Blackstock, Donna
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- | OK. | 0:01 |
- | Donna, thank you so much for agreeing | 0:04 |
to be interviewed and if I could first get | 0:05 | |
some background information from you. | 0:08 | |
Could you please say and spell your name. | 0:10 | |
- | Donna Blackstock, that's D-O-N-N-A B-L-A-C-K-S-T-O-C-K. | 0:14 |
- | Oh, thank you very much, and Donna, are you lay or clergy? | 0:24 |
- | Excuse me, do not write Blackstone, okay. | 0:28 |
- | OK, it's Blackstock right. | 0:31 |
- | I get the other one all the time. | 0:34 |
- | I bet you do. (laughing) | 0:36 |
We want to make sure we get this right Donna. | 0:38 | |
I don't blame you. | 0:39 | |
Are you lay or clergy? | 0:41 | |
- | I'm lay. | 0:45 |
- | Uh huh, and your denominational affiliation? | 0:46 |
- | Presbyterian Church USA. | 0:50 |
- | Thank you and Donna, when and where were you born? | 0:52 |
- | I was born in Salt Lake City in 1942. | 0:56 |
- | OK, where did you go to school? | 1:00 |
College, graduate shool, divinity school any of those? | 1:03 | |
- | I got my undergraduate degree at | 1:08 |
California State University in Los Angeles. | 1:10 | |
They changed the name after I left, | 1:16 | |
I never remember what it is now. | 1:17 | |
Got a Masters degree at New Mexico State. | 1:21 | |
Got a M.Div at Union Seminary in New York. | 1:26 | |
- | What was your Masters degree in, besides, | 1:34 |
not the M.Div, the other one? | 1:37 | |
- | The other one, oh yeah, that was | 1:38 |
Educational Administration in Multicultural Areas. | 1:41 | |
- | Oh, interesting, OK. | 1:45 |
- | Then, well you were involved in curriculum development, | 1:49 |
is that correct? | 1:52 | |
- | That's right. | 1:54 |
- | Good. | 1:54 |
So what work or ministry were you doing | 1:56 | |
at the time of Reimagining Donna? | 1:57 | |
- | I was providing | 2:01 |
the people who made up the | 2:07 | |
let's see, made-up isn't a good term. | 2:10 | |
Um, supervising the editorial staff. | 2:13 | |
The editorial staff for curriculum | 2:16 | |
and other educational resources. | 2:19 | |
- | Good, was that in your title as | 2:22 |
Coordinator of Resource Development? | 2:23 | |
- | No I think that was all the title | 2:27 |
because it's been so long. | 2:28 | |
But, yes, Coordinator of Resource Development | 2:30 | |
was I think the title. | 2:32 | |
(both chuckling) | 2:34 | |
- | Right, it is rather a long title, yes, | 2:35 |
and then what work or ministry did you do | 2:36 | |
after Reimagining Donna? | 2:39 | |
- | Basically the same thing until Ossinger moved to... | 2:43 |
Wait we were already there. | 2:49 | |
I don't know. | 2:52 | |
- | You were already where? In Louisville? | 2:53 |
- | No, okay yeah, we were in Louisville. | 2:56 |
So when we went to Louisville, | 3:00 | |
that's when I became the Coordinator | 3:04 | |
for Development of Educational Resources. | 3:05 | |
And after Reimagining a couple or three years later, | 3:09 | |
I became a publisher for educational resources | 3:14 | |
A few years after that, lost my job, that was stunning. | 3:19 | |
- | Yes, yep, very common unfortunately. | 3:30 |
How and when did you first become aware | 3:33 | |
of feminist theology? | 3:38 | |
- | I was in Mew Mexico at the time, | 3:51 |
I worked for awhile in New Mexico for the Church. | 3:52 | |
for Board for National Admissions. | 3:55 | |
Then they restructured themselves | 3:57 | |
and got rid of the Board National Admissions. | 4:03 | |
I was working in Taos we had finally set up | 4:05 | |
a center for children with learning disabilities in Taos. | 4:10 | |
That was in the 70's, late 70's, | 4:15 | |
then I started reading feminist theology. | 4:21 | |
Really got pretty much into it and branched a little bit | 4:28 | |
into church related stuff, but didn't really | 4:34 | |
get into that until a little bit later when I moved | 4:40 | |
to New York to work in the offices there. | 4:43 | |
Then I had easy access to resources and stuff | 4:46 | |
for teaching myself. | 4:51 | |
After a while I decided I'd taught myself | 4:53 | |
as much as I could, besides I turned myself off to seminary. | 4:56 | |
Then I really got into it. | 5:01 | |
- | Yes, I'm sorry, in New York, what offices | 5:04 |
