Nelson, Randy
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Woman | Thank you so much for meeting me, Randy. | 0:04 |
If you could say your name. | 0:07 | |
Randy | Randy Nelson. | 0:08 |
- | And are you lay or clergy? | 0:10 |
- | I am clergy. | |
I am an ordained member of the | 0:13 | |
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. | 0:15 | |
Woman | Thank you very much. | 0:17 |
When and where were you born, Randy? | 0:19 | |
Randy | I was born in South Dakota, | 0:22 |
a small community, Watertown, South Dakota, | 0:24 | |
in October of 1941. | 0:27 | |
Woman | Okay, great. Where did you go to school? | 0:31 |
Graduate, Divinity school? | 0:33 | |
Randy | Went to grade school, high school in | 0:36 |
my small community of Strandburg, South Dakota. | 0:38 | |
Went to college in Gustavus Adolphus in St Peter, Minnesota. | 0:41 | |
Went to seminary first in Rock Island, Illinois, | 0:46 | |
and then graduated from the | 0:49 | |
Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. | 0:51 | |
I had moved there, | 0:53 | |
and then did a master's and a doctorate | 0:55 | |
at the University of Chicago Divinity School. | 0:58 | |
Woman | Okay. | 1:00 |
Randy | Did some graduate work, | 1:02 |
or some sabbatical work | 1:03 | |
in Cambridge, England, at Cambridge University, | 1:05 | |
and | 1:09 | |
that's the academic part. | 1:12 | |
Woman | Yes. That sounds wonderful, actually. | 1:14 |
What work or ministry were you | 1:18 | |
doing at the time of Re-imagining? | 1:20 | |
Randy | I was on the faculty at Luther seminary | 1:23 |
in Saint Paul, Minnesota. | 1:27 | |
I was the director of contextual education, | 1:29 | |
which was the seminary's program for | 1:33 | |
placing students who are preparing for ministry | 1:37 | |
in congregations all around the country | 1:40 | |
and in some overseas sites, | 1:42 | |
so, I supervised their placements. | 1:44 | |
It was a one year... | 1:47 | |
They were in a, basically, in apprenticeship | 1:49 | |
I don't know, for a year, and I and my colleagues, | 1:53 | |
at one point there were three of us, | 1:56 | |
at another point there were four of us, | 1:58 | |
another point there were two of us. | 2:00 | |
We ended up supervising them | 2:01 | |
in that year of internship. | 2:04 | |
Woman | Yeah, and how long did you do that, Randy? | 2:07 |
- | Thirty-two years. | 2:09 |
- | Wow. | |
Randy | And for most of those 32 years, | 2:13 |
I would say for, maybe, | 2:16 | |
28 or 29, it was our practice to visit our interns | 2:20 | |
in their places, each year. | 2:24 | |
And so I would make, | 2:28 | |
one year I made 60 site visits throughout the country | 2:30 | |
and then other years, it was mostly between 30 and 40. | 2:33 | |
Woman | Wow, that's a lot. | 2:36 |
Randy | I was, basically, every other week | 2:39 |
I would be gone from end of November through | 2:42 | |
end of March. | 2:47 | |
Woman | And this was all over the country? | 2:48 |
Randy | Yes, and then about, all over the country | 2:50 |
and in about seven or eight foreign countries | 2:53 | |
over the time, as well. | 2:55 | |
- | Really? So you visited there, too, | 2:58 |
the foreign countries, wow. | 3:00 | |
Randy | We did, up until the last two or three years, | 3:01 |
when we did not do visits anymore. | 3:03 | |
Woman | Yeah, yeah, yeah. | 3:05 |
And you're retired? | 3:07 | |
Randy | I am retired. | 3:09 |
I retired in | 3:10 | |
June of | 3:12 | |
of 2007. | 3:14 | |
Woman | Yes. | 3:17 |
Randy | My wife, who was a school social worker, | 3:18 |
retired the same year. | 3:20 | |
So, we've been in retirement now for, | 3:21 | |
this is our ninth year. | 3:25 | |
Woman | Wonderful, great. | 3:26 |
How and when did you first become aware | 3:29 | |
of feminist theology? | 3:31 | |
Randy | Well, I suspect, | 3:34 |
well, yeah, when I was at the University of Chicago, | 3:37 | |
at the divinity school, for a couple of years, | 3:43 | |
I also served part-time on the faculty | 3:46 | |
of the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, | 3:50 | |
and a couple of those years, I was in internship, | 3:53 | |
a couple years I was teaching in church and society, | 3:57 | |
and a couple years I was active dean of students. | 4:01 | |
Woman | Oh, wow. | 4:04 |
Randy | And so, in those years, we had | 4:04 |
not very many, but we did have some women students | 4:08 | |
that were coming. | 4:11 | |
So that was one of the impetus for my interest. | 4:13 | |
Another was a colleague of mine | 4:17 | |
at the University of Chicago. | 4:18 | |
Her name was Mary Pellauer. | 4:21 | |
She was a part of the feminist movement, | 4:23 | |
and so she and I were | 4:28 | |
classmates, although class is a little different | 4:33 | |
when you talk about graduate school. | 4:36 | |
So, that would've been the early, | 4:39 | |
the early interests, and then basically coming here | 4:42 | |
and being at Luther Seminary. | 4:46 | |
I ended up having a strong interest in | 4:50 | |
feminist theology, and | 4:54 | |
I seem to be able to relate, | 4:58 | |
to women students fairly well. | 5:01 | |
This is not quite what you asked, but it's related, | 5:07 | |
I also became very interested, at that point, | 5:09 | |
in LGBT community. | 5:12 | |
Woman | Yes. | 5:15 |
Randy | Especially some of the women students | 5:16 |
who were lesbian, but could not be out. | 5:19 | |
Woman | Right. | 5:23 |
Randy | Would come and, we'd talk about, | 5:24 |
well, what are your options and that kind of thing. | 5:26 | |
Woman | Wow, no, that's definitely related, yeah. | 5:29 |
So it's interesting, so it was largely your, | 5:31 | |
the women and students who were, | 5:33 | |
that's what sparked your interest? | 5:36 | |
- | Right. | 5:37 |
- | Yeah. | |
Being supportive of them. | 5:39 | |
Randy | Yes, yes, and then I would start to read | 5:41 |
some of the feminist theology. | 5:45 | |
So, it was primarily, though, experiential, | 5:48 | |
is what triggered it. | 5:51 | |
And, I mean, that's not surprising since my whole ministry | 5:53 | |
was basically working with experiential learning. | 5:56 | |
Woman | Right. | 6:00 |
The doctorate was pretty much academic theology, | 6:02 | |
but most of my ministry was more, okay, | 6:05 | |
how do you put this into practice? | 6:09 | |
- | Makes sense. | 6:12 |
- | Yeah. | |
- | Absolutely. | 6:13 |
- | It does, for me, at least. | |
Woman | If we could talk about the Re-Imagining Community. | 6:17 |
Could you talk about your relationship that you're in, | 6:20 | |
in Re-imagining community, what kind of role you play? | 6:22 | |
Randy | Sure, sure. | 6:24 |
My first involvement was | 6:28 | |
with the Decade for Women. | 6:31 | |
It started in, what, | 6:34 | |
'88, '88. | 6:38 | |
Woman | Yeah. | 6:39 |
Randy | And I was asked by | 6:40 |
a senate staff person if I would, in some sense, | 6:45 | |
represent the Lutheran church as a part of that | 6:49 | |
planning committee, or | 6:54 | |
I'm not sure what we called it at that point. | 6:58 | |
But anyway, Sally Hill was the one who kind of, | 7:00 | |
both invited me to be on this, | 7:04 | |
and also, then, encouraged me, so. | 7:06 | |
From '88 I was a part of that planning committee, | 7:09 | |
and it wasn't a planning committee yet. | 7:13 | |
By about '95, it became clear that not much was happening | 7:15 | |
