Evans, Sara
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- | Sara, thank you so much for meeting with me. | 0:04 |
I really appreciate it. | 0:07 | |
I want to get some background information first. | 0:07 | |
First of all, could you say your name. | 0:10 | |
- | Sara Evans. | 0:12 |
- | Thank you, and are you lay or clergy? | 0:13 |
- | I am lay. | 0:15 |
- | And your denomination? | 0:16 |
- | Methodist. | 0:18 |
- | Yeah. | 0:19 |
- | United Methodist. | |
- | United Methodist, yes. | 0:20 |
When and where were you born, Sara? | 0:22 | |
- | I was born | 0:24 |
on December 1st, 1943 | 0:26 | |
in a parsonage in McCormick, South Carolina. | 0:29 | |
- | Ohhh. | 0:32 |
- | My father | |
was a Methodist minister so I'm a PK. | 0:33 | |
- | You are a PK, so you're, that's great. | 0:36 |
Where and when did you go to school, | 0:38 | |
or where did you to go to school? | 0:40 | |
Graduate or Divinity school? | 0:41 | |
- | I did not go to Divinity school, | 0:44 |
I was an undergraduate at Duke University, | 0:46 | |
and my Masters is also from there. | 0:49 | |
My PhD is from Chapel Hill. | 0:52 | |
- | Mm-hmm, and what is your area again? | 0:54 |
- | The history of American women, women in the United States, | 0:59 |
and particularly the history of feminism. | 1:02 | |
- | Mm-hmm, how did you get interested in that? | 1:04 |
- | Oh my, this is a long story. | 1:09 |
(interviewer laughs) | 1:11 | |
- | But a fascinating one. | 1:12 |
- | But let me see if I | |
can give you the Cliff Notes. | 1:13 | |
A lot of it has to do with growing up | 1:17 | |
in the segregated South with parents | 1:19 | |
who knew it was wrong | 1:23 | |
and I didn't know any other white people who knew that. | 1:24 | |
But my father, before I was born, | 1:29 | |
had preached a very radical sermon on the issue of race | 1:31 | |
in Columbia, South Carolina, | 1:36 | |
as a 25 year old associate pastor. | 1:37 | |
And he was sent into exile in McCormick | 1:40 | |
which is why I was born where I was born. | 1:43 | |
And so that, | 1:48 | |
awareness, | 1:50 | |
of deep injustice | 1:51 | |
in the world I lived in and the helplessness | 1:54 | |
about what do you do | 1:57 | |
is central to who I am. | 2:02 | |
In theological terms it's an awareness of sin. | 2:05 | |
I also had a very angry mother | 2:10 | |
who tried really hard to be a good preacher's wife, | 2:13 | |
but it was a very bad fit, she should have been a scientist. | 2:16 | |
So we had great yards, she broke some rules, | 2:21 | |
went to college, North Carolina State University, | 2:25 | |
in landscape architecture, | 2:29 | |
when there were only six women in that whole university. | 2:30 | |
Or college, it was a state college then. | 2:34 | |
So I had a mother who knew she had potentials | 2:38 | |
and who certainly had passions for the natural world. | 2:43 | |
Birds, plants, the whole thing. | 2:45 | |
That she had no way to express when I was little. | 2:49 | |
So I also grew up with that kind of emotion | 2:56 | |
throbbing in the background | 3:00 | |
and I knew she was depressed in the '50s. | 3:01 | |
So I go off to Duke University in 1962, | 3:05 | |
and the civil rights movement is exploding around me, | 3:09 | |
and that was a kind of liberation for me. | 3:12 | |
And the center, | 3:16 | |
the place where people involved in civil rights, at Duke, | 3:19 | |
in my freshman year when there were no black undergraduates, | 3:24 | |
was the Methodist students there. | 3:29 | |
So for me, | 3:32 | |
existential theology was my first radical language, | 3:37 | |
and it was really important. | 3:44 | |
By the end of my time at Duke, I was, | 3:47 | |
full-tilt. | 3:51 | |
I got involved | 3:52 | |
by dipping my toes in for awhile there. | 3:55 | |
But my, | 3:59 | |
I ended up going to the Montgomery march, | 4:01 | |
which culminated the Selma Montgomery. | 4:05 | |
That was my first really big one, but right before that, | 4:09 | |
I went to an antiwar march | 4:12 | |
in spring of '65 we're talking about. | 4:15 | |
And the summer before I had gone to Africa | 4:18 | |
for a summer work camp program, | 4:21 | |
which was my first interracial experience. | 4:24 | |
First interracial experience with peers | 4:28 | |
not in a racial hierarchy. | 4:32 | |
So the movement was exploding around me | 4:37 | |
and I became part of it. | 4:41 | |
I ended up doing labor union support work, | 4:43 | |
and working for nonacademic employees at Duke | 4:47 | |
who wanted a union, | 4:51 | |
and that's kind of where the civil rights movement went | 4:52 | |
in '67, | 4:56 | |
'66-'67. | 4:58 | |
I was the North Carolina coordinator | 5:00 | |
for Vietnam Summer in 1967, | 5:03 | |
which means I drove around the state trying to get people | 5:06 | |
to write letters to Congress, and maybe have a vigil. | 5:09 | |
And so in the fall of '67 | 5:15 | |
I moved to Chicago. | 5:18 | |
I was gonna go to grad school in African studies, | 5:21 | |
because Africa had changed me, | 5:24 | |
profoundly, | 5:28 | |
but it was the height of black power, | 5:30 | |
and I didn't think that someone with a white female face, | 5:32 | |
and, maybe even a bit of a southern accent sometimes, | 5:37 | |
could be credible, in that field, at that time. | 5:43 | |
And I was probably tired of school, so I dropped out, | 5:49 | |
and I ended up as a secretary | 5:51 | |
on the campus of the University of Chicago | 5:54 | |
for the Methodist and Presbyterian campus ministries. | 5:57 | |
In the basement was a radical press, | 6:01 | |
and all these people were coming through, | 6:04 | |
coming through, coming through, fomenting stuff. | 6:06 | |
And the women stopped and talked to me. | 6:10 | |
And when they realized I was like one of them, | 6:13 | |
because I had just come off that organizing summer, | 6:16 | |
and was very, in North Carolina everybody connected | 6:20 | |
to any social justice movement knows everybody | 6:24 | |
'cause it's so small. | 6:27 | |
So they said there's this group of women meeting, | 6:29 | |
wanna come? | 6:33 | |
I landed in arguably the first consciousness-raising group | 6:34 | |
in the country, | 6:38 | |
which is now called the West Side group in Chicago, | 6:40 | |
in the fall of '67. | 6:43 | |
And that year you couldn't, | 6:45 | |
tell me about a women's liberation meeting | 6:49 | |
that I didn't want to go to. | 6:53 | |
And I came back to North Carolina the next summer, | 6:55 | |
with missionary zeal, | 6:58 | |
and began organizing women's liberation in North Carolina | 7:00 | |
in the summer of '68. | 7:03 | |
So, | 7:06 | |
in the meantime, | 7:08 | |
I had really left the church, | 7:10 | |
because as I got involved in civil rights, | 7:14 | |
the whiteness of the church, | 7:18 | |
it's continuing segregation, | 7:22 | |
