Thomas, Margaret
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- | Well Margaret thank you very much for this interview. | 0:03 |
Could you please say your full name? | 0:06 | |
- | It's Margaret Jean Thomas. | 0:08 |
- | Good. Excellent. How do you spell Jean? | 0:12 |
- | J-E-A-N. | 0:14 |
- | Okay, thank you. | 0:16 |
And are you lay or clergy? | 0:17 | |
- | I am Presbyterian clergy. | 0:19 |
Ordained in 1971. | 0:21 | |
- | Okay, great. | 0:23 |
And Margaret, when and where were you born? | 0:26 | |
- | I was born in Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan | 0:28 |
in 1943, December. | 0:32 | |
- | Okay, thank you. | 0:34 |
Where did you go to graduate or divinity school? | 0:37 | |
- | Several places. | 0:41 |
(both laughing) | 0:42 | |
- | Interesting, good. | 0:44 |
- | Yeah I went to graduate school | 0:45 |
at Michigan State University. | 0:47 | |
Pursued Master of Arts at that time. | 0:49 | |
(laughs) Stewed on that. | 0:58 | |
Did not get that degree. | 1:01 | |
Presbyterian Church in the south actually | 1:02 | |
called me to be a staff person before I finished it. | 1:05 | |
So I went to join the Board of Christian Education | 1:09 | |
with the Southern Presbyterian Church in summer of '65. | 1:12 | |
That was the last year of the civil war centennial. | 1:22 | |
- | Oh Right! | 1:28 |
- | Which affected a lot of what we're gonna talk about today. | 1:30 |
Because they were in the midst of fighting all the | 1:33 | |
segregation and feminist issues. | 1:36 | |
I was 21 at the time, so a Yankee in the South | 1:40 | |
was an interesting dynamic. | 1:44 | |
I went to Union Seminary in Virginia. In Richmond, Virginia. | 1:46 | |
It's now Union Presbyterian Seminary. | 1:52 | |
It's changed its name three times since I graduated. | 1:54 | |
- | Oh really? | 1:57 |
(both laughing) | ||
- | I graduated in '71 from there. | 1:59 |
And then I got a Doctor of Ministry in | 2:02 | |
the San Francisco Theological Seminary in '91. | 2:03 | |
- | Oh, okay. Great. | 2:09 |
And so what work or ministry | 2:12 | |
were you doing at the time of re-imagining? That was '93. | 2:15 | |
- | I was executive director of the | 2:18 |
Minnesota Council of Churches. | 2:20 | |
- | Good. Could you say a little bit more | 2:21 |
about what that job means? | 2:23 | |
What you were doing then? | 2:25 | |
- | Well the state council of churches was | 2:27 |
the conciliar ecumenical agency in Minnesota. | 2:32 | |
It related to the communions, | 2:35 | |
not to particular congregations. | 2:38 | |
So we were the ones that were in relationship | 2:41 | |
with the senates, the dioceses, the conferences. | 2:44 | |
And sought to do what was cooperative | 2:50 | |
at that level in the state of Minnesota. | 2:55 | |
We were actually at the time, I think, | 3:05 | |
four major city councils as well in the state. | 3:07 | |
Two of whom were in the metro area; | 3:14 | |
The Saint Paul area Council of Churches has a new name now. | 3:16 | |
And the Greater Minneapolis Council of Churches, | 3:19 | |
which I think has a new name now. | 3:20 | |
(both laughing) | 3:22 | |
- | Everything keeps changing names. | 3:24 |
- | Everything changes. | 3:25 |
Well you have different relationships. | 3:26 | |
And there's one in Rochester, one in Duluth, | 3:29 | |
a nominal one up in northwestern Minnesota somewhere. | 3:34 | |
Those were basically consortiums of congregations | 3:44 | |
in those regions. | 3:47 | |
And did the mission work cooperatively among congregations. | 3:49 | |
So what a particular congregation couldn't do, | 3:55 | |
the various councils did. | 3:58 | |
And what the denominations couldn't do alone, we did. | 4:01 | |
- | Okay. | 4:05 |
- | Our funding at the Minnesota Council was almost | 4:08 |
exclusively from the communions, | 4:11 | |
with the exception of refugee resettlement | 4:15 | |
where we got best major funding. | 4:17 | |
The city councils of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, | 4:20 | |
a primary was congregations. | 4:22 | |
So greater Minneapolis increasingly | 4:25 | |
went to government grants for a lot of their things. | 4:27 | |
And obviously the whole conciliar structure of ecumenism | 4:34 | |
confuses every parishioner in the world. | 4:38 | |
And a lot of clergy who don't quite know how this works. | 4:41 | |
So Minnesota was kind of in the lead, and still is | 4:47 | |
in cooperative work among the entities. | 4:53 | |
So the Joint Religious Legislative Coalition, for instance, | 4:56 | |
came out of the denominational affiliations. | 5:03 | |
Primarily really just | 5:08 | |
Catholic conference and Jewish community. | 5:10 | |
Minnesota Fuchair came out of the | 5:14 | |
greater Minneapolis Council of Churches. | 5:14 | |
Paint-a-thon came out of the | 5:19 | |
greater Minneapolis Council of Churches. | 5:20 | |
Saint Paul Council focused very heavily on Indian ministry. | 5:25 | |
As did Greater Minneapolis later. | 5:30 | |
We did too, but ours was statewide. | 5:32 | |
So the number of programs were pretty much anything that | 5:37 | |
would work better if we were doing it together. | 5:42 | |
The three councils, the three that have presence | 5:47 | |
in the metropolitan area formed an entity. | 5:51 | |
It was deliberately focused on program and events. | 5:57 | |
And that was the Tri-council. | 6:02 | |
Twin Cities Metropolitan Church Commission at the time, | 6:05 | |
later became Tri-Council. | 6:08 | |
Twin Cities Metropolitan Church Commission. | 6:10 | |
And Sally Hill is the staff person for that. | 6:13 | |
So she actually was an employee of the three councils | 6:17 | |
and whenever we thought there was something worth doing, | 6:21 | |
as an event, she was kind of the staff person for it. | 6:26 | |
And she's a very, very creative person, | 6:31 | |
very connected in the community. | 6:33 | |
Her whole life she'd been connected in the community. | 6:39 | |
Primarily through McCallister and her connections there. | 6:41 | |
And she did just great stuff. | 6:50 | |
We would have Christian Educator events, | 6:52 | |
she did a celebration of scripture that got 900 | 6:55 | |
people showing up at St. Marks Cathedral. | 6:57 | |
- | Wow! | 7:02 |
- | Yeah precisely. And so when the World Council of Churches | 7:03 |