in terms of what's going on here in the cities, | 7:20 | |
or really anyplace, and so that group said, | 7:23 | |
we need to put on a conference. | 7:25 | |
Woman | Okay. Can I interrupt for one minute? | 7:27 |
Is this, | 7:29 | |
the church councils, the Minneapolis? | 7:32 | |
Randy | Yeah. | 7:34 |
Woman | Yeah, yeah, okay, sorry to interrupt. | 7:35 |
Okay, go ahead. | 7:36 | |
Randy | Yeah, and I don't know exactly | 7:37 |
who started the thing because Sally was with | 7:39 | |
the Council of Churches. | 7:42 | |
So I became a part of that, | 7:45 | |
planning for the first major conference. | 7:47 | |
And we played a kind of minor role in that, but | 7:51 | |
was involved from the beginning with that. | 7:58 | |
So, participated in that conference, | 8:02 | |
and then, when that one was over, | 8:05 | |
we basically thought we're done. | 8:07 | |
This is it, we're done. | 8:09 | |
Well, the response was | 8:11 | |
so major and so much of it was negative, | 8:17 | |
that it became clear that we couldn't just fade away | 8:20 | |
because there were some people that needed | 8:24 | |
that help, support, and we thought we could offer that. | 8:25 | |
And so, instead of a one and done, | 8:30 | |
we continued to work, and then | 8:34 | |
we decided, well, we needed to do some more of these. | 8:38 | |
And I'm not exactly sure why | 8:43 | |
I was invited, but Pam Jorn and Jerry Smith and I | 8:46 | |
were asked if we would be chairs for the '98 conference. | 8:51 | |
I think all three of us said, well, we won't do it alone. | 8:58 | |
So if we can't do it together, we won't do it. | 9:03 | |
So we agreed to do it. | 9:05 | |
And so we did it in '98, and | 9:07 | |
then, when that one was over, | 9:10 | |
we said that they were still not done. | 9:13 | |
So the three of us became tri chairs again | 9:17 | |
for the 2000 conference. | 9:19 | |
And, I think after that, | 9:22 | |
the three of us said, okay, | 9:26 | |
if there's gonna be more of these, that's great, | 9:28 | |
but we're not gonna be the instigators or | 9:31 | |
organizers, or whatever it was called. | 9:34 | |
And so, we did those two conf-- | 9:38 | |
chaired those two conferences, | 9:43 | |
and then stayed somewhat involved. | 9:45 | |
It became, really, a bonding conference for Jerry | 9:52 | |
and Pam and I, as we had continued to meet regularly, | 9:55 | |
almost on a once-a-month basis, since then, | 10:00 | |
so I suppose you could say, we started in '98, | 10:03 | |
then we were meeting more than once a month, of course, | 10:06 | |
for the planning. | 10:08 | |
So it's been almost, it's been close to 20 years | 10:10 | |
in which we've met regularly, | 10:13 | |
over breakfast, once a month. | 10:16 | |
That's been a, | 10:20 | |
that's been just a great, fun experience. | 10:23 | |
Woman | I love that. | 10:27 |
Randy | One other thing just went through my mind | 10:32 |
and I've now lost it. | 10:34 | |
Oh, my other involvement with the Re-Imagining Community | 10:37 | |
was we put out a newsletter, or a monthly. | 10:40 | |
And Nancy Burnekin was the one who was the first editor. | 10:45 | |
No-- | 10:50 | |
- | Pam Jorn was. | 10:51 |
- | Pam Jorn. | |
Woman | Yes, and then Nancy, you got it. | 10:52 |
Randy | And then Nancy Burnekin, | 10:53 |
and I served on the editorial council for both of these. | 10:55 | |
And I would occasionally write an article, or whatever. | 11:00 | |
But, again, that group would meet pretty much | 11:05 | |
on a monthly basis. | 11:07 | |
We did editorial work for them. | 11:10 | |
So, my main involvement was with the two conferences, | 11:12 | |
but then also the ongoing work with the | 11:15 | |
Re-Imagining newsletter, or the, | 11:19 | |
it was more than a newsletter, it was a magazine, | 11:22 | |
20 to 30 pages long. | 11:24 | |
That was fun. | 11:28 | |
In a former life, or in a different life, | 11:30 | |
I would've been an editor. | 11:33 | |
Woman | Really? | 11:34 |
Randy | If I can't proof something and find a mistake, | 11:36 |
then there's something wrong with me. | 11:40 | |
(laughing) | 11:42 | |
It was all in good fun, and it was great to work | 11:45 | |
with both Pam and Nancy in that context, also. | 11:47 | |
Woman | Oh, yes. | 11:52 |
Randy, I want to hear more details, | 11:53 | |
'cause you were involved in so many important ways. | 11:54 | |
This is great. | 11:58 | |
First of all, when you think back to the planning, | 11:59 | |
when you were on the Ecumenical Decade, | 12:01 | |
the church council, all of that, could you tell me | 12:03 | |
a little bit more about how this all evolved | 12:06 | |
into the conference that it became? | 12:08 | |
Do you remember that? | 12:11 | |
Randy | Well, | 12:12 |
my main memory is that we, | 12:13 | |
it was an Ecumenical Decade, but we had gone | 12:17 | |
three or four years, | 12:19 | |
and nothing much seemed to be happening. | 12:20 | |
Woman | Across the country? | 12:24 |
Randy | Across the country. | 12:25 |
And Sally, I think, said, something's gotta happen | 12:27 | |
or we're gonna have 10 years and, what? | 12:30 | |
And so, it was Sally that really was the prime mover | 12:34 | |
of this, but I think it was good, | 12:38 | |
good participation and awareness. | 12:42 | |
Again, we needed to do something, | 12:44 | |
because nobody else seemed to be doing anything. | 12:46 | |
So, we decided, well, let's do this conference. | 12:49 | |
And I'm not sure | 12:54 | |
how we settled on the notion of re-imagining God, | 12:58 | |
all the theology, quote, topics. | 13:03 | |
But it became clear early on that what we wanted to do | 13:07 | |
was a conference, and basically, the staff | 13:10 | |
staffed by female theologians. | 13:16 | |
And, again, it was Sally with her kind of content, | 13:20 | |
who said, well we don't need to just stay local. | 13:23 | |
We can go national, in fact we can go international. | 13:26 | |
And so, we had presenters at that conference | 13:29 | |
from all over the world, | 13:35 | |
Africa, Asia, Europe, and the United States. | 13:38 | |
I think we were all surprised at the response. | 13:44 | |
I'm not sure how many we thought we were gonna have, | 13:48 | |
but when we ended up with 2,200, that was kinda like | 13:52 | |
oh, there is something on here | 13:56 | |
that needs to be tapped. | 13:59 | |
And it turned out to be, I don't have the exact figures, | 14:01 | |
but about 2,100 women and about 100 men attended that. | 14:04 | |
And then, it had its own momentum. | 14:10 | |
And, of course, | 14:13 | |
by describing it as re-imagining, | 14:16 | |
and some of the presenters were really quite bold | 14:19 | |
in re-imagining very traditional and | 14:24 | |
in some sense, | 14:29 | |
untouchable topics that they dared to touch. | 14:31 | |
And then, of course, that | 14:36 | |
because there was some ecumenical money involved | 14:38 | |
from the various denominations, some of those denominations, | 14:41 | |
or parts of those denominations, became very critical, and | 14:45 | |
they said they took off some of the presenters | 14:51 | |
and some of the organizers. | 14:54 | |
One of the unfortunate things is that several persons | 14:59 | |
lost jobs, | 15:01 | |
were emotionally abused, not physically, | 15:06 | |
