Bass, Diana Butler
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- | Okay. | 0:00 |
Well Diana thank you so much for being interviewed. | 0:04 | |
I just need some background information | 0:06 | |
if you could say your name. | 0:09 | |
- | Diana Butler Bass. | 0:10 |
- | Thank you and are you lay or clergy? | 0:11 |
- | I'm a lay person. | 0:13 |
- | And what denomination do you associate with? | 0:15 |
- | Probably Episcopalian | 0:17 |
- | Thank you, where and when were you born Diana? | 0:18 |
- | Baltimore, Maryland 1959. | 0:21 |
- | Hey. | 0:23 |
- | Too long ago. | 0:24 |
(both laugh) | 0:25 | |
- | Same year as me okay. | 0:27 |
- | And my daughter always says you were born | 0:28 |
in the 50s? | 0:31 | |
And I say just barely, just barely. | 0:32 | |
- | Just barely exactly. (laughs) | 0:34 |
So where did you go to school? | 0:35 | |
- | College and beyond? | 0:41 |
- | Yes. | 0:42 |
- | Okay so college I went to Westmont College | 0:43 |
which is an Evangelical college | 0:45 | |
in Santa Barbara of California. | 0:47 | |
Then I went to Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary | 0:48 | |
in South Hamilton, Massachusetts | 0:51 | |
and got my PhD at Duke University. | 0:53 | |
- | Wonderful and what work or ministry | 0:55 |
were you doing at the time of Re-Imagining 93 | 0:58 | |
you were there at the 96. | 1:01 | |
- | I was a college professor. | 1:03 |
And I was working on the sideline doing a weekly column | 1:04 | |
for the New York Times Syndicate | 1:09 | |
on religion and American culture. | 1:11 | |
So, when I was actually at Re-Imagining in Minneapolis, | 1:13 | |
I was teaching as a visiting professor for a year | 1:18 | |
at Macalester College in St. Paul. | 1:22 | |
- | Wonderful. | 1:24 |
- | Yeah it was a great year. | |
- | So what were you teaching there? | 1:25 |
- | I was teaching religious studies. | 1:26 |
I was doing American religion. | 1:28 | |
I think I was actually doing a class on women in religion | 1:31 | |
if I remember correctly and church history | 1:34 | |
and a class in reformation. | 1:37 | |
So it was a sort of a large scale church history | 1:38 | |
with a specialization in American religion. | 1:42 | |
- | Great and what | 1:45 |
- | And I also did a class on Evangelicalism | 1:47 |
while at Macalester. | 1:49 | |
- | Did you? | 1:49 |
- | Yeah. | 1:50 |
- | That's great. | 1:51 |
- | Which was fascinating cause the kids were so liberal | 1:52 |
and nobody had ever taught a class | 1:55 | |
on American Evangelicalism and they | 1:58 | |
really were engaged in it as a religious phenomenon. | 1:59 | |
And they always wanted to argue about it | 2:05 | |
so it was a great year. | 2:06 | |
- | What an interesting experience for you too | 2:09 |
to get that reaction. | 2:10 | |
- | It was. | 2:12 |
(both laugh) | 2:12 | |
Especially after I taught at Westmont. | 2:13 | |
- | Exactly yeah. | 2:14 |
Wow kind of opposite poles. | 2:16 | |
- | It was very much so. | 2:18 |
- | And what work or ministry did you do after Re-Imagining? | 2:19 |
- | I was still a college professor | 2:22 |
and I got a full-time tenure track job at Rhodes College | 2:25 | |
where I was for three years. | 2:30 | |
And then after that I basically left | 2:32 | |
formal academia and have become a full-time author. | 2:34 | |
- | Wonderful. | 2:38 |
Now you have a very interesting religious background. | 2:39 | |
I would like to know when and where | 2:42 | |
you first became aware of feminist theology. | 2:44 | |
- | Oh my. | 2:47 |
- | Well I was born and raised in the United Methodist Church | 2:48 |
and became enamored over part of however you want to say it | 2:52 | |
the Evangelical community. | 2:56 | |
When I was 15 years old living in Scottsdale, Arizona | 2:58 | |
and it was just, | 3:02 | |
it was the 70s. | 3:05 | |
(interviewer laughs) | 3:06 | |
What can I say? | 3:07 | |
That's always my excuse it was the 70s | 3:08 | |
and mainline churches were kind of boring. | 3:09 | |
And if you had an active interest in faith | 3:13 | |
in the 1970s, chances were pretty good | 3:17 | |
if you were a teenager you'd wind up in Evangelicalism. | 3:19 | |
And so that's what I wound up doing religiously | 3:22 | |
is that I understood myself to have been born again. | 3:26 | |
And I went to a very conservative Evangelical church. | 3:30 | |
And so it was not there that I learned | 3:34 | |
(both laugh) | 3:36 | |
it was not there that I learned about Evangelical feminism | 3:38 | |
or Christian feminism at all. | 3:40 | |
I went on from the high school experience | 3:43 | |
of the feminist church to Westmont College as a student. | 3:46 | |
And so I was there between 1977 and 1981. | 3:51 | |
And it's interesting because that's | 3:56 | |
when I learned about Christian feminism | 3:58 | |
was at Westmont | 4:00 | |
- | Tell me how did that happen? | 4:01 |
- | Well it actually happened because Christian feminism | 4:03 |
was sort of in the news as it were | 4:07 | |
even though it hadn't gotten in the news | 4:10 | |
to my Evangelical church in Scottsdale, Arizona. | 4:12 | |
I don't remember what year it was that Letty Russell | 4:15 | |
or that Letha Scanzoni and Nancy Hardesty | 4:20 | |
wrote All We're Meant To Be | 4:23 | |
which was kind of the shot across the bow | 4:24 | |
for Evangelicals introducing them to the idea | 4:29 | |
of feminist theology. | 4:32 | |
And Nancy and Letha were arguing that | 4:35 | |
both the Bible and church history pointed | 4:37 | |
toward Evangelical women being feminists. | 4:40 | |
And there were people at Westmont in the 1970s | 4:45 | |
who were brave enough to point that out. | 4:49 | |
And | 4:51 | |
- | These are faculty members? | 4:52 |
- | I think that, | 4:54 |
I'm trying to remember now | 4:58 | |
whether I first heard of that book from a faculty member | 4:59 | |
or in chapel. | 5:02 | |
Because we had a very open even what you might | 5:05 | |
want to call progressive chaplain. | 5:09 | |
He was very Evangelical but he loved Jim Wallace. | 5:12 | |
He loved what was then called The Other Side magazine | 5:16 | |
which was this very radical Evangelical magazine. | 5:19 | |
He was being influenced by folks who would later become | 5:23 | |
incredibly famous Theologians in their own right. | 5:27 | |
Then the young Theologian by the name of Ched Myers | 5:30 | |
who has become a major sort of environmental | 5:33 | |
activist justice person who was very involved | 5:36 | |
in liberation movements in the 1970s. | 5:42 | |
So mostly it was the chaplain's office | 5:45 | |
that was putting these sorts of alternative | 5:50 | |
very edgy ideas in front of us | 5:52 | |
about liberation theologies | 5:56 | |
of all sorts about environmentalism. | 5:58 | |
And I think it was probably there | 6:01 | |
that we somehow got introduced to Christian feminism. | 6:04 | |
And then there was one professor who was a pretty young guy. | 6:07 | |
His name was Kirk Whiteman and he had just | 6:11 | |
gotten out of graduate school. | 6:14 | |
So he was the one who was like cutting his teeth | 6:16 | |
and was certainly willing to engage all these issues | 6:20 | |
that were talking about in chapel. | 6:23 | |
The other professors were not very excited. | 6:25 | |
(Both laugh) | 6:27 | |
If I remember correctly they were like what. | 6:28 | |
We didn't really want to talk about these issues | 6:30 | |
but the students were pushing. | 6:32 | |
- | Yes, do you remember how did you react Diana? | 6:35 |
- | Oh I was excited. | 6:37 |
- | Yeah. | 6:39 |
- | I was | 6:40 |
because it made sense and I was really thrilled | 6:41 | |
