36:32 | |
| I just thought that was | 36:36 | |
| just a marvelous, marvelous beginning. | 36:37 | |
| If you never listened to her speech-- | 36:41 | |
| - | Yes, I have. | 36:43 |
| - | Yeah. | 36:45 |
| - | Yes. | |
| - | So powerful about the women, the Jewish women | 36:46 |
| who were together at the end of her, she talks about this. | 36:51 | |
| I use that a lot in Europe, where it's important. | 36:54 | |
| Worship was incredible. | 37:00 | |
| Sweet Honey in the Rock just blew me away. | 37:01 | |
| And I hadn't known some of those pieces. | 37:05 | |
| Then I knew Nancy Chinn, and I knew we tried | 37:08 | |
| to get her to do the art, | 37:11 | |
| but I didn't know quite how she was gonna do that. | 37:12 | |
| Then, it was just so powerful | 37:15 | |
| to have them doing the art at the same time | 37:18 | |
| when we're all eating. | 37:20 | |
| The whole opening was just, | 37:25 | |
| I thought it was a wonderful blend | 37:27 | |
| of, kind of, the usual women's hymns | 37:29 | |
| that were not that, Jane Parker Hueberger | 37:36 | |
| was a good friend who'd written a lot of hymns | 37:39 | |
| in the Presbyterian church, with the buoyant, | 37:42 | |
| and then the Native American, the drums, | 37:45 | |
| and the four corners, | 37:50 | |
| going back and forth, liturgy. | 37:56 | |
| It was so powerful. | 38:00 | |
| I just was walking on air. | 38:02 | |
| Yeah, it just was, we were all so excited. | 38:05 | |
| And there were 19 of us from the women's staff | 38:09 | |
| and the other staff | 38:13 | |
| at the national level Presbyterian church. | 38:14 | |
| We were all just walking on air. | 38:17 | |
| We were just so excited. | 38:19 | |
| The one thing that I guess I should, yeah. | 38:24 | |
| I had gone to the communication department | 38:29 | |
| of the Presbyterian church and said | 38:31 | |
| to the then-acting director, | 38:34 | |
| "We're having this major conference. | 38:39 | |
| "It's gonna be the major contribution (audio warps) | 38:41 | |
| "and we need two reporters later." | 38:45 | |
| And she said, "Oh, well, I've got two more meetings." | 38:47 | |
| And they were still organizing this department. | 38:53 | |
| She said, "We've got these general assemblies." | 38:56 | |
| One was a General Assembly Council committee, another one. | 39:01 | |
| And she said, "We need to cover those. | 39:04 | |
| "I've already assigned you reporters | 39:06 | |
| "and I don't have any more." | 39:08 | |
| I said, "Look, this is really important. | 39:09 | |
| "You really need to get a reporter there." | 39:12 | |
| She said, "Oh, it's just a women's meeting, isn't it?" | 39:15 | |
| And I said, "It's our most important meeting of the decade. | 39:19 | |
| "It's not just a woman's meeting. | 39:25 | |
| "It's going to be | 39:28 | |
| "the most influential meeting of the decade." | 39:29 | |
| Anyway, she said, "I'll see what I can do," and she didn't. | 39:31 | |
| And that was one of the problems we had as a denomination, | 39:35 | |
| because the only communicators there | 39:38 | |
| was the Presbyterian Layman. | 39:42 | |
| Except that then Presbyterian (audio skips), | 39:44 | |
| who published a magazine and had very competent staff, | 39:47 | |
| realized that they were gonna have to take over | 39:54 | |
| the communication role about the second day in. | 39:56 | |
| So they did right. | 40:01 | |
| They were the best ears and eyes we had, | 40:04 | |
| to be there and to write. | 40:08 | |
| - | I think I missed the name of that, Mary Ann. | 40:10 |
| Who was that again, who took it over? | 40:12 | |
| - | The person who was the editor was Barbara Roche. | 40:16 |
| It was the Magazine of Presbyterian Women. | 40:19 | |
| - | Okay. | 40:23 |
| - | I don't know, (mumbles). | 40:25 |
| She's a good one to talk to, too. | 40:26 | |
| - | Okay, good. | 40:27 |
| - | It's R-O-C-H-E. | 40:29 |
| - | Got it. | 40:31 |
| - | Think that's her name. | 40:32 |
| I can't tell you where she is right now. | 40:33 | |
| She may still be in Louisville. | 40:35 | |
| - | Okay. | 40:37 |
| - | But she did write a number of articles. | 40:38 |
| And she became very out front there | 40:43 | |
| in terms of speaking back to the Layman about issues, | 40:50 | |
| even though that had not been her role, | 40:53 | |
| and speaking to the church. | 40:56 | |
| - | Was she at the conference? | 40:59 |
| - | Oh, yeah. | 41:01 |
| Oh, yeah. | 41:02 | |
| I think there were at least two other reporters | 41:05 | |
| from the Christian women's magazine that were there, too. | 41:09 | |
| It was called Concern at that point. | 41:13 | |
| And then the Episcopal church had a reporter there | 41:19 | |
| that I really depended upon a lot for interpretation later, | 41:22 | |
| as well as the Lutherans. | 41:27 | |
| The ELCA was being formed about that time, too. | 41:29 | |
| The women's directors there and I met several times | 41:35 | |
| because we were, especially after Re-imagining. | 41:42 | |
| - | Mary Ann, now we're talking about the backlash here. | 41:47 |
| I know you were definitely affected personally, | 41:50 | |
| and probably more than anyone. | 41:54 | |
| I know you've written some about this, | 41:55 | |
| but could you talk some about what happened to you | 41:57 | |
| and how it happened? | 42:02 | |
| - | Yeah. | 42:03 |
| (chuckles) It's in and of itself a book. | 42:08 | |
| I knew right away, as I said to you. | 42:13 | |
| I went to have dinner with my family | 42:15 | |
| on the Sunday the conference ended. | 42:18 | |
| Both Dick and his wife Lucille, | 42:23 | |
| Lucille had been one of the dancers in the group. | 42:26 | |
| She said, "(mumbles), Mary Ann. | 42:30 | |
| "This is really gonna cause trouble, isn't it? | 42:33 | |
| "Aren't you gonna be in trouble?" | 42:37 | |
| I said, "Oh yeah, I think so." (laughs) | 42:38 | |
| And the whole family was at lunch and my kids were saying, | 42:42 | |
| "Well, what kind of trouble? | 42:45 | |
| "What do you mean? | 42:47 | |
| "What do you mean, Mom? | 42:49 | |
| "It was a woman's conference." | 42:51 | |
| And right away we said, "Well, there were a lot of things | 42:53 | |
| "that sort of, quote, 'broke the rules,' quote | 42:57 | |
| "for a conference. | 43:01 | |
| "And because I was so involved in forming the conference, | 43:02 | |
| "in the idea of it, yeah, there's gonna be backlash." | 43:08 | |
| And everyone was sitting there, thinking, | 43:14 | |
| "I can't eat any more of this lunch. | 43:16 | |
| "Where is she?" | 43:20 | |
| I just, it's, "They're right. | 43:22 | |
| "And if they recognize this is gonna happen, | 43:25 | |
| "it's gonna be really bad." | 43:28 | |
| So the (mumbles) realized that it was gonna be really, | 43:30 | |
| you know, very difficult. | 43:36 | |
| The group of us met right away, | 43:39 | |
| the 20 of us, or 19 of us who'd been at the conference. | 43:45 | |
| We tried to analyze what could be the biggest problems, | 43:50 | |
| how could we respond? | 43:55 | |
| And then everything began to come in from everywhere. | 43:57 | |
| - | Could you say a little bit more | 44:02 |
| about what you thought at that time, | 44:03 | |
| what you thought the biggest problems would be | 44:04 | |
| and how you would respond? | 44:06 | |
| - | I thought the worship language would be biggest problems. | 44:08 |
| I knew the gathering, the public recognition | 44:11 | |
| of the lesbian group, that kind of affirmation, really, | 44:15 | |
| homosexuality was given would be a problem. | 44:22 | |
| And the worship language, I was concerned about | 44:28 | |
| being able to defend as the liturgical language. | 44:31 | |
| - | Could I ask which-- | 44:40 |
| - | I had been in the group the afternoon | 44:42 |
| that Delores Williams had answered the question on the floor | 44:46 | |
| about the atonement that hit the fan. | 44:52 | |
| It was hard to hear her because she didn't realize | 44:57 | |
| she was mic'd. | 45:00 | |
| She thought she was talking to this person, | 45:02 | |
| just (audio warps) question and answer. | 45:04 | |
| And I knew the minute that came over the mic, | 45:08 | |
| the whole question about the atonement | 45:11 | |
| was gonna be a problem. | 45:13 | |
| But I knew also that Dolores could defend herself. | 45:15 | |
| (laughs) | 45:18 | |