the Methodist church was segregated. | 7:25 | |
There was a separate conference | 7:27 | |
for African American churches, | 7:29 | |
and I, | 7:33 | |
couldn't bear it. | 7:35 | |
So the Methodist student center was this radical place | 7:37 | |
but the church, writ larger, | 7:39 | |
was part of the status quo, | 7:43 | |
and so, I simply, | 7:47 | |
stopped being connected. | 7:50 | |
And while I was back in North Carolina | 7:53 | |
between 1968 and 1976, | 7:56 | |
getting a PhD in women's history, | 8:00 | |
I mean, it was my engagement of feminism that sent me back | 8:02 | |
to graduate school with questions | 8:06 | |
because I didn't think you could make history | 8:09 | |
if you don't have a history. | 8:11 | |
Are we the first people with bodies like this | 8:13 | |
to want to change everything? | 8:17 | |
Well, obviously we're not. | 8:19 | |
(Sara chuckles) | ||
But I, those were my questions, | 8:22 | |
and I was part of a cohort of several thousand, really, | 8:24 | |
certainly many hundreds, who were doing exactly that. | 8:29 | |
The field of women's history grew out of our being | 8:32 | |
pulled into asking these questions and finding ways to do it | 8:37 | |
in graduate school. | 8:41 | |
And my dissertation was about how it happened | 8:44 | |
that women involved in the civil rights movement | 8:48 | |
and the new left | 8:51 | |
initiated what called itself women's liberation. | 8:53 | |
How did that happen, | 8:58 | |
said three chapters on women's involvement in SNCC, | 8:59 | |
the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, | 9:03 | |
focused on the experiences of white women, | 9:06 | |
'cause it was white women who started those first groups | 9:08 | |
at a time when black and white women | 9:11 | |
couldn't communicate very well. | 9:13 | |
And then three chapters on SDS. | 9:16 | |
- | SDS is? | 9:21 |
- | Students for Democratic Society. | 9:22 |
And when I landed in Chicago, | 9:25 | |
I had been in a little group in Durham, | 9:28 | |
and our mailbox after I got married was the SDS mailbox | 9:33 | |
(interviewer laughs) | 9:37 | |
for Duke. | ||
But I didn't know the world of SDS activism, the big names. | 9:39 | |
I got to Chicago and there they where. | 9:43 | |
So it was, I just learned a lot, | 9:46 | |
and I went to this first women's group and most of them | 9:50 | |
had been South in '64 and '65 for civil rights. | 9:53 | |
Which is not something that had been on my radar. | 9:58 | |
I was in the South and they didn't recruit people | 10:01 | |
to go to Mississippi. | 10:06 | |
What I had done is gone to Africa. | 10:08 | |
That was my, I look back and think, | 10:10 | |
in some kind of subliminal way, | 10:14 | |
going to Africa was my way of going to Mississippi, | 10:16 | |
being engaged. | 10:19 | |
So, | 10:22 | |
I ended up working | 10:24 | |
in women's history, the history of feminism. | 10:26 | |
Timing is everything, it was sort of a magical time. | 10:30 | |
And then I landed one of the early jobs in women's history | 10:35 | |
here at the University of Minnesota. | 10:39 | |
And when I moved here with a seven year old son, | 10:41 | |
I realized that I wanted to put down roots where I was, | 10:47 | |
and that I was searching for some kind spiritual home. | 10:52 | |
So we started going, looked in the Yellow Pages | 10:56 | |
under United Methodist. | 11:00 | |
(laughing) | 11:02 | |
And started going to churches | 11:05 | |
and landed at Prospect Park United Methodist | 11:08 | |
in Minneapolis. | 11:12 | |
Where I, it was a liberal progressive church, | 11:15 | |
where I could, be my, | 11:20 | |
ritual-loving, agnostic feminist self. | 11:23 | |
And be okay. | 11:29 | |
And where I felt that my son could at least be exposed | 11:31 | |
to the tradition I grew up in, in that church. | 11:35 | |
In the late '70s, | 11:41 | |
early '80s, | 11:44 | |
I was part of a group that, | 11:46 | |
wanted to talk about feminism and Christianity. | 11:50 | |
So we started meeting on Saturday mornings, | 11:53 | |
many of us had little kids, and we, | 11:56 | |
read Womanspirit Rising. | 12:01 | |
Feminist theology really, | 12:04 | |
touched me very deeply. | 12:08 | |
When that group organized a service at Prospect Park, | 12:11 | |
in which we only used feminine imagery for God, | 12:15 | |
we invited a woman to preach, | 12:19 | |
and we had women liturgists, | 12:23 | |
and Elton Brown, bless his heart, | 12:26 | |
was totally supportive of this. | 12:28 | |
But, | 12:32 | |
the experience of being in church, and addressing, | 12:34 | |
God using imaging, God, using female imagery, | 12:39 | |
made me cry. | 12:44 | |
I didn't know, | 12:47 | |
how much the, | 12:49 | |
patriarchalism of Christian tradition | 12:52 | |
had set me outside until I had that experience | 12:56 | |
and it affected me in my body. | 13:00 | |
So that was a wonderful group. | 13:04 | |
We invented all kinds of rituals, and we, | 13:06 | |
out of it came a subgroup which I couldn't do | 13:11 | |
'cause I was so busy being a professor and a mother | 13:15 | |
that I couldn't be in the musical they did, | 13:19 | |
but they did a musical on images of God | 13:21 | |
that was written by a local woman. | 13:23 | |
It was just great. | 13:25 | |
- | Do you remember what that was called? | 13:27 |
- | I think it's Images of God, but I'm not positive. | 13:28 |
You can look it up. | 13:32 | |
- | Was it by Kay Heckland, or by any chance? | 13:33 |
- | Probably. | 13:36 |
- | Okay, yeah. | |
- | But I don't know. | 13:37 |
- | Sure, sure, I'll find out. | |
- | Double check it. | 13:39 |
- | Sure. | |
- | The music was wonderful | 13:41 |
and it was performed in our church. | 13:43 | |
We also, that group, | 13:46 | |
initiated the rewriting of our hymnal, | 13:49 | |
before the denomination did, | 13:51 | |
and we found that other churches were doing the same thing | 13:54 | |
and so we put together, | 13:57 | |
a hymnal, with inclusive language. | 14:00 | |
So that's the background | 14:04 | |
and there was a member of that church who told me | 14:06 | |
about the first Re-Imagining conference, | 14:09 | |
and I don't remember why I couldn't go, | 14:12 | |
but I do remember her saying you would really love this. | 14:16 | |
(Sara laughs) | 14:19 | |
And I, to this day, | 14:21 | |
I deeply regret that I didn't have that experience. | 14:23 | |
But, my heart was always there. | 14:29 | |
And so, as later conf, and I was not, | 14:33 | |
I was only somewhat aware of the backlash, | 14:37 | |
and it's, a lot of it has to do | 14:42 | |
with being over my head, | 14:44 | |
trying to be, | 14:47 | |
a professor, write the books I needed to write, | 14:49 | |
and raise two children. | 14:54 | |
But I remember, | 14:59 | |
as the subsequent conferences were being organized, | 15:01 | |