decided in the late '80s to focus on women in the church | 7:12 | |
for a decade of the '90s, and asked all the communions | 7:18 | |
around the world to do the same. | 7:22 | |
Well and the United States, | 7:27 | |
The National Council of Churches. | 7:29 | |
Which I was on the board | 7:30 | |
and eventually became its treasurer. | 7:32 | |
Might even have been at that time. | 7:35 | |
Anyway, we said we were more than happy in this country, | 7:37 | |
to encourage our communions, | 7:42 | |
as well as the National Council of Churches, | 7:43 | |
to plan events, educational materials, | 7:45 | |
anything we could do. | 7:50 | |
I think there were a few videos created | 7:51 | |
on this decade of women. | 7:56 | |
And of course, we then said, | 8:01 | |
well we got this | 8:03 | |
Tri-Council coordinating (laughs) committee. | 8:04 | |
And Sally Hill(?) who loves to do these things, | 8:09 | |
so let's do something locally. | 8:12 | |
So Sally was turned loose | 8:14 | |
to form a planning committee to plan the event. | 8:17 | |
One of her close friends and fellow parishioners | 8:23 | |
at Saint Luke Presbyterian, was Mary Ann Lundy. | 8:27 | |
So Sally being the kind of person she was, | 8:30 | |
she went to the people she knew and said, | 8:33 | |
hey we need some funding for this. | 8:36 | |
And of course Mary Ann Lundy | 8:38 | |
was more than willing to help fund. | 8:39 | |
Because the Presbyterians said yes, | 8:42 | |
We're gonna celebrate this decade of women. | 8:44 | |
So she became not only a member of the planning committee, | 8:47 | |
but also a funder of it. | 8:50 | |
I don't remember all the other places that money came from | 8:52 | |
and that kind of thing, | 8:56 | |
but we did set up, as we did for every event, | 8:57 | |
a planning committee. | 9:01 | |
And that's many of the people you've interviewed | 9:03 | |
and many of them became speakers. | 9:06 | |
(laughs) | 9:09 | |
Now the dynamic of it was | 9:12 | |
that because it was a three council entity, | 9:14 | |
the person who supervised Sally, rotated every year. | 9:19 | |
- | Oh! | 9:23 |
- | So she wasn't supervised by the three executives, | 9:25 |
but she was our staff person. | 9:28 | |
In that particular year, in '93, for Re-imagining, | 9:31 | |
Tom Duke, of the Saint Paul Area Council of Churches, | 9:33 | |
was her supervisor. | 9:35 | |
So anything that related to | 9:37 | |
the work of the planning committee | 9:39 | |
or when any issue arose, | 9:42 | |
He would be the front person. | 9:44 | |
And of course we had meetings, | 9:47 | |
regular monthly meetings of The Council. | 9:48 | |
And Twin Cities went into commission. | 9:53 | |
The commission and a few issues arose during the planning, | 9:57 | |
but not very many. | 10:02 | |
- | What kind of issues arose, that you recall? | 10:04 |
- | Well the big one was, | 10:06 |
I'm gonna speak only what | 10:12 | |
rose for me. | 10:13 | |
- | Yes. That's fair. | 10:14 |
And what I spoke about it and tried to intervene on, | 10:15 | |
unsuccessfully, I might add. | 10:19 | |
- | Oh. | |
Was one, I tried to put it in the broader context of | 10:22 | |
what was going on in the communions. | 10:24 | |
And raised the awareness that | 10:26 | |
they were going to be attacked. | 10:29 | |
That the far right are coming | 10:34 | |
to institute a religion democracy | 10:36 | |
in the lay committee and others. | 10:38 | |
There's a parallel group in the Methodist church here now. | 10:41 | |
And a kind of small presence | 10:46 | |
in the Lutheran church at the time. | 10:50 | |
It wasn't very powerful at that time. | 10:54 | |
Never did become powerful in the Lutheran church. | 10:56 | |
But inside the Presbyterian system, | 10:59 | |
it went back all the way to 1965, | 11:02 | |
these people who were attacking. | 11:05 | |
So they were very used to, | 11:08 | |
and they were well-funded from the Pew Foundation, | 11:11 | |
who had funded the lay committee to start with. | 11:18 | |
And were sad at the fact that | 11:20 | |
they had to keep giving them money every year. | 11:23 | |
Because it was part of the bequest | 11:24 | |
they had received from their founder, | 11:26 | |
- | Really? | 11:28 |
- | Yeah, so there was a lot of money | 11:29 |
and a lot of history of knowing how to attack. | 11:32 | |
It was post reunion | 11:36 | |
- | Post reunion of the | 11:41 |
Both | Presbyterian | 11:42 |
church, which was '83. | 11:43 | |
- | Okay. | |
And one of the political dynamics of that reunion | 11:46 | |
was both churches had experienced schism prior to this. | 11:51 | |
The Southern Presbyterian Church, | 12:03 | |
which was contiguous with the old confederacy. | 12:05 | |
It was still the boundary of the old confederacy. | 12:09 | |
They had lost 5% of churches' in their membership | 12:12 | |
in one schism. | 12:16 | |
We had lost, in the United Presbyterian Church, | 12:18 | |
which was the one I was connected with, | 12:22 | |
which was nationwide, | 12:25 | |
maybe 25, 30 thousand people. | 12:29 | |
It was nothing. | 12:32 | |
But it did form another schism and another dynamic. | 12:33 | |
Well the lay committee had its origins | 12:37 | |
in the so called northern, | 12:40 | |
(laughs) had to put the parentheses around it. | 12:44 | |
because I was a member of the Presbyterian Church, | 12:45 | |
and we didn't consider ourselves Northern. | 12:48 | |
(both laughing) | 12:49 | |
- | Oh interesting. | 12:50 |
- | But that's how the Southerners | 12:51 |
described it was the Northerns. | 12:54 | |
It was still the civil war. | 12:55 | |
It was still the North and South, | 12:57 | |
Well excuse me, we were a national denomination | 12:58 | |
and a regional denomination. | 13:02 | |
But the United Presbyterian Church, | 13:04 | |
the so called Northern, | 13:07 | |
had the lay committee and the money. | 13:09 | |
The Southern Presbyterian Church in the culture wars | 13:14 | |
had the vitriol | 13:18 | |
and the go for the gut kind of methodology. | 13:21 | |
And unfortunately in '83, they found each other. | 13:27 | |
So we got a lay committee who was effective and criticizing | 13:31 | |
and did good investigative reporting in some instances. | 13:39 | |
But it got, then merged, with people who were, | 13:45 | |