were you working for in New York? | 5:06 | |
- | In New York, I started out with | 5:09 |
the Christian Education Team developing curriculum. | 5:11 | |
And I was a minister at that time. | 5:14 | |
- | OK, Donna I'm intrigued. | 5:17 |
What lead you to even start reading feminist theology? | 5:20 | |
Do you recall? | 5:24 | |
- | Well, the same thing that lead me to read. | 5:27 |
I was reading theology written by men, | 5:33 | |
reading the theology of the day, whatever it was. | 5:37 | |
The Church had always been a part of my life | 5:44 | |
and a part of my thinking in theology and so forth, | 5:46 | |
and just kind of broadened out to theological reading | 5:49 | |
and some feminist stuff I could get into. | 5:55 | |
I don't remember a whole lot how I did that in those days | 6:01 | |
(both chuckling) | 6:04 | |
- | Well obviously you got very intrigued | 6:05 |
because you went on an pursued it even more. | 6:07 | |
- | Yeah. | 6:09 |
- | So I'm curious, what brought you, | 6:12 |
I know you attended the 1993 Reimagining Conference, | 6:15 | |
what lead you there, what made you go? | 6:18 | |
- | Annie said go. | 6:22 |
- | Annie said? Annie King? | 6:24 |
- | Yeah. | 6:26 |
Women were staffed, they tried to be really friendly | 6:31 | |
and close with eachother because it was so rare | 6:38 | |
to have women staff in those days | 6:42 | |
and we were all learning, because there hadn't been | 6:44 | |
that much in the women's leadership and so forth | 6:48 | |
over the years, except in women's ministries. | 6:52 | |
So I had to kinda look to them to learn how to do things. | 6:56 | |
Annie said, hey this great conference is coming up | 7:01 | |
and you don't want to miss it. | 7:03 | |
Bring your staff and I said okay. | 7:05 | |
Go tell my staff, hey there's this thing here we can go to. | 7:07 | |
So we had a great time there. | 7:11 | |
- | Yeah, did many of your staff go Donna? | 7:14 |
- | Almost all of my female staff went. | 7:17 |
- | You said you had a great time, | 7:22 |
I'm curious, what do you remember, I know it's been awhile, | 7:23 | |
but what do you remember about that gathering? | 7:26 | |
- | I remember the feeling that went with it, | 7:34 |
being part of this group which was part of. | 7:38 | |
I don't know how to put it. | 7:51 | |
It was kind of giving us bits, | 7:54 | |
little bits of heaven I guess. | 8:05 | |
Little bits of how it's gonna be | 8:07 | |
when we all know how to act with eachother. | 8:10 | |
- | I might have missed a little bit of what you said, | 8:13 |
you said you figured out how to act together, | 8:16 | |
is that what you said? | 8:19 | |
- | I don't know what I said, something like that. | 8:21 |
- | OK. | 8:24 |
- | Peace, justice, good news. | 8:27 |
- | Yeah. | |
Are there any particular moments that stand out for you? | 8:33 | |
- | Not that I recall specifically. | 8:43 |
I know there were times when there were very high spirit | 8:46 | |
going through the ritual or what ever was going on | 8:54 | |
and other times you say oh brother | 8:58 | |
because it was wonderful, because even when you thought that | 9:05 | |
it was okay because you knew there was gonna be differences | 9:09 | |
in the, it was ecumenical, | 9:11 | |
it wasn't going to be Presbyterian, | 9:15 | |
like the small bridges that it ought to be. | 9:19 | |
It was great to be able to experience that. | 9:26 | |
- | So overall, it was a positive experience for you | 9:31 |
it sounds like. | 9:33 | |
- | Oh yeah. | 9:34 |
- | Yeah. | |
Now I know you were aware of the backlash. | 9:35 | |
Did it effect you directly Donna? | 9:38 | |
- | Yes it did. | 9:41 |
- | In what way? | 9:42 |
Well, all of us at one point were vilified, | 9:45 | |
and called names, | 9:51 | |
in print and not in print, | 9:54 | |
and we were all criticized. | 9:58 | |
There were a lot of calls for our dismissal | 10:01 | |
there were a lot of calls for women to be restricted | 10:03 | |
not allowed to go to conferences because we were so dumb | 10:06 | |
we didn't know the difference between Presbyterian | 10:09 | |
and something else. | 10:11 | |
That our travel money be taken away from us, | 10:16 | |
all women's travel to be restricted | 10:20 | |