somebody reached out to me, | 15:05 | |
and I remember showing up at a planning meeting | 15:07 | |
that was kind of brainstorming. | 15:11 | |
And that happened to me a few times where I began, | 15:15 | |
and I would go to the conferences and go, whoa, | 15:18 | |
this is so incredible. | 15:21 | |
But that happened a few times | 15:25 | |
and then I got an invitation to join the board. | 15:26 | |
- | Do you have specific memories of some of the conferences? | 15:31 |
Things that stand out to you or what your reaction was? | 15:33 | |
- | Well, I remember, | 15:38 |
the power of the rituals. | 15:42 | |
Biting the apple, milk and honey, | 15:45 | |
to summon light and darkness | 15:51 | |
where they turned out the lights and we had sort of, | 15:54 | |
starlight sparkles, | 15:58 | |
and we're all singing Light and Darkness, | 16:02 | |
and we're going into the dark, | 16:04 | |
and learning to face it and welcome it. | 16:06 | |
So those are, | 16:17 | |
the rituals, | 16:19 | |
in many ways were the most powerful, but, | 16:22 | |
I remember a number of the talks. | 16:27 | |
Rita Brock-- | 16:31 | |
- | Nakashima Brock? | |
- | Nakashima Brock. | 16:34 |
I remember as very powerful. | 16:36 | |
- | When you talk about the rituals, it's very moving to you. | 16:41 |
What is it about the rituals that spoke to you so deeply? | 16:44 | |
- | In part, I mean I'm someone who loves ritual. | 16:52 |
My father was the liturgist | 16:55 | |
for the Methodist MSM National conferences | 16:56 | |
in the early '60s. | 17:00 | |
I discovered this going through his papers. | 17:02 | |
(Sara laughs) | 17:04 | |
- | Really, wow. | |
- | And, because he was campus chaplain at SMU from '57 | 17:06 |
to the late '70s, | 17:11 | |
I was very aware of his interest in ritual, | 17:16 | |
and I was drawn to it, drawn, very much drawn. | 17:20 | |
But in this case, it was, | 17:23 | |
giving, putting into symbols things that, | 17:28 | |
had been forbidden, and that, | 17:32 | |
made me feel connected | 17:36 | |
as who I am. | 17:39 | |
It was also very embodied. | 17:42 | |
There was dancing, there were streamers and banners, | 17:45 | |
there was the physical biting of the apple, | 17:50 | |
and seeing Eve as my sister. | 17:55 | |
So that I think, | 18:02 | |
there was a sensuality to it that was very powerful, | 18:05 | |
very beautiful. | 18:10 | |
I spent plenty of time in little bitty churches | 18:15 | |
with really bad organs | 18:18 | |
and choirs that couldn't quite get there, and singing, | 18:21 | |
as John Wesley wanted us to do, all nine verses. | 18:26 | |
(laughing) | 18:30 | |
Sometimes in a dirge like, | 18:34 | |
- | Way! | 18:36 |
- | Ohhh! | |
But I had also sung in church choirs | 18:37 | |
and really loved choral music, loved singing. | 18:40 | |
And my mother had a really good voice | 18:45 | |
and a much better ear than me, | 18:47 | |
so I would stand beside her | 18:49 | |
and she would hear the harmony and I could sing it with her. | 18:51 | |
Those are important memories for me. | 18:57 | |
But I think Re-imagining | 19:02 | |
made ritual into this incredibly participatory thing. | 19:06 | |
That was wonderful. | 19:12 | |
- | You mentioned a little bit ago about the backlash, | 19:15 |
and although you weren't that involved then, | 19:18 | |
what do you know about it? | 19:20 | |
How do you account for it, if you look at it now. | 19:21 | |
- | Well what I know is, | 19:27 |
more, things I have learned, | 19:31 | |
but because of my involvement in Re-imagining since then. | 19:35 | |
I grew up in the South, I went to high school in Dallas. | 19:40 | |
I know about the right wing. | 19:44 | |
And, | 19:51 | |
it did, it has always struck me, that, | 19:54 | |
Re-imagining, which the organizers of the conference | 20:00 | |
thought was not that big a deal, | 20:03 | |
it was this beautiful line | 20:07 | |
of theological investigation | 20:10 | |
that they wanted to bring together and lift up | 20:15 | |
to the world. | 20:21 | |
And it had been going on for 20 years. | 20:24 | |
I read Womanspirit Rising from the early '70s. | 20:25 | |
So, and there were things in that book | 20:31 | |
that really touched me like the way we need to redefine sin | 20:33 | |
because women give themselves away. | 20:38 | |
And as a child what I thought was taught | 20:40 | |
was sinful is being selfish. | 20:44 | |
But you are equally sinful if you give yourself away | 20:47 | |
and have no center and that was important to me. | 20:50 | |
So the organizers didn't think they were doing | 20:57 | |
such a big deal, | 20:59 | |
but to the right wing, | 21:01 | |
this was incredibly dangerous. | 21:06 | |
Now that right wing not only was deeply invested | 21:09 | |
in a very literalist interpretation of the Bible, | 21:14 | |
they were deeply invested in a very patriarchal version | 21:20 | |
of the family, as well as church hierarchy. | 21:23 | |
And so, everything that Re-imagining stood for, | 21:27 | |
upended those things. | 21:34 | |
Challenged the right of men to be in charge. | 21:37 | |
Fundamentally by challenging the idea | 21:42 | |
that God is this little old man in the sky who's in charge | 21:45 | |
and who's direct voice is the man in the church. | 21:48 | |
But to empower women from the bottom up is kind of, | 21:55 | |
explosive, in that context. | 22:00 | |
And so you can see, at least in retrospect, why, | 22:03 | |
this upset them so much. | 22:09 | |
They'd been fighting feminism for a long time. | 22:13 | |
Really fighting it. | 22:18 | |
These were people who led the battle | 22:21 | |
against the equal rights amendment, | 22:23 | |
these were people who thought women should stay home | 22:26 | |
and serve their husbands and families. | 22:30 | |
So there was a long history behind their reaction. | 22:35 | |
And so, there you have it. | 22:43 | |
It was kind of brutal. | 22:48 | |
- | Yeah it was, you mentioned you got involved, | 22:51 |
you were kind of invited in. | 22:54 | |
Could you say more about your involvement | 22:56 | |
in the Re-imagining community? | 22:58 | |
- | Well there were a few years | 23:00 |
when I just was aware of the planning groups | 23:03 | |
and showed up for brainstorming. | 23:06 | |
Couldn't take on lots of responsibility, so, | 23:09 | |
then I'd be there at the event. | 23:13 | |
But I was quite aware of the community and its work, | 23:17 | |
and also how much work goes into those conferences. | 23:21 | |
And then when I was invited onto the board, | 23:27 | |
I accepted that with great joy. | 23:30 | |
I was glad to have a place at that table. | 23:33 | |
And there I really saw the bones of the organization. | 23:39 | |
Nancy Berneking churning out this wonderful newsletter, | 23:45 | |
month after month after month, | 23:49 | |