the only end goal we want | 13:49 | |
is the destruction of the national structures. | 13:51 | |
And if you wanna put it into today's context. | 13:54 | |
Okay, who wants big government. | 13:56 | |
and who doesn't want big government. | 13:58 | |
Who wants a national presence and who doesn't? | 14:00 | |
And the kind of language we're hearing | 14:05 | |
and the kind of products in this debates these time. | 14:07 | |
This is kind of mild compared | 14:11 | |
to what we were experiencing inside the church. | 14:14 | |
So 10 years after reunion | 14:17 | |
we have all this stuff going on. | 14:21 | |
Those people in what was then Louisville heard, | 14:25 | |
they're evil, unchristian, | 14:36 | |
we gotta get rid of them mentalities. | 14:39 | |
The primary focus was always biblical authority, | 14:45 | |
you don't believe the Bible, | 14:50 | |
you don't think the only way to salvation is Jesus, | 14:52 | |
you support abortion, | 14:55 | |
and it's these terrible women who are leading all this. | 15:00 | |
(laughs) That kind of mentality. | 15:03 | |
And I had come from New York to Minnesota in '85. | 15:07 | |
I knew all that history, I knew all the actors. | 15:14 | |
And I saw what | 15:18 | |
the Re-imagining planning committee was doing, | 15:19 | |
and I said, they're gonna come after you. | 15:21 | |
You need to be prepared to answer | 15:24 | |
what's going to be an all out assault. | 15:29 | |
And they did not believe me. | 15:32 | |
- | First of all, could you identify | 15:34 |
what you saw in the planning | 15:35 | |
that you knew they were gonna go after. | 15:37 | |
- | (laughs) Well one, they were gonna be ecumenical. | 15:39 |
And our conservatives, | 15:42 | |
I think the conservatives in most churches | 15:46 | |
don't understand ecumenical. | 15:48 | |
They don't understand | 15:51 | |
that when you have an ecumenical gathering | 15:52 | |
there are certain things you can't do, | 15:55 | |
or you have to be cautious of. | 15:59 | |
So we couldn't have communion. | 16:02 | |
If you can't have the Lord's Supper or the Eucharist, | 16:04 | |
what kind of rituals can you have? | 16:09 | |
And when I started talking about the milk, | 16:13 | |
what became the milk and honey, made eminent sense | 16:14 | |
to me from a biblical perspective | 16:18 | |
and from an ecumenical perspective, | 16:20 | |
is way of symbolizing our unity | 16:23 | |
without offending or violating | 16:26 | |
the religious principles of our participants. | 16:30 | |
Made eminent sense to me, | 16:34 | |
but I said that's gonna be a big flashpoint. | 16:35 | |
Being with the National Council of Churches, | 16:44 | |
all the orthodox communions, | 16:46 | |
heads of communions were close friends. | 16:51 | |
And I understood Sophia. | 16:53 | |
I understood that. | 16:56 | |
I understood and I knew the theology of Sophia, | 16:57 | |
that wisdom was present at creation and was identified. | 17:01 | |
And if Jesus was the word of God, | 17:06 | |
with the logos being present from the beginning, | 17:10 | |
that that had to be wisdom | 17:13 | |
cause that's the only biblical thing it could be. | 17:16 | |
And that the word was Sophia. | 17:18 | |
And by the way if that wasn't true, | 17:22 | |
there would be no Trinity. | 17:23 | |
Because Jesus couldn't be the son of God | 17:25 | |
and coequal in the Godhead, | 17:26 | |
if Sophia wasn't a name for Jesus, | 17:27 | |
I knew that because it was | 17:35 | |
such an important part of the orthodox traditions. | 17:36 | |
And it was present in the Catholic traditions, but not huge. | 17:40 | |
Mary was huger (laughs) obviously. | 17:44 | |
But the feminine side has always been more prevalent | 17:47 | |
in the orthodox of the Godhead. | 17:51 | |
And I said, you know you're gonna have to explain this. | 17:55 | |
You can't just say Sophia's wisdom in God, | 18:01 | |
and then have a milk and honey ritual that can be confused. | 18:04 | |
Well they weren't into theology, | 18:08 | |
and they weren't into ecumenical sensitivities. | 18:11 | |
So they just did it, (laughs) they just did it. | 18:16 | |
And it made eminent sense in the planning committee, | 18:22 | |
it made eminent sense ecumenically, | 18:25 | |
and didn't offend very many people present. | 18:26 | |
(laughs) just a few. | 18:31 | |
But it became key points for proving these were heretics. | 18:35 | |
Heretical women heretics trying to destroy the Gospel, | 18:40 | |
destroy Jesus, substituting another God. | 18:45 | |
Just tossing out the history of the church. | 18:52 | |
In fact, we were reclaiming the history of the church. | 18:54 | |
But I think, and you can check this out, if you go back | 18:57 | |
to the material that was produced for the conference, | 19:00 | |
I don't think you're gonna find any explanation. | 19:04 | |
- | The only thing there was, | 19:07 |
had a newsletter that was produced at the conference. | 19:08 | |
It did talk about Sophia, | 19:10 | |
but yeah, so there was a little bit. | 19:12 | |
- | Yeah, but not much. | 19:14 |
And in the publicity had never said anything. | 19:17 | |
It's being advertised nationally, | 19:20 | |
and once you get these national invitations to this event, | 19:23 | |
well there's all the fodder these folks who were trying | 19:28 | |
to tear down the churches needed. | 19:31 | |
So I knew they were treading on shaky ground | 19:34 | |
in terms of the future. | 19:42 | |
And what could be done with what they were doing. | 19:44 | |
The other thing that I warned them about was security. | 19:47 | |
- | Oh? Say some more about that. | 19:51 |
- | Because we had, matter of fact | 19:53 |
right over here about two blocks, | 19:56 | |
a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America. | 19:57 | |
No the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, excuse me. | 20:01 | |
The orthodox Presbyterian church was a 1930's schism, | 20:03 | |
by Carol McIntyre, out of the | 20:08 | |
old United Presbyterian Church. | 20:10 | |
And it was one of these fundamentals schisms | 20:13 | |
and their only purpose as a denomination was | 20:18 | |
to picket the national meetings | 20:21 | |
of the mainline denominations, | 20:24 | |
particularly Presbyterian or | 20:25 | |