as far as I know, but emotionally and psychologically | 15:09 | |
targeted for heresy, | 15:13 | |
I mean, there was no | 15:16 | |
it wasn't quite that formal, but that was the implication. | 15:19 | |
That these feminist theologians were | 15:22 | |
out of bounds | 15:27 | |
and were | 15:29 | |
targeting the faith, destroying the faith for the churches | 15:32 | |
and that kind of thing. | 15:35 | |
And the leverage they had was that there was | 15:37 | |
some ecumenical money involved. | 15:39 | |
So, it was kinda like, well how come our money is being sent | 15:42 | |
being spent for such and such a thing? | 15:45 | |
So, then, as I say, | 15:49 | |
then it kind of had its own momentum after that. | 15:51 | |
And it was kinda like, well, we got a tiger going here. | 15:55 | |
We can't just drop it. | 15:57 | |
We could've, I think, if the response had been | 16:00 | |
either neutral or maybe more positive. | 16:02 | |
Then I think we could've said, well, we did our thing. | 16:07 | |
Woman | Right. | 16:09 |
Randy | But it was clear, if we didn't continue, | 16:11 |
some people were really gonna be hurt, | 16:13 | |
and they were anyway, but at least we could provide | 16:16 | |
a support for them, which I think we did pretty well. | 16:18 | |
Woman | Yeah, yeah. | 16:24 |
Randy | I, at least, from my perspective, | 16:27 |
went into this fairly innocently, so I mean, | 16:32 | |
I don't recall all the ins and outs of this | 16:34 | |
until after the fact, and then, oh, | 16:38 | |
were we aware of that? | 16:41 | |
Should we have been aware of that? | 16:42 | |
Should we have expected this? | 16:43 | |
Well no, I don't think any of us did. | 16:45 | |
Woman | And why didn't you expect it? | 16:48 |
Randy | 'Cause I think most of us thought, | 16:50 |
this is what theology's about. | 16:52 | |
It's about group creativity and it's about | 16:54 | |
thinking outside the box, and that's not | 16:57 | |
that's not something that ought to be | 17:02 | |
stifled, I guess. | 17:07 | |
Now, obviously, when you think about it, | 17:10 | |
most of us were like-minded. | 17:12 | |
There was no what I would call | 17:16 | |
conservative fundamentalists in that group. | 17:20 | |
So there was nobody there who was saying, | 17:23 | |
well, you can't do that because the bible says this. | 17:26 | |
No, so I think we were, | 17:29 | |
we were naive, I would say we were naive in that sense. | 17:31 | |
That we thought the whole theological arena | 17:36 | |
was more open than it turned out to be. | 17:39 | |
And, I think we were not aware of how | 17:43 | |
okay, academic theory is one thing, but then you have | 17:47 | |
the whole lay community of the churches, | 17:50 | |
and they were less interested, | 17:52 | |
I shouldn't say less interested. | 17:55 | |
They were more afraid of what this meant | 17:57 | |
because, okay, if you can challenge that part of my faith, | 18:00 | |
then I'm not sure what I've got left, kinda thing. | 18:06 | |
We were, I think, both like-minded in what | 18:13 | |
we were hoping for, but also then, naive | 18:16 | |
in the dimensions of the church community, especially, | 18:19 | |
that were not prepared for that kind of | 18:23 | |
outside of the norm kind of thinking. | 18:26 | |
Woman | Yeah, and you mentioned earlier about | 18:29 |
untouchable topics, or topics, | 18:32 | |
what would you say were the issues that really-- | 18:34 | |
Randy | Well, one of them was atonement, | 18:38 |
and there was a thought about, well, maybe Jesus, | 18:41 | |
that the normal understanding of Jesus | 18:45 | |
as dying for one's sins, | 18:47 | |
maybe we need to rethink what that means. | 18:49 | |
Another was the | 18:52 | |
image of | 18:54 | |
of milk and honey, which was seen by some to be | 18:56 | |
a reflection on | 19:00 | |
critiquing the eucharist, or | 19:04 | |
somehow that, | 19:07 | |
that was not a good thing to be doing. | 19:09 | |
Another was the Adam and Eve, the apples | 19:11 | |
with the Korean woman who kind of-- | 19:15 | |
Woman | Chung Hyun Kyung? | 19:19 |
Randy | Yeah, instead of saying | 19:20 |
biting of the apple is a problem, | 19:23 | |
she said, well, we're gonna bite the apple, | 19:26 | |
(laughing) | 19:28 | |
and, of course, without any explanation of that. | 19:29 | |
That seemed to be saying, | 19:33 | |
(mumbles) at least, or | 19:35 | |
how sin comes about, so atonement was one. | 19:38 | |
The creation story was another. | 19:46 | |
I would say, the whole notion of sin, worship, | 19:50 | |
music, ritual, all of that was, at least on the edge. | 19:54 | |
Woman | Yes, yeah. | 20:00 |
Randy | And while it was | 20:01 |
we thought it was the thing to be doing, | 20:04 | |
was to kind of open this up. | 20:06 | |
Woman | Right. | 20:08 |
Randy | Many people in the church, | 20:09 |
at least the vocal ones in the church said, | 20:11 | |
you can't do that. | 20:13 | |
Woman | Right, right, yeah. | 20:14 |
What was your experience like at the '93 conference? | 20:17 | |
Do you remember? | 20:21 | |
Randy | Yeah, it was, | 20:22 |
well, I was doing a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff, | 20:25 | |
so I didn't get to hear everything. | 20:30 | |
And, that's okay. | 20:32 | |
My most vivid memory of that | 20:34 | |
was the closing conference | 20:37 | |
when, at that event, | 20:40 | |
we started singing We're Marching in the Light of God, | 20:44 | |
and the whole auditorium | 20:48 | |
was, basically, marching. | 20:50 | |
I was partly awestruck by the fact | 20:56 | |
that I had been invited to participate in the event | 20:59 | |
which was clearly feminist, and I'm not a woman. | 21:03 | |
So, there was a part of me that was saying, | 21:06 | |
I can't believe that I have been invited to be part of this. | 21:08 | |
And then to be able to do that kind of celebrative dance | 21:13 | |
at the end, was just great. | 21:18 | |
I was also aware of, during the conference, | 21:21 | |
the sense in which LGBTQ, | 21:24 | |
it wasn't Q then, I guess it was just LGBT | 21:28 | |
persons became very visible and were basically saying, | 21:33 | |
we're not gonna apologize for who we are anymore. | 21:38 | |
I guess three things, one being the closing celebration, | 21:45 | |
the kind of coming out of the LGBT candidates, | 21:49 | |
and the behind-the-scenes work of, okay, | 21:52 | |
which speaker has to be where at what time, | 21:57 | |
and that kind of thing. | 21:59 | |
And I did some transporting of people, | 22:00 | |
which I ended up doing all three of them | 22:05 | |
and then I did find out | 22:08 | |
(machine whirring over speech) | 22:11 | |
I would make a note in my journal of, | 22:25 | |
this time I brought Rebecca Walker to the airport | 22:26 | |
or something like that. | 22:31 | |
Another time, I think (mumbles). | 22:32 | |
So I was one of those who had a vehicle | 22:35 | |
and I had time and I could do that. | 22:40 | |
And I thought it was more important for me | 22:43 | |
to do something about organizing | 22:45 | |
than to be making sure I heard everything | 22:47 | |
and preventing some other one from hearing | 22:50 | |
when I could be doing behind-the-scenes stuff. | 22:55 | |
As I say, that I did with all three of the major ones. | 22:59 | |
There were several of the minor ones, in between, | 23:04 | |