and coming to every meeting | 23:53 | |
saying get me things for the newsletter. | 23:54 | |
Here's what we're gonna work on, | 23:57 | |
here's the theme, here's this and that. | 23:58 | |
It was, you were there. | 24:01 | |
- | I was. | 24:02 |
- | It was pretty phenomenal. | |
And understanding that people like Mary Gates had just been, | 24:05 | |
stalwart, | 24:13 | |
much behind-the-scenes, | 24:16 | |
although her involvement in United Methodist women | 24:18 | |
was sort of out there and mobilizing. | 24:22 | |
But there were so many people, | 24:24 | |
and she just stands in for a whole group, who, | 24:27 | |
did the groundwork, all the time, to make it happen. | 24:31 | |
Who helped, they produced t-shirts and mugs, | 24:36 | |
and we recorded everything, | 24:40 | |
and we sold them at the events. | 24:44 | |
The amount of work that went into making all of that happen, | 24:46 | |
and we had this tiny little office with a part-time, | 24:52 | |
staff person. | 24:58 | |
It couldn't have functioned without that, had to have it, | 25:01 | |
but most of it was carried on the backs of people, | 25:06 | |
of other people. | 25:12 | |
I didn't, I never met Mary Ann Lundy, | 25:13 | |
who was our martyr, and, | 25:19 | |
I did, a little bit, get to know Sally Hill, | 25:22 | |
but not personally really, | 25:26 | |
I was in her presence and awed by her. | 25:28 | |
But, so these great formative figures | 25:32 | |
were people who were not as much in the foreground | 25:36 | |
by the time I came along. | 25:39 | |
The community was kind of in survival mode. | 25:41 | |
How do we keep this going? | 25:45 | |
How do we keep our voices out there? | 25:47 | |
When I came in, was, | 25:51 | |
I guess some time after | 25:53 | |
virtually all institutional support had been withdrawn, | 25:57 | |
and the name Re-Imagining was anathema | 26:01 | |
in the mainline denominations. | 26:06 | |
They just, | 26:09 | |
turned their backs. | 26:12 | |
So it was a struggle, that's the other thing I was aware of. | 26:16 | |
Not only the creativity and unbelievable hard work | 26:19 | |
and dedication of this group of people, | 26:23 | |
but also we operated on a shoestring, | 26:26 | |
and the conferences themselves earned enough money | 26:30 | |
to get us from one to another, | 26:35 | |
but not much. | 26:38 | |
And the numbers were going down. | 26:40 | |
By the time I became co-chair, | 26:46 | |
and now I've lost the name of my co-chair, | 26:52 | |
but I know her well. | 26:54 | |
- | I don't remember either, actually. | 26:58 |
- | Really? | 26:59 |
- | Yeah, I'm sorry. | |
- | I'm on Facebook with her, | 27:03 |
I'll look it up and I'll send it to you, | 27:04 | |
but it's in the record. | 27:05 | |
- | Yeah, I can look it up easily. | 27:06 |
- | But she was wonderful, | 27:08 |
I can see her face. | 27:11 | |
She also was very into, | 27:13 | |
dance, ritual and dance. | 27:17 | |
I think she was ordained. | 27:21 | |
But, so she and I would meet | 27:24 | |
and talk through things before we'd come to a meeting. | 27:29 | |
It was, the whole thing was very collaborative, | 27:32 | |
very collaborative, and it's kind of amazing | 27:36 | |
that it sustained itself for 10 years, very amazing. | 27:39 | |
But the fact is that the financial reports | 27:45 | |
began to tell us a story about ourselves | 27:49 | |
which was that we couldn't afford to exist. | 27:53 | |
Because there was no way we could operate | 27:58 | |
without some staff. | 28:01 | |
Someone to answer the phone and send people somewhere. | 28:04 | |
Someone, someplace to keep the stuff that was all of ours. | 28:10 | |
Just the paperwork. | 28:15 | |
And that was, I think, | 28:20 | |
what I remember about the last part, was, | 28:23 | |
how hard it was for people to face that reality | 28:28 | |
because of how important the organization was to them | 28:33 | |
and the community. | 28:38 | |
It was deep in people's identity, | 28:40 | |
had become part of their DNA. | 28:43 | |
And so, | 28:47 | |
there were quite a few, and I remember, | 28:50 | |
just there were meetings, I can't recount any conversations, | 28:52 | |
I just remember having this sense, that over time, | 28:56 | |
people gradually, gradually, | 29:03 | |
began to acknowledge that the handwriting was on the wall. | 29:06 | |
We couldn't continue forever. | 29:11 | |
It just was. | 29:15 | |
Another piece of that is that every time we did a conference | 29:18 | |
we burned out a whole 'nother group of people. | 29:21 | |
They couldn't, they worked so hard, | 29:25 | |
that when it was over, it's like their feet, | 29:30 | |
they needed to go on with their lives, and to other things, | 29:34 | |
and to things that fill them up, | 29:39 | |
instead of draining them out. | 29:40 | |
And so we kept finding new people | 29:43 | |
but there comes a point when you can't find new people | 29:46 | |
and integrate them fully enough to make this happen again. | 29:51 | |
And with declining finances it was more and more | 29:57 | |
coming out of our hides. | 30:00 | |
And that just has its limits. | 30:04 | |
This is really a common story about institutions | 30:07 | |
that start with a mission, and that either, | 30:13 | |
develop a source of income big enough | 30:18 | |
to become institutionalized, | 30:21 | |
and then they become more professionalized, | 30:23 | |
and then they become something else than a movement. | 30:25 | |
They do go on but they're not a movement anymore. | 30:30 | |
If you want to stay in movement, | 30:34 | |
you basically burn everybody out, | 30:36 | |
and there comes a time when both the money | 30:39 | |
and the human energy are depleted. | 30:43 | |
And you have to think, so what's next? | 30:47 | |
And what I feel best about, | 30:51 | |
and I feel like I had some role in helping it happen, | 30:54 | |
is that we, | 30:59 | |
made a decision to have one more conference, | 31:02 | |
that we knew was our last. | 31:06 | |
And to use that conference to, | 31:10 | |
claim what we had been and done. | 31:14 | |
That it was not over, | 31:17 | |
but this piece of it was over. | 31:21 | |
And movements change, they morph, | 31:23 | |
they have generational changes and transformations. | 31:26 | |
They take new forms. | 31:31 | |
This form, | 31:33 | |
had certainly come to its end. | 31:35 | |
And we really had to, | 31:40 | |
try to end on a note that says we made a difference. | 31:43 | |
The strength of the backlash is a signal | 31:49 | |
about how powerful our message is. | 31:52 | |
And what we did by refusing to go away and succumb to that | 31:57 | |
is also a powerful message. | 32:03 | |
We have planted seeds. | 32:06 | |
And so, our symbol for that conference was seeds. | 32:09 | |
That these seeds, | 32:15 | |