that there was a history of Evangelical women | 6:46 | |
and it wasn't just all about men. | 6:50 | |
And I think it also resonated in some interesting way | 6:53 | |
with my Methodist childhood. | 6:56 | |
- | Can you say in what way do you think? | 6:58 |
- | Well the thing was true about the Methodism | 7:00 |
that I grew up with. | 7:03 | |
Even though it was somewhat spiritually cold | 7:05 | |
or maybe a little nominal even by the time | 7:08 | |
I was a Methodist kid what we had retained | 7:12 | |
was the interest in social justice that Wesley | 7:17 | |
certainly had. | 7:18 | |
And we knew that somehow, | 7:20 | |
at least I got the message somehow | 7:22 | |
that piety and social justice should be connected. | 7:24 | |
Even though I never really saw that connection. | 7:27 | |
But I heard the social justice messages | 7:31 | |
and when I was a little kid living in Baltimore | 7:34 | |
we had pastors who got in trouble | 7:39 | |
about preaching against the Vietnam War. | 7:40 | |
And we also had pastors who got in trouble | 7:44 | |
for saying nice things about Civil Rights Movement | 7:46 | |
about Martin Luther King. | 7:48 | |
And so I remember how those things | 7:50 | |
made the grown-ups in the Methodist Church really upset. | 7:53 | |
And so I thought they were particularly interesting. | 7:55 | |
- | Of course. | 7:58 |
(both laugh) | 7:59 | |
So when I got to college and there was all of a sudden | 7:59 | |
this sort of heritage that I had not been taught | 8:04 | |
in the Evangelical Church or my teenage years | 8:07 | |
about justice and the Bible | 8:10 | |
and God being on the side of the poor. | 8:14 | |
And I was in college when Oscar Romero was shot | 8:16 | |
and that was a big, big freaking deal. | 8:19 | |
The denominations were just at the point | 8:25 | |
where they, I think like the Episcopal church | 8:28 | |
had just ordained women as clergy. | 8:31 | |
And the Presbyterians had women clergy | 8:33 | |
but they were coming into a more prominent position | 8:36 | |
and the Methodist hadn't had women clergy | 8:38 | |
for very long. | 8:40 | |
So all these things were sort of pressing | 8:44 | |
at the Christian community | 8:45 | |
and we had somehow we weren't isolated from that | 8:47 | |
as Evangelicals. | 8:51 | |
And there was a group of people that I went to college with | 8:53 | |
who really embraced it. | 8:54 | |
As a matter of fact, we had when I was in college, | 8:58 | |
an alternative dorm where people who were interested | 9:03 | |
in things like being vegetarians | 9:07 | |
and doing social justice projects in Mexico | 9:10 | |
and who wanted to think about what it meant | 9:15 | |
to be global Christians. | 9:19 | |
Where we lived together and we actually | 9:20 | |
had a rule of life where we followed | 9:22 | |
a little Benedictine rule of life. | 9:24 | |
- | Really? | 9:25 |
- | Yeah I mean it was kind of remarkable. | 9:26 |
It's a sort of a, | 9:28 | |
that period of the 70s, there was this very edgy, | 9:30 | |
very excited | 9:34 | |
social justice form of Evangelicalism | 9:40 | |
that was being like I said sort of manifested | 9:42 | |
by some of our elders. | 9:45 | |
I think Jim Wallace is probably the most | 9:47 | |
well known name of a person who had been leading. | 9:50 | |
But he was 10 years older than we were. | 9:53 | |
And so he felt like an old guy. | 9:56 | |
(both laugh) | 9:58 | |
But yeah we were reading everything he ever wrote. | 10:01 | |
And we read Sojourners and we were reading, | 10:03 | |
I remember reading the first newsletters | 10:06 | |
of like the Evangelical Women's Caucus. | 10:09 | |
And the articles in Christianity Today that were reporting | 10:12 | |
on the controversies over All We're Meant To Be. | 10:16 | |
- | Yeah. | 10:19 |
- | And so all that stuff was part of my universe | 10:21 |
as a sophomore, junior and senior in college | 10:24 | |
at this Evangelical college. | 10:27 | |
And there was probably a group of maybe | 10:28 | |
oh I don't know probably 40 of us | 10:33 | |
that were really in leadership around these issues. | 10:35 | |
And most of those people, one of the guys | 10:40 | |
who was sort of in that coterie of people, | 10:43 | |
a guy named David Batstone who later on founded | 10:46 | |
a human trafficking organization. | 10:49 | |
And is a very well known liberation theologian. | 10:51 | |
There was myself, there was an amazing women | 10:56 | |
by the name of Kathleen Corley | 10:59 | |
who is world class. | 11:01 | |
A New Testament scholar who's written mostly on women | 11:03 | |
in the New Testament. | 11:07 | |
Just it was a fascinating group of people. | 11:09 | |
Phil Clayton who is a process theologian and justice guy | 11:14 | |
in environmentalism and teaches at Clermont now. | 11:19 | |
And so we were all Westmont students together. | 11:20 | |
And we all cared about these issues. | 11:24 | |
And we were encouraging one another to go deeper | 11:27 | |
and try to figure out what faith | 11:31 | |
was really going to mean to people in the late 20th | 11:35 | |
and the early 21st Century. | 11:39 | |
If being a Christian mattered to the kind | 11:41 | |
of change to make the universe a more loving place. | 11:45 | |
- | That is fascinating and boy I can see the seeds | 11:51 |
and the trajectory you have followed from there. | 11:53 | |
- | Yeah really I've written about it just a little bit. | 11:55 |
It comes up in Christianity After Religion. | 11:57 | |
I tell a couple of stories about that community | 12:02 | |
but it's also a lot more strongly written about | 12:05 | |
in Strength For The Journey which was the first | 12:07 | |
trade book that I ever wrote. | 12:10 | |
And you know I think since I wrote | 12:12 | |
Strength For The Journey that was almost that was like | 12:14 | |
15 years ago, 17 years ago now. | 12:17 | |
I've realized the real germination of my adulthood | 12:22 | |
in that community of people back at Westmont. | 12:29 | |
And also very appreciative of the way | 12:31 | |
that it wasn't just me. | 12:34 | |
It was really these other people. | 12:35 | |
And over the years many of us have reconnected. | 12:38 | |
And to see where people have gone | 12:42 | |
and | 12:44 | |
one of the women, well she was a little bit | 12:47 | |
older than us. | 12:49 | |
I thinK she graduated when I, | 12:50 | |
she was like a senior when I was a freshman. | 12:51 | |
Her name is Bear Ride and her sister | 12:54 | |
was Sally Ride. | 12:56 | |
- | Oh my goodness. | 12:58 |
- | And Bear wound up being one of the first ever | 12:59 |
out lesbian pastors of a PCUSA church | 13:01 | |
in southern California. | 13:06 | |
And she went on to Clermont. | 13:08 | |
And so these are Westmont people. | 13:11 | |
And so all of us felt really kind of funny. | 13:13 | |
In years since, very few of us have | 13:17 | |
ever gone to a Westmont reunion. | 13:18 | |
(both laugh) | 13:20 | |
Cause they don't really want to talk to us. | 13:22 | |
I mean I think that they've never published anything | 13:25 | |
about any of these people's work. | 13:27 | |
- | Seriously? | 13:31 |
- | Yeah we've been kind of banished | 13:32 |
from the institutional memory. | 13:33 | |
But the memory of the place and those people | 13:36 | |
and those really interesting days | 13:39 | |
and how heavy and passionate and powerful they were | 13:41 | |
has shaped a surprising sort of undertow | 13:45 | |
in contemporary liberal Protestantism. (laughs) | 13:50 | |
Who would have thought it? | 13:55 | |
(both laugh) | 13:56 | |
I know really. | 13:57 | |
- | Boy the spirit does amazing things. | 13:59 |
- | No I don't know how good they did | 14:01 |