the national council or anything, | 20:27 | |
because of their heresies. | 20:29 | |
So you'd have a meeting of a general assembly or something | 20:32 | |
and these folks would always | 20:36 | |
be out there with their picket signs. | 20:38 | |
You think the anti-abortion guy out of Missouri or whatever, | 20:41 | |
Nebraska I guess is it. | 20:48 | |
You think those things are, but these were in that ilk. | 20:51 | |
- | Right. | 20:55 |
- | So I knew that if I got through it, | 20:56 |
There's a church right here. | 20:58 | |
They're gonna show up. | 21:01 | |
And the folks at the convention center better know that | 21:04 | |
they're going to be there. | 21:08 | |
This is not just a church meeting. | 21:09 | |
It's a politically charged church meeting. | 21:12 | |
And I said you gotta be prepared, | 21:16 | |
you gotta be talking with the police of Minneapolis | 21:20 | |
in terms of the potential here. | 21:24 | |
And you better be hiring some security guards. | 21:26 | |
- | And did they? | 21:29 |
What was the response to that? | 21:30 | |
- | The response was, well nothing's gonna happen. | 21:31 |
But of course they were there. | 21:34 | |
- | They were there. | 21:35 |
- | They were there, and they had a scrabble with the | 21:36 |
Minneapolis police department. | 21:39 | |
- | Really? | |
- | To get them out on to the side of the convention center | 21:41 |
where they could not come in, | 21:45 | |
but be outside in a public space. | 21:48 | |
But I remember days when the participants | 21:50 | |
were leaving the convention center | 21:53 | |
and had to wade through them. | 21:55 | |
And that's because of my national experience. | 21:59 | |
- | I'd seen these things in operation and all. | 22:02 |
But you tell them and I wasn't their supervisor so. | 22:04 | |
(laughs) | 22:10 | |
And the general response was, | 22:12 | |
these aren't going to be problems? Was that was it? | 22:13 | |
- | This is the irony of the whole thing. | 22:19 |
The fact that you're even sitting here doing this interview. | 22:21 | |
If those reactionary forces had not been present, | 22:27 | |
it would've been an event. | 22:29 | |
And it would've ended. | 22:32 | |
- | You're right. | |
- | And it would've been wonderful. | 22:33 |
They made an issue of it, | 22:37 | |
and they went after people, | 22:40 | |
and they won in several instances. | 22:42 | |
And the community goes on. | 22:47 | |
And the agenda goes on. | 22:49 | |
So I kind of laugh at them, | 22:50 | |
but I was kind of hoping that would happen anyway. | 22:52 | |
They never did win. | 22:54 | |
The demise of mainline churches might be | 22:59 | |
a result of some of this. | 23:00 | |
But it's the same as the demise of the republican party. | 23:02 | |
(laughs) It's the same, you keep spewing hatred | 23:04 | |
and for some reason | 23:09 | |
people don't want to part of you. | 23:09 | |
(both laughing) | 23:11 | |
So that's kind of what I brought in to it. | 23:15 | |
And I don't believe I ever saw | 23:18 | |
any of the planning materials | 23:19 | |
Or anything specific that I could've responded to. | 23:27 | |
But it was that broader climate that I was aware of. | 23:30 | |
And the other dynamic at the time. | 23:34 | |
Just one more and then we can-- | 23:38 | |
- | Well this is very helpful. Keep it up, yes. | 23:40 |
- | The other dynamic was I think the conference was, | 23:42 |
What day was the conference over? Was it a Sunday? | 23:48 | |
- | It was the beginning of November. | 23:50 |
- | Was it a Saturday or something like that | 23:52 |
that where had ended? | 23:54 | |
- | I think that's right. I think it was. | 23:55 |
- | And the following Tuesday was a presbytery meeting. | 23:57 |
- | Oh? | 24:02 |
- | I was moderator. | |
of the presbytery at the time. | 24:04 | |
- | I'm sorry, clarify. Presbytery of the | 24:06 |
- | Twin Cities area. | 24:08 |
- | Twin Cities. Okay got it. | |
- | And our meeting was down in Rochester, | 24:11 |
which is, you don't wanna be going late in a meeting | 24:14 | |
down in Rochester when most of your people are up here. | 24:18 | |
But at the very end of that meeting, | 24:22 | |
the commissioner from one of our conservative churches, | 24:29 | |
got up and introduced a resolution | 24:31 | |
to condemn the Re-imagining meeting. | 24:34 | |
And the Presbyterian participation in it, | 24:38 | |
and calling for the resignation of Mary Ann Lundy. | 24:41 | |
The resolution, which did not pass, | 24:46 | |
cause there were too many people sitting in the room | 24:50 | |
who attend the conference knew better. | 24:53 | |
(laughs) But it was a verbatim of the charges that | 24:56 | |
were filed publicly by the lay committee and the others. | 25:04 | |
So it was written before the conference occurred | 25:10 | |
and it was presented the following Tuesday night. | 25:14 | |
So they were on attack by Tuesday night. | 25:17 | |
- | Wow! | 25:20 |
- | And it literally was the same language | 25:21 |
used in all the stuff that you've probably seen. | 25:25 | |
- | Yes. That soon, wow. | 25:28 |
- | Yeah, so it was identified as a way | 25:31 |
of perpetuating the warfare. | 25:35 | |
And initiated immediately after the conference. | 25:38 | |
- | Now you anticipated this backlash. | 25:44 |
Were you surprised at the form that it took? | 25:45 | |
- | Not really because I had seen it before. | 25:50 |
I wasn't prepared for it at the presbytery meeting. | 25:52 | |
I didn't think it'd come that quick. | 25:55 | |
I thought it would hit the national level first, | 25:57 | |
but it hit the presbytery level. | 26:00 | |
And it was a motion to condemn our participation | 26:02 | |
and apologize for it. | 26:05 | |
And then, then ask for resignations | 26:08 | |
and firings of key people. | 26:10 | |
Okay. I'm a Presbyterian leader, right? | 26:17 | |
- | Yes. | 26:20 |
- | Okay. I've held the second highest position | 26:21 |
in the denomination. | 26:23 | |
- | Which is called what? Remind me. | 26:26 |
- | I was the chief operating officer | 26:27 |
of the deputy executive director of the mission council, | 26:29 | |
which oversaw the mission of the church | 26:32 | |
on all six continents. | 26:34 | |
- | Wow | |
- | And I'd come from New York to Minnesota | 26:38 |