that I did not have much involvement with. | 23:07 | |
- | Did you attend those? | 23:10 |
- | Yes, yeah. | |
And that was fine, too. | 23:14 | |
I'm in a different role. | 23:16 | |
Woman | Yes. | 23:17 |
You mentioned being, | 23:18 | |
I think the phrase that was often used was, | 23:20 | |
one of the few good men | 23:21 | |
that were involved. | 23:23 | |
I'm just curious, how would you describe | 23:24 | |
what it was like being a man and involved | 23:26 | |
in this organization that was primarily women? | 23:28 | |
Randy | Yeah, it was. | 23:30 |
Well, I think having been a part of the Ecumenical Decade | 23:32 | |
committee, from the beginning. | 23:36 | |
It wasn't like I have to find my place. | 23:38 | |
And there was such a great group of women. | 23:44 | |
They welcomed me. | 23:50 | |
As I said, I did feel like, kinda | 23:52 | |
when I would stand up and think, | 23:54 | |
how did I get into this position? | 23:56 | |
And not in a sense of, | 24:00 | |
as a bad place to be, but how did I, | 24:02 | |
how did I get to be in this situation? | 24:06 | |
And it was because | 24:09 | |
so many of the planning women | 24:12 | |
simply welcomed me in. | 24:16 | |
And it wasn't a question, well you gotta, | 24:18 | |
you gotta prove to us why you belong here. | 24:21 | |
Not that at all. | 24:22 | |
It was, welcome, let's do the work. | 24:24 | |
But, I mean, there are still parts of me that think, | 24:28 | |
and still times when I wonder, | 24:32 | |
how was I both able to do this and why was I so lucky | 24:34 | |
that I was able to be a part of this? | 24:39 | |
Because I really do find it, I think of it | 24:41 | |
as one of the major, major events in my life, | 24:44 | |
in terms of | 24:49 | |
welcoming and being just accepted and | 24:51 | |
having a place and a spot in which to give | 24:55 | |
to bring my gifts. | 25:00 | |
- | Wow. | 25:02 |
- | Yeah. | |
I should say a little bit about my background, | 25:09 | |
because I grew up in rural South Dakota, | 25:11 | |
very traditional, normal kind of place. | 25:13 | |
You know, rural values, I would say. | 25:18 | |
My family, my parents were | 25:21 | |
normal kind of Republican persons. | 25:25 | |
And so, there was a part of me that thinks, | 25:30 | |
how did a little country boy from South Dakota | 25:32 | |
get into this kind of a international | 25:36 | |
milieu? | 25:41 | |
I still think about that on occasion. | 25:43 | |
I don't know how it happened. I'm sure that it did. | 25:47 | |
But I don't know how, because nothing, in some sense, | 25:49 | |
prepared me for that. | 25:52 | |
Well, I shouldn't say that. | 25:54 | |
After college, | 25:55 | |
it's one of those things where | 25:57 | |
I had not planned out what I wanted to do. | 26:00 | |
It just kinda comes. | 26:03 | |
So, when I was a senior in college, | 26:06 | |
my philosophy prof said, | 26:09 | |
well, you're applying, aren't you, | 26:15 | |
for a Fulbright scholarship? | 26:18 | |
And I said, no. | 26:19 | |
Well, yeah you are. | 26:21 | |
So he, basically, had given encouragement. | 26:23 | |
I applied for a Fulbright scholarship. | 26:25 | |
Well, I think, okay I'll apply. | 26:27 | |
Surprisingly, I received a full (mumbles). | 26:31 | |
Woman | Wow. | 26:34 |
State government fellowship, so I spent, | 26:34 | |
between college and seminary, a year in Germany | 26:37 | |
studying at University of (mumbles). | 26:40 | |
Well, that was | 26:44 | |
another pivotal point in my life, | 26:47 | |
because it started to break me out of a rural, | 26:49 | |
midwestern mindset, and say hey, | 26:51 | |
there's another world out there. | 26:53 | |
Woman | Yes, what were you studying there, Randy? | 26:54 |
Randy | Well, it was social ethics. | 26:56 |
I couldn't tell you why my interest in social ethics started | 27:01 | |
but I carried that forward, then, into seminary, | 27:06 | |
but especially into graduate school. | 27:09 | |
Woman | Yes. | 27:11 |
I'm just curious, this is fascinating. | 27:13 | |
What led you to divinity school, to becoming a pastor? | 27:14 | |
Randy | Well, I was one of the, we had | 27:20 |
our small church in South Dakota basically had | 27:23 | |
pastors who were nearing the end of their retirement, | 27:27 | |
or, I'm sorry, nearing the end of their ministry | 27:30 | |
and heading for retirement. | 27:33 | |
Woman | Yes. | 27:34 |
Randy | When I was in high school, | 27:34 |
we had a seminary graduate, right out of the seminary. | 27:36 | |
And his goal was to have a youth group here. | 27:39 | |
Well, there were enough of us kids around, so he did that. | 27:42 | |
And at that point, I became | 27:45 | |
one of the leaders in that, and I ended up | 27:50 | |
doing some supply preaching | 27:52 | |
as a junior in high school | 27:56 | |
in rural churches in South Dakota. | 27:59 | |
Woman | Wow. | 28:01 |
Randy | And, it was the kind of thing where, | 28:02 |
okay you showed some aptitude for it, | 28:05 | |
the ministry's a great profession, sure. | 28:07 | |
You ought to do it. | 28:09 | |
(laughing) | 28:10 | |
Then, as I say, I mean okay, I can do that. | 28:12 | |
So I did. | 28:15 | |
So, it wasn't a | 28:16 | |
it was not a conversion experience or anything, | 28:19 | |
I mean, it was not a blinding light. | 28:22 | |
You've got the gifts, so that's what I did. | 28:25 | |
Woman | Wonderful. | 28:28 |
That's great, I love it. | 28:29 | |
This is great, we've talked about, | 28:34 | |
did the backlash affect you at all directly? | 28:36 | |
You were talking some about that. | 28:39 | |
Randy | Well, | 28:42 |
I was identified in several conservative Lutheran papers | 28:46 | |
as one who had been a part of that. | 28:53 | |
The bishop that at that time was Herb Jolstrom, | 28:57 | |
and so, some of the inquiries came to him. | 29:01 | |
And he said, well, why don't you be in touch | 29:04 | |
with Randy Nelson, he's a part of it. | 29:07 | |
And I remember one of them, | 29:10 | |
it was in a paper called the Lutheran Commentator | 29:11 | |
and the editor said, well, | 29:15 | |
getting in touch with Nelson is like | 29:18 | |
getting in touch with the fox | 29:22 | |
after the chickens have been eaten. | 29:23 | |
It was the image, it wasn't the right language. | 29:27 | |
So there was that, but it was just very minor, | 29:30 | |
two or three instances like that where | 29:33 | |
I was referred to as | 29:36 | |
one of those that was a part of it, and | 29:39 | |
but there was no repercussions at the seminary. | 29:43 | |
There were some people at the seminary who | 29:47 | |
clearly didn't think I should've been doing that, | 29:49 | |
but they were not, | 29:52 | |
they were not mean or, they didn't come after me. | 29:54 | |
And I could weather that fairly easily | 29:59 | |
because by then I had been with the seminary | 30:03 | |
for almost, well, I started in seminary in '75, | 30:05 | |
so I was one of the main persons there. | 30:08 | |
And there was nothing really in the church, itself, | 30:13 | |
and Lutherans were not picked out | 30:17 | |
because we had not, | 30:21 | |
maybe a little bit of sabbatical money but there was | 30:22 | |
no major money source that could be said, well, | 30:26 | |
why are you spending Lutheran money? | 30:30 | |
Woman | Right, right. | 30:32 |
Randy | So, it was, | 30:33 |