ideas, rituals, songs, | 32:18 | |
are out in the world now. | 32:25 | |
I remember leading, | 32:32 | |
that's the only time I really took much public leadership | 32:35 | |
in the Re-Imagining conference, | 32:39 | |
but leading a visualization exercise | 32:41 | |
in which I invited everyone | 32:45 | |
to close their eyes and imagine church. | 32:49 | |
And invite them to imagine church | 32:54 | |
wherever and however that was meaningful to them. | 32:57 | |
So not just the little place with the steeple. | 33:01 | |
It could be in a natural place, it could be in a home, | 33:06 | |
it could be in a small group. | 33:11 | |
Most of us had been in small groups that were, | 33:12 | |
powerful for our spiritual growth, and, | 33:17 | |
sort of go out on that note, | 33:23 | |
on that re-imagining | 33:26 | |
what our spiritual communities could be. | 33:30 | |
And sort of going forth in the world, to, | 33:34 | |
continue the work but not with this structure anymore. | 33:38 | |
We really had to, | 33:42 | |
if we hadn't closed the office when we did, | 33:43 | |
we would've gone in debt. | 33:45 | |
And my biggest fear was that we would run the organization | 33:47 | |
into debt, | 33:52 | |
and there's both the fact that boards | 33:55 | |
are fiscally responsible, | 33:57 | |
so I remember kind of lifting that up to people. | 34:01 | |
(Sara laughs) | 34:03 | |
Saying do you know | 34:04 | |
that we would bear personal responsibility | 34:07 | |
if we run it into the ground and into debt, | 34:11 | |
then it's on us. | 34:13 | |
So that it was literally true | 34:16 | |
that we had to close the office | 34:19 | |
and that we couldn't do another conference | 34:21 | |
without more support. | 34:23 | |
But we had to own the fact that what had happened | 34:26 | |
in 10 years, | 34:29 | |
of persistent work and inspiration, | 34:32 | |
was in the world. | 34:37 | |
It had changed us and it was gonna continue | 34:39 | |
to bear fruit other places. | 34:44 | |
- | Well, as someone who was on the coordinating council, | 34:47 |
those time, I have to completely affirm that you really | 34:50 | |
guided us toward an ending that was graceful. | 34:54 | |
- | Thank you. | 34:58 |
- | We didn't just whimper and-- | |
- | Right, and too many organizations do that | 35:01 |
and end up feeling like failures. | 35:04 | |
- | Exactly. | 35:08 |
- | And that, I mean that happens a lot. | 35:09 |
- | And you kept that from happening. | 35:13 |
It didn't feel like we were defeated. | 35:14 | |
- | I was part of that, yes. | 35:16 |
- | So how would you define Re-Imagining then? | 35:18 |
- | I think would define it as a movement, | 35:28 |
to open up, | 35:34 | |
the theological and ritual possibilities | 35:37 | |
that come when you're not stuck | 35:42 | |
in a patriarchal straitjacket of the tradition, | 35:45 | |
but can see the tradition, | 35:51 | |
as a gift, | 35:55 | |
which is, | 35:57 | |
for each generation and each person, really, | 35:59 | |
to embrace in a way that affirms them. | 36:03 | |
And so we embarked on a process of, | 36:07 | |
the alternative is to leave. | 36:11 | |
And most of us didn't want to leave. | 36:17 | |
We felt that we had roots, | 36:19 | |
it had made us who we are, | 36:24 | |
it had given us the need to re-imagine it, | 36:28 | |
but we couldn't stay, | 36:34 | |
without feeling affirmed. | 36:42 | |
And there was plenty in the tradition that was affirming, | 36:45 | |
you just had to go find it. | 36:48 | |
Most of it had been suppressed over millennia. | 36:49 | |
- | That's great. | 36:56 |
How would you say, in your involvement in community, | 36:59 | |
how did feminist theology affect the structure | 37:01 | |
and functioning of the community? | 37:04 | |
- | The community was, | 37:10 |
I think saw itself as functioning in a feminist way. | 37:13 | |
That the way many groups that I've been part of | 37:17 | |
do or did. | 37:22 | |
And that means very democratic, | 37:24 | |
very cooperative and collaborative, | 37:27 | |
open to people using their gifts, | 37:32 | |
how they can, | 37:35 | |
we had co-chairs. | 37:38 | |
And I think there's a real deep purpose to that, | 37:41 | |
which is you don't have one leader, you have two. | 37:44 | |
First of all you share the work, and the burden, | 37:48 | |
and the thought, but you also, | 37:51 | |
keep the conversation. | 37:57 | |
Conversation was at the center, | 37:58 | |
really at the center of process | 38:01 | |
that made (dog barks) more democratic. | 38:04 | |
- | Shhh. | 38:06 |
- | You need to go out. | 38:08 |
- | Yeah. | 38:09 |
- | So, and I think | |
there was a real consciousness of not wanting | 38:10 | |
to recreate hierarchy. | 38:14 | |
(dog barks) | ||
And at the same time wanting to get stuff done. | 38:16 | |
And I think that's a dilemma in many feminist organizations. | 38:19 | |
Can you have a specialization of labor? | 38:22 | |
Can one person, | 38:25 | |
do the newsletter? | 38:27 | |
If we don't all do the newsletter, is it really feminist? | 38:32 | |
(laughing) | 38:36 | |
But if you can let and support one person doing it, | 38:39 | |
and then she called on all of us all the time, | 38:44 | |
then you can find your way to new ways of working. | 38:48 | |
- | Well that kinda brings me to the next question, | 38:52 |
which was the challenges during its 10 years of existence, | 38:54 | |
what kind of challenges did the organization face | 38:57 | |
and how did they try to address them? | 39:00 | |
(bird chirping) | 39:01 | |
- | Pardon my bird clock. | 39:04 |
(interviewer laughs) | 39:06 | |
- | Is that what that is? | |
- | It has bird recordings every hour. | 39:08 |
(Sara laughs) | 39:10 | |
- | I love it. | |
(laughing) | 39:11 | |
Which bird was that? | 39:13 | |
- | I don't know. | 39:15 |
- | I don't either. | |
(laughing) | 39:16 | |
- | I was supposed to learn them and I didn't. | 39:17 |
I have a friend who tried to get me-- | 39:21 | |
- | Sara? | 39:22 |
- | Yes. | |
- | Does he need to go out? | 39:23 |
- | He would love to go, yes. | 39:24 |
- | Okay. | 39:26 |
- | This is a conversation | |
about my dog, because my husband just showed up. | 39:28 | |
(interviewer laughs) | 39:31 | |
(door thuds) | ||
And so that noise in the background is the coming and going. | 39:32 | |
- | That's great. | 39:35 |
- | So repeat the question. | 39:39 |
- | Challenges. | |
- | The challenges, oh. | 39:41 |
- | The challenges | |
and how you tried to address them. | 39:42 | |
- | Well I came in late in the day, but I think, | 39:44 |
the first big challenge was how to respond to the backlash, | 39:50 | |
how to not be crushed by it, | 39:54 | |
and how to respond in a way that continued the work | 39:58 | |
that said we don't go away. | 40:03 | |
There's more to be said here. | 40:05 | |