several years before this, '85. | 26:45 | |
But I continued to hold leadership positions | 26:47 | |
at the national level. | 26:50 | |
I was on our national judicial commission, | 26:52 | |
I was on our committee that interpreted the constitution. | 26:56 | |
I became the Presbyterian representative | 27:01 | |
and then treasurer of the National Council of Churches. | 27:04 | |
So I was very, very, very visible. | 27:06 | |
And I'm sitting here watching this backlash develop | 27:10 | |
in the communions. | 27:13 | |
And the assaults on the lay committee's publications. | 27:15 | |
And overtures around the church | 27:19 | |
going to the general assembly. | 27:21 | |
And I don't know if you've seen those. | 27:23 | |
- | I have and the report too. | 27:25 |
I wanna ask you about that, but go ahead. | 27:28 | |
- | So I'm sitting here, | 27:30 |
okay, three councils sponsored this event. | 27:34 | |
One of them is a high profile Presbyterian clergy. | 27:36 | |
I think the three councils in their totality | 27:42 | |
got maybe nine letters. | 27:45 | |
- | Really? | 27:47 |
- | Nobody in Minnesota was after us. | 27:48 |
Nobody in this national assault was after us. | 27:51 | |
- | How do you account for that Margaret? | 27:55 |
That's amazing. | 27:57 | |
- | Because they wanted to destroy the denomination. | 27:57 |
They didn't care about that. | 27:59 | |
- | I see. | 28:02 |
- | Now I had one other dynamic which Mary Ann didn't have. | 28:03 |
I do not remember the name that, | 28:17 | |
it was Presbyterian's Renewal at one time. | 28:22 | |
And it might've been still that at that point. | 28:25 | |
But during this period, | 28:29 | |
an executive again was submerging the two denominations. | 28:32 | |
A woman named Betty Moore, who was from South Carolina, | 28:35 | |
was the executive of the group that was going with the | 28:41 | |
lay committee on these assaults. | 28:46 | |
And Betty Moore, and I also had worked | 28:50 | |
for the Southern Presbyterian Church | 28:52 | |
before going to the United Presbyterian Church. | 28:54 | |
And Betty Moore had learned to trust me. | 28:58 | |
I was head of the research departments | 29:01 | |
in the Southern Church, | 29:04 | |
and I was one of the few national staff people | 29:05 | |
who told the truth. | 29:07 | |
You do survey research, | 29:09 | |
I'll give you one illustration to tell you. | 29:12 | |
- | So from her perspective you were the-- | 29:15 |
- | From her perspective I was reliable | 29:16 |
and I was a good person. | 29:18 | |
And I have a suspicion that she protected me. | 29:21 | |
- | Oh interesting. | 29:25 |
- | I don't know that to be a fact, | 29:26 |
but I do know during this entire period | 29:27 | |
she had speed dialed a lot. | 29:30 | |
And she'd get a speed dial call to me | 29:34 | |
and we'd have a nice long conversation. | 29:35 | |
(laughs) She didn't intend to call me, | 29:36 | |
but we'd have a nice conversation. | 29:38 | |
- | Oh really! | 29:39 |
- | Yeah and so I think some of that | 29:40 |
southern family stuff that might've protected me. | 29:43 | |
And I wasn't at the national level | 29:49 | |
so she could convince them no, | 29:50 | |
we don't need to worry about them folks. | 29:52 | |
But the same thing happened to the other two councils. | 29:55 | |
There were a few people in Minnesota who were upset, | 29:58 | |
but like I said, it was less than 10 or 12 letters total. | 30:02 | |
- | Amazing. Wow. | 30:05 |
After what happened at the national level | 30:07 | |
that's incredible. | 30:08 | |
- | Yeah during that entire period. | 30:09 |
And at the beginning you think you might have a few comments | 30:11 | |
and then when it boils over you think you're gonna have, | 30:15 | |
okay and all this stop the funding for the councils. | 30:18 | |
Why should our church be supporting these heretical people | 30:22 | |
who did that horrible conference. | 30:25 | |
None of it. None of it. | 30:27 | |
And that was a pretty good clue | 30:30 | |
that it was part of the bigger culture war. | 30:32 | |
It didn't have anything to do with the conference. | 30:34 | |
It was just fodder. | 30:36 | |
(laughs) It was fodder for them. | 30:38 | |
And the more you could distort it, | 30:42 | |
the more you could misinterpret it | 30:44 | |
and spread hate and vehemence against people | 30:47 | |
you wanted to get rid of, | 30:51 | |
Mary Ann Lundy wasn't the only one that was fired. | 30:53 | |
Jim Brown was as well. | 30:56 | |
Did she mention him? | 30:57 | |
- | Briefly. | 30:59 |
- | Yeah, now I don't think they got along to well | 31:00 |
cause he didn't defend her, at all. | 31:02 | |
But they got him too. | 31:08 | |
- | Yeah did they get him | 31:08 |
like the following year or something? | 31:10 | |
- | Yeah cause he had a term that was up | 31:12 |
and he was not re-elected. | 31:14 | |
Which was unheard of. | 31:15 | |
- | And that was because of Re-imagining? | 31:17 |
- | Oh absolutely yeah. | 31:18 |
- | Even though he fired Mary Ann Lundy? | 31:22 |
- | Yeah, you know, you do damage control | 31:26 |
and you think you can get rid of the people | 31:29 | |
that are the lightning rod, | 31:31 | |
when in fact you're the lightning rod too. | 31:32 | |
(laughs) | 31:34 | |
You were running this organization and you didn't | 31:36 | |
keep her in line. | 31:39 | |
And besides you wanted gays included. | 31:42 | |
The other thing to say of course, | 31:44 | |
is this was just the beginning | 31:45 | |
of the gay rights movements in the churches. | 31:47 | |
So if you don't get these feminists and radicals into line, | 31:50 | |
next thing you know we're gonna have gays in the church. | 31:56 | |
(laughs) we gotta get them out of there. | 31:58 | |
So they worked to do that. | 32:04 | |
- | I was wondering, were you at the '94 general assembly? | 32:08 |
- | Yes. | 32:11 |
- | Okay. I would love to hear your | 32:12 |
perception of what happened there. | 32:14 | |
The report on Re-imagining, | 32:18 | |
whatever you recall about that and what happened. | 32:19 | |
- | You know I really don't have a lot of recollection of it. | 32:21 |
More of my recollection is Jim Brown's not being re-elected. | 32:24 | |
- | Say about that. | 32:28 |
- | Cause he was nice and a good friend. | 32:29 |