| (mumbles) | 45:20 | |
| So I wasn't, I guessed that one didn't bother me | 45:22 | |
| quite so much. | 45:26 | |
| And the question of the atonement | 45:29 | |
| is always questionable anyway. | 45:31 | |
| And she was right in terms of, | 45:33 | |
| she'd been talking about the communities and churches, | 45:36 | |
| the black communities, the black churches | 45:43 | |
| and the fact that this code is there, is what she said, | 45:46 | |
| "You know, we don't need any more bloody Jesuses." | 45:51 | |
| And she talked about the fact that we didn't need | 45:55 | |
| to victimize and to lend credence to the idea | 45:58 | |
| that we were all victims | 46:03 | |
| in the Christian faith, Christology. | 46:07 | |
| I didn't think so much about it at the time. | 46:14 | |
| But I did think, "Oh-oh." | 46:16 | |
| But then I thought, "Well, that's now a part of her speech." | 46:18 | |
| It wasn't part of her presentation. | 46:21 | |
| But it ended up not mattering (mumbles). | 46:24 | |
| So those are some of the things. | 46:28 | |
| - | Mary Ann, I'm sorry to interrupt. | 46:30 |
| Could you say a little bit more about, | 46:32 | |
| what about the worship language, specifically, | 46:33 | |
| had you concerned? | 46:37 | |
| - | Mostly, the references, the sexual images of women, | 46:38 |
| the women's sexuality, and the part | 46:46 | |
| of what we were proclaiming within the rituals. | 46:51 | |
| Particularly the one about, "We greet the lover's body," | 47:01 | |
| I can't quote it exactly, | 47:08 | |
| "through the juices of our body. | 47:12 | |
| "We take a lover into our," that's, | 47:16 | |
| there's just one, really one image there. | 47:19 | |
| I can find it if you need me to do that. | 47:22 | |
| - | No, I know where that is. | 47:24 |
| Yeah, you're absolutely right, yup, yup. | 47:25 | |
| - | And that was, I remember thinking as we said that, | 47:28 |
| "Wow, that's pretty graphic | 47:32 | |
| "and can be seen to be pornographic rather than liturgical. | 47:35 | |
| "But I still probably could defend it." | 47:41 | |
| On the other hand, I also knew that we were always, | 47:45 | |
| we'd had huge battles in the Presbyterian church. | 47:48 | |
| We'd always won in terms of a woman's right to choose, | 47:53 | |
| women's reproductive freedom. | 47:59 | |
| The women's unit had been right in the middle | 48:01 | |
| of a lot of that. | 48:03 | |
| But we always had always won on those issues. | 48:04 | |
| We'd always taken the very important, | 48:09 | |
| in fact, I'd been in several press conferences | 48:14 | |
| in Washington, at least twice, | 48:20 | |
| where the Methodists, head of the Methodists, | 48:23 | |
| the Jewish women had asked the Presbyterians. | 48:26 | |
| We had talked to those issues. | 48:32 | |
| And we were very much one voice. | 48:34 | |
| So I had the feeling that it was still an uphill battle. | 48:37 | |
| More of an uphill battle today, isn't it? | 48:45 | |
| - | Yeah, uh-huh. | 48:47 |
| - | I think that that really jolted me, I think, | 48:51 |
| the graphic images of woman's sexuality. | 48:55 | |
| I think that's the one, when I was asked nationally | 49:02 | |
| to make an apology for the conference, | 49:06 | |
| I refused, saying, "How can I do that? | 49:09 | |
| "It's the most important conference for women | 49:12 | |
| "as the Christian censorship in the last decade, | 49:17 | |
| "the most important religious event in this country." | 49:20 | |
| And I said, "How can I take that back? | 49:23 | |
| "That doesn't make any sense. | 49:27 | |
| "Why would I apologize? | 49:29 | |
| "That just makes no sense." | 49:31 | |
| But that was the area, I think, as the critics would say, | 49:33 | |
| "Well, if she just would apologize for some of those images, | 49:38 | |
| "if she'd just apologize." | 49:42 | |
| And I just said, "No, I refuse. | 49:45 | |
| "How can I do that? | 49:46 | |
| "That would be to deny the conference." | 49:48 | |
| Yeah. | 49:52 | |
| More graphic than that, let's see. | 49:54 | |
| Well, the Sophia language. | 49:56 | |
| But that was so justifiable I didn't worry about that. | 49:59 | |
| I just felt we were just right on target | 50:02 | |
| with the whole concept of wisdom | 50:09 | |
| and the feminine aspect of God. | 50:13 | |
| So I didn't worry about that. | 50:15 | |
| I felt we could justify that. | 50:17 | |
| It did turn out to be | 50:20 | |
| one of the major critical points later. | 50:21 | |
| I don't know, too, I was brought up on heresy charges. | 50:26 | |
| I don't know if you. | 50:31 | |
| That didn't come out anywhere. | 50:32 | |
| - | Oh. | 50:34 |
| Say some more about that. | 50:35 | |
| - | I was charged with heresy. | 50:37 |
| A local church can do that with a person, | 50:40 | |
| leadership in the church, particularly clergy. | 50:46 | |
| And they thought I was clergy. | 50:49 | |
| So I would have been brought up differently | 50:51 | |
| as an Elder of the church, an elected leader. | 50:54 | |
| But they threw it out finally. | 50:58 | |
| We have a whole court system in the Presbyterian church, | 51:00 | |
| with a permanent judicial commission | 51:04 | |
| that sits on cases of theological question. | 51:06 | |
| And one of the lawyers, you have to be a lawyer, | 51:12 | |
| who came to me and said, "Mary Ann, don't worry about this. | 51:15 | |
| "I think you'll be okay." | 51:20 | |
| And I said, "I'd be glad to talk about my theology. | 51:24 | |
| "I think it would turn out that I'm really quite, | 51:27 | |
| "quite common, not at all crazy." | 51:30 | |
| But it never came to that point. | 51:37 | |
| The charges were thrown out | 51:40 | |
| by the permanent judicial commission. | 51:42 | |
| - | Were they thrown out for technical reason, | 51:44 |
| or what? | 51:46 | |
| - | Yeah, yeah. | |
| It was, it was thrown out because I was a lay person | 51:48 | |
| and because they had not been clear | 51:54 | |
| about what their charges were. | 51:56 | |
| They were trying to use the conference | 51:58 | |
| and they didn't tie it closely enough to my theology | 52:01 | |
| and what they could have charged me, personally, with. | 52:06 | |
| So I got off the hook on that one. | 52:13 | |
| - | Are you allowed to say or remember | 52:15 |
| which local church it was, or is that confidential? | 52:17 | |
| - | It was in Wichita. | 52:19 |
| - | In Wichita? Um-hm. | 52:20 |
| - | I think it's called Westminster Presbyterian Church | 52:22 |
| in Wichita. | 52:24 | |
| - | Okay, yeah. | 52:25 |
| - | Maybe it was First Presbyterian, anyway. | 52:26 |
| And the (mumbles) was to meet there in Wichita, | 52:28 | |
| and the whole conference was going to be evacuated. | 52:31 | |
| So it all sort of worked together. | 52:35 | |
| - | When we left off, and I apologize for that | 52:40 |
| 'cause I wanted you to clarify something, | 52:42 | |
| you were meeting with the 19 people who were there, | 52:43 | |
| the 19 women, and you were kind of addressing it? | 52:46 | |
| - | Yeah, (mumbles) the national staff, | 52:48 |
| my colleagues on national staff in Louisville. | 52:51 | |
| - | Yeah. | 52:53 |
| - | Yeah. | |
| - | And what happened from there? | 52:55 |
| - | Well, they met. | 52:59 |
| As things got hotter and hotter, they met Jim Brown, | 53:02 | |
| who was the Executive Director | 53:05 | |
| of this General Assembly Council. | 53:08 | |
| But I should say, by the time the conference came, | 53:11 | |
| that's the other thing. | 53:14 | |
| By the time, let's see, by the time, | 53:18 | |
| yeah, by the time the conference took place, | 53:24 | |
| I had been made the Associate Director | 53:27 | |
| of the General Assembly Council of the church, | 53:29 | |
| which meant I was the highest ranking woman in the church, | 53:32 | |
| in terms of governing, government. | 53:39 | |
| That's also why I think if I'd been identified | 53:45 | |
| only as director of the women's unit, | 53:53 | |
| it would have been bad enough. | 53:54 | |
| But by then, Jim had moved me up to Associate Director. | 53:56 | |
| I think, in fact I'm quite sure, | 54:06 | |
| that there still would have been lots of criticism, | 54:09 | |
| and lots of criticism of the women's unit, | 54:17 | |
| but not quite as much that that, not quite as much. | 54:20 | |