it was minor. | 30:36 | |
Woman | Yes, yeah, that's good, good. | 30:37 |
Talking about Re-Imagining, the community itself, | 30:41 | |
how would you define Re-Imagining? | 30:44 | |
Randy | Well, it was a community that gathered around | 30:50 |
first, supporting a feminist theology, | 30:53 | |
and then it became a community that | 30:56 | |
continued, in order to support those who had been | 31:00 | |
a part of that effort and were now being challenged. | 31:03 | |
It became, basically, a support community, | 31:08 | |
and the support was very strong locally. | 31:12 | |
It continued, then, to be what I think of primarily | 31:20 | |
as a support community. | 31:23 | |
It was in a position to provide some educational | 31:25 | |
experiences and support for persons not from around here. | 31:28 | |
I can remember one Lutheran woman who was a pastor | 31:33 | |
in North Dakota, and for her, | 31:36 | |
the conferences were kind of life-saving | 31:39 | |
because in her community, she had really no support | 31:43 | |
(mumbles) to be a feminist. | 31:47 | |
She would use these events as kind of | 31:54 | |
restocking or rebuilding her resources | 32:00 | |
kind of thing. | 32:04 | |
Woman | Were there other ways that the community | 32:06 |
provided support, other than the gatherings? | 32:07 | |
Randy | Well, we tried to help groups in other places | 32:10 |
develop into small groups so they didn't have to rely | 32:15 | |
only on Minneapolis, St. Paul, | 32:19 | |
but they could gather their own. | 32:22 | |
And then, I would say the newsletter did that also, | 32:25 | |
because it became a really valuable resource | 32:28 | |
for, I think, people, who, | 32:31 | |
and especially for those who couldn't attend the conference. | 32:35 | |
They could still get a sense of what was going on, | 32:38 | |
and have a sense of participating in it. | 32:41 | |
Now, I'm sure, those, | 32:46 | |
I mean, there are ways that others in the community | 32:48 | |
probably provide additional kinds of support, | 32:54 | |
but that's what I'm aware of. | 32:57 | |
Woman | Do you have any idea how successful | 33:00 |
the small groups were? | 33:02 | |
How many were formed, or any of that? | 33:03 | |
Randy | I don't think there were a lot of them, | 33:06 |
and I don't know how long they continued. | 33:10 | |
So no, I really don't know how on that. | 33:15 | |
Woman | I wanted to ask a little bit more about | 33:19 |
the quarterly publication that you were involved in. | 33:21 | |
I've been looking through them, and it is amazing | 33:23 | |
how much is in them, and how integrated it is | 33:25 | |
with art and poetry. | 33:27 | |
Could you just say a little bit more about | 33:29 | |
what you recall of what you were trying to achieve there, | 33:32 | |
what it was like being involved in that? | 33:34 | |
Randy | Well, one of the things we tried to do | 33:37 |
is to keep the theological conversation going | 33:39 | |
by having, usually there was a lead in which | 33:42 | |
there was a conversation first with Pam | 33:46 | |
and then with Nancy, with two or three persons | 33:49 | |
around a common, around a theme. | 33:52 | |
So that was a priority way of saying, | 33:55 | |
let's keep the conversation going theologically. | 33:57 | |
It was also intended to give an outlet for some people | 34:01 | |
who wanted to express themselves | 34:04 | |
and were able to do that. | 34:06 | |
(machine whirring) | 34:08 | |
Woman | Go ahead. | 34:18 |
Randy | And, it was also intended to be | 34:21 |
an outlet for providing information about | 34:25 | |
what's going on in various parts of the movement. | 34:29 | |
So, if a group was meeting out, say, in California, | 34:33 | |
they could announce that in there. | 34:36 | |
And it was a chance to express true art, | 34:41 | |
so many mentions of this whole movement, as well. | 34:45 | |
Basically, I think it was intended to be a way of | 34:50 | |
keeping people in touch with each other | 34:53 | |
in between gatherings and it did that. | 34:55 | |
I don't have any idea how many actual subscriptions | 34:59 | |
or how many actual copies were made, so I, | 35:02 | |
but, it did, | 35:09 | |
I think it did what it was intended to do, | 35:12 | |
which was to kind of serve as a glue or a thread | 35:15 | |
for the whole community. | 35:18 | |
Woman | Yes. | 35:19 |
Exactly, yeah. | 35:21 | |
How would you say feminist theology affected | 35:23 | |
the structure and functioning of the community? | 35:25 | |
Randy | Well, one of the ways it affected it | 35:31 |
was in terms of language. | 35:33 | |
There was no hesitancy about talking about | 35:36 | |
God the mother, and so | 35:40 | |
feminist imaging was there for | 35:43 | |
the theological themes. | 35:48 | |
I think feminist theology was also | 35:54 | |
prominent in a kind of egalitarian or equality | 35:59 | |
kind of notion. | 36:02 | |
It says it's not hierarchical. | 36:05 | |
It's what the gifts you have that you can bring. | 36:08 | |
And I think that was modeled pretty well. | 36:11 | |
So many of the leaders were lay leaders, | 36:14 | |
I mean, they were not ordained. | 36:18 | |
There were several, I mean like Sally, ordained, | 36:19 | |
there were several. | 36:21 | |
But many of them were lay leaders. | 36:22 | |
And as far as I can tell, | 36:26 | |
they did not feel | 36:29 | |
they felt welcome for the gifts they had. | 36:33 | |
They weren't intimidated by not being clergy. | 36:37 | |
So, | 36:44 | |
this maybe is redundant, but | 36:53 | |
there's a sense in which the theology, itself, | 36:56 | |
that's very clearly feminist | 36:59 | |
that was not | 37:02 | |
it did not worry about well, does the tradition say this? | 37:04 | |
I mean, it wasn't disrespectful of the tradition, | 37:08 | |
but it didn't feel that it needed to be simply | 37:12 | |
(mumbles) | 37:15 | |
The tradition could be respected, | 37:18 | |
but we're in a different era. | 37:20 | |
There's new learning going on in biblical theological area. | 37:24 | |
We need to deal with that, incorporate that if we can. | 37:28 | |
So, | 37:31 | |
it was partly a sense of, let's be creative and that's, | 37:33 | |
if it develops into something good, that's fine. | 37:38 | |
If it doesn't, that's okay. | 37:41 | |
We can, okay that was a good attempt, but it didn't work. | 37:43 | |
So, we can go back and, if not start over, | 37:47 | |
but at least take a different tack. | 37:51 | |
It was also, I think | 37:55 | |
one of the other things it did was, | 37:58 | |
it was very committed to diversity. | 37:59 | |
And that was diversity in terms of the | 38:03 | |
nationalities, | 38:07 | |
races, | 38:10 | |
and it was not | 38:12 | |
individuals may have had all kinds of trouble | 38:16 | |
with maleness. | 38:18 | |
But as a community, it was not | 38:21 | |
disrespectful of males, either. | 38:23 | |
In other words, the egalitarianess also extended to, | 38:25 | |
well, if you want to be a part of this, | 38:30 | |
you can be a part of it, even if you're not a woman. | 38:32 | |
And that's partly why I think I continued to be a part of it | 38:37 | |
was because I didn't have a sense that | 38:41 | |
I didn't belong. | 38:43 | |
So I'm not, | 38:47 | |
there's probably some other ways also, but I think-- | 38:50 | |