on creating Evangelical megachurch pastors | 14:02 | |
(interviewer laughs) | 14:05 | |
but Westmont did a fair, handsome job | 14:06 | |
creating feminists, Liberationists and Panantheists | 14:08 | |
and process Theologians. | 14:12 | |
(both laugh) | 14:13 | |
- | I love it. | 14:14 |
- | So they're good at it. | 14:16 |
(interviewer laughs) | 14:17 | |
But they don't let anybody know. | 14:18 | |
(interviewer laughs) | 14:19 | |
- | You're telling the story though. | 14:20 |
So to move to Re-Imagining you were at the 1996 | 14:22 | |
- | I was. | 14:24 |
- | Re-Imagining which was about power and Letty Russell. | 14:25 |
First of all, what brought you there? | 14:28 | |
You were at Macalester. | 14:30 | |
- | Right I was at Macalester as a, | 14:31 |
you know like I said my side job was writing | 14:33 | |
for the New York Times Syndicate at that moment. | 14:35 | |
And so every week I had to get a column out | 14:39 | |
about religion and culture. | 14:41 | |
And I'd always been sort of fascinated | 14:43 | |
about what was going on with Re-Imagining. | 14:45 | |
I mean that was my job, paying attention | 14:46 | |
to what was going on in American Christianity. | 14:48 | |
- | Exactly. | 14:51 |
- | And so I knew that they were in trouble | 14:52 |
and I knew that they were very controversial. | 14:54 | |
And I, by that point in time, | 14:59 | |
I was pretty out and committed about feminism. | 15:02 | |
But I think I still had some of this sort | 15:08 | |
of Evangelical stuff kind of pulling me back. | 15:11 | |
And I was sort of wondering well maybe these | 15:16 | |
women really have gone too far. | 15:19 | |
I mean there was part of me that really | 15:21 | |
wondered did they really deserve it. | 15:23 | |
Maybe they're really obnoxious. | 15:24 | |
And so I wanted to see it for myself. | 15:26 | |
I wanted to witness history. | 15:32 | |
I was curious about what my own response would be. | 15:34 | |
So there was a personal piece to it. | 15:38 | |
But then I just knew it would be a good column. | 15:39 | |
- | Yeah. | 15:42 |
- | You know it was news worthy, | 15:43 |
people cared about it and I told my editor | 15:44 | |
I was going to go and he said oh that's great. | 15:47 | |
And in 1996, I'd written about Promise Keepers. | 15:49 | |
I had written about the Republican National Convention. | 15:53 | |
So I was really kind of looking | 15:57 | |
at those big ticket, public controversy issues. | 16:00 | |
And a lot of them were related to gender. | 16:05 | |
So this just seemed like it was in a continued flow | 16:07 | |
from those columns that I had already written that year. | 16:11 | |
And they were in town, perfect, so I went. | 16:14 | |
- | And I know it's been a long time | 16:20 |
but what do you remember. | 16:21 | |
- | 20 years. | 16:23 |
- | I know, we're coming up on the yup 25th anniversary. | 16:24 |
- | 1993. | 16:26 |
- | What were the actual dates? | 16:27 |
- | 1993 was the first one, you were at the 96, | 16:28 |
the community lasted until 2003. | 16:31 | |
- | Okay. | 16:34 |
- | So 2018 will be the 25th anniversary | 16:35 |
of the first one. | 16:36 | |
- | So this was in Fall of 96. | 16:37 |
- | It was, it was exactly. | 16:38 |
So what do you remember about that conference | 16:40 | |
and your reaction? | 16:44 | |
I'd love to hear that. | 16:45 | |
- | The two things that stand out in most of my memory | 16:45 |
were one Heather Elkins Murray | 16:51 | |
who got up and did a academic, sort of presentation. | 16:54 | |
But it was more than that, it was almost like a sermon too | 17:00 | |
on milk and honey being the original, sort of | 17:04 | |
how Christians use milk and honey | 17:09 | |
as eucharistic elements in the early church. | 17:12 | |
And I can actually remember, I was sitting | 17:15 | |
in the back of the room with the media. | 17:16 | |
See this is one of the parts of my life | 17:19 | |
at that moment, so I was always | 17:20 | |
in the back of the room. | 17:22 | |
And I was with other people who were media people | 17:24 | |
and so they were supposed to be skeptics. | 17:26 | |
I have some very funny Promise Keeper stories about that. | 17:29 | |
(Both laugh) | 17:32 | |
- | I bet you do. | 17:34 |
- | I really do actually. | 17:35 |
But so here I was in the back of the room | 17:37 | |
and I was with the rest of the media people. | 17:38 | |
And I was kind of the big rank media person | 17:41 | |
cause I was working for the New York Times. | 17:43 | |
And there was somebody from the Startrib | 17:47 | |
and there was I think a Christian Century person. | 17:50 | |
And the person from IRD | 17:53 | |
Institute of Religion Democracy was there. | 17:55 | |
And there were some denominational press people as well. | 17:58 | |
So I was in the back and I was watching | 18:04 | |
Heather give this speech/sermon. | 18:06 | |
And it was brilliant. | 18:11 | |
I, she was just, | 18:18 | |
I mean as an academic what I knew is she was right. | 18:19 | |
And I had never really heard anybody | 18:23 | |
approach early church liturgy in quite the way that she did. | 18:26 | |
But she was approaching it through | 18:31 | |
the lands of the Bible. | 18:33 | |
She was very faithful to the textual evidence | 18:35 | |
and I can just sort of remember feeling this kind of | 18:39 | |
oh my gosh what is so controversial about this. | 18:43 | |
That was my inner territory | 18:49 | |
was I knew it was academic, I knew it was correct. | 18:54 | |
I knew she had done her homework. | 18:58 | |
It was beautifully presented. | 19:00 | |
And it was presented not in the kind of in your face | 19:03 | |
sort of stereotype angry feminist sort of thing. | 19:07 | |
It was a really smart woman telling the truth | 19:13 | |
about her research. | 19:16 | |
And doing it in a way that had a sense of passion | 19:19 | |
and meaning about it. | 19:23 | |
And I just sat there and I thought | 19:26 | |
this is nothing like I have heard | 19:28 | |
from the rest of the media. | 19:30 | |
And I thought, I kept thinking | 19:34 | |
over and over again I kept thinking what in the world | 19:36 | |
could possibly be controversial | 19:38 | |
about talking about early church history. | 19:40 | |
- | Exactly, yeah. | 19:42 |
- | And that was my big response. | 19:44 |
And she was, for whatever reason, | 19:47 | |
the speaker I remember the best. | 19:49 | |
And there were some pretty big name speakers, | 19:52 | |
like I had forgotten Letty Russell was there. | 19:53 | |
(interviewer laughs) | 19:55 | |
Sorry Letty. | 19:56 | |
I think I went to hear Letty Russel | 19:58 | |
but then the big surprise was this speech by Heather. | 20:00 | |
And I think it was because I was just so personally | 20:04 | |
impacted by it because here was another person | 20:06 | |
who was a church historian. | 20:09 | |
And I knew we were speaking such the same language. | 20:11 | |
And I also knew that she was so deeply committed | 20:16 | |
to the church. | 20:18 | |
And so anyway I listened | 20:21 | |
and I was impressed | 20:24 | |
and I talked to her afterwards and I thought | 20:27 | |
it was pretty amazing. | 20:31 | |
So that was the piece of the conference | 20:33 | |
in terms of the presentations | 20:36 | |
that I remember the best. | 20:38 | |
The other piece of the conference | 20:41 | |
that I remember really well was again | 20:42 | |
here I was sitting in the back. | 20:45 | |
And they did a liturgy of milk and honey | 20:46 | |
that was kind of a follow-up, I believe | 20:49 | |
to her speech. | 20:52 | |
And so it was this kind of eucharistic celebration. | 20:53 | |
And | 20:58 | |