| It just hit the whole church | 54:28 | |
| because I was seen as the Associate Director. | 54:30 | |
| - | Okay, yeah. | 54:35 |
| - | Yeah, that needs to be said. | 54:38 |
| I keep forgetting that. | 54:39 | |
| - | That's important, yes, yes. | 54:40 |
| Is this, just to get to how you account for the backlash, | 54:42 | |
| that seems to be part of it. | 54:46 | |
| What are your, when you look at it, | 54:47 | |
| what led to that backlash? | 54:49 | |
| - | Well, because of the $66,000 essentially. | 54:53 |
| I think had the church not given the amount of money | 54:58 | |
| from the Bicentennial Fund, | 55:05 | |
| then a lot of the opposition | 55:08 | |
| would have been much, much less. | 55:12 | |
| But the fact that that's our money going to that conference. | 55:14 | |
| I mean, it wasn't necessarily. | 55:18 | |
| There were lots of large gifts given by individuals | 55:20 | |
| as well as churches. | 55:23 | |
| But it was a major, major financial burst, | 55:25 | |
| from the (mumbles). | 55:33 | |
| I think that that really was the big controversy. | 55:36 | |
| And the other part, we ended up having a, | 55:42 | |
| uh, what's the word? | 55:48 | |
| When you do a financial. | 55:51 | |
| We had someone come. | 55:54 | |
| - | An audit? | 55:57 |
| - | An audit of all the money. | 55:58 |
| Sally and I figured that out. | 56:01 | |
| From the beginning, we said we had | 56:05 | |
| to keep the Christian money discrete in the census, | 56:07 | |
| that's being able to trace it. | 56:11 | |
| So we said, "Trace every penny of this $66,000 | 56:14 | |
| "even to the point of saying which people | 56:21 | |
| "had been funded to come," | 56:25 | |
| which, many theologians had been funded. | 56:28 | |
| So that was helpful. | 56:31 | |
| We were never, ever accused of misusing any of the funds. | 56:33 | |
| I think in a way, that worked, | 56:45 | |
| by then, that hardly mattered. | 56:48 | |
| The other thing we did, we hired a woman, | 56:51 | |
| actually a minister, whose husband, I think, | 56:58 | |
| was a presbytery executive, | 57:00 | |
| offered to come and stay and go through all of the money | 57:02 | |
| that the churches were withholding, | 57:08 | |
| which was said to be $4 million. | 57:11 | |
| Well, that turned out not be even a million dollars. | 57:13 | |
| She came and traced all the money, | 57:17 | |
| trying to find out which churches were already | 57:19 | |
| not giving their shares to the national offices. | 57:22 | |
| She was able to find out that it was about $500,000. | 57:29 | |
| It was always questionable | 57:36 | |
| because a lot of the churches were withholding funds, anyway | 57:37 | |
| 'cause they were mad at the church. | 57:40 | |
| But this gave some of them a real reason to do that. | 57:42 | |
| - | Why were they mad at the church? | 57:47 |
| What were the issues already there? | 57:49 | |
| - | Well, we had just joined Southern, Northern churches | 57:51 |
| and the different politics that are involved in that. | 57:56 | |
| So there were lots of issues. | 57:59 | |
| There were different ways of doing things. | 58:04 | |
| When something had to be decided, | 58:11 | |
| when putting all this together, | 58:13 | |
| there were always people who were unhappy, | 58:15 | |
| at the presbytery level or at the, you know, | 58:19 | |
| in local churches, saying, | 58:22 | |
| "Oh, we don't have as much to say as we used to," | 58:24 | |
| or, "Why are we supporting this?" | 58:27 | |
| "What are we doing with that?" | 58:29 | |
| Presbyterians are very feisty | 58:32 | |
| when it comes to anything they disagree. | 58:34 | |
| (both laugh) | 58:36 | |
| We realized it just, in the putting together churches | 58:41 | |
| without any conference, any women's issues, | 58:45 | |
| it was a pretty tricky time, anyway. | 58:49 | |
| And we were not that far into that. | 58:53 | |
| That was part of the dissatisfaction generally. | 58:59 | |
| - | That's really important. | 59:05 |
| That's an important context for it. | 59:06 | |
| - | Yeah, it was very important. | 59:08 |
| And part of it was, we were still making decisions | 59:13 | |
| on how to put it all together. | 59:16 | |
| The Civil War still lives, right? | 59:20 | |
| In terms of the division between Northern attitudes | 59:23 | |
| and Southern attitudes. | 59:28 | |
| - | Right. | 59:29 |
| - | That was part of that whole division | 59:31 |
| and discontent, I'd say, with the national body | 59:35 | |
| that was being formed. | 59:40 | |
| It was still being tried. | 59:43 | |
| - | Yeah, yeah. | 59:44 |
| To get back to your experience, | 59:47 | |
| could you say some more about then what happened to you? | 59:49 | |
| - | Yeah. | 59:54 |
| I started getting awful, awful phone calls. | 59:55 | |
| Let me see what time it is. | 1:00:01 | |
| I don't know. | 1:00:02 | |
| Okay, quarter of eleven. | 1:00:03 | |
| I started right away getting phone calls | 1:00:06 | |
| from people who were upset. | 1:00:10 | |
| And I was trying to answer them first | 1:00:12 | |
| and then realized I couldn't. | 1:00:14 | |
| So I hired an extra secretary. | 1:00:15 | |
| I mean, it was just wonderful. | 1:00:19 | |
| She was an actress in Louisville, theater. | 1:00:21 | |
| (both laugh) | 1:00:26 | |
| She turned out to be perfect. | 1:00:28 | |
| She knew why she'd been hired, | 1:00:33 | |
| but she was willing to take these awful phone calls. | 1:00:34 | |
| And she was to deflect them | 1:00:37 | |
| so that I wouldn't have to take them. | 1:00:39 | |
| She got so good at it, she was so funny. | 1:00:43 | |
| And then every once in a while, she would come and say, | 1:00:46 | |
| I mean, we had 100 a day. | 1:00:49 | |
| (interviewer gasps) | 1:00:52 | |
| And she would come and say, | 1:00:53 | |
| "I think you should take this one. | 1:00:57 | |
| "This sounds like a good person." | 1:00:59 | |
| (interviewer laughs) | 1:01:00 | |
| She really sort of sifted all the phone calls | 1:01:03 | |
| so that I just didn't have to. | 1:01:06 | |
| But many people threatened me. | 1:01:11 | |
| There were church elders who called and said, | 1:01:14 | |
| "You know what I'd do with you if I ever saw you? | 1:01:17 | |
| "I'd take you down in the church basement | 1:01:21 | |
| "and give you what you need." | 1:01:23 | |
| I mean, really awful and vulgar stuff. | 1:01:25 | |
| So it was somewhat frightening in that sense. | 1:01:29 | |
| And she took down what they were concerned about. | 1:01:37 | |
| Jim had all the narrative. | 1:01:40 | |
| That was really helpful. | 1:01:43 | |
| And she was just so funny. | 1:01:47 | |
| I even forget her name, isn't that funny? | 1:01:51 | |
| Anyway, that helped a lot with my being one step removed. | 1:01:53 | |
| The other thing I should say was, | 1:01:58 | |
| all the time I was going through this, | 1:01:59 | |
| the national staff was so supportive. | 1:02:01 | |
| I would come in some mornings, | 1:02:06 | |
| I'm still getting (mumbles) about it, | 1:02:08 | |
| we'd come in and there'd be a rose on my desk, | 1:02:10 | |
| or a card or something like a hot cup of coffee. | 1:02:14 | |
| Most of the time I didn't even know who'd done it. | 1:02:25 | |
| So it was men, as well. | 1:02:28 | |
| In fact I got a lot of support | 1:02:31 | |
| from my male colleagues, as well. | 1:02:32 | |
| But my (mumbles), the thing I can remember back is, | 1:02:37 | |
| I'm taking a shower in the morning. | 1:02:42 | |
| I'd feel like had a black cloud over my head. | 1:02:44 | |
| If I could just stand there, wash long enough, | 1:02:46 | |
| the black cloud would be removed. | 1:02:49 | |
| And I'd come out every day and think, | 1:02:52 | |
| "Oh, it's still there." | 1:02:54 | |
| I know that seems so simple and so, | 1:02:56 | |
| you know, kind of naive, of course. | 1:03:02 | |
| But that was one way of dealing with what was so graphic. | 1:03:04 | |
| You know, awful to have to deal with all of that. | 1:03:12 | |
| But I must say, my colleagues on the national staff, | 1:03:15 | |
| I think all of them were supportive. | 1:03:20 | |
| Some left, didn't understand, | 1:03:26 | |
| still thought women were, you know, it was much too. | 1:03:29 | |
| I know a lot of them told me, some of them, | 1:03:34 | |
| I shouldn't say all of 'em, | 1:03:37 | |