Woman | Those are very helpful. | 38:52 |
Randy | I think that's what I, | 38:54 |
you need immediately. | 38:57 | |
Woman | Yeah, those are very important. | 39:00 |
When you think about the kind of challenges, | 39:02 | |
you know, during its 10 years of existence, | 39:04 | |
what challenges did the community face? | 39:06 | |
And how did they address them? | 39:08 | |
Randy | Well, I suppose, | 39:13 |
the most vocal challenges | 39:15 | |
(machine whirs) | 39:17 | |
the most vocal challenges came from | 39:27 | |
concerned lay people in various denominations. | 39:30 | |
And, the way we dealt with it was, partly | 39:35 | |
to support those who were being attacked, | 39:39 | |
but it was also not to back off from, okay, | 39:42 | |
we understand you don't like this, | 39:47 | |
but we think this is something we need to be thinking about. | 39:48 | |
So that was one of the challenges. | 39:52 | |
There were some, | 39:54 | |
I would say the pushback or the challenge from | 39:57 | |
professional theologians was more muted | 40:03 | |
and probably more subtle. | 40:07 | |
I mean, there wasn't direct out and out, | 40:09 | |
although there would be comments about, | 40:12 | |
that doesn't seem to be what we ought to be doing | 40:18 | |
as theologians, and that kind of stuff. | 40:20 | |
But I would say the biggest challenge was, | 40:24 | |
was from the church and its denominational manifestations. | 40:27 | |
Woman | When you talk about the professional theologians, | 40:34 |
was this in print or was this more comments? | 40:36 | |
Randy | I think it was more comments. | 40:38 |
I mean, there were, | 40:40 | |
every now and then you'd see a comment in print | 40:42 | |
from a theologian who was questioning what was going on, | 40:45 | |
but that was, I'd say, much more muted. | 40:48 | |
And I'm not sure, I think | 40:53 | |
I think part of that was because | 40:56 | |
they said, this isn't a serious movement. | 40:59 | |
Woman | Oh, yeah. | 41:01 |
Randy | I mean, they didn't think it was, | 41:03 |
and I think | 41:05 | |
they thought, you know, we don't need to address this. | 41:08 | |
Well, they probably didn't. | 41:14 | |
But when the lay people got upset, | 41:16 | |
then in some sense, it became a serious movement. | 41:19 | |
Woman | Yes, yeah. | 41:22 |
I wanted to go back to that issue of diversity because | 41:23 | |
I would say that the community did very well | 41:29 | |
at getting racially and ethnically diverse speakers. | 41:32 | |
Randy | Right. | 41:35 |
Woman | The general population of the community | 41:36 |
tended to be very white and middle class. | 41:38 | |
Randy | Right. | 41:40 |
Woman | Would you agree with that? | 41:42 |
Randy | Absolutely. | 41:42 |
Woman | So do you have any thoughts on that? | 41:43 |
Why that was? | 41:44 | |
Were there attempts to address that? | 41:46 | |
Just any reflections on that? | 41:48 | |
Randy | Well, one of the attempts to address it | 41:50 |
was by the diversity of the speakers. | 41:52 | |
And we did, | 41:56 | |
we did try to incorporate into the kind of planning groups | 41:57 | |
women of color, especially African-American. | 42:01 | |
I think it's, | 42:05 | |
because it started out pretty much as a middle-class group, | 42:08 | |
I think it had some of the same problems | 42:12 | |
that every middle-class church group has, | 42:14 | |
and that's, how do you accommodate persons who don't have | 42:16 | |
for one thing, don't have time, | 42:23 | |
and they cannot give that kind of volunteer time | 42:25 | |
that most of us could. | 42:27 | |
Woman | Yes. | 42:28 |
Randy | Because we were secure in our positions. | 42:29 |
And I think | 42:35 | |
in some sense, the worship and the ritual | 42:37 | |
was going to the other direction. | 42:40 | |
In other words, it was not going towards | 42:42 | |
the spiritual African-American style. | 42:45 | |
It was heading the other way, in terms of much more, | 42:48 | |
much more adventuresome stuff. | 42:51 | |
And I think, | 42:54 | |
I think especially people of color, | 42:56 | |
their tradition of that kind of | 43:00 | |
of worship is so strong. | 43:04 | |
Woman | Yeah. | 43:06 |
Randy | But they're not gonna really be attracted | 43:09 |
to something that seems to be, | 43:12 | |
well, not only are we not moving our way, | 43:14 | |
you're moving another way. | 43:18 | |
Now, I mean, | 43:19 | |
I'm not sure that makes sense, | 43:21 | |
because I'm just kind of thinking it through | 43:22 | |
at this time. | 43:24 | |
Woman | Could you say a little bit more, yeah, | 43:26 |
what details would make it move the other direction? | 43:27 | |
You said adventuresome. | 43:29 | |
Randy | Well, milk and honey, for some. | 43:31 |
I mean, I don't think most African-American communities | 43:33 | |
would say, that doesn't fit with our tradition at all. | 43:36 | |
And, it didn't fit with mainline, either, but | 43:41 | |
the mainline was more, because middle class, okay, | 43:44 | |
we can try this. | 43:47 | |
So, I haven't thought this through much. | 43:50 | |
Woman | Sure. | 43:54 |
Randy | That seems to be, | 43:56 |
but as I say, I think the main issue is | 43:58 | |
what every church-based, traditional organization | 44:00 | |
the problem it has in trying to bridge | 44:06 | |
both ethnic differences and in some sense, class differences | 44:10 | |
and we were clearly middle class. | 44:13 | |
And that's who, basically, attended. | 44:17 | |
What we found, though, was that the middle class, | 44:20 | |
white, | 44:24 | |
spiritual people, | 44:29 | |
they had no outlet for their stuff, either. | 44:31 | |
And they had no way to find support, | 44:33 | |
especially if they were serving congregations | 44:36 | |
in smaller communities. | 44:39 | |
So for them, it became a lifeline. | 44:42 | |
And once that kinda got developed, it seems to me, | 44:45 | |
that's the direction it continued to go. | 44:48 | |
So, I mean, Church Women United was a part of that, | 44:53 | |
the impetus for this, | 44:58 | |
and that's primarily a white group, a middle-class group. | 44:59 | |
So, that's the way it stayed. | 45:04 | |
Woman | Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, yeah. | 45:06 |
You may have already answered this question. | 45:09 | |
I'll give you a minute to have your drink there. | 45:11 | |
But, what aspects of Re-Imagining | 45:15 | |
were most significant to you, and why? | 45:17 | |
Randy | Well, I, the theology, itself, was. | 45:23 |
Much of my academic work, | 45:27 | |
and that experiential work was in liberation theology. | 45:31 | |
I would take students to Mexico. | 45:35 | |
I did that about 16 times. | 45:37 | |
Woman | Wow. | 45:39 |
Randy | And part of that was, | 45:40 |
they'd get a sense of what's going on | 45:42 | |
in the liberation community, particularly, | 45:44 | |
I mean not only Roman Catholic, but, | 45:48 | |
so I read a lot of liberation theology, so | 45:50 | |
Re-Imagining seemed to be a liberation movement. | 45:56 | |
And so, that resonated with what I was doing | 46:00 | |
in my own academic work. | 46:06 | |
So, for example, my sabbatical, | 46:13 | |
I had a sabbatical in Cuernavaca, Mexico in | 46:14 | |
what year was that? | 46:20 | |
'89, '90. | 46:23 | |
- | Huh. | 46:24 |
- | Yeah. | |
And, what I did there was write a manual | 46:26 | |