There's more to be experimented with. | 40:07 | |
There are more voices to hear. | 40:09 | |
So that was, I think that was the biggest challenge of all. | 40:13 | |
And then sustaining. | 40:18 | |
Its challenges were like many many groups. | 40:20 | |
I'm a student of social movements, | 40:23 | |
and so I have to say I've been in other groups, too, | 40:25 | |
that how do you find a way to function | 40:29 | |
when you have very few resources, | 40:33 | |
when people who are already working full-time, | 40:35 | |
many of them, not all but many, | 40:37 | |
have to shoulder the work of the organization. | 40:43 | |
How do you share it around | 40:49 | |
so that nobody sort of takes charge and runs away with it. | 40:51 | |
And that happens in organizations. | 40:56 | |
You get, | 40:59 | |
a kind of informal hierarchy | 41:01 | |
of people who assume more authority | 41:05 | |
and nobody agrees that they have it, but. | 41:10 | |
So the organization clearly brought, | 41:12 | |
not only feminism, | 41:17 | |
but also lots of experience in other places into itself. | 41:18 | |
And it's real important that we did have officers, | 41:24 | |
we had a treasurer, we didn't have an argument, | 41:28 | |
to my knowledge, | 41:31 | |
over whether someone should be the treasurer. | 41:32 | |
We needed co-chairs, somebody has to run the meetings. | 41:35 | |
There was a level of structure, that in the 1970s, | 41:39 | |
20 years before many feminist groups | 41:42 | |
tried to have no structure. | 41:45 | |
Well we've learned a lot in 20 years. | 41:47 | |
And these were women who had functioned effectively | 41:51 | |
in lots of hierarchical structures, | 41:55 | |
and kind of knew how to make things work, | 41:59 | |
but also wanted to resist where that takes you. | 42:02 | |
So how do you make a hybrid that is collaborative, | 42:06 | |
cooperative, brings in new people. | 42:10 | |
I mean I just walked in | 42:12 | |
and felt welcome. | 42:15 | |
That's a sign of something really important | 42:18 | |
about the organization. | 42:20 | |
- | So you think Re-Imagining basically did that pretty well | 42:24 |
over its 10 years, would you say? | 42:26 | |
- | I think so because it had to change who was in charge. | 42:29 |
I mean the original group, | 42:34 | |
some of those people were still around, | 42:35 | |
but a lot of 'em weren't. | 42:37 | |
But it kept going. | 42:38 | |
On the other hand it was pretty small, | 42:41 | |
and so I don't know that this was the case, | 42:44 | |
but small groups from the outside can look insular, | 42:47 | |
or you could be interested but not know how to get involved. | 42:50 | |
One of the great things Re-Imagining did | 42:55 | |
was initiate small groups, | 42:57 | |
giving people like me a path in, | 42:59 | |
because my first real involvement in Re-Imagining | 43:03 | |
was coming to our small group in 1994. | 43:07 | |
And I think that those, | 43:14 | |
most of those groups did not survive but a few years. | 43:16 | |
But some-- | 43:21 | |
- | Yes? | |
- | That you're still really central to, | 43:23 |
continue to this day. | 43:27 | |
And so that recognition that you have to create community | 43:29 | |
sets another lesson from the feminist movement, | 43:33 | |
that small groups are a fundamental organizing tool. | 43:36 | |
Bringing in people, | 43:43 | |
people go through a learning process together, | 43:45 | |
and they become supportive of each other. | 43:50 | |
So that was a really good thing that Re-Imagining did | 43:54 | |
right off the bat as it was figuring out how to exist | 43:58 | |
in the face of this attack. | 44:03 | |
They not only restructured a steering committee | 44:06 | |
and a planning committee for the next conference, | 44:11 | |
but they initiated small groups. | 44:13 | |
And I think that was probably the best thing they did | 44:16 | |
for bringing in new people who otherwise might have been | 44:19 | |
on the fringes or never quite connected. | 44:24 | |
- | I have a question to ask you. | 44:30 |
When you talked earlier about sometimes movements, | 44:31 | |
to continue, have to become more institutionalized? | 44:33 | |
Do you think that that was not possible | 44:37 | |
for Re-Imagining or do you think that | 44:41 | |
that wasn't what Re-Imagining wanted to be? | 44:42 | |
- | I think both are true, I think both are true. | 44:47 |
It was not possible because there was no source of funds. | 44:51 | |
You can't become institutionalized | 44:55 | |
if you can't find sustainable funding. | 45:01 | |
Now some service providers, | 45:04 | |
like shelters for battered women, | 45:08 | |
which started out as all volunteer. | 45:12 | |
They raised foundation money, | 45:15 | |
and then they got public funding, | 45:18 | |
because they were providing a service. | 45:20 | |
But I know that in the 1980s, before we came into existence, | 45:22 | |
they were going through a transition, | 45:27 | |
that in some cases was traumatic, | 45:29 | |
because they were hiring professionals | 45:31 | |
who weren't there at the beginning. | 45:36 | |
And the volunteers felt pushed to the sideline, | 45:39 | |
but the volunteers were also extremely burned out | 45:44 | |
and needed to get on with their lives | 45:47 | |
and make money to support their kids. | 45:49 | |
That story of, | 45:55 | |
how things go from upstart volunteer movement organizations | 45:58 | |
to bookstores, | 46:03 | |
coffee houses, | 46:07 | |
shelters for battered women, rape crisis hotlines, | 46:09 | |
daycare centers, | 46:15 | |
there's hundreds of these. | 46:18 | |
And the ones that became institutionalized | 46:22 | |
met some kind of clear social need | 46:26 | |
that generated an income stream. | 46:29 | |
But it also met a kind of identity crisis | 46:32 | |
for the people who create it | 46:37 | |
because you have to specialize. | 46:40 | |
I was in a group that founded a children's book writing | 46:43 | |
project in Chapel Hill called Lollipop Power Incorporated. | 46:47 | |
We did incorporate, | 46:52 | |
but at first we just said the children's books | 46:54 | |
that are out there, and we had all had small children, | 46:57 | |
or at the time we started it I think I was pregnant. | 47:00 | |
But we were thinking about how you raise children | 47:04 | |
not to be so programmed into traditional gender roles | 47:08 | |
and most children's books, boys were the actors, | 47:14 | |
they had the adventure, and girls were their sidekick, | 47:19 | |
or the observer of the adventure. | 47:23 | |
The same thing was true of television | 47:29 | |
but we knew we couldn't produce TV. | 47:31 | |
But like many small groups in those days, | 47:33 | |
we just did something, we started writing children's books. | 47:35 | |
And in the beginning, everybody was supposed to write them, | 47:39 | |