| felt it was just over the hill, too far. | 1:03:38 | |
| And then I should say, the General Assembly Council | 1:03:43 | |
| did an evaluation of me, of my work as Associate Director. | 1:03:47 | |
| It was an effort to say, "Should we fire Mary Ann or not?" | 1:03:56 | |
| (chuckles) Well, the first thing was, | 1:04:04 | |
| "Should we do a major evaluation on Mary Ann Lundy?" | 1:04:06 | |
| It came out 33 to 32. | 1:04:09 | |
| - | Wow. | 1:04:12 |
| - | (laughs) So they decided they couldn't do that, | 1:04:13 |
| wouldn't be an evaluation. | 1:04:17 | |
| But then the General Assembly had a taskforce | 1:04:18 | |
| to evaluate the whole Re-imagining and my role. | 1:04:23 | |
| That came, I had already been fired | 1:04:31 | |
| right before that General Assembly. | 1:04:35 | |
| But I insisted on going. | 1:04:37 | |
| I said, "They're gonna have to face me." | 1:04:38 | |
| - | Wow. | 1:04:41 |
| - | The Assembly was very positive. | 1:04:43 |
| It said, this was an ecumenical conference. | 1:04:47 | |
| That was the other thing being just so frustrating, | 1:04:49 | |
| for Presbyterians to act like this was their conference | 1:04:54 | |
| and not an ecumenical conference. | 1:04:59 | |
| And we'd always supported ecumenical gatherings, | 1:05:02 | |
| very strongly. | 1:05:07 | |
| A part of the theology of being Presbyterian. | 1:05:10 | |
| That was very frustrating, because people would write | 1:05:14 | |
| as though we owned the conference, | 1:05:17 | |
| it was our conference, Presbyterians. | 1:05:21 | |
| And we just had to keep saying over and over and over, | 1:05:24 | |
| and we wrote information sheets | 1:05:26 | |
| that we sent out to all the presbyteries, | 1:05:28 | |
| dealing with Sophia and the worship language. | 1:05:31 | |
| I have some. | 1:05:35 | |
| If you don't have any of those, you should see | 1:05:36 | |
| one of those, too, that we sent out. | 1:05:39 | |
| - | Thank you. | 1:05:42 |
| - | Jim Brown is here in Santa Fe. | 1:05:46 |
| We both live here now. | 1:05:47 | |
| - | Oh. | 1:05:49 |
| - | He was the Executive Director. | 1:05:50 |
| He was very supportive of me | 1:05:55 | |
| and tried hard to kind of keep it together | 1:05:58 | |
| in the national church, | 1:06:02 | |
| until he finally decided that it was | 1:06:04 | |
| too much of a division in the church. | 1:06:07 | |
| It was gonna split the church, my staying. | 1:06:10 | |
| So he came, and we issued a joint statement. | 1:06:15 | |
| Under personnel policies of the Presbyterian church, | 1:06:20 | |
| I couldn't say I'd been fired. | 1:06:22 | |
| We said, I forget what this, but it was related to, | 1:06:25 | |
| Mary Ann Lundy has found she can no longer be | 1:06:32 | |
| effective in her position as Associate Director. | 1:06:37 | |
| That was a very short statement that was issued. | 1:06:41 | |
| Then everybody wanted to know, was she fired or wasn't she? | 1:06:45 | |
| Did she just leave? | 1:06:49 | |
| So that became a whole conversation | 1:06:52 | |
| in the Presbyterian church. | 1:06:55 | |
| Did she leave, was she? (vocalizes growling) | 1:06:57 | |
| That was very hard for all of us, | 1:07:01 | |
| 'cause we just couldn't say. | 1:07:02 | |
| - | How did you feel at that point about that? | 1:07:07 |
| - | Oh, awful. | 1:07:10 |
| I was devastated. | 1:07:11 | |
| Because Jim had tried over and over again, | 1:07:14 | |
| and I think really earnestly, to say, | 1:07:18 | |
| "She's a good colleague, she's done her job." | 1:07:20 | |
| My job was church-wide partnerships | 1:07:24 | |
| between the presbyteries, the senates, the whole church, | 1:07:28 | |
| the structures of the church. | 1:07:35 | |
| That was my job, was working on partnerships of funding, | 1:07:37 | |
| programming, nationally. | 1:07:42 | |
| And I had meetings that I was responsible for, | 1:07:45 | |
| I think about four times a year. | 1:07:49 | |
| So he was really trying to say, | 1:07:53 | |
| and the 16 senate executives, who were all men, | 1:07:59 | |
| voted in support of me | 1:08:03 | |
| and said, "You cannot fire her. | 1:08:05 | |
| "This is not about the work she's done | 1:08:08 | |
| "or the work the church is doing. | 1:08:11 | |
| "This is the right-wing attacks." | 1:08:13 | |
| That came about three weeks before then, | 1:08:17 | |
| he came back from a presbytery meeting on the left coast, | 1:08:22 | |
| a very conservative presbytery, | 1:08:26 | |
| and said, "It's gonna be worse, it's gonna get worse. | 1:08:29 | |
| "You've got to go." | 1:08:34 | |
| So that was it, and I was just devastated. | 1:08:36 | |
| But, you know, | 1:08:42 | |
| in the long term, well, you know, | 1:08:46 | |
| I knew it was a possibility, of course. | 1:08:47 | |
| At the same time, I was doing all these things. | 1:08:53 | |
| I was being interviewed by ABC. | 1:08:55 | |
| They did a thing, I happened to be away | 1:08:58 | |
| in Florida for a weekend. | 1:09:01 | |
| So there's a film of that, on a beach in Florida | 1:09:05 | |
| with one of my oldest YWCA friends. | 1:09:08 | |
| It got a lot of more comment because the right wing said | 1:09:15 | |
| I was just trying to get sympathy, | 1:09:20 | |
| that I just looked bad because I was trying to get sympathy. | 1:09:22 | |
| (gasps) Rita Nakashima Brock did a good job on that one. | 1:09:27 | |
| She took up that cause. | 1:09:30 | |
| Then Ted Koppel did a thing, | 1:09:33 | |
| but that was, I think, with Rita. | 1:09:35 | |
| Oh, and Susan Fire, the one that had attacked me. | 1:09:39 | |
| Then I was, by PBS at General Assembly, | 1:09:42 | |
| which was really hard | 1:09:46 | |
| because there's so much stuff going on. | 1:09:47 | |
| And Richard, can't think of his name, | 1:09:50 | |
| he was the religion person. | 1:09:53 | |
| He was a Roman Catholic. | 1:09:57 | |
| I had a hard time helping him understand | 1:10:00 | |
| what the conference was about. | 1:10:02 | |
| Remember being very frustrated about it. | 1:10:04 | |
| So it came out to be a very short piece, | 1:10:07 | |
| because I hadn't done very well | 1:10:11 | |
| and I certainly hadn't helped him. | 1:10:12 | |
| I didn't think I'd helped him understand this at all. | 1:10:15 | |
| It was a really hard time. | 1:10:19 | |
| Anyway, then, let's see. | 1:10:23 | |
| Finally I was gone. | 1:10:27 | |
| Had we gotten to that part? | 1:10:30 | |
| Yeah, we have. | 1:10:31 | |
| - | Earlier, you had said something, | 1:10:34 |
| would you say something | 1:10:35 | |
| about that small Burgess paper that came out? | 1:10:36 | |
| - | Yes. | 1:10:39 |
| That went to all the, it went to all the presbyteries. | 1:10:40 | |
| It didn't go to all the churches. | 1:10:45 | |
| I think it went to all the presbyteries. | 1:10:47 | |
| It made some statements. | 1:10:54 | |
| She said, you read Donna (audio skips) last paper | 1:10:55 | |
| that refuted it? | 1:10:59 | |
| - | Yes. | 1:11:00 |
| - | I was just furious at them, | 1:11:01 |
| because they didn't show it to me ahead of time. | 1:11:07 | |
| I didn't even know it had gone out | 1:11:09 | |
| until I learned about it from local churches, | 1:11:11 | |
| local presbyteries. | 1:11:15 | |
| It just was so unfair, 'cause it gave none of us a chance, | 1:11:21 | |
| none of us on the national staff, their colleagues, | 1:11:25 | |
| to say anything. | 1:11:30 | |
| And it was just wrong in some places. | 1:11:32 | |
| They really had done a, no. | 1:11:37 | |
| I still don't know what the motivation was. | 1:11:40 | |
| - | What was their role? | 1:11:45 |
| I mean, they had a position? | 1:11:46 | |
| - | They were on the national staff in theology and worship. | 1:11:50 |
| They said, "Don't (mumbles) this theologians | 1:11:54 | |
| "that knew better than the rest of us." | 1:11:56 | |
| - | When you said they got some of it wrong, | 1:11:59 |
| do you recall what it was that they got wrong? | 1:12:01 | |
| - | If you read Donna's paper, I was reading that yesterday, | 1:12:04 |
| about, well, it just, the nuances of the Sophia, | 1:12:08 | |
| I mean, they knew better than some of the things | 1:12:17 | |
| they said in their paper. | 1:12:19 | |
| I'm sorry, I'd have to have the paper in my hand. | 1:12:21 | |
| It was the theology. | 1:12:29 | |
| (sighs) No, I don't know any more. | 1:12:32 | |