But see I had been at the national level. | 32:33 | |
These were all people that, he was my director, | 32:34 | |
he was my elected chairperson for finance | 32:37 | |
at the national level before he became in that position. | 32:40 | |
So I knew him. He was a pastor. | 32:44 | |
He had a kind heart. | 32:47 | |
He understood the church, but he wasn't a fighter. | 32:50 | |
He just didn't know how to deal | 32:55 | |
with those political dynamics. | 32:57 | |
It wasn't in his soul to do that. | 32:59 | |
The election we knew that was gonna happen. | 33:05 | |
- | I'm sorry the elect, what was gonna happen? | 33:09 |
The election for him? | 33:11 | |
- | Yeah. We knew the election was gonna happen | 33:12 |
and we knew he was in trouble because there were people | 33:14 | |
running against him. | 33:16 | |
And it was such a stunning loss | 33:18 | |
that when the vote was | 33:23 | |
announced, I did go over to him | 33:25 | |
and talk to him for a few minutes and then he disappeared. | 33:30 | |
He just walked out. | 33:32 | |
- | And who was elected instead? | 33:34 |
What did they belong to a certain group or? | 33:35 | |
- | No, it was, I won't pull back his name. | 33:39 |
Pretty mainstream person. | 33:45 | |
But see the assembly didn't buy the Re-imagining junk. | 33:48 | |
- | Say some more about that. | 33:52 |
- | Well I don't remember them approving anything in reaction. | 33:53 |
They didn't censure it. | 33:56 | |
Mary Ann had already been fired. | 33:58 | |
I don't recall any, I recall heated debate on the floor. | 34:01 | |
But most of the debate occurs in committees | 34:07 | |
and I wasn't in those committees. | 34:11 | |
I was actually assigned to another one. | 34:13 | |
I was on the advisory committee of the constitution | 34:18 | |
at the time and I had to resource a holiday committee, | 34:19 | |
But even then, we there'd be | 34:24 | |
a significant conservative vote. | 34:29 | |
But that triggered, | 34:34 | |
again the conservatives lose everything. | 34:38 | |
They don't win, | 34:43 | |
they just make life terrible in the church and drag | 34:46 | |
people away and make folks think we're a nasty denomination. | 34:50 | |
- | They don't win because they're a minority, is that right? | 34:55 |
- | They're a minority! They're on the fringes | 34:57 |
of both theology and evangelism and everything. | 35:00 | |
And they give us this song and dance about how great | 35:05 | |
they are and proclaiming the Gospel. | 35:07 | |
Their churches don't grow any faster than anybody else's. | 35:09 | |
(laughs) you know? | 35:11 | |
- | You mentioned all the overtures | 35:14 |
that went into general assembly. | 35:16 | |
- | Yeah. There were a lot of them. | 35:17 |
But I'd have to go back to the record to see how | 35:22 | |
they were disposed of. | 35:24 | |
I think there was some kind of general statement, | 35:25 | |
but I don't think-- | 35:28 | |
John Buchanan was moderator and he chaired a committee | 35:29 | |
and they came up with a general statement. | 35:32 | |
But it's interesting that it's not really memorable. | 35:34 | |
(laughs) | 35:37 | |
- | It's not memorable and it didn't | 35:38 |
affect the national church. | 35:39 | |
Certainly didn't get rid of the women's voice at the level. | 35:42 | |
I mean part of the dynamic is that, I don't know if the | 35:48 | |
advisory committee on women in the church still exists. | 35:53 | |
I don't think it does. | 35:56 | |
But I think there is an all women's presence still | 35:57 | |
that would be equivalent to Mary Ann Lundy's old job. | 36:00 | |
And there's Presbyterian women, and it's the most radical | 36:04 | |
group in the world. | 36:06 | |
And everybody thought that was dying. | 36:09 | |
They really did. | 36:11 | |
There's been this downwards membership spiral. | 36:13 | |
And presbyterian women used to meet at the time of the '90s. | 36:17 | |
They'd meet at Purdue and they'd have several thousand | 36:24 | |
people there from around the country. | 36:27 | |
And there try any else seminary three years. | 36:30 | |
And I think maybe six years ago, they were down to | 36:35 | |
maybe 600 showing up. | 36:39 | |
And so they started moving it into hotels rather than | 36:41 | |
college campuses. | 36:44 | |
Well the last triennial was last summer and it was | 36:48 | |
here in Minneapolis and they scheduled themselves | 36:50 | |
into the Hyatt and 1400 people showed up. | 36:52 | |
They couldn't get into the room. | 36:55 | |
- | Really? | 36:57 |
- | Yeah. People just kept coming. | 36:58 |
And there were bets in Louisville, | 37:00 | |
that they wouldn't have 600. | 37:01 | |
And people just kept piling. | 37:03 | |
I think the women are getting angry again. | 37:06 | |
(laughs) | 37:08 | |
- | And getting angry about? | 37:09 |
- | The course in America right now. | 37:11 |
I think there's pretty strong anti-women movement. | 37:13 | |
Women obviously have no moral authority over their | 37:20 | |
own bodies (laughs) for example. | 37:23 | |
Voter suppression is usually expressed as a racial issue. | 37:28 | |
It's as much a women's issue. | 37:32 | |
I think you get the language | 37:39 | |
that you get in some of the debates going on. | 37:42 | |
I think Hillary has a great little response to that. | 37:45 | |
(laughs) | 37:48 | |
I think people, some of those folks who say they're not | 37:53 | |
feminists, that have benefited from feminism | 37:57 | |
are maybe beginning to catch on that | 38:01 | |
as they move up the ladder in their careers, | 38:03 | |
maybe that ceiling and that bias is still there. | 38:06 | |
And that wage disparity doesn't go away (laughs). | 38:09 | |
- | So do you feel like in the end, | 38:15 |
I don't wanna put words in your mouth, | 38:18 | |
but in the end, what do you think | 38:19 | |
did the backlash accomplished? | 38:22 | |
It accomplished in forming the community. | 38:24 | |
- | Well it did do that, but I think it helped place | 38:26 |
in the atmosphere inside the church. | 38:30 | |
- | Say some more about that. | 38:32 |
- | Well it's you can't have constant attacks | 38:33 |
on the integrity of the people who run the church. | 38:37 | |
And not have a negative effect. | 38:42 | |
I mean if you just look | 38:43 | |