people were dancing in the room. | 21:01 | |
And | 21:03 | |
it was cool. | 21:05 | |
(both laugh) | 21:08 | |
And I remember feeling like I wanted to dance too | 21:09 | |
but I wasn't allowed to dance | 21:12 | |
cause you know when you're in the media | 21:13 | |
and so you're not allowed to dance. | 21:15 | |
And so I didn't dance. | 21:17 | |
But on every table they had a centerpiece | 21:19 | |
and part of the centerpiece were these apples. | 21:24 | |
And when people were dancing around the room, | 21:29 | |
they had picked up these little apples | 21:32 | |
and they were like dancing around | 21:34 | |
and it's just way kind of like in your face Eve | 21:35 | |
kind of thing. | 21:38 | |
- | Yes. | 21:39 |
- | And I just, I was laughing so hard, | 21:39 |
I thought it was beautiful, it was energizing. | 21:42 | |
It was kind of just this glorious kind of | 21:44 | |
spiritual and emotive revolt against | 21:47 | |
the traditional reading of Eve | 21:52 | |
and it was so happy that while they were dancing | 21:55 | |
around the room I snuck up to a table | 21:58 | |
and I took the apple. | 22:00 | |
And that apple has hung on my Christmas tree | 22:02 | |
as a Christmas tree ornament every single year. | 22:05 | |
And after my daughter was born | 22:09 | |
and she got to be old enough | 22:11 | |
and I pull out the apple. | 22:12 | |
And I tell her the story | 22:14 | |
- | Oh Diana. | 22:16 |
- | of stealing the apple. | 22:17 |
(interviewer laughs) | 22:19 | |
- | I'm so glad you did. | 22:20 |
- | I'm stealing this apple from the table | 22:21 |
at Re-Imagining after I realized that Eve | 22:23 | |
a hero of the story. | 22:26 | |
And that women should never feel out of place | 22:29 | |
in Christian community because we've always | 22:32 | |
had a place at the table. | 22:36 | |
And so that has become a kind of a family ritual. | 22:38 | |
And I do that still every year. | 22:42 | |
Every time I take those ornaments out | 22:45 | |
and I see that I get this | 22:48 | |
tender, amazing feeling | 22:52 | |
about that day and Heather's speech | 22:55 | |
and the milk and the honey | 22:58 | |
and the reclaiming of Eve. | 22:59 | |
And seeing all those women dancing around the room | 23:00 | |
and not being able to join them | 23:03 | |
but joining them in my heart by stealing the apple. (laughs) | 23:04 | |
- | Oh that is so fantastic. | 23:07 |
- | And it's best but those are my sort of two | 23:10 |
big memories. | 23:13 | |
- | Yes. | 23:15 |
- | So it was very personal | 23:17 |
and there was a kind of a freeing that went on | 23:18 | |
for me there | 23:21 | |
that I didn't know that I really needed. | 23:23 | |
But that did occur. | 23:25 | |
Even though I was not really supposed | 23:27 | |
to express that because of the role that I had that day. | 23:28 | |
But then there was also this just sort of puzzlement. | 23:33 | |
I mean really just deep puzzlement | 23:35 | |
as a professional | 23:38 | |
- | Yes. | 23:39 |
- | that I didn't understand why these women | 23:41 |
were upsetting other people so much. | 23:45 | |
Because it just seemed to me like it was good scholarship. | 23:46 | |
- | So what is your theory? | 23:50 |
Do you have an idea about what accounts for that backlash? | 23:51 | |
Do you have any ideas about what it came from? | 23:55 | |
- | The strangest moment I think of the whole, | 23:58 |
the whole episode for me, | 24:03 | |
after I'd felt so personally moved | 24:06 | |
and I thought that Heather's speech | 24:09 | |
was so completely convincing. | 24:11 | |
That I went out to lunch with another person | 24:14 | |
who was in the media. | 24:17 | |
And I had forgotten her name | 24:19 | |
until you just reminded me of it, Kirsten I guess. | 24:21 | |
- | Right. | 24:24 |
Katherine Kirsten. | 24:25 | |
- | Katherine Kirsten | 24:26 |
who I never met her before | 24:28 | |
and she seemed like she really wanted to talk. | 24:30 | |
And I believe she was an Episcopalian. | 24:33 | |
- | Oh okay. | 24:34 |
- | So I think that we shared that | 24:35 |
I mean if my memory serves me correctly | 24:37 | |
which it might not after all these years. | 24:39 | |
But she was nice and she seemed like | 24:42 | |
she was taking good notes. | 24:43 | |
And she was really interested in what was going on. | 24:45 | |
And so we went out for lunch and we talked about it | 24:47 | |
and I shared with her how basically | 24:50 | |
what I was going to write and how impressed | 24:53 | |
I was with the scholarship. | 24:55 | |
And you know that I was really worried a bit | 24:58 | |
at that point still about the Episcopal church | 25:02 | |
was not dealing with gay and lesbian stuff. | 25:06 | |
But there were a lot of people really angry | 25:09 | |
in the Episcopal church about the recent consecration | 25:10 | |
of Barbara Harris as the first woman bishop. | 25:14 | |
And so the Episcopal church was sort of reeling from this | 25:18 | |
because even the people who | 25:22 | |
might have been somewhat resistant to women's' ordination | 25:25 | |
had put up with it as long as there | 25:27 | |
were no women bishops. | 25:29 | |
Because the idea that the bishop holds authority | 25:31 | |
and that Barbara Harris as bishop | 25:34 | |
would hold authority over men, | 25:36 | |
was very worrisome to the conservatives | 25:39 | |
in the Episcopal church. | 25:41 | |
And so what was happening, | 25:43 | |
at least for Episcopalians is that Re-Imagining | 25:44 | |
was playing into this great achievement | 25:47 | |
of Barbara Harris being elected | 25:52 | |
as a woman bishop. | 25:55 | |
And the whole of the Anglican Communion, | 25:57 | |
I believe Barbara was the first elected | 26:00 | |
but the second consecrated | 26:03 | |
because New Zealand snuck in there. | 26:05 | |
(interviewer laughs) | 26:07 | |
And after Barbara I think was elected | 26:08 | |
they elected somebody and then consecrated | 26:10 | |
her before Barbara was consecrated. | 26:12 | |
Or something like that. | 26:14 | |
But within a year, the Anglican Communion | 26:14 | |
globally had two female bishops. | 26:18 | |
And this had conservatives going crazy. | 26:20 | |
And so here was Re-Imagining for Episcopalians | 26:26 | |
sneaking along side of this shift in pastoral authority. | 26:30 | |
And they're thinking oh my god is this, | 26:36 | |
are we going to be doing eucharis with milk and honey next. | 26:38 | |
And are people going to be dancing in our aisles | 26:42 | |
which would be horror for Episcopalians. | 26:44 | |
(both laugh) | 26:46 | |
People dancing oh my god in church. | 26:48 | |
(interviewer laughs) | 26:48 | |
And I think a lot of people were really horrified | 26:50 | |
by the reinterpretation of the Bible, | 26:56 | |
what they saw as reinterpretation of the Bible. | 26:57 | |
Instead of I mean what's been going in scholarship | 27:01 | |
of course is a deep re-engagement with the text | 27:04 | |
as we find better text, | 27:07 | |
as we have more historical evidence | 27:09 | |
about what the early church was like. | 27:10 | |
As we understand more about ancient Greece and Rome | 27:12 | |
and gender issues and sexuality | 27:15 | |
and all this sort of stuff. | 27:18 | |
And so the idea with conservatives is that | 27:19 | |
truth is truth once delivered. | 27:22 | |
And all of this scholarship was upsetting | 27:25 | |
what they understood to be the truth. | 27:29 | |
So that was upsetting. | 27:32 | |
And they thought Re-Imagining was part of that | 27:33 | |
what they call revisionism. | 27:35 | |
And then in their churches | 27:39 | |
there was a lot of fear about the authority | 27:42 | |