we were a collective. | 47:43 | |
Everybody write a book, let's come read them to each other. | 47:45 | |
And everybody ran the press and everybody stood there | 47:48 | |
in the YMCA on campus at Chapel Hill | 47:53 | |
and stapled them together. | 47:56 | |
I wrote the first book, | 47:58 | |
I kept it on my vitae my entire career. | 48:00 | |
- | Do you remember what it was called? | 48:04 |
- | Jenny's Secret Place. | 48:06 |
- | I love it. | |
- | And it was just a little picture book | 48:08 |
with role reversals built in. | 48:10 | |
It was very simple, | 48:17 | |
but it's just little reversals of expected things. | 48:18 | |
And Jenny learns to ride a bicycle and her little brother | 48:24 | |
cries 'cause he can't keep up with her. | 48:27 | |
But, anyway, I don't need to tell the whole story. | 48:29 | |
And I was long out of Lollipop Power, | 48:34 | |
I helped in the incorporation papers in the early '70s, | 48:38 | |
but I had gone on to my dissertation and into Minnesota. | 48:42 | |
And they really wrestled with the fact | 48:47 | |
that some people wanted to go get trained | 48:49 | |
to be printers and become specialists. | 48:51 | |
And then you have to, when you incorporate, | 48:55 | |
you have to start paying taxes or filing forms | 48:57 | |
'cause you're a nonprofit about your income | 49:01 | |
and keeping books. | 49:04 | |
I mean all that institutionalization is a challenge | 49:06 | |
to the identity of a movement group | 49:09 | |
that is just doing everything. | 49:12 | |
And great fears of hierarchy, | 49:15 | |
great fears that some people needed | 49:19 | |
to be paid a living wage. | 49:23 | |
Well, that's totally fair, | 49:27 | |
but when you start from a all-volunteer thing, | 49:30 | |
and there's actually a certain value | 49:34 | |
placed on not monetizing things, | 49:37 | |
that expectation of being paid reasonably well | 49:43 | |
feels like we're getting commercial, | 49:48 | |
we're getting, we're losing our soul. | 49:50 | |
So, I had seen this in many other places. | 49:55 | |
I don't think that was an option for Re-Imagining. | 49:59 | |
Re-Imagining was fundamentally about ideas, | 50:03 | |
it was fundamentally an insurgent movement | 50:08 | |
in multiple denominations. | 50:12 | |
It had institutional support in the very beginning | 50:15 | |
because the initiators had institutional positions. | 50:19 | |
But when that was withdrawn, | 50:24 | |
and it would not have continued | 50:26 | |
if there hadn't been the backlash. | 50:28 | |
It would have been a one-time wonderful event | 50:30 | |
with ripple effects that we would never know what they were. | 50:35 | |
But because of the backlash, it decided to continue, | 50:39 | |
and the work it did was to produce a conference. | 50:43 | |
That costs a lot of money | 50:48 | |
and you have to charge people to come, | 50:51 | |
and then you have to produce things people will buy, | 50:55 | |
like mugs, and t-shirts, and tapes, | 50:59 | |
so you can make enough money to fund the next conference. | 51:03 | |
That's not a business model | 51:07 | |
unless you're doing corporate conferences | 51:10 | |
and can charge many many hundreds of dollars to people. | 51:12 | |
But that's not what we were about. | 51:15 | |
So I don't see, | 51:18 | |
that there was really any way for Re-Imagining | 51:22 | |
to become really institutionalized, | 51:26 | |
to become an institution, and that means it had, | 51:31 | |
its future was always problematic, at least, | 51:36 | |
as an organization. | 51:42 | |
But not necessarily as a movement. | 51:44 | |
- | As we're talking, I'm remembering that, near the end, | 51:47 |
there was some talk of hiring an executive director, | 51:50 | |
and that didn't happen. | 51:54 | |
Do you have any thoughts about that? | 51:56 | |
- | It couldn't happen, we had no money. | 51:57 |
I mean I guess I was, | 52:01 | |
in the position of being the voice of reality | 52:05 | |
from time to time because people would come up | 52:10 | |
with fantasies of what what we could do, and why don't we, | 52:13 | |
and so it became kind of my job to say, | 52:19 | |
that would be good, how would we pay for it? | 52:25 | |
Where would that come from? | 52:30 | |
And I was genuinely afraid of us going in debt, so I, | 52:33 | |
did bring that up a lot. | 52:40 | |
If we'd had an executive director sometime before, | 52:44 | |
maybe, but frankly it's hard for me to see | 52:50 | |
how we could have made that happen. | 52:52 | |
We just didn't generate enough income. | 52:55 | |
And given the power of the backlash, such that, | 52:59 | |
for two decades, | 53:05 | |
Re-Imagining became, when Sue Swanson talked about | 53:08 | |
having to suppress Re-Imagining on her resume, | 53:11 | |
or understand that there were serious consequences | 53:18 | |
to putting it there, that was so disheartening to me, | 53:22 | |
so disheartening. | 53:27 | |
And so many people had to do that. | 53:29 | |
- | It's true, it's true. | 53:32 |
So what aspects of Re-Imagining | 53:35 | |
were most significant to you and why? | 53:37 | |
- | I think the innovations, and ritual, | 53:42 |
and the lifting up of the incredibly creative, | 53:45 | |
thinking going on among feminist theologians. | 53:53 | |
- | Did your involvement in Re-Imagining | 54:00 |
change your perspective at all on feminist theology | 54:01 | |
or the church, do you think? | 54:04 | |
- | It affirmed it. | 54:06 |
- | It affirmed it, yeah. | 54:07 |
- | I don't think for me it was a changing thing | 54:09 |
'cause I had been there. | 54:11 | |
It had been important to me but it affirmed it. | 54:13 | |
- | As you reflect on it, | 54:19 |
maybe you've said a little bit about this, | 54:20 | |
but can you name specific contributions | 54:21 | |
you think Re-Imagining made | 54:24 | |
to Christian theology or liturgy? | 54:25 | |
- | It's a little hard for me to sort out | 54:34 |
what Re-Imagining's contributions were | 54:36 | |
from the broader field of feminist theology | 54:39 | |
'cause it lifted up most of those things. | 54:42 | |
Rethinking, | 54:48 | |
basic doctrines like atonement, | 54:51 | |
is fundamental, | 54:55 | |
fundamental. | 54:58 | |
Rethinking what we mean when we talk about sin. | 55:02 | |
And opening up, | 55:10 | |
the widest possibilities for, | 55:15 | |
imagining the divine or the mystery, | 55:20 | |
having no limits on that. | 55:26 | |
Because you can't capture that inwards anyway. | 55:28 | |
But, to open it up, | 55:33 | |
in a way that, | 55:37 | |
makes it more real when we talk about people | 55:41 | |
being made in God's image. | 55:45 | |
That we really do mean that. | 55:49 | |
- | In the time we have left, | 55:55 |
how 'bout if we turn toward the future? | 55:56 | |
