Evans, Sara / Re-Imagining Collection / Duke Digital Repository

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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

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Sara Evans.

0:12

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Thank you, and are you lay or clergy?

0:13

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I am lay.

0:15

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And your denomination?

0:16

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Methodist.

0:18

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Yeah.

0:19

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United Methodist.

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United Methodist, yes.

0:20

When and where were you born, Sara?

0:22

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I was born

0:24

on December 1st, 1943

0:26

in a parsonage in McCormick, South Carolina.

0:29

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Ohhh.

0:32

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My father

was a Methodist minister so I'm a PK.

0:33

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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

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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

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Mm-hmm, and what is your area again?

0:54

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The history of American women, women in the United States,

0:59

and particularly the history of feminism.

1:02

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Mm-hmm, how did you get interested in that?

1:04

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Oh my, this is a long story.

1:09

(interviewer laughs)

1:11

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But a fascinating one.

1:12

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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

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SDS is?

9:21

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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

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Do you remember what that was called?

13:27

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I think it's Images of God, but I'm not positive.

13:28

You can look it up.

13:32

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Was it by Kay Heckland, or by any chance?

13:33

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Probably.

13:36

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Okay, yeah.

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But I don't know.

13:37

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Sure, sure, I'll find out.

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Double check it.

13:39

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Sure.

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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

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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

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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

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Nakashima Brock?

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Nakashima Brock.

16:34

I remember as very powerful.

16:36

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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

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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

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Really, wow.

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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

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Way!

18:36

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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I was.

24:02

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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

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I don't remember either, actually.

26:58

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Really?

26:59

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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

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Yeah, I can look it up easily.

27:06

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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.

Evans, Sara

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Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History & Culture