of a female bishop or even worse I suppose, | 27:44 | |
from their point-of-view getting a female clergy person | 27:47 | |
in their own parish. | 27:51 | |
And there were plenty of parishes that would | 27:53 | |
never, I mean there still are parishes now 20 years later | 27:56 | |
that still have not had women. | 27:59 | |
So all of that was coming to bare on this. | 28:01 | |
And so anyway, | 28:04 | |
Katherine and I had lunch together. | 28:06 | |
And we talked about all this stuff | 28:08 | |
about the conference and about what | 28:11 | |
was going on with global Anglicanism. | 28:12 | |
And I thought we had a good conversation. | 28:15 | |
And then whatever it was two weeks later, | 28:17 | |
my piece had been published | 28:21 | |
through the New York Times Syndicate. | 28:22 | |
And her piece had been published wherever | 28:24 | |
it had been published in the | 28:26 | |
Institute of Religion Democracy's letter or whatever it was. | 28:26 | |
And they were exactly the opposite. | 28:30 | |
It was literally like we had been in two different rooms | 28:32 | |
and had never had any conversation at all. | 28:35 | |
- | So she never gave you a clue | 28:39 |
of what her reaction was when you had | 28:40 | |
- | No. | 28:42 |
- | Wow. | 28:43 |
- | She was like a cipher. | 28:43 |
- | Ahh. | 28:44 |
- | And not only was she like a cipher | 28:45 |
but she was asking me questions, she kept saying | 28:46 | |
well is this what is going on in academia. | 28:48 | |
And I was like saying, in this very sort | 28:52 | |
of enthusiastic way that I have, | 28:54 | |
(interviewer laughs) | 28:56 | |
which is always how I am. | 28:57 | |
- | Yes. | 28:58 |
- | I was like well yeah you know there was this amazing | 28:59 |
sort of set of discoveries | 29:02 | |
about women's roles in the early church. | 29:05 | |
And there's this new archeological evidence | 29:07 | |
and there's this kind of, we're re-thinking | 29:09 | |
about there's textual evidence | 29:12 | |
and there's all this stuff that's going on | 29:14 | |
with coptic studies. | 29:16 | |
And so that's not my area of expertise | 29:18 | |
but I have great friends. | 29:20 | |
I was telling you Kathleen Corley's name | 29:23 | |
for example. | 29:24 | |
Kathleen was one of my best friends | 29:26 | |
while we were all in this period of time together | 29:28 | |
from college and seminary and graduate school onward. | 29:32 | |
I lost track with her a little bit in recent years. | 29:35 | |
But she and I would talk about this stuff | 29:37 | |
and that's her area. | 29:40 | |
- | Yeah. | 29:42 |
- | And it was just amazing to me | 29:42 |
what was going on in New Testament studies around gender. | 29:45 | |
Since my PhD is in Theology and church history, | 29:49 | |
I'm smart enough to know what that's all about. | 29:52 | |
And so I was telling this in this wonderful way, | 29:56 | |
you know exciting biography and showing how | 29:59 | |
Heather's point-of-view was right in line | 30:02 | |
with the way that we are moving and understanding | 30:05 | |
the deep history of the Bible. | 30:09 | |
And I thought she understood me. | 30:13 | |
- | Wow. | 30:15 |
- | I mean I thought, what I thought it was | 30:16 |
was having a conversation with a reporter | 30:18 | |
who didn't have the same background that I had | 30:21 | |
and that she wanted to be educated about a subject. | 30:24 | |
And then when I got to the other side of it, | 30:27 | |
actually it appears, when you lay the articles | 30:29 | |
side by side, it appears that she was actually | 30:33 | |
sort of fishing around to try to find out | 30:35 | |
how I was a heretic. | 30:37 | |
- | Yes. | 30:39 |
- | And I don't believe she mentioned me by name. | 30:40 |
- | She did not. | 30:43 |
- | Cause that would have been really unprofessional. | 30:43 |
- | Yeah. | 30:45 |
- | Because you're not supposed to do that | 30:46 |
to another journalist. | 30:49 | |
- | And I even mentioned her in my article. | 30:51 |
- | Right. | 30:53 |
- | But that conversation between us did happen. | 30:54 |
And like I said I was really shocked afterwards | 30:57 | |
to see that it was literally like two people | 30:59 | |
had not even been in the same room together. | 31:03 | |
She saw something so entirely different than I saw. | 31:05 | |
- | That's amazing. | 31:08 |
- | It was amazing. | 31:09 |
- | Yeah | 31:10 |
- | It was kind of a lesson in post modernism. | 31:11 |
- | Exactly, exactly. | 31:13 |
(Diana laughs) | 31:14 | |
- | It was a perspective and what you bring into | 31:16 |
a room really does account for | 31:19 | |
an amazing amount of journalistic interpretation. | 31:23 | |
- | Yeah exactly. | 31:26 |
I loved your article in the New York Times. | 31:29 | |
You said so many good things. | 31:31 | |
And there's a quote. | 31:32 | |
And I know it's been a long time | 31:33 | |
but I wondered if you could react to this. | 31:34 | |
You wrote for the first time, | 31:36 | |
I could imagine the power of Christianity | 31:37 | |
fully inclusive of women. | 31:39 | |
Does that spark any memories or any reactions? | 31:41 | |
- | Yeah I think that was the dancing. | 31:44 |
(both laugh) | 31:45 | |
- | Was it? | 31:46 |
I love it. | 31:47 | |
- | I really do I think it was that liturgy | 31:48 |
because I had never seen a liturgy | 31:50 | |
that was all women before. | 31:51 | |
- | Yeah. | 31:54 |
- | I had been in Episcopal church | 31:55 |
where there had been women presiding over the table. | 31:57 | |
And I had even I think by that time | 32:01 | |
probably been in a church when it had been all | 32:03 | |
women presiding, like a priest, maybe a deacon. | 32:06 | |
And the readers that day were all women, | 32:09 | |
you know for some quirky reason. | 32:12 | |
But in those settings, | 32:15 | |
there were still a lot of men around. | 32:16 | |
- | Yes. | 32:18 |
- | And even if there was no man up front | 32:19 |
there were the men in the congregation, | 32:21 | |
the ushers and the Sunday school teachers. | 32:22 | |
So I'd never been in a liturgy | 32:25 | |
that was written by, presided over by | 32:27 | |
and participated in all by women. | 32:31 | |
And that was the piece that was so powerful | 32:33 | |
that I stole the apple off the table. | 32:36 | |
(interviewer laughs) | 32:38 | |
And wrote that really nice line. (laughs) | 32:39 | |
- | You did, oh my goodness. | 32:41 |
- | But I didn't talk about stealing the apple in the article. | 32:42 |
- | No, so I'm so glad that I know that. | 32:44 |
- | Well now it's in the background. | 32:47 |
- | Yes it's public, it's great and it's so important. | 32:48 |
- | And if anybody every finds it amongst my remains | 32:51 |
(interviewer laughs) | 32:53 | |
bury me with the apple. | 32:54 | |
(both laugh) | 32:55 | |
- | Oh I love it. | 32:57 |
There were so many great lines. | 32:59 | |
There's another quote you gave | 33:01 | |
that I wanted to know how you would reflect on now. | 33:02 | |
Feminist theology and liturgical reform | 33:04 | |
was officially banished in the margins | 33:06 | |
of American main line Protestantism. | 33:08 | |
What would you say now about that? | 33:11 | |
- | Yeah that's a great, that's really interesting | 33:13 |
because back then that's how it felt | 33:15 | |
because those women for everything they were doing | 33:19 | |
that was so smart and so powerful and so beautiful | 33:22 | |
they were losing their jobs. | 33:25 | |
- | Exactly. | 33:26 |
- | And the other thing that was horrifying to me | 33:27 |
is that people were not paying attention to my article, | 33:30 | |
they were paying attention to Katherine's article. | 33:37 | |