until we could get an approval from somebody. | 10:22 | |
None of this went into effect. | 10:24 | |
But it does have an effect on you as you listen | 10:28 | |
to yourself think it as people talk to you directly | 10:32 | |
about how dependent and how they screwed up | 10:38 | |
the whole theology of the church | 10:43 | |
forever and ever and ever amen. | 10:45 | |
Because you went to ecumenical conference | 10:48 | |
and said Sophia and all kinds if things like that. | 10:49 | |
It got pretty nasty, very nasty. | 10:57 | |
The Church can be really nasty when it wants to, | 10:59 | |
all of them. | 11:04 | |
- | Could you say something about the, | 11:07 |
what were some of the charges that were laid against you | 11:10 | |
and the other women who attended. | 11:13 | |
- | Well, we didn't have official charges. | 11:17 |
- | I guess I was, what did people say about you? | 11:20 |
- | They said we were heretics, we were femi-nazis, | 11:25 |
we were I don't know what they called us | 11:29 | |
a lot of other names. | 11:35 | |
- | I know, well, first of all, how do you account | 11:38 |
for this backlash, were you surprised by it? | 11:42 | |
And how do you account for it? | 11:46 | |
- | I was surprised by it, because the church | 11:50 |
had been working pretty hard for the past several years | 11:53 | |
to hire women on the staff and to mention | 11:55 | |
the quality of the staff all that kind of stuff. | 12:03 | |
I suppose that was part of the backlash to that. | 12:08 | |
Where men were getting scared that we | 12:12 | |
were taking their jobs or something, | 12:15 | |
and we didn't even know how to take them over. | 12:16 | |
Because we didn't have our theology screwed on straight. | 12:18 | |
I don't know, I'm not the kind of person | 12:22 | |
who wants to mess with theology. | 12:26 | |
And how to do those studies and so forth. | 12:30 | |
So I don't really know that I can do any evaluation | 12:32 | |
of it at the time, moving in that direction | 12:36 | |
we were just trying to survive. | 12:39 | |
I was just trying to bring home right away. | 12:43 | |
Writing a couple of papers and showing them | 12:46 | |
might be something. | 12:49 | |
Showing what's going on, I don't know. | 12:51 | |
But it was a bad time and there was a lot of fear | 12:54 | |
that in my case since I was in higher management, | 12:59 | |
that it could have a negative effect | 13:07 | |
on everybody else's work and all our positions at work | 13:09 | |
would be discredited because I couldn't think right, | 13:14 | |
you know, theologically. | 13:18 | |
- | Right, well I know one of the ways you reacted | 13:21 |
was by writing a response to the small Burgess paper, | 13:24 | |
The Theological Appraisal. | 13:28 | |
- | I know I let that one get away. | 13:30 |
- | Yes, so I'm very interested in the background to that. | 13:33 |
I've read it an I was very interested in reading it. | 13:37 | |
So what motivated you, I assume, was then, well, | 13:42 | |
tell me some more about what lead you | 13:45 | |
to write that response. | 13:47 | |
- | There, what they wrote was ridiculous. | 13:50 |
How can you not go to a conference, | 13:54 | |
and then sit and write an evaluation of it? | 13:57 | |
And accuse all your colleagues of mal-theological practice? | 14:00 | |
That's it, they weren't going to get away with that | 14:08 | |
without some kind of response from somebody. | 14:10 | |
Since I was one of the writers, | 14:13 | |
I just decided I better write something. | 14:19 | |
So I decided to look at what they had, | 14:21 | |
and took apart all his stuff that I thought | 14:25 | |
needed to be picked apart and exposed, | 14:29 | |
so that was basically what I was doing, | 14:31 | |
hoping that somewhere, someplace in the Church | 14:34 | |
there were some sane people who could see this | 14:38 | |
and not be railroaded by those other two as well. | 14:41 | |
- | I'm curious Donna, did you, they were at | 14:50 |
the theology office or something, | 14:53 | |
did you know them personally? | 14:56 | |
- | Oh yeah, we were on the same larger staff, | 14:59 |
the Congregational Ministries staff. | 15:03 | |
I think that was it, a little something. | 15:06 | |
Plus I could keep the names straight for a few years. | 15:10 | |