on liberation theology. | 46:27 | |
You know, so it fit very much into that. | 46:29 | |
Woman | Yes, yes. | 46:31 |
Randy | So that was one of the things | 46:34 |
that very clearly resonated with me. | 46:35 | |
I think the sense of | 46:40 | |
creativity was important for me. | 46:42 | |
But the main attraction was the theology, itself, | 46:49 | |
which seemed to be another version | 46:54 | |
of what I was very interested in. | 46:57 | |
Woman | Yeah. | 47:00 |
Very good. | 47:02 | |
How, or did your involvement in Re-Imagining change | 47:04 | |
your perspective on feminist theology and/or the church? | 47:07 | |
Randy | I don't know that I would say it changed | 47:18 |
my perspective on theology. | 47:20 | |
It probably deepened it. | 47:21 | |
I have not, for example, done much with womenist theology, | 47:24 | |
which, as I think about it, that would be | 47:28 | |
kind of a further elaboration of this, | 47:31 | |
and I just haven't done much of that. | 47:34 | |
It kind of reinforced, confirmed, kind of, | 47:38 | |
my own sense of things. | 47:42 | |
But the truth, itself, I think it was both | 47:46 | |
I wouldn't say disappointed, but I was | 47:53 | |
I would have preferred that the church | 47:58 | |
not be quite so | 48:00 | |
quick to say no, no, no, we can't do this. | 48:03 | |
But much more willing to explore. | 48:07 | |
But that's why all of us were naive. | 48:09 | |
I mean we thought, okay, we're offering here a gift, | 48:13 | |
and why don't you take it? | 48:16 | |
Well, it's too threatening. | 48:18 | |
Woman | Why is it threatening? | 48:21 |
Randy | Well, because I think it does say | 48:23 |
you can look at the bible in different ways. | 48:25 | |
There's not just one way to talk about | 48:28 | |
major theological issues. | 48:32 | |
There's an openness here and that would suggest | 48:35 | |
there's maybe not one right answer, either. | 48:39 | |
And if you need to have something solid and secure, | 48:42 | |
we're not it, 'cause all we want to do is open things up. | 48:46 | |
We don't want to close things down. | 48:50 | |
So, I mean, I think that was, and that's, I think | 48:52 | |
what really threatened lay people was this sense of, | 48:54 | |
you mean, all I believed all these years, | 48:57 | |
maybe isn't quite what I believe? | 49:00 | |
Well, what does that mean? | 49:02 | |
And how do I deal with that? | 49:03 | |
And I think there's still some issues | 49:06 | |
with the liturgies of the church | 49:10 | |
because they claim to be still very traditional. | 49:12 | |
Even some of these nominations are very active | 49:16 | |
in social justice and ethics and | 49:21 | |
that kind of thing. | 49:24 | |
The liturgies, no, (mumbles) | 49:26 | |
God the father and Lord have mercy. | 49:29 | |
I mean, I understand why that is, | 49:36 | |
because when you've got a congregation | 49:37 | |
you've got the whole gamut and you cannot be | 49:39 | |
so far ahead that those who are more traditional | 49:41 | |
in their faith can't find a place. | 49:45 | |
But, | 49:49 | |
I think, | 49:53 | |
that's why in some sense, it was a | 49:54 | |
re-imagining movement. | 49:58 | |
We'll offer this. | 50:03 | |
If you can work with it, do it. | 50:04 | |
If not, | 50:06 | |
we're gonna still do it. | 50:09 | |
Woman | Yeah, yeah. | 50:11 |
Did you think that, why don't you take a sip. | 50:13 | |
Did you think that the churches | 50:16 | |
would be further along in inclusive language in 2016? | 50:18 | |
Or, are you not surprised? | 50:23 | |
- | You mean today? | 50:24 |
- | Today, yeah. | |
Randy | Well, I think we're there, | 50:27 |
when you talk about academic stuff. | 50:30 | |
We're not there when you talk about | 50:32 | |
liturgical stuff. | 50:35 | |
Some are. | 50:38 | |
But it's more individual congregations. | 50:40 | |
It's not whole denominations. | 50:43 | |
And in some sense, some of the liturgy | 50:47 | |
has gone out of that. | 50:49 | |
It's kind of like, oh that's, | 50:51 | |
we've got other things to deal with, rather than that. | 50:54 | |
Which, in some sense, that's true. | 50:57 | |
I mean, you've got | 51:03 | |
lot of the justice issues now. | 51:06 | |
I'm not gonna fight over God the mother or daughter | 51:09 | |
or father. | 51:11 | |
It seems, okay, yeah, that's okay, | 51:12 | |
but that's not really what the issues are. | 51:15 | |
But, on the other hand, you could make a case | 51:17 | |
that if we could get that straight | 51:19 | |
the rest of it might actually get easier. | 51:21 | |
But, it's hard to make that case. | 51:23 | |
Woman | I want to pick up on one other word. | 51:28 |
You said Re-Imagining movement, | 51:29 | |
you emphasized movement. | 51:31 | |
Why movement? What do you see? | 51:34 | |
Randy | Well, because I think | 51:37 |
this was not just individuals. | 51:38 | |
I mean, there are individual theologians | 51:40 | |
but together they represented and still represent | 51:43 | |
a kind of larger reality. | 51:48 | |
I mean, that's what it became for at least 10 years | 51:55 | |
and then | 51:59 | |
as with other movements, | 52:02 | |
when it has done its work, then it needs to quit. | 52:04 | |
And I think we have done our work. | 52:09 | |
It would have been, | 52:13 | |
we could have continued, but I think that | 52:15 | |
some of the energy had gone out of it. | 52:18 | |
And, we were not saying, okay, | 52:22 | |
if we quit, we failed. | 52:24 | |
It's time to quit. | 52:28 | |
Woman | Yeah, yeah. | 52:29 |
Randy | So, for me the movement, then, simply, | 52:31 |
it's more than just one or two theologians. | 52:33 | |
There is a sense of, this is something that's happening | 52:38 | |
in the church. | 52:41 | |
But actually it's happening outside the church | 52:43 | |
as much. | 52:46 | |
(machine whirring) | 52:47 | |
So, in some ways, it was a way | 53:01 | |
of bridging the church and world. | 53:03 | |
Which, as I said, when my background is ethics | 53:08 | |
and society, and so for me it was | 53:12 | |
a way to confirm | 53:16 | |
professionally what I | 53:19 | |
actually studied and trained to do. | 53:21 | |
Woman | Could you say just a, | 53:25 |
give an example of how you saw it | 53:26 | |
or examples of how you saw it bridging the church | 53:27 | |
and the world? | 53:29 | |
How is it doing that? | 53:30 | |
Randy | Well, I think some of those who attended, | 53:31 |
for example, the conferences | 53:33 | |
had pretty much given up on the church. | 53:34 | |
And yet, here's something that is at least | 53:37 | |
under some auspices of the church, | 53:40 | |
and they're willing to do this and so maybe | 53:43 | |
we don't have to quite quit yet. | 53:45 | |
So, I don't know how many that was the case, | 53:48 | |
but I know there were some for whom, okay, | 53:52 | |
we'll give it a try again. | 53:54 | |
And whether they've stayed with it, | 53:58 | |
I don't know what's happened since. | 54:00 | |
But I do think that was one of the goals, | 54:03 | |
well, I don't know if it was one of the goals. | 54:06 | |
It became one of the results | 54:08 | |
was that the appeal was not just to tried and true | 54:11 | |
church members, it was to those who wanted | 54:15 | |
(mumbles) the church. | 54:17 | |
We gave them a place to say, | 54:19 | |