And Heather got into real trouble after that conference. | 33:40 | |
And I don't believe she lost her job. | 33:46 | |
- | She did not. | 33:48 |
- | But that she was under great pressure. | 33:50 |
- | She was. | 33:52 |
- | And nobody ever asked me what I saw there. | 33:52 |
But instead they used Katherine's article | 33:59 | |
as evidence against her. | 34:03 | |
And that really hurt me. | 34:05 | |
And I remember I believe, | 34:06 | |
it'd be interesting to see if Heather remembers this or not. | 34:09 | |
I met Heather again on the other side | 34:13 | |
on a couple of different occasions. | 34:17 | |
But I do believe I called her up | 34:18 | |
when I heard that she was in trouble | 34:22 | |
and I just commiserated with her. | 34:24 | |
And I said I can't believe that this is going on. | 34:26 | |
Because from what I saw everything you | 34:30 | |
said and did was perfectly | 34:33 | |
within the parameters of orthodoxy. | 34:34 | |
And that's really what was shocking to me at the time | 34:37 | |
is that I couldn't see how anything she did | 34:39 | |
deviated from orthodoxy. | 34:45 | |
Now there was some other stuff | 34:47 | |
that was a little bit more challenging | 34:48 | |
including the dance and the apples and stuff. | 34:51 | |
But that was just done in fun. | 34:53 | |
That wasn't really anybody standing up there | 34:55 | |
saying we're going to now violate the whole | 34:57 | |
purpose of Christianity by committing | 35:02 | |
some sort of burning crosses or whatever. | 35:05 | |
There was certainly a pushing at the edge. | 35:08 | |
But it wasn't Heather. | 35:12 | |
- | Yes. | 35:14 |
- | And a lot of the intellectual stuff | 35:15 |
really wasn't very much pushing the edge. | 35:17 | |
But yet everything was being interpreted | 35:21 | |
as being heretical or dangerous | 35:24 | |
or outside of the boundaries of orthodoxy. | 35:25 | |
And that's what the part was that really puzzled me. | 35:29 | |
And that's why I called, I'm sure I called Heather up | 35:31 | |
and talked to her about that. | 35:34 | |
And that was the choice it seemed | 35:39 | |
that the denominations were making at that time. | 35:40 | |
Is that they were going to believe | 35:44 | |
the Institute of Religion and Democracy | 35:45 | |
and not believe people like me. | 35:47 | |
And I should have been a credible voice | 35:51 | |
as credible as the other person sitting there in the room. | 35:53 | |
But no. | 35:56 | |
- | Where do you think mainline Protestantism is today | 36:00 |
on inclusive language, feminist theology? | 36:03 | |
- | Well, that's the interesting thing in 20 years retrospect | 36:07 |
I think a lot of people who might have participated | 36:10 | |
in some of the, let's use the language, | 36:13 | |
I mean that was an intellectual and sort of Ecclesiastical | 36:16 | |
witch hunt that went on against those women. | 36:19 | |
- | Yes. | 36:22 |
- | And a lot of their lives were almost ruined | 36:23 |
because of what happened. | 36:25 | |
I do think that there would be people | 36:30 | |
who participated in that then that might regret that now. | 36:30 | |
Because now we've had 20 more years | 36:35 | |
of women in ministry. | 36:38 | |
And I think one of the things that we can fairly say | 36:39 | |
is that yeah the churches are all smaller than they were | 36:42 | |
20 years ago. | 36:46 | |
But that was not the women's fault. (laughs) | 36:48 | |
What happened was the women were the inheritors | 36:51 | |
of an institution that was already in a state of disarray. | 36:54 | |
And I think you can equally make the case that whatever | 36:58 | |
is left of mainline Protestantism | 37:01 | |
that women have saved it. | 37:04 | |
- | And how have women saved it would you say? | 37:08 |
- | Well I think women saved it by being | 37:10 |
willing to go in and take parishes | 37:12 | |
that no man would have ever taken. | 37:13 | |
You know that where they got half the pay | 37:16 | |
and still loved the people there | 37:18 | |
and cared for them and marry their grandchildren | 37:21 | |
and baptize their family members and buried them. | 37:23 | |
Women took a lot of really crappy jobs. | 37:28 | |
- | Yeah. | 37:30 |
- | That no guy would ever take graduating from seminary. | 37:32 |
And then, and I would I think be more like the first | 37:33 | |
maybe decade, first 15 years of women's ordination, | 37:37 | |
the Episcopal church certainly. | 37:42 | |
But then people began saying hey this isn't so scary. | 37:44 | |
She was actually a really good priest. | 37:47 | |
She was there for me when I was sick. | 37:49 | |
And so then those women started getting into somewhat | 37:52 | |
better jobs and then they begin to move | 37:54 | |
into more and more places of influence. | 37:56 | |
And started becoming professors at seminaries. | 37:58 | |
And I think there was just this kind of slow acceptance | 38:03 | |
of women that became almost a real enthusiasm | 38:07 | |
in many quarters for the ministry of women | 38:10 | |
and saying hey she was actually really a lot nicer | 38:13 | |
than any of the guys we ever had in this place | 38:16 | |
before then. | 38:19 | |
Or wasn't it fun when our priest was pregnant | 38:21 | |
and it was Christmas time. | 38:24 | |
And so that people began to really | 38:26 | |
see these amazing kinds of things | 38:28 | |
that women did because one sometimes they just had to | 38:31 | |
if they were going to exercise their ministry. | 38:37 | |
Or that they did because they loved. | 38:40 | |
Or that happened just because they happened to be women. | 38:43 | |
You know being pregnant at Christmas | 38:45 | |
gives a whole different spin to the Mary story. | 38:46 | |
- | It does. | 38:48 |
- | You wind up being a character in the Christmas pageants. | 38:49 |
(both laugh) | 38:51 | |
- | That's a good way to put it. | 38:54 |
- | Rather than just a king. | 38:56 |
(interviewer laughs) | 38:58 | |
- | You get to be Mary | 38:59 |
and so I think that was really very powerful. | 39:01 | |
And then those women started sort of saying | 39:09 | |
they would just more naturally kind of read | 39:13 | |
the liturgy in different ways. | 39:15 | |
Or you know some were simply introducing | 39:18 | |
bits of liturgy. | 39:21 | |
And then overtly introducing liturgy. | 39:25 | |
And that changed things. | 39:27 | |
And I know Presbyterian and UCC and Episcopal | 39:30 | |
and Lutheran churches that use very much | 39:34 | |
things that happened at Re-Imagining 25 years ago | 39:38 | |
they use now in Sunday services. | 39:41 | |
- | Really? | 39:42 |
- | Yeah. | 39:43 |
- | Yeah. | 39:45 |
- | Now they might not use it in every Sunday service | 39:45 |
- | Rignt. | 39:47 |
- | but I would say that there's a significant number | 39:48 |
of I'd probably put it 30 to 40% of mainline congregations | 39:52 | |
on a somewhat regular basis use bits and pieces | 39:58 | |
of liturgy that were, would have been | 40:02 | |
comfortable at Re-Imagining in the 90s. | 40:05 | |
And some, there's probably about 20% of mainline churches | 40:08 | |
that I suspect that use that liturgy a lot. | 40:12 | |
And if not, some of them even as regular liturgies. | 40:14 | |
- | You mean actual liturgy from Re-Imagining | 40:18 |
- | Oh yeah. | 40:19 |
- | Yeah. | 40:20 |
- | Well I don't know if it's the actual liturgy | 40:21 |
from Re-Imagining but like there's a wonderful | 40:22 | |
Episcopal church that I was a member | 40:25 | |
of in Santa Barbara, California. | 40:27 | |
And I visit that church every year at least once. | 40:29 | |
And I've watched them over the last two decades | 40:34 | |