Anyway we were on the same staff, | 15:13 | |
we would go to staff meetings, was kind of interesting. | 15:16 | |
- | What was it like to be on the same staff | 15:23 |
while this is going on? | 15:26 | |
- | Yeah, so we were sitting around this table | 15:28 |
having a staff meeting and another Director passed around | 15:30 | |
a copy of the paper and it was discussed some. | 15:34 | |
And the whole staff seemed to agree with me, | 15:41 | |
except for a couple of men. | 15:45 | |
Small and Burgess, but there we were on the same staff, | 15:50 | |
sitting side-by-side while all this was going on | 15:57 | |
and me just finding out our side of the controversy. | 16:02 | |
- | How were you able to deal with that? | 16:09 |
- | I just did my writing thing and let it go. | 16:16 |
So I'd done that and after a while | 16:21 | |
I thought Joe and I we had previously, | 16:27 | |
before the conference had ever happened | 16:31 | |
he and I would try to come to some sort of amiable terms | 16:35 | |
because we were on the same staff and we needed | 16:40 | |
to be able to work more graciously with eachother | 16:42 | |
than we had been doing. | 16:46 | |
So we had made some small steps in that direction | 16:48 | |
and I finally decided well, paper or no paper, | 16:50 | |
I'm gonna go speak to Joe and see where we are. | 16:54 | |
So I did, you know they just agreed | 16:59 | |
that we would try to work together when we had to, | 17:05 | |
even if we didn't agree on anything. | 17:08 | |
- | Was this Joe, was he Small, was this Joe Small? | 17:11 |
- | Yes. | 17:15 |
- | OK Yeah, how was your paper distributed? | 17:19 |
I found a copy in the archives, | 17:22 | |
but I wasn't clear who received it, or how it was. | 17:23 | |
- | Me neither. | 17:28 |
- | Oh, okay. | |
- | I wouldn't have had a copy, | 17:30 |
so thank you for the one that you sent. | 17:31 | |
- | Of course, of course. | 17:34 |
Was it mostly just an internal thing | 17:35 | |
that was circulated among the staff? | 17:37 | |
- | I think it was printed in the Outlook at one point. | 17:41 |
I'm not sure on it, but I think shortly after I wrote it | 17:47 | |
they grabbed it and asked if they could print it | 17:53 | |
and they did. | 17:56 | |
- | Good, I can check on that. | 17:58 |
- | Feels like a dream | |
or something but I'm pretty sure it happened. | 18:03 | |
I don't know really other ways to got distributed | 18:07 | |
I didn't have a way to distribute it. | 18:11 | |
I don't know if anyone ever picked that up | 18:14 | |
and did something with it. | 18:17 | |
- | Because the Small Burgess statement | 18:21 |
was adapted and published in the Christian Century. | 18:23 | |
- | I think they would always get the publicity. | 18:26 |
- | Small and, those two people would get publicity? | 18:32 |
- | They would, if they had the chance they're theologians. | 18:36 |
Whatever they say people sit up and listen. | 18:44 | |
- | Did you get any response to what you wrote Donna? | 18:49 |
- | Yes, there were some women here and there | 18:53 |
across the country who wrote and said thank you, | 18:56 | |
thank you, thank you, thank you. | 18:59 | |
- | What would you say was most significant | 19:05 |
to you about Reimagining? | 19:09 | |
To you personally? | 19:11 | |
- | Let's see. | 19:16 |
I guess it was the chance to get to sit around the table | 19:27 | |
with people from other faiths, | 19:33 | |
other forms of Christianity, | 19:38 | |
other ways of understanding the holiness around us. | 19:41 | |
I really appreciated that a lot, it was very meaningful. | 19:57 | |
- | Did it change your view on feminist theology | 20:07 |
and / or the church at all Donna? | 20:10 | |
- | It didn't change my views on feminist theology. | 20:16 |
But the whole backlash did have some effect | 20:21 | |
on my views of the church. | 20:27 | |
It was so hard to live in the Church at that time. | 20:32 | |
Particularly if you were a woman. | 20:37 | |
After I lost my job, there was quite a spell there | 20:45 | |
where I just couldn't bare to go to church. | 20:51 | |
It was just too painful, so it had an effect | 20:54 | |
on my relationship with the Church. | 21:01 | |
That was delayed effect I think. | 21:08 | |