| I'd have to go back and look. | 1:12:35 | |
| - | Sure. | 1:12:36 |
| But you would say that Donna really gave a good response | 1:12:37 | |
| that you would agree with to their? | 1:12:41 | |
| - | Oh yeah, oh yeah. | 1:12:43 |
| Donna's paper was sound theologically. | 1:12:46 | |
| She'd been at the conference. | 1:12:48 | |
| In several places, I think in three places, she said, | 1:12:50 | |
| "They didn't understand because they weren't even there. | 1:12:55 | |
| "They didn't even hear those words." | 1:12:58 | |
| She felt that it needed to be critiqued | 1:13:03 | |
| by somebody who was there. | 1:13:05 | |
| So that was a part of her. | 1:13:10 | |
| And then just taking things too far in some cases. | 1:13:13 | |
| I'm sorry, I'd really need to go back and-- | 1:13:18 | |
| - | Sure, oh, understandable. | 1:13:20 |
| Yes, yeah. | 1:13:22 | |
| You were saying, did you wanna pick up | 1:13:24 | |
| where you were leaving off there, about the firing? | 1:13:26 | |
| - | Yeah. | 1:13:30 |
| Yeah, well, it was confidential. | 1:13:31 | |
| I couldn't talk about it. | 1:13:34 | |
| I was invited at the General Assembly to speak | 1:13:36 | |
| at the PHEWA, which is a, I guess it was (mumbles), | 1:13:38 | |
| yeah, Presbyterian Health Education Welfare, | 1:13:43 | |
| it's been one of the radical groups, social justice. | 1:13:48 | |
| I really thought, "This is a chance for me to say something, | 1:13:52 | |
| "but I can't" (audio skips) | 1:13:55 | |
| the personality, the personnel policy. | 1:13:58 | |
| I had signed a statement that I would not talk about it. | 1:14:02 | |
| So finally I thought of something. | 1:14:06 | |
| It was a whole set of things saying, | 1:14:08 | |
| "Do you believe," let's see, how can I say it? | 1:14:14 | |
| I said it was questions. | 1:14:18 | |
| Oh, oh, "Check your assumptions." | 1:14:21 | |
| I'd had a colleague, and she (audio warps) saying, | 1:14:23 | |
| "Mary Ann, check your assumptions." | 1:14:27 | |
| Every time we'd get in an argument, | 1:14:30 | |
| "Check your assumptions." | 1:14:31 | |
| So I thought, "A-ha, check your assumption | 1:14:32 | |
| "that every person who stands up for gay persons | 1:14:35 | |
| "is gay themselves. | 1:14:39 | |
| "Check your assumption," and I just wrote down | 1:14:41 | |
| a whole line of things. | 1:14:43 | |
| It was, "Check your assumption | 1:14:45 | |
| "that Mary Ann Lundy was fired." | 1:14:47 | |
| And it just sort of, oh, (laughs) | 1:14:51 | |
| it turned out to be a good way to be able to say, | 1:14:55 | |
| "Okay, just question that." | 1:14:58 | |
| - | Because, would you, just to clarify. | 1:15:04 |
| What would you say about that, that you were fired? | 1:15:07 | |
| - | I couldn't say anything. | 1:15:11 |
| - | Yeah. | 1:15:12 |
| But that was the truth, but you weren't allowed to say it. | 1:15:13 | |
| - | That's right. | 1:15:16 |
| - | Yeah. | 1:15:17 |
| - | Yeah. | |
| That little statement that said, | 1:15:18 | |
| "James Brown has issued a statement today | 1:15:22 | |
| "that Mary Ann Lundy is no longer able | 1:15:25 | |
| "to carry out the duties of her," | 1:15:30 | |
| I've got the statement somewhere. | 1:15:34 | |
| Is no longer able to carry out her ministry | 1:15:37 | |
| or her leadership in a way, (stutters) | 1:15:43 | |
| in a way that makes it effective, or that way. | 1:15:50 | |
| I remember the word "effective" on that, too. | 1:15:52 | |
| I can find the statement. | 1:15:55 | |
| - | Oh, I've seen the statement. | 1:15:57 |
| I can go back and look at that, Mary Ann, thank you. | 1:15:59 | |
| - | It was a pretty neutral statement. | 1:16:01 |
| We were both crying while the statement was issued. | 1:16:07 | |
| (both talk over each other) | 1:16:09 | |
| Pretty poignant, yeah. | 1:16:11 | |
| - | Wow. | 1:16:12 |
| What did you think of the report | 1:16:13 | |
| that came out of the General Assembly about-- | 1:16:15 | |
| - | I actually thought it was good. | 1:16:17 |
| I thought they tried to be as neutral as possible. | 1:16:22 | |
| The person who chaired that committee | 1:16:28 | |
| is the editor of the Christian Sentry now. | 1:16:30 | |
| Shawn, this is so funny. | 1:16:34 | |
| He was just here and I've blocked his name. | 1:16:37 | |
| Anyway. | 1:16:41 | |
| I thought they did well. | 1:16:43 | |
| There were some things I wished | 1:16:45 | |
| they had stressed a bit more, I remember, at the time. | 1:16:46 | |
| But when the report came out and it said | 1:16:50 | |
| that we are ecumenical, this was an ecumenical event, | 1:16:53 | |
| was not a Presbyterian event. | 1:16:57 | |
| It talked about that they had found nothing | 1:17:00 | |
| in my leadership to be, | 1:17:03 | |
| I don't know what their term was, | 1:17:10 | |
| oh, that we should affirm the people who were there. | 1:17:14 | |
| It was trying to say there was nothing, | 1:17:22 | |
| the fact that it was an ecumenical event meant | 1:17:25 | |
| we didn't control it | 1:17:27 | |
| and that we should continue to be involved | 1:17:29 | |
| in ecumenical events and continue to sponsor them. | 1:17:33 | |
| The only question I think it raised | 1:17:38 | |
| about whether we could affirm (audio skips) | 1:17:41 | |
| that happened at the conference. | 1:17:47 | |
| Then, they did say, | 1:17:50 | |
| there was something also related to them. | 1:17:52 | |
| I remember being (audio skips) the door, | 1:17:54 | |
| talking to the Layman about what they had said | 1:17:57 | |
| that was incorrect, and their wanting to assassinate | 1:18:00 | |
| the people who'd been there. | 1:18:06 | |
| And I had hoped they'd be a little more. | 1:18:08 | |
| Later, they set up a fund for having conversations | 1:18:12 | |
| with the Presbyterian Layman. | 1:18:16 | |
| I think they had three conferences | 1:18:22 | |
| and then they gave up on it, | 1:18:25 | |
| because you just couldn't talk with 'em, | 1:18:26 | |
| was about the differences in the church | 1:18:29 | |
| and what they were critical of. | 1:18:32 | |
| It was just a fiasco, really, | 1:18:35 | |
| because they would not agree | 1:18:38 | |
| to have open conversation, really. | 1:18:42 | |
| And (mumbles) Layman has folded now. | 1:18:45 | |
| It started in 1952, when Eugene Carson Blake | 1:18:48 | |
| was the stated clerk of our church. | 1:18:53 | |
| He was later the secretary of the World Council of Churches. | 1:18:57 | |
| He had integrated the park in Baltimore, | 1:19:02 | |
| and that's when the Layman started its great mission | 1:19:04 | |
| of taking down national staff. (huffs) | 1:19:08 | |
| - | Really? Oh. | 1:19:12 |
| I didn't, go ahead. | 1:19:13 | |
| - | It started, it was a kind of spurious intent. | 1:19:17 |
| And it was always aimed at national staff. | 1:19:22 | |
| - | There was a line in the report | 1:19:27 |
| about not being in line with reform theology? | 1:19:29 | |
| - | Yeah, yeah, which I think was very unfortunate. | 1:19:34 |
| In the report that came back. | 1:19:39 | |
| - | Right. | 1:19:41 |
| - | Yeah. | |
| It said that everything in an ecumenical event, | 1:19:44 | |
| when they spoke to the report, | 1:19:47 | |
| everything in an ecumenical (mumbles) | 1:19:50 | |
| will not be in line with reform theology. | 1:19:52 | |
| But I can't remember, I think that was, | 1:19:56 | |
| yeah, that was the line that I never quite figured out | 1:19:59 | |
| what they were talking about. | 1:20:02 | |
| Yeah. | 1:20:06 | |
| Do you have that in front of you? | 1:20:07 | |
| Can you? | 1:20:08 | |
| - | I don't, but I could get that later. | 1:20:09 |
| - | Yeah, and I can find it, too. | 1:20:11 |
| I just don't have it now. | 1:20:13 | |
| And I just remember, I remember that somebody took a picture | 1:20:15 | |
| of some of us in the national staff hugging each other | 1:20:19 | |
| and crying when that report came in. | 1:20:23 | |
| The sad part of that whole thing was, | 1:20:26 | |
| after the report came in, | 1:20:28 | |
| and I learned this later, | 1:20:33 | |
| at a conference actually at Vanderbilt, | 1:20:34 | |
| there had been three commissioners with the General Assembly | 1:20:39 | |
| who wanted to thank, to issue a statement | 1:20:45 | |
| about gratitude for my leadership | 1:20:49 | |
| in the Presbyterian church, | 1:20:51 | |