- | Sure, | 55:58 |
- | And, | |
what do you think re-imagining means today, | 56:01 | |
or what could it mean today? | 56:04 | |
What needs to be re-imagined? | 56:06 | |
- | Well, | 56:11 |
I feel that, | 56:13 | |
some of what I felt was progress going on in the '90s, | 56:15 | |
has in the early 2000s, | 56:23 | |
is slipping away from us. | 56:27 | |
I don't, I think the language that's used liturgically, | 56:30 | |
for example, we are no longer as careful, | 56:35 | |
even in really progressive churches. | 56:39 | |
I mean some are actually wonderful, wonderful, | 56:42 | |
but many of the mainline denominations | 56:44 | |
are not paying much attention to that. | 56:53 | |
And I watch the easy slippage back into traditional language | 56:56 | |
and it makes me sad. | 57:02 | |
So I think there's still a lot of work to do | 57:04 | |
and that the work we thought | 57:07 | |
we had done isn't finished, that's clear. | 57:09 | |
I don't know, I mean on the other hand, | 57:17 | |
the world has changed. | 57:19 | |
The proportion of clergy who are female | 57:21 | |
is totally different and that was underway | 57:24 | |
in the early '90s. | 57:28 | |
I mean that flood in seminaries happened in the '80s. | 57:30 | |
Just a flood. | 57:34 | |
What difference that's making for, | 57:37 | |
churches I am not totally sure, | 57:43 | |
and what those women's experiences are, | 57:47 | |
I don't understand. | 57:50 | |
So I feel like there's a lot for us to learn about | 57:52 | |
in these years since then. | 57:58 | |
We need to know, | 58:01 | |
what is the place of feminist theology in seminaries? | 58:05 | |
I mean there's questions that we are all asking today, | 58:08 | |
the reconstituted Re-Imagining community | 58:12 | |
that would like to pass this legacy on. | 58:15 | |
In order to pass it on effectively, | 58:20 | |
we have to understand better the world we're in. | 58:22 | |
And so I'm hoping we will learn more | 58:27 | |
about what are the conversations in seminaries? | 58:32 | |
What is the place of feminist, | 58:39 | |
womanist, mujerista theology? | 58:41 | |
What is happening in interfaith conversations? | 58:46 | |
Because I think that's a frontier | 58:49 | |
that we did not fully appreciate in Re-Imagining. | 58:53 | |
I think we felt we had all we could handle | 58:58 | |
just to address our own Christian tradition | 59:02 | |
in it's great diversity, but, | 59:05 | |
the fact is, that when I have been in interfaith contexts, | 59:09 | |
where people are genuinely talking to each other, | 59:14 | |
it's very powerful. | 59:17 | |
And so, | 59:21 | |
that's the direction, that I see, | 59:23 | |
for the future with great promise. | 59:28 | |
So I'm like I get hopeful and excited | 59:34 | |
when I think about things like that | 59:36 | |
and then I also feel, | 59:38 | |
distressed, about how things are now. | 59:42 | |
I've had the similar feelings about other aspects | 59:46 | |
of feminism and I'm aware that younger women | 59:48 | |
have a very different experience than my generation did, | 59:53 | |
and we need to listen to them. | 59:57 | |
They need to articulate where the issues are for them. | 1:00:00 | |
So some of it is developing conversations, | 1:00:08 | |
developing settings where those conversations can happen, | 1:00:11 | |
but also to communicate to them that they can build | 1:00:17 | |
on what we did. | 1:00:22 | |
They don't have to reinvent that wheel | 1:00:25 | |
to go a new place. | 1:00:28 | |
They can take that wheel | 1:00:31 | |
and add it to other wheels of their own making. | 1:00:33 | |
And then roll into the future. | 1:00:38 | |
(interviewer laughs) | 1:00:40 | |
Just trying to play | ||
with this metaphor. | 1:00:41 | |
(laughing) | 1:00:42 | |
I've got this cart (laughing drowns out other sounds). | 1:00:45 | |
There's a huge amount | 1:00:50 | |
to be done. | 1:00:53 | |
And that's daunting. | 1:00:56 | |
But on the other hand, the world is different, | 1:00:59 | |
and in some ways, | 1:01:02 | |
it's much better. | 1:01:05 | |
So we have to kinda figure out how we balance those | 1:01:07 | |
and how we generate the conversations | 1:01:10 | |
that need to occur now. | 1:01:13 | |
- | Well you said conversation was at the heart | 1:01:15 |
of Re-Imagining, so let's continue that. | 1:01:17 | |
I have a very specific question to end up with, and that is, | 1:01:20 | |
as you know, we're working on this Re-Imagining website. | 1:01:23 | |
Any ideas you have about what should be included, | 1:01:27 | |
who would benefit from it, | 1:01:30 | |
how we should get it out in the world? | 1:01:32 | |
Any thoughts you have about the website would be welcome. | 1:01:34 | |
- | Well I think it has to be, | 1:01:42 |
continue to be a work in progress. | 1:01:44 | |
We might want to think about it | 1:01:47 | |
as a site where conversation can happen. | 1:01:48 | |
I'm excited at the thought that all the different archives | 1:01:53 | |
could collaborate, | 1:01:58 | |
and so researchers, like me, | 1:02:01 | |
could go there and find their way to all the resources | 1:02:05 | |
that we generated over those many years. | 1:02:10 | |
How you link that to conversations | 1:02:15 | |
about the present and the future | 1:02:18 | |
is the thing I don't fully understand yet. | 1:02:20 | |
So one thing I would do is maybe go look at the SNCC website | 1:02:25 | |
that Duke hosts because that's part | 1:02:29 | |
of their concern as well. | 1:02:32 | |
That their papers are at Duke, | 1:02:35 | |
their history needs to be lifted up and appreciated, | 1:02:39 | |
but they certainly don't see it as something | 1:02:44 | |
that was done and taken care of at all. | 1:02:46 | |
And so, | 1:02:49 | |
giving it back and building on it is central. | 1:02:51 | |
So I'd like to see how they're handling that | 1:02:56 | |
'cause I think that's what we hope for. | 1:02:59 | |
How we ultimately build something a little more interfaith | 1:03:02 | |
into it, I have no idea, | 1:03:07 | |
but I think we have to lay the groundwork first. | 1:03:09 | |
You can't just jump to your big vision, you have to, | 1:03:13 | |
lay the bricks | 1:03:19 | |
and make it sturdy. | 1:03:20 | |
But know that you want to go where you want it to go | 1:03:24 | |
is into some bigger place | 1:03:29 | |
and so it can be part of those big conversations. | 1:03:32 | |
- | Sara, is there anything that we haven't talked about | 1:03:39 |
that you would like to add? | 1:03:42 | |
- | It's certainly not on my mind right now. | 1:03:44 |
(laughing) | 1:03:46 | |
- | But the conversation can continue, | 1:03:48 |
right? | 1:03:49 | |
- | But it certainly can. | |
At any time. | 1:03:51 | |
- | Very appreciative, thank you so much. | 1:03:52 |
- | You're welcome. | 1:03:55 |
- | Sara, that was great. |