- | Was there a time when you feel like you could | 21:13 |
you wanted to return to church eventually? | 21:15 | |
- | Well, I never totally left, I'd still go, | 21:20 |
sometimes I was going every Sunday again. | 21:26 | |
I know I belong in the Church. | 21:31 | |
That's part of who I am. | 21:34 | |
I'm gonna get that reconciled some day. | 21:39 | |
- | What is it that keeps you in the church, | 21:43 |
why do you feel you still belong? | 21:47 | |
- | Well, first of all, it's the relationship that I have | 22:00 |
with God then I really love the church. | 22:07 | |
I've been in the church my while life, | 22:13 | |
I enjoy being part of whatever's happening, | 22:16 | |
going to the General Assembly and see what they're doing | 22:22 | |
and all kinds of stuff so. | 22:27 | |
Actually church has always been very very important to me. | 22:33 | |
I don't know, it's kind of strange not to be a part of it. | 22:39 | |
- | Yeah. Well I have just a couple of final questions. | 22:43 |
What do you think is the greatest legacy | 22:50 | |
of the Reimagining conference or community? | 22:52 | |
- | I don't know because I was never really close | 22:59 |
to the Reimagine community, I was out on the fringe of | 23:03 | |
but I think with their Sophia groups | 23:10 | |
and the groups that carry on an stuff, | 23:18 | |
they probably did crack a window open a little bit | 23:22 | |
so that people could Reimagine. | 23:29 | |
So I think that a wonderful legacy to have. | 23:34 | |
- | Yeah. You know part of the goals of Reimagining | 23:41 |
was to bring feminist theology | 23:44 | |
and inclusive language to the church. | 23:46 | |
In your experience do you feel as if that has happened? | 23:50 | |
- | Yes and no. | 23:55 |
In education and in our educational resources | 23:58 | |
and our Presbyterian Publishing Corporation | 24:03 | |
we all have been writing editing, printing, | 24:08 | |
in inclusive language since 1978. | 24:16 | |
You would never know that because even though | 24:22 | |
that's the way that we write it and print it up | 24:24 | |
people just skip over all the inclusive language | 24:29 | |
and use plain old, well man is everybody. | 24:33 | |
It drives me nuts when you work so hard to smooth | 24:42 | |
out the language so it doesn't look all bumpy | 24:45 | |
and disjointed with the inclusive language, | 24:50 | |
make it read well and so forth. | 24:53 | |
And then there's people who say, | 24:58 | |
well how come we don't have inclusive language. | 24:59 | |
Well we do, it's just kind of nutty. | 25:02 | |
- | Why do you think that it's not actually used then, | 25:09 |
after all that work why so you think that its not. | 25:11 | |
- | Well people don't realize what they're doing. | 25:17 |
They just, well, we take Sunday school classes | 25:21 | |
this one year, and help them use the material | 25:27 | |
and this one woman, when we gather the kids around, | 25:30 | |
she said okay, now we're gonna have a story about Jonah. | 25:34 | |
Jonah was the only word that she used | 25:40 | |
that we had in the material. | 25:42 | |
- | Wow. | 25:45 |
- | People just take the stuff and they do whatever | 25:46 |
they want to with it. | 25:50 | |
Even to not being able to read the material | 25:55 | |
and saying anything in the class that's in the material. | 25:59 | |
So its really mind boggling, so they own you | 26:04 | |
and they'll eventually type teflon. | 26:08 | |
Some people just read it, | 26:11 | |
then it doesn't end up being imposed, | 26:12 | |
but some people they sort of see what it is | 26:15 | |
and sort of talk it out and (audio skips out) | 26:17 | |
- | It must be frustrating. | 26:28 |
- | Yah, it is. | 26:30 |
But we keep plugging away. | 26:33 | |
Well I don't know what they're doing now, | 26:34 | |
I haven't been there, but I think | 26:35 | |
they keep plugging away at it. | 26:37 | |
- | Well Donna, this has been really helpful. | 26:41 |
Is there anything you'd like to add | 26:42 | |
that we haven't discussed? | 26:44 | |
- | Not that I can think of. | 26:50 |
- | Well, I really appreciate it. | 26:53 |
I'm gonna turn off the recording now, but thank you so much. | 26:55 | |
- | You're welcome. | 26:58 |
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