| and they were told they could do that. | 1:20:53 | |
| Particularly one was a professor at a seminary. | 1:20:58 | |
| I met with him later and he was the one who told me | 1:21:08 | |
| that they had worked this out, | 1:21:10 | |
| and they were told this would be fine, | 1:21:13 | |
| that they could issue the statement | 1:21:16 | |
| just thanking me for my leadership | 1:21:19 | |
| and stating what my leadership had been. | 1:21:22 | |
| Every time they stood up, they were called out of order. | 1:21:26 | |
| So they never did, they were never able to get | 1:21:30 | |
| that overture or that statement of gratitude | 1:21:33 | |
| onto the floor. | 1:21:37 | |
| The conference I was in later with Ron Peters, | 1:21:39 | |
| he was furious, just furious, still, months after this | 1:21:41 | |
| because he's an African-American, (mumbles) professor | 1:21:46 | |
| in a Pittsburgh seminary. | 1:21:50 | |
| He felt like this was another case where women | 1:21:54 | |
| and people of color were counted out. | 1:21:58 | |
| It's kind of a private matter, | 1:22:04 | |
| 'cause people don't know very much about it. | 1:22:06 | |
| But I was really sad about that. | 1:22:08 | |
| Not for me, but for him. | 1:22:11 | |
| - | Mary Ann, I'm aware that we've been talking | 1:22:15 |
| for a while now. | 1:22:17 | |
| You have generously offered to continue the conversation. | 1:22:18 | |
| Should we talk, I mean communicate, by email | 1:22:21 | |
| and set up another time? | 1:22:24 | |
| Because this is-- | 1:22:25 | |
| - | Let's do that. | |
| - | So important and there's so much here. | 1:22:27 |
| If you're willing to talk again, | 1:22:29 | |
| that would be such a gift. | 1:22:31 | |
| - | Sure, I'm willing to do that, sure. | 1:22:32 |
| - | Good. | 1:22:34 |
| - | In fact do you wanna try another Monday? | 1:22:35 |
| - | Yes, that would work great, sure. | 1:22:37 |
| - | Hang on, I think I can do it the 23rd, | 1:22:39 |
| 'cause we'd said that I'd do two different, yeah. | 1:22:41 | |
| So I could do that the 23rd. | 1:22:46 | |
| - | Good. | 1:22:48 |
| - | Let's try for 10 o'clock. | 1:22:50 |
| - | 10 o'clock, which time? | 1:22:51 |
| - | The trouble, that's noon (mumbles) you. | 1:22:53 |
| You'll have to bring a sandwich. | 1:22:54 | |
| - | Okay, I'm fine with that. | 1:22:56 |
| Actually, I'm only an hour ahead, | 1:22:57 | |
| so it'd probably be 11 my time, is that right? | 1:22:59 | |
| - | Pardon? | 1:23:03 |
| - | I'm sorry. | 1:23:04 |
| - | Yeah, we're just an hour difference. | 1:23:04 |
| - | Yeah. | 1:23:06 |
| So 11 o'clock my time, 10 o'clock your time. | 1:23:07 | |
| - | That would be great. | 1:23:10 |
| I'm almost losing my voice here. | 1:23:11 | |
| - | Yes, it's been a lot. | 1:23:13 |
| - | Funny, too, there's still so much emotion in this. | 1:23:15 |
| - | Oh, yes. | 1:23:18 |
| - | I'm always surprised at that. | 1:23:19 |
| - | Yeah. | 1:23:21 |
| - | It's been 20 years, 20-some years, my goodness. | 1:23:23 |
| - | But it was huge, for you and for everyone. | 1:23:26 |
| Yeah, especially for you. | 1:23:29 | |
| - | Yeah, yeah. | 1:23:31 |
| Okay, good. | 1:23:33 | |
| The 23rd at 10 o'clock. | 1:23:35 | |
| - | Excellent. | 1:23:37 |
| Thank you so much. | 1:23:38 | |
| - | I have your phone number | |
| if anything happens, so okay. | 1:23:39 | |
| - | Thank you so much, Mary Ann, I really appreciate it. | 1:23:41 |
| - | I'm glad, thank you very much. | 1:23:44 |
| - | Thank you. | 1:23:45 |
| Bye-bye. | 1:23:46 | |
| - | Bye-bye. |
| - | And we are now recording, Maryanne we are picking | 0:01 |
| up the conversation, thank you so much for your time. | 0:04 | |
| And we, I thought it would be helpful to just finish | 0:07 | |
| up with looking toward the future. | 0:10 | |
| We've talked about the past but what, as you look | 0:13 | |
| to the future, what do you think is the greatest legacy | 0:17 | |
| of the Reimagining Community? | 0:21 | |
| - | Well in many ways, I think it wasn't so much what | 0:23 |
| was said, even though, of course that's crucial | 0:27 | |
| and most important but I think, as one of my colleagues | 0:32 | |
| in of the time, Reimagining showed us a way of being church, | 0:37 | |
| not of doing church but of being. | 0:46 | |
| Relationships, attitudes, a way of looking at the | 0:50 | |
| past, a way of incorporating the past into the present | 0:57 | |
| and the future, a way of helping us be inclusive. | 1:00 | |
| It showed us how to be these things. | 1:08 | |
| It didn't talk about being church, it didn't talk about | 1:10 | |
| theology, it was a living, doing of theology. | 1:16 | |
| And that's why it was so threatening to the church | 1:21 | |
| in many ways because it was so living and it was changing. | 1:24 | |
| By implication, the structures, the worship, liberty | 1:35 | |
| and so it wasn't, it wasn't just something that you | 1:44 | |
| talk about intellectually and let it go. | 1:49 | |
| It was living the lives of those who are there. | 1:52 | |
| And they were committed to it and committed to bringing | 1:57 | |
| it back and living in our midst, in our communities | 2:01 | |
| wherever we were and in many ways that was why it was so, | 2:04 | |
| the impact was so great in local communities. | 2:10 | |
| I think the other thing that was so important was that | 2:16 | |
| it was international, it was so huge and so you couldn't | 2:20 | |
| say, oh, this is just a few women | 2:26 | |
| in a corner doing something. | 2:29 | |
| There were women there from all denominations, | 2:30 | |
| all parts of the Christian faith plus non-Christians, | 2:34 | |
| Jewish persons, some Muslim and people from all over | 2:41 | |
| the world so everybody could see it as going back | 2:47 | |
| into all corners of the world. | 2:51 | |
| And I think that was very threatening to the structures. | 2:54 | |
| In many ways, that is, has been what the legacy has been, | 2:58 | |
| it seems to me, it's what's remembered. | 3:03 | |
| The controversy's remembered but the controversy has stayed. | 3:06 | |
| I mean, we've had more theological discussion of wisdom, | 3:10 | |
| Sofia, what did that mean, what does that mean now. | 3:16 | |
| There's still books being written in terms of my own | 3:19 | |
| denomination that would never have happened without that. | 3:23 | |
| So in a sense, Reimagining's impulses, Reimagining's, | 3:26 | |
| I don't want to make it sound too academic. | 3:36 | |
| But the insights, didn't just live for women, | 3:40 | |
| they were really lived out and lived into the structures of | 3:47 | |
| churches so I think that's what's made the difference. | 3:54 | |
| And I think that because it became a living community, | 3:58 | |
| Reimagining, that also had a huge impact on the, | 4:03 | |
| it didn't die with end of the conference. | 4:07 | |
| It began to live then, so that the conference is | 4:11 | |
| an impetus for other insights | 4:15 | |
| and changes and controversies that happen. | 4:20 | |
| - | Oh that's great, what, as you look around today, | 4:23 |
| what does Reimagining mean today, what needs to be | 4:28 | |
| reimagined, what is being reimagined? | 4:31 | |
| - | Well, I think in many ways, I guess I need to speak | 4:36 |
| only for my own denomination but it's become much more, | 4:42 | |
| much less courageous than it ever was before. | 4:48 | |
| And I think Reimagining is the community which is starting | 4:52 | |
| again can become living and wide spread which it has | 4:59 | |
| the possibility of being, then I think we may yet | 5:06 | |
| be able to revive churches that are in so many ways dying. | 5:13 | |
| Mainline denominations that don't speak at all on the | 5:18 | |
| issues of culture and social justice, our voices are | 5:24 | |
| very much dimmed in terms of what they mean | 5:28 | |
| or whether they're listened to and I think that | 5:33 | |
| it's while it's history, in some ways. | 5:43 | |
| People say, oh yes, I know you, you were involved | 5:45 | |
| with Reimagining, nevertheless, there are still impulses | 5:47 | |
| of change and revision, I guess revision, rethinking | 5:58 | |
| that I find in the local churches. | 6:07 | |
| But it's not fearful, it's not awful. | 6:09 | |
| If we really look or ask questions about some of these | 6:14 | |