go on this long journey. | 40:37 | |
And in the 1990s, they were using fairly standard | 40:38 | |
Episcopal liturgy that now I think of as sexist. | 40:42 | |
But now they use liturgy | 40:49 | |
that there's snippets of it that are still | 40:53 | |
the traditional liturgy | 40:55 | |
but they use the inclusive language liturgy | 40:57 | |
of the Episcopal church. | 40:59 | |
They use the New Zealand liturgy | 41:01 | |
which was very much rewritten | 41:03 | |
in a non-sexist, non white privilege way. | 41:06 | |
They use that liturgy. | 41:11 | |
They use Janet Morley's Catholic liturgies | 41:13 | |
that are now, the Episcopal church | 41:16 | |
just this past year has officially permitted | 41:18 | |
Janet Morley's Catholic feminist liturgies | 41:23 | |
to be used in main Episcopal services. | 41:26 | |
- | Wow. | 41:31 |
- | Yeah and those were | 41:32 |
certainly influenced by Re-Imagining | 41:33 | |
all those years ago. | 41:36 | |
And so some bits and pieces of all of that work | 41:38 | |
that was done that was so controversial | 41:42 | |
and got people fired and caused such a stank | 41:45 | |
and fill the coffers of the Institute of Religion Democracy | 41:49 | |
with donation money that's become fairly | 41:54 | |
standard practice in a significant portion | 41:59 | |
of mainline Protestantism. | 42:03 | |
And that's a portion of mainline Protestantism | 42:05 | |
that is growing. | 42:07 | |
That's not the part that's in decline. | 42:09 | |
- | Yeah. | 42:11 |
- | You go into those churches and like | 42:12 |
All Saints Pasadena or Trinity Church Wall Street | 42:14 | |
in New York City. | 42:17 | |
Or Trinity Church in Santa Barbara | 42:19 | |
those are congregations that are big and stable | 42:22 | |
and even growing congregations. | 42:26 | |
And if not necessarily growing by leaps and bounds. | 42:30 | |
There are certainly congregations | 42:33 | |
that are not going anywhere cause they have | 42:34 | |
very dynamic memberships | 42:37 | |
that are Evangelistic and justice-oriented. | 42:42 | |
And they're some of our best congregations | 42:47 | |
that have made this term. | 42:50 | |
And I think that's true for the Lutherans | 42:54 | |
and the Presbyterians as well. | 42:56 | |
- | Yeah, you know in you're recent work Grounded | 42:58 |
you do a great job of talking about spirituality | 43:01 | |
and the importance of nature and community. | 43:03 | |
And I wonder if you see any connections to Re-Imaging | 43:06 | |
in any of that. | 43:09 | |
- | Well you know I don't personally know, | 43:10 |
Re-imagining was that moment | 43:15 | |
that sort of I think for me crystallized | 43:17 | |
where I had been going and sort of just said | 43:20 | |
hey don't be afraid of this. | 43:23 | |
You know all this stuff from graduate school, | 43:25 | |
you've already been a part of a congregation | 43:28 | |
that's starting to experiment with this. | 43:30 | |
And I was friends with a lot of people | 43:34 | |
in the mid 90s at Clermont School Of Theology. | 43:36 | |
And so they were, they had a lot of bugs in my ear. | 43:39 | |
And plus I had all this experience about Evangelical | 43:43 | |
feminism which was still very much a conversation | 43:45 | |
that was going on and the connections that I retained | 43:51 | |
in Evangelicalism which was mostly through fuller | 43:55 | |
seminary I think at that point | 43:58 | |
- | Yeah. | 43:59 |
- | and some of the more liberal Evangelical organizations. | 44:00 |
So all of that was already in play | 44:06 | |
- | Yes. | 44:07 |
- | sort of in my own life and Re-Imagining | 44:08 |
just sort of was a moment of underlining that. | 44:10 | |
And saying you know hey this is just part | 44:13 | |
of the tradition. | 44:17 | |
This is just part of reading the Bible. | 44:18 | |
This is who you are. | 44:20 | |
And this is the future. | 44:23 | |
And it's okay. | 44:25 | |
- | Yeah. | 44:27 |
- | And I think that for me | 44:28 |
that was the moment where I just sort of said | 44:29 | |
name it and claim it. | 44:33 | |
(both laugh) | 44:37 | |
It's an old adage I would say. | 44:38 | |
So I think that the trajectory in terms of my work | 44:43 | |
is a cumulative trajectory | 44:48 | |
in which Re-Imagining was sort of one pause | 44:50 | |
or one moment on that path. | 44:54 | |
That was important certainly | 44:57 | |
but not maybe formative. | 44:59 | |
- | Yes. | 45:02 |
- | The other things were already in place | 45:03 |
that were formative. | 45:05 | |
But Re-Imagining underscored it. | 45:07 | |
- | Yeah, that's great. | 45:09 |
- | And I do meet Heather later. | 45:11 |
- | Oh you did. | 45:12 |
- | Yeah she actually | 45:13 |
when I was looking for a job, | 45:15 | |
she brought me to Drew and I interviewed | 45:17 | |
for a position there and we had a great time. | 45:19 | |
And it was really wonderful | 45:21 | |
to think that at some point I might have worked undner her | 45:23 | |
as her being my dean. | 45:25 | |
But I guess I came in second for that job. | 45:29 | |
(interviewer laughs) | 45:31 | |
- | They probably always regretted that. (laughs) | 45:32 |
- | No it went to a really cool guy, | 45:34 |
out gay, really amazing American religion scholar | 45:36 | |
and hey I | 45:39 | |
- | YOu've done pretty well for yourself. | 45:40 |
- | I'm fine and he's fine | 45:42 |
and he's done great work. | 45:45 | |
- | Good. | 45:47 |
- | So all is good. | 45:47 |
- | Well I have just two more questions for you. | 45:48 |
I really appreciate your time. | 45:50 | |
What do you think Re-Imagining means today | 45:51 | |
and I don't just mean the Re-Imagining community? | 45:54 | |
Think what needs to be re-imagined today | 45:55 | |
in church, in society. | 45:58 | |
- | One way I think Re-Imagining probably it's most | 46:01 |
long term impact on me was to think | 46:04 | |
about theological imagination | 46:07 | |
and the importance of theological imagination. | 46:11 | |
And that it's a never ending task | 46:14 | |
is that we are always bring the sacred imagination | 46:16 | |
to play in our texts and our practices | 46:20 | |
and the ways that we gather as community | 46:23 | |
and the ways we worship. | 46:25 | |
And to understand how beautiful and precious | 46:27 | |
and what a creative process that is. | 46:30 | |
And so I think that | 46:32 | |
Re-Imagining just sort of reminded, | 46:35 | |
it taught me first of all that imagination | 46:39 | |
was necessary | 46:42 | |
in the life of the church. | 46:44 | |
And it's also for me, it's really pushed me | 46:48 | |
to the edges as a writer. | 46:51 | |
I really take that seriously as part of my call. | 46:54 | |
And so for me in a sense Re-Imagining never ends | 46:58 | |
which I'm reminded of with that apple. | 47:00 | |
- | Yes, yes. | 47:02 |
- | When I pick that up every Christmas time | 47:03 |
and hang it on my tree, | 47:05 | |
it's like okay well there was the Re-Imagining conference | 47:06 | |
back when and a lot of people got in trouble | 47:09 | |
but the task of re-imagining is continuous. | 47:12 | |
And it's beautiful. | 47:16 | |
And it is really the life of any faith community, | 47:18 | |
that constant call to enter into creativity. | 47:22 | |
Now I would talk about it as co-creation. | 47:27 | |
The co-creation of both the beloved community | 47:31 | |
of the church, the co-creation of just the beloved community | 47:34 | |
of humanity, the priesthood of all of us | 47:38 | |
of the whole human family. | 47:42 | |
In living in a keen sense of awareness of God's presence, | 47:44 | |
with and in and through us. | 47:48 | |
And that we are not only called to just re-imagine | 47:51 | |