at the religious statistics right now, | 38:46 | |
I sympathize with the nuns. | 38:49 | |
I mean, who wants to be a part of a church | 38:53 | |
that's got a lot of pedophiles in it, | 38:57 | |
or can't control its priests? | 38:59 | |
Or where there's fiscal mismanagement. | 39:01 | |
Or they're fighting over whether women have any moral | 39:04 | |
sensibilities at all or gays or lesbians. | 39:08 | |
They don't care about those things. | 39:11 | |
If that's the image of the church, why join? | 39:13 | |
I think the whole culture wars has been a terrible thing | 39:20 | |
in terms of the presence of religion in America. | 39:24 | |
And unfortunately there are congregations and denominations | 39:29 | |
that just kind of plug along and they're not going away. | 39:34 | |
(laughs) they're just not going anywhere. | 39:37 | |
Been around for couple thousand years | 39:39 | |
it's not gonna go away. | 39:41 | |
It will be transformed. | 39:43 | |
- | How would you evaluate the presence of the right wing | 39:45 |
and the Presbyterian church USA today? | 39:48 | |
- | Well we've had several schisms | 39:51 |
and we keep getting rid of them. | 39:53 | |
Our assemblies, general assemblies | 40:00 | |
are pretty moderate, enjoyable. | 40:02 | |
We get these resolutions on abortion every year. | 40:07 | |
I think it gets dismissed with 95% against them. | 40:12 | |
It's just not an issue. | 40:16 | |
The issue of ordination of gays and lesbians | 40:19 | |
with marriage equity it's not an issue. | 40:21 | |
You can print all the resolutions you want, | 40:26 | |
it's not going anywhere. | 40:28 | |
So they're a little more copacetic. | 40:31 | |
We're being able to know in our presbytery meeting | 40:34 | |
we're actually doing educational events. | 40:38 | |
We're having a lot of fellowship. | 40:40 | |
We're doing mission like crazy. | 40:42 | |
The whole mood has changed | 40:44 | |
with these people out of our midst. | 40:46 | |
And you hate to see the body of Christ separated that way. | 40:50 | |
But, boy it sure makes it nicer | 40:53 | |
for those of us who are left. | 40:56 | |
(laughs) | 40:58 | |
And churches that are, | 41:01 | |
I think in the moderate to progressive | 41:04 | |
and inclusive, who don't shut out the people | 41:06 | |
with differing opinions are thriving. | 41:10 | |
I think maybe as recently as seven or eight years ago, | 41:16 | |
Presbytery of the Twin Cities area, | 41:21 | |
maybe 72, 78 congregations at the time | 41:23 | |
maybe had four that grew. | 41:30 | |
The rest were either stable or declining. | 41:33 | |
And now it's 2/3 of them are growing. | 41:36 | |
Not significantly, but they're growing. | 41:39 | |
Get rid of the people who hate | 41:44 | |
and suddenly churches have some meaning again. | 41:46 | |
So I think a great deal of harm was done. | 41:52 | |
It parallels what we see in our political parties. | 41:58 | |
- | Today? | 42:02 |
- | Today. Having worked in the south, I am absolutely | 42:03 |
convinced we have not dealt with the civil war yet. | 42:08 | |
We have not dealt with slavery yet. | 42:12 | |
And all of these battles are continuing those arguments. | 42:16 | |
And the reality of controlling women, | 42:22 | |
controlling minorities, | 42:27 | |
it's just part of this mentality | 42:29 | |
that they're not quite fully human. | 42:32 | |
And that's the civil war. | 42:36 | |
The founding of the nation for that matter. | 42:39 | |
But slavery was there. | 42:41 | |
But slavery, race is a new concept which I didn't know. | 42:45 | |
I did not know that the concept of race | 42:51 | |
did not appear until the 1800s. | 42:53 | |
People were people. | 42:56 | |
You had slaves, but it wasn't a racial thing. | 42:58 | |
And we don't talk about that. | 43:04 | |
- | I'm curious. So in the end, | 43:09 |
what do you think the significance | 43:11 | |
of Re-imagining finally was? | 43:12 | |
- | Well I think, | 43:16 |
I don't think it had much influence | 43:20 | |
beyond the conference itself. | 43:22 | |
I think the ongoing community might be local, | 43:24 | |
but I think the battles that we were addressing | 43:28 | |
are not an issue inside Minnesota. | 43:33 | |
They may be an issue for people who aren't part of churches. | 43:39 | |
- | Which battles are you thinking of? | 43:43 |
- | Well the inclusion of women. | 43:45 |
The broader theological language. | 43:46 | |
The reinterpretation of scripture | 43:51 | |
with some of the more feminists perspectives. | 43:54 | |
That's routine now. | 43:59 | |
You got an awful lot of (laughs) female clergy now. | 44:02 | |
- | So you're thinking the Presbyterian church overall | 44:05 |
that that inclusive language and feminists theology | 44:07 | |
are part of the congregations? | 44:10 | |
- | Yeah. Every now and then you have to deal with it | 44:12 |
but it's usually with one of our conservative churches. | 44:16 | |
But people just they're over that stuff. | 44:22 | |
At least here. | 44:28 | |
So as far as the Re-imagining community, I don't think so. | 44:30 | |
It did empower a number of feminists theologians | 44:34 | |
who were the speakers who continue | 44:39 | |
to write and continue to be a presence. | 44:40 | |
But I think they would've done that anyway. | 44:45 | |
I don't think the Re-imagining community particularly | 44:49 | |
did anything for them. | 44:52 | |
I mean academically they would have to go that way. | 44:54 | |
- | So just to make sure I understand. | 44:58 |
So you think there's more feminist theology | 45:00 | |
inclusive language, but the Re-imagining community | 45:03 | |
is not responsible for that. | 45:04 | |
- | No. I don't think it nurtures it in any way because I | 45:06 |
don't think it's needed. | 45:10 | |
- | Do you think it led to it at all? | 45:15 |
Or helped it happen? Or not? | 45:16 | |
- | Well it certainly surfaced the issues. | 45:18 |
As soon as something that was, like I said, | 45:22 | |
it wasn't an issue in Minnesota to start with. | 45:25 | |
And for our denominational colleagues here. | 45:28 | |
It just, it might've reinforced it a little. | 45:38 | |
But the forces were in those communions to start with. | 45:44 | |
Some of the ironies of it | 45:49 | |
was we learned how to deal with | 45:51 | |