| things, particularly as women do it. | 6:17 | |
| Now I think the other thing that I don't know | 6:20 | |
| and I am hoping that the | 6:23 | |
| Reimagining Community is revitalized | 6:24 | |
| again that we'll keep in touch with all those small | 6:27 | |
| communities of women that were the result of Reimagining. | 6:34 | |
| Women found each other and went back and formed small | 6:39 | |
| five or six maybe, women, who met, who read, who studied, | 6:48 | |
| who looked at their churches, their congregations | 6:53 | |
| and often the real center of their lives, religious | 6:58 | |
| lives were in these small communities of women. | 7:06 | |
| I'd love to know if they still exist. | 7:09 | |
| I'd love to know how many of those met together, | 7:13 | |
| knew each other in different ways, how much they | 7:18 | |
| shared across denominational lines. | 7:21 | |
| Because we knew from the quarterly publications | 7:24 | |
| that the Reimagining Community in Minneapolis kept doing | 7:29 | |
| for 10 years, we had some handle on where they were, | 7:32 | |
| where these little communities were. | 7:38 | |
| I think we didn't keep as probably as accurate a | 7:39 | |
| record as we should have of those communities. | 7:43 | |
| And it would be, I don't know how we'd find them now | 7:47 | |
| but we've got the names of all the people who | 7:50 | |
| went to the conference so if they're still alive, | 7:53 | |
| 20 some years later, it might | 7:57 | |
| be very interesting to find out. | 8:00 | |
| - | Just so you know, yeah, I actually am still | 8:03 |
| part of a Reimagining small group and I know another woman | 8:05 | |
| who is but I think, those are the only | 8:08 | |
| two that we know of at the moment. | 8:11 | |
| - | Really? | 8:14 |
| - | Yeah. | |
| There was an active one in Sante Fe I know, at one point | 8:15 | |
| but I don't think, most. | 8:18 | |
| - | Yeah, we've had, well, I came here. | 8:20 |
| Sante Fe were one of the larger groups. | 8:21 | |
| I think there were 10 or 12 women who came from here | 8:24 | |
| and we studied for another 10 years probably. | 8:28 | |
| - | Wow, wow. | 8:33 |
| - | We're not still going right now but yeah. | 8:35 |
| But that group saw itself as extremely important | 8:38 | |
| to following up on Reimagining and staying alive | 8:44 | |
| and bringing to the church it's submissions. | 8:48 | |
| Because the church is very receptive to the Reimagining. | 8:52 | |
| Yeah, the learnings and that group, the women who | 8:57 | |
| read theology together is still doing theology in | 9:04 | |
| different configurations but it would be interesting | 9:09 | |
| to know where they, and I travel sometimes I'm in the | 9:14 | |
| church or in churches or local congregations, | 9:19 | |
| somebody will say oh yeah, I was at Reimagining | 9:21 | |
| and uh huh, we're still or groups of us. | 9:25 | |
| And the other significant thing I'd like to know | 9:29 | |
| is what's happened to the Roman Catholic Women | 9:32 | |
| who came in groups and they were parts of these local, | 9:37 | |
| small groups of women, I'd love to know if those were | 9:44 | |
| still happening, I think we still have a lot of follow | 9:47 | |
| up to do, I mean, we think we ended but. | 9:51 | |
| (laughing) | 9:54 | |
| - | I think you're right, ya know. | 9:57 |
| Is there anything else that we haven't discussed | 10:00 | |
| that you would like to add, Maryanne? | 10:02 | |
| - | I, well, one of the other things I'd like to know | 10:09 |
| is what happened in the seminaries afterward. | 10:13 | |
| Because I think the most impact that took place | 10:16 | |
| on women who were up for nomination in the various | 10:19 | |
| denominations and I don't know whether it was true | 10:22 | |
| in other denominations but in the Presbyterian Church, | 10:26 | |
| those women were really given a hard time since | 10:31 | |
| they came up for their oral ordination exams. | 10:36 | |
| And they were harassed about it in some cases. | 10:41 | |
| They weren't sure that they were going to make it through. | 10:46 | |
| Just because in some cases, they were, the questioning | 10:50 | |
| went on for hours and hours. | 10:56 | |
| - | Wow. | |
| - | It really was just like an inquisition. | 10:59 |
| And I think in most cases, they were finally ordained | 11:04 | |
| but they surely had to have stalwart backbone if they | 11:10 | |
| succeeded because they, men and others who would, | 11:17 | |
| had gone to Seminaries and graduated and who had followed | 11:24 | |
| a kind of regular tract were not given the same kind | 11:30 | |
| of inquisition or questioning or really critical. | 11:37 | |
| It was very, very unfair and I felt for those young women | 11:43 | |
| because in many cases, they didn't have a community as such. | 11:47 | |
| They were from Seminaries all over the country. | 11:51 | |
| - | Maryanne, do you know if the women were, | 11:56 |
| how did they know they had been to Reimagining? | 11:59 | |
| Did that become a question? | 12:01 | |
| - | They asked them right away. | 12:02 |
| - | They did. | |
| - | Every women who came up for ordination in the Presbyterian | 12:04 |
| Church, the year following Reimagining was asked that. | 12:06 | |
| - | Wow. | 12:11 |
| - | I have no doubts | |
| about that, I know that many of the Presbyterians | 12:12 | |
| grilled them about what they thought about the conference | 12:17 | |
| before they ever even began the ordination questions. | 12:20 | |
| - | Wow. | 12:23 |
| - | And when you talk to | |
| Rebecca Todd Peters, she'll know about that because | 12:25 | |
| she was one of those people who was, who came up | 12:29 | |
| for ordination in I think, North Carolina. | 12:33 | |
| And she, because she keeps in touch with a lot of | 12:36 | |
| those young women, theologians, I think she'll know. | 12:39 | |
| - | Yes. | 12:44 |
| - | But I felt one of the things | |
| we didn't do was follow up with the court for | 12:48 | |
| particularly the younger ones who were there at the | 12:53 | |
| conference that we as a Reimagining Community could've | 12:56 | |
| been better at so that's one of the areas that I | 12:59 | |
| and I have no, I don't know whether we can trace those | 13:06 | |
| women, we have the list of the women. | 13:10 | |
| Well, yeah, we do, we have the list. | 13:13 | |
| So we've never, I don't think we've ever done a mailing, | 13:15 | |
| a follow up mailing to all those people who were there. | 13:18 | |
| - | You mean like a, 'cause we did initially, | 13:21 |
| you mean like in recent years? | 13:24 | |
| - | Yeah. | 13:26 |
| - | Yeah, yeah. | |
| No, it's been. | 13:27 | |
| - | Did we initially? | |
| - | Yes, we did, I mean, I'm saying we. | 13:30 |
| I was not actually part of it but I understood | 13:33 | |
| that they sent out a mailing afterwards to everyone | 13:35 | |
| who was there talking about what happened. | 13:38 | |
| - | Well, they must have because they got a lot of | 13:39 |
| positive feedback on the conference itself | 13:43 | |
| and that must've been the way they did that. | 13:48 | |
| - | Yeah, yeah. | 13:49 |
| - | Yeah. | |
| So I think, it would be interesting too. | 13:51 | |
| My feeling is so much because there was negative, | 13:56 | |
| immediate negative response that we didn't find many | 14:02 | |
| of the positives kinds of things that came out. | 14:08 | |
| - | Yes. | 14:11 |
| - | We simply didn't | |
| follow up enough on that as individuals | 14:13 | |
| within our denominations. | 14:17 | |
| - | Yeah. | |
| - | I'm not, the Reimagining Community in Minneapolis may | 14:19 |
| have done that, the other problem for me was of course, | 14:24 | |
| I left the country for four years, so. | 14:27 | |
| - | What was your title at the, it was the World | 14:31 |
| Counsel of Churches, right? | 14:33 | |
| - | Yeah, the World Counsel of Churches. | 14:35 |
| I was Deputy General Secretary. | 14:36 | |
| - | Okay, great. | 14:39 |
| - | The General Secretary's the head | 14:41 |
| and then there were two and I replaced a woman | 14:42 | |
| who was at Reimagining and down there, | 14:46 | |
| a theologian named Mercy Aduaway. | 14:49 | |
| - | Yes, oh, okay. | 14:53 |
| - | Yeah, I replaced Mercy. | |
| She left and then she taught at Seminaries for a while | 14:56 | |