theology but we're called always to re-imagine what | 47:53 | |
it means to live with justice. | 47:56 | |
And to live in such a way | 48:01 | |
that every human being has dignity. | 48:04 | |
And I think that for me that that's what re-imagining | 48:08 | |
has really come to mean. | 48:10 | |
It's a life commitment of the dream of God | 48:12 | |
and us participating with and in and through that. | 48:17 | |
And God with us doing it. | 48:20 | |
And so I'm really kind of grateful for the language | 48:21 | |
to re-imagine. | 48:27 | |
Cause it's a never ending task. | 48:29 | |
It's just a never ending task. | 48:32 | |
- | That was beautiful. | 48:33 |
- | I have one last question for you. | 48:35 |
- | Okay. | 48:36 |
- | The Re-Imagining community has reincorporated and | 48:37 |
- | I did not know that. | 48:39 |
- | Yes, yes. | 48:40 |
- | Oh wow it's a never ending task. | 48:41 |
- | it is, it is. | 48:43 |
(Diana laughs) | 48:44 | |
and we jump back in again. | 48:45 | |
And one of our works is developing a website. | 48:46 | |
And part of it is historical, | 48:49 | |
we're digitizing the conferences, | 48:50 | |
we're collecting history so it's not lost | 48:52 | |
but we also want to collect resources | 48:57 | |
and make connections for people. | 48:59 | |
And I'm just wondering if you had any thoughts | 49:01 | |
about resources we should include, | 49:03 | |
who would benefit from it. | 49:05 | |
Any ideas about what to do with the website. | 49:07 | |
- | Oh gosh, oh, I'm terrible with technology. | 49:11 |
(interviewer laughs) | 49:14 | |
Although I love social media which is kind of weird. | 49:15 | |
I think of a lot of websites now | 49:20 | |
as libraries. | 49:24 | |
One of the websites that I'm really impressed with | 49:26 | |
that I think is doing great work about continuing | 49:29 | |
a legacy of someone that we love | 49:32 | |
is the Frederick Buechner community and website. | 49:37 | |
And they've done kind of some astonishing work | 49:41 | |
in keeping, you know Buechner is 90 now. | 49:44 | |
- | Yeah. | 49:47 |
- | I guess they're just getting ready to celebrate | 49:48 |
his 90th birthday. | 49:49 | |
And what they're trying to do through both | 49:51 | |
a website and conferences through social media | 49:54 | |
is making sure that the legacy of his words live. | 49:57 | |
- | Wonderful. | 50:00 |
- | And so I can easily see Re-Imagining | 50:01 |
trying to figure out how to do that. | 50:05 | |
How do you make this legacy sing. | 50:08 | |
And I could certainly think of a lot of people who need it. | 50:12 | |
Increasingly, I'm struck as I know so many millennial adults | 50:16 | |
now which is so funny cause they were the millennial kids | 50:22 | |
(interviewer laughs) | 50:25 | |
for a long time but now they're the millennial adults | 50:26 | |
and I'm really glad that we're all together | 50:28 | |
on this journey right now. | 50:30 | |
Cause I feel like as a baby boomer, | 50:31 | |
I feel like my life is so enriched | 50:33 | |
by my millennial kids and I have a step son | 50:35 | |
who's a millennial and my daughter's 18. | 50:38 | |
And my incredible number of friends | 50:41 | |
who are in their 20s and 30s. | 50:43 | |
And one of the really precious things | 50:46 | |
about so many of those journeys | 50:49 | |
is that those young adults grew up | 50:52 | |
in Evangelicalism in the 1980s when it was not like | 50:54 | |
the Evangelicalism that I describe that I knew in my 20s | 50:56 | |
in the 1970s. | 51:01 | |
For them Evangelicalism that they were born | 51:04 | |
to in the 1980s was the religious right | 51:06 | |
it was Jerry Falwell, it was narrow patriarchy. | 51:09 | |
It was anti-feminist. | 51:14 | |
It was against gay people. | 51:14 | |
That kind of Evangelicalism was horrifying. | 51:16 | |
And they were raised with it. | 51:22 | |
And so what's happening now is there's so many | 51:24 | |
people from the Evangelical tradition | 51:26 | |
who are having to leave. | 51:29 | |
And they don't know any of this history. | 51:31 | |
As a matter of fact, they were taught | 51:34 | |
that people like me | 51:37 | |
I know I've had friends | 51:39 | |
who are now in their 20s | 51:40 | |
or 30s who said that their parents | 51:42 | |
actually warned them not to read books | 51:45 | |
that I had written because I was dangerous. | 51:47 | |
And hey I went to college with those people. | 51:51 | |
(both laugh) | 51:53 | |
Or seminary and their parents or their pastors | 51:57 | |
think I'm dangerous. | 52:01 | |
- | Wow. | 52:02 |
- | And so then they find their way to something | 52:03 |
that I've written and it's like they've gone oh my gosh | 52:06 | |
this is beautiful. | 52:07 | |
This is what I think Christianity is. | 52:08 | |
And so I think what we have now is we have | 52:10 | |
this whole beautiful, amazing generation | 52:12 | |
of young adults who are on a journey | 52:15 | |
who have been so shaped by a really negative | 52:19 | |
form of Christianity | 52:24 | |
that they don't even know if they're Christian anymore. | 52:26 | |
And so the more I think we can put | 52:28 | |
the stories about a different sort of Christianity | 52:31 | |
out there, especially in places where they make | 52:34 | |
community like the internet. | 52:37 | |
That hopefully people will find their way there. | 52:40 | |
And realize that they have friends and that | 52:43 | |
there's different ways of seeing these things. | 52:46 | |
And that a lot of the work has been done. | 52:48 | |
That they can just pick up and if some of the younger | 52:51 | |
leaders that I know understood that that | 52:55 | |
and power of this work, I do think that it could | 52:57 | |
make their jobs easier. | 53:01 | |
- | Yes. | 53:03 |
- | Cause they can build on it. | 53:04 |
And they can just go further. | 53:04 | |
I don't want our work to colonize them. | 53:06 | |
- | Yes. | 53:08 |
- | What I dream of, is having the work that we've done | 53:09 |
and that we've left behind as simply | 53:12 | |
one more layer of a foundation. | 53:15 | |
That they can build something on that | 53:19 | |
would be beyond my wildest imagining. | 53:22 | |
That they can pick up the process | 53:26 | |
of this creative re-imagining, this co-creation. | 53:29 | |
And build just something that's so beautiful. | 53:32 | |
And that's more truly Christian | 53:37 | |
than what even I can imagine. | 53:41 | |
And that's why we need each other. | 53:43 | |
And so I think that having places | 53:46 | |
where these resources and these stories are preserved | 53:49 | |
are just a way of laying that foundation. | 53:52 | |
So that people can take it and build more. | 53:55 | |
- | You express beautifully what the Re-Imagining community | 53:59 |
is hoping. | 54:03 | |
Thank you. | 54:04 | |
- | Oh that's wonderful. | 54:04 |
- | It's beautifully expressed, that's exactly what | 54:06 |
- | Well I always just watching | 54:07 |
or on edge and I did steal your apple. | 54:08 | |
I suppose I owe you. | 54:12 | |
(both laugh) | 54:13 | |
- | Oh no we owe you, we owe you please. | 54:14 |
And I love that, people will be thrilled to know | 54:17 | |
that at Christmas, we'll be thinking of you at Christmas | 54:19 | |
when you put that apple on the tree. | 54:21 | |
- | Aw well thank you. | 54:22 |
- | With gratitude, enjoy. | 54:23 |
- | It's always there. | 54:26 |
- | I love it. | 54:27 |
- | Is there anything we haven't discussed | 54:28 |
that you would like to add Diana. | 54:29 | |
- | Oh, no. | 54:31 |
- | This was great. | 54:34 |
- | Yeah thank you so much. | 54:35 |
- | Thank you so much. | 54:36 |