well maybe there is something down there. | 54:20 | |
So, that's basically what I mean is that | 54:23 | |
sense of trying to help those who | 54:27 | |
were having trouble with the church. | 54:31 | |
Say, well it's not a lost cause totally. | 54:34 | |
Woman | Right, yeah, yeah. | 54:37 |
In the time we have left, and I so appreciate this, | 54:39 | |
we want to look a little bit toward the future. | 54:43 | |
And so, what do you think is the greatest legacy | 54:45 | |
of the Re-Imagining Community? | 54:48 | |
Randy | Well, I suspect the legacy is in | 54:55 |
those individuals who participated in it, | 54:58 | |
and whether there's much for them | 55:02 | |
either in their faith life or their ministry life. | 55:03 | |
There are a couple of written documents, | 55:11 | |
so there is some of that. | 55:15 | |
But I think probably they focus more in terms of | 55:21 | |
what needs to happen in the lives of individuals | 55:23 | |
and then, to some extent, | 55:27 | |
what happened to parts of the church. | 55:28 | |
Woman | What do you think happened to parts of the church? | 55:32 |
Randy | Well, some, I think, were | 55:36 |
some did become more open. | 55:44 | |
Some allowed | 55:48 | |
it did give greater space to some, | 55:58 | |
especially women, who I think | 56:02 | |
might not have continued in the church | 56:05 | |
if they had not had a sense of, okay, | 56:08 | |
now I can try some stuff and still be accepted, | 56:11 | |
or, I can be true to my own sense of who I am | 56:16 | |
and still be in the church. | 56:20 | |
I suppose, | 56:24 | |
and I don't know the extent to which this is the case, | 56:25 | |
but part of the legacy is a sense of what | 56:28 | |
what can happen when committed people | 56:33 | |
decide it's time to do something. | 56:37 | |
It doesn't mean it's gonna change the world. | 56:42 | |
It doesn't mean it's gonna go on forever. | 56:44 | |
But it's like kind of a, okay, | 56:46 | |
grassroots movements still have their place | 56:48 | |
and can still | 56:52 | |
can still create a bit of excitement | 56:56 | |
and if individuals can connect to that, great. | 56:59 | |
But, we didn't go into it saying, | 57:05 | |
we want this to be our legacy. | 57:06 | |
We went into it saying, this is what we need to do | 57:08 | |
and then, let it happen. | 57:11 | |
Woman | Yeah, yeah. | 57:14 |
Couple more quick questions. | 57:17 | |
What does re-imagining mean today? | 57:19 | |
Randy | Well, for me it means, | 57:23 |
every now and then I see someone say, | 57:28 | |
well we need to re-imagine this, and they don't have a clue | 57:29 | |
that they're picking up on that movement | 57:33 | |
because as far as they (mumbles) | 57:36 | |
But I see it as a way of saying, yeah, | 57:38 | |
there is always a need for a re-imagining | 57:41 | |
what we're about, what we believe, what we think, | 57:45 | |
and how do we do that? | 57:48 | |
It has that kind of personal sense. | 57:53 | |
And I do think that, | 57:58 | |
for those who are able and willing to kinda take a look | 58:00 | |
it does refer to this really quite extraordinary event | 58:05 | |
in which, primarily, women got together and said, | 58:12 | |
we're not comfortable with how the tradition | 58:16 | |
has always described things, and we think we can, | 58:19 | |
there can be other ways of doing it. | 58:23 | |
So, in some sense what you're doing, probably, | 58:27 | |
(mumbles) | 58:30 | |
there's something here, let's take a look at it. | 58:32 | |
And it may not, | 58:34 | |
I mean, it's not current right now, | 58:35 | |
but you can look at it and say, okay, what did they do | 58:37 | |
that was able to get some stuff moving? | 58:41 | |
But for me, the re-imagining will always trigger, | 58:49 | |
whenever that word is used, whether it's in relation | 58:53 | |
to theology or anything else, it'll always trigger, | 58:56 | |
ah-ha, there was a movement once | 58:59 | |
that was really quite exciting and did some good stuff. | 59:03 | |
Woman | Yeah, yeah. | 59:06 |
And my last question, which is very specific. | 59:08 | |
The community is creating a Re-Imagining website, | 59:11 | |
and I wonder if you had any thoughts about | 59:16 | |
what would be helpful to include in it, | 59:19 | |
who would benefit from it, | 59:22 | |
how we could get the word out, any of those issues, | 59:24 | |
any ideas on it? | 59:26 | |
Randy | Well, to be very honest, I have been | 59:30 |
skeptical about trying to resurrect that. | 59:34 | |
Woman | Mm-hmm, say some more about that, yes. | 59:38 |
Randy | Well, my own sense is that we did our thing, | 59:41 |
we did what we wanted to do, | 59:46 | |
that particular dimension is done, let's let it rest. | 59:50 | |
Woman | Yeah. | 59:54 |
Randy | I don't have a good sense of | 59:57 |
what could be done because I, | 59:59 | |
especially if it's, those who are part of the original | 1:00:02 | |
Re-Imagining movement, most of them aren't gonna be | 1:00:06 | |
around much longer. | 1:00:08 | |
And so, unless the attempt is to appeal | 1:00:10 | |
to the younger generation, | 1:00:15 | |
I don't have a sense of what, | 1:00:19 | |
why that would be a good thing to do. | 1:00:22 | |
Woman | Yeah, fair enough. | 1:00:24 |
Randy | But that's a personal opinion. | 1:00:26 |
Woman | No, well that's good, and it's good to hear that. | 1:00:26 |
I think that's very good. | 1:00:28 | |
We need to hear all those voices, that's good. | 1:00:29 | |
Last thing is, is there anything that we haven't | 1:00:32 | |
talked about that you would want to say? | 1:00:35 | |
Something we've left out of the conversation? | 1:00:37 | |
Randy | I think, not really. | 1:00:47 |
I suppose, personally, for me, | 1:00:49 | |
what was a benefit was the fact that | 1:00:52 | |
I was out of a Lutheran context, | 1:00:56 | |
meaning the ecumenical context. | 1:00:59 | |
So, for example, Sally Martin who, | 1:01:01 | |
a musician I would never have come in contact with her | 1:01:05 | |
except through this, | 1:01:08 | |
and some of the other women | 1:01:11 | |
who represented other denominations | 1:01:12 | |
and I think that was one of the geniuses of it | 1:01:16 | |
was that it could span denominational lines, | 1:01:18 | |
not just Protestant, but especially Roman Catholic, | 1:01:20 | |
Protestant lines. | 1:01:24 | |
So, I mean, that was a diversity also | 1:01:29 | |
that was a positive diversity, especially for me. | 1:01:32 | |
But it did bring together | 1:01:37 | |
the Catholic nuns, sisters, Protestant theologians, | 1:01:39 | |
Protestant pastors, lay people from all over, so, | 1:01:44 | |
that ability to appeal | 1:01:50 | |
was a good thing. | 1:01:54 | |
But no, I mean, | 1:01:57 | |
when Jerry and Pam and I get together, | 1:02:03 | |
we don't talk about Re-Imagining so much anymore | 1:02:05 | |
because now we all go, what's going on in your life? | 1:02:08 | |
Woman | I love it. | 1:02:11 |
Randy | I went to Joe Engenberg's funeral, | 1:02:16 |
so when those things come along, | 1:02:20 | |
there is still a tie that says, okay, | 1:02:22 | |
let's get back into that and, | 1:02:25 | |
or not get back into it, but let's remember that, | 1:02:27 | |
affirm what happened. | 1:02:31 | |
Woman | Yes. | 1:02:33 |
Yeah. | 1:02:34 | |
Thank you very much, Randy. I really appreciate it. | 1:02:36 |