| and so and so I think part of it, my job at the | 15:00 | |
| World Counsel of Churches was not to follow up on the | 15:06 | |
| Reimagining Conference, that was not why I was hired. | 15:12 | |
| I was hired because of my positions in the Presbyterian | 15:15 | |
| Church, particularly I left as Associate Director. | 15:18 | |
| The General from the Counsel said that man that I was | 15:22 | |
| working in areas of coordination, planning, staffing, | 15:27 | |
| staff issues, personnel issues. | 15:33 | |
| So those I was really hired to do that with the | 15:36 | |
| World Counsel of Churches. | 15:39 | |
| So I didn't feel, I did find, the one area follow up | 15:41 | |
| was I made, the World Counsel made ecumenical | 15:47 | |
| decade visits to all of the, how did they decide which | 15:54 | |
| countries, I guess they asked permission to come | 15:59 | |
| and they sent teams of four or five persons to spend | 16:03 | |
| four or five days and we had a set of questions that | 16:09 | |
| we met with the heads of the communions. | 16:14 | |
| Like I went to Estonia and Lavia. | 16:18 | |
| And what was the head of our delegation was a | 16:26 | |
| bishop, an African bishop from Tanzania. | 16:33 | |
| The head of the Welsh, the Church of Wales. | 16:39 | |
| Another woman and it all had to have a young woman. | 16:44 | |
| They were very versatile groups. | 16:48 | |
| That report, I have the book of the report to that. | 16:53 | |
| And then they came together at the end which would've | 16:57 | |
| been two years, I think two years after Reimagining | 17:01 | |
| had a conference and Todd Peters was there. | 17:04 | |
| She was one of the young women who planned that, | 17:09 | |
| Rebecca Todd Peters so she'll have and she's still | 17:13 | |
| on the Division of Faith | 17:18 | |
| and Order of the World Counsel of Churches. | 17:20 | |
| - | Oh okay so just to clarify, Maryanne, | 17:22 |
| what was the point of the report? | 17:25 | |
| Was the report to find out what these different | 17:26 | |
| places had done for the ecumenical decade? | 17:27 | |
| - | Uh huh, it was to follow up, what difference had a | 17:30 |
| decade for churches in solidarity with women, | 17:34 | |
| what had that meant? | 17:38 | |
| - | Wow, okay. | |
| - | Yeah so it's a follow up report in a book that I have. | 17:41 |
| And if you can't find that, which you might not, | 17:46 | |
| it was published overseas. | 17:48 | |
| I'm pretty, I know I have it so I can get that to you. | 17:52 | |
| - | Good, I'll look and see if I can find it | 17:56 |
| 'cause that would be very interesting, yeah. | 17:58 | |
| - | Yeah, yeah, yeah, because you know, that had been | 18:00 |
| our intent in the beginning, this is a world conference. | 18:03 | |
| These women were coming from overseas to tell us. | 18:07 | |
| And that kind of got lost in some ways. | 18:10 | |
| In certainly did when the criticisms came, | 18:16 | |
| not only in my own denomination was this not seen | 18:20 | |
| sometimes as an ecumenical conference. | 18:24 | |
| It certainly was not seen as an international conference | 18:27 | |
| where we were receiving many | 18:31 | |
| cultural aspects of Christianity as well. | 18:37 | |
| - | Yes. | 18:40 |
| - | So that made it a very | |
| different, that would have made it a very different critique | 18:43 | |
| and we could've learned instead of critiquing so much. | 18:48 | |
| So I think that's probably about where I am now. | 18:53 | |
| Let me look at one more. | 18:58 | |
| Yeah, I ended up with that about the international | 19:05 | |
| aspects of the conference and in those other | 19:09 | |
| countries, they did have a backlash about the conference. | 19:14 | |
| - | Really? | 19:18 |
| - | Which is why | |
| I think, I don't know this for sure but I think I was | 19:20 | |
| hired by the World Counsel because the women, | 19:25 | |
| many women all over the world who'd been at this conference, | 19:29 | |
| when they found out I had lost my job said | 19:33 | |
| then you must have her in the World Counsel of Churches. | 19:38 | |
| That conference was, so I think the impulse | 19:41 | |
| to hire me came from what had happened. | 19:44 | |
| And it was a, Conrad Riser who is the Executive, | 19:49 | |
| General Secretary, who's German, very, very competent | 19:52 | |
| theologian in his own right and so he was very much | 20:01 | |
| aware and up on top of it and courageous. | 20:06 | |
| No body could tell him who to hire, so. | 20:10 | |
| (laughing) | 20:12 | |
| Except the women. | 20:13 | |
| (laughing) | ||
| Conrad's a very strong German theologian too. | 20:17 | |
| So Elizabeth would've told him but he didn't need | 20:22 | |
| to have anybody tell him, he was at the | 20:26 | |
| General Assembly when the report came in. | 20:28 | |
| - | Yes. | 20:30 |
| - | He was the ecumenical | |
| representative, we always have one. | 20:31 | |
| And he happened to be that year, the ecumenical theologian | 20:34 | |
| when the report of the conference came, so. | 20:40 | |
| - | Maryanne, I'm just curious, do you have a | 20:42 |
| theory as to why there was not a backlash | 20:45 | |
| against Reimagining other countries the | 20:47 | |
| way there was in the United States? | 20:50 | |
| - | Well, I think because there were fewer | 20:52 |
| in each country, when we chose people to come | 20:55 | |
| and be speak throughs particularly, because we | 20:59 | |
| paid their way, that was the 66,000 from | 21:03 | |
| the Presbyterians covered that and we usually chose | 21:06 | |
| one, I think we had three from Africa. | 21:14 | |
| We had two from the East so they weren't, they didn't | 21:18 | |
| go back to a lot, clearly, the represented a whole country. | 21:24 | |
| African women theologians met all the time | 21:34 | |
| but they'd never been a threat in | 21:37 | |
| the African church in the same way. | 21:40 | |
| The African women theologians, very strong group, | 21:44 | |
| usually the churches begin to adopt or maybe not | 21:49 | |
| in recent years but they did in the '90's. | 21:52 | |
| So I don't know, that's another interesting question. | 21:58 | |
| And Mercy Aduaway, I think we spoke about that. | 22:04 | |
| I heard her once in Lu Abul after I had left and come back. | 22:08 | |
| And so there were several of them, Chung Chun, of course, | 22:16 | |
| spoke always in the theological communities. | 22:20 | |
| So they were already known but they also had | 22:23 | |
| very strong credentials, it wasn't like the person | 22:26 | |
| who sits next to me in the pew. | 22:29 | |
| It was somebody who knew more than I did. | 22:31 | |
| (laughing) | 22:33 | |
| A lot of people, a lot of heads of, well, I shouldn't say | 22:35 | |
| that, people high up in the structures realized that. | 22:42 | |
| So they had kind of competency already. | 22:47 | |
| But they were fearless too. | 22:54 | |
| - | Yes. | |
| - | So and the World Counsel's very supportive | 22:58 |
| of that kind of theological investigation, so. | 23:01 | |
| That's another reason. | 23:09 | |
| - | Yes. | |
| - | Okay. | 23:13 |
| - | Well, thank you. | |
| Maryanne, this has been so wonderful and so important. | 23:15 | |
| Thank you so much for your time. | 23:19 | |
| - | You're very welcome and I will look up some of | 23:21 |
| these things that I think might, you might not | 23:25 | |
| necessarily have seen and maybe. | 23:27 | |
| - | And I'll turn off the. | 23:32 |
| - | I had mentioned | |
| the Christian Century, I just found an article | 23:33 | |
| in which they talked, they did a piece on me. | 23:36 | |
| They never talked to me about it, I don't know | 23:41 | |
| who they talked to, but. | 23:44 | |
| - | Really? | |
| - | Yeah, so it's in, I have the date written down. | 23:47 |
| I'll send you that. | 23:55 | |
| - | Great. | |
| - | I can't tell you, I don't see it right now | 23:57 |
| in this stack of papers but yeah, I'll go through | 23:59 | |
| these things and just think and see things that | 24:03 | |
| you might be interested in 'cause I have your address. | 24:05 | |
| - | I appreciate this, I'm gonna turn off the recording now. | 24:07 |
| - | Yes. | 24:11 |
| - | And let me do | |
| that real fast, great and. | 24:12 | |
| - | Okay. |