some of the differences a little better. | 45:55 | |
Take orthodox communions and homosexuality. | 45:59 | |
When we, the Minnesota Council of Churches tried | 46:08 | |
and the communions, most of the communions tried to | 46:12 | |
get sexual orientation into our protective classes. | 46:15 | |
The orthodox vetoed JRLC inclusion. | 46:21 | |
And when pressed, it wasn't that they wanted to discriminate | 46:26 | |
against gays and lesbians, | 46:33 | |
it was that there was no such thing. | 46:35 | |
Because God created male and female so there could | 46:37 | |
not be a different sexual orientation. | 46:40 | |
So the word sexual orientation was theologically impossible. | 46:43 | |
So we challenged them. | 46:50 | |
We said, you know the gays and lesbians are getting | 46:52 | |
beat up, they're getting denied jobs. | 46:56 | |
And they said, yeah we know that. | 47:00 | |
I said, well come up with | 47:02 | |
a different phrase that describes them. | 47:02 | |
And then of course, they couldn't. | 47:05 | |
But I think the Re-imagining, | 47:07 | |
there's a different way | 47:14 | |
of interpretation here. | 47:15 | |
You gotta start thinking about it. | 47:16 | |
And they could be challenged on that, | 47:17 | |
where before I don't think they | 47:20 | |
could've been challenged at all. | 47:20 | |
So that was one thing. | 47:23 | |
I think the inclusive language questions. | 47:35 | |
One of the strangest conversations I ever had was | 47:39 | |
with the episcopal bishop at the time. | 47:43 | |
Who actually I was doing a workshop at the Basilica | 47:47 | |
and a lot of people questioned me about my ordination | 47:53 | |
and what's it like to be an ordained woman | 47:59 | |
and all that kind of stuff. | 48:01 | |
And I was debriefing with the episcopal bishop on it | 48:03 | |
afterwards and he said, | 48:06 | |
well you know they can't ordain you, | 48:10 | |
you being ordained just doesn't make any sense to them | 48:19 | |
because they can't ordain women. | 48:21 | |
So of course they're curious about that. | 48:24 | |
He says, but the real problem for me is inclusive language. | 48:25 | |
And I said why? | 48:28 | |
He said, cause I've got this prayer book that | 48:29 | |
I have to follow and it's not inclusive. | 48:31 | |
(laughs) I can ordain you, | 48:33 | |
but I can't give you inclusive language. | 48:37 | |
I think those conversations got facilitated a little bit | 48:43 | |
by Re-imagining, but they were off on the side and | 48:47 | |
they were in individual congregations or denominations. | 48:49 | |
And of course the United Methodist still can't ordain gays | 48:56 | |
so (laughs) despite the fact they do. | 48:59 | |
- | Yes. So how would you say | 49:05 |
the church needs to be re-imagined today? | 49:08 | |
By that, I don't mean just the re-imagining movement, | 49:10 | |
but what needs to happen in the church today, do you think? | 49:12 | |
- | Well I think we're going through a major transformation | 49:16 |
and then the best is gonna be over | 49:19 | |
at House of Hope this weekend. | 49:20 | |
Or starting Friday night, we'll talk a lot about that. | 49:22 | |
I think one of the major things | 49:31 | |
is the question of belonging. | 49:34 | |
Everything we've been told is the current generations | 49:37 | |
don't wanna belong, they wanna participate. | 49:40 | |
But not belong. | 49:43 | |
And that's true of all kinds of institutions. | 49:46 | |
So if churches can't find a more inclusive way | 49:49 | |
of involving people without the | 49:55 | |
why don't you come to our membership | 49:58 | |
class being the first question out of your mouth. | 49:59 | |
We're not gonna go into the future. | 50:04 | |
The image of the congregations is having set beliefs | 50:08 | |
needs to be acknowledged as it's never been true. | 50:17 | |
- | Say some more about that. | 50:21 |
- | Well we have basic Christian principles that | 50:22 |
get reinterpreted all the time. | 50:27 | |
That's what Re-imagining was about. | 50:28 | |
How do you re-look at this language for today? | 50:30 | |
The whole area of cosmology is changing the way | 50:36 | |
we look at the universe and the possibility of creation | 50:42 | |
and all that. | 50:45 | |
Well people come now out of schools, even high school | 50:46 | |
let alone college, with a different understanding | 50:50 | |
of how the universe works and how life is. | 50:53 | |
And how people are related. | 51:00 | |
So the churches better be a place where those things | 51:02 | |
can be talked about and explored and connected | 51:05 | |
with the tradition. | 51:08 | |
So the translation role from | 51:10 | |
the old to the new is pretty critical. | 51:16 | |
Back when I was doing research for both, | 51:25 | |
I headed a research function for both denominations before | 51:30 | |
I moved into the other position. | 51:33 | |
You'd have these certainties of response, | 51:39 | |
and I used to joke about that | 51:47 | |
there were only two differences | 51:48 | |
between the northern and the southern church | 51:50 | |
other than the civil war. (laughs) | 51:52 | |
but one was the professional makeup of the two churches. | 51:55 | |
The southern church was basically educators, | 52:02 | |
business owners. | 52:10 | |
The northern church was managers and entrepreneurs | 52:14 | |
they were the big people with industry. | 52:20 | |
- | Are you talking about the participants? | 52:26 |
- | The membership. | 52:28 |
- | The membership. Okay, yeah. | 52:29 |
- | The second that was, and this is more or less | 52:30 |
going where I was going, | 52:32 | |
if I ask somebody, | 52:34 | |
what do you think about the death penalty? | 52:38 | |
A southern respondent would right down Leviticus flump, | 52:42 | |
flump, flump. | 52:45 | |
That's all they'd say, Leviticus, flump flump. | 52:49 | |
I ask a United Presbyterian that question and | 52:52 | |
they say, well in the Bible, | 52:54 | |
there's this phrase of an eye for an eye | 52:55 | |
and a tooth for a tooth, but then Jesus said we should | 52:58 | |
forgive seven times 70 and (laughs) they give you | 53:01 | |
a long discourse on the complexity of it. | 53:04 | |
I figured that was the only reason for reunion. | 53:10 | |
The southerns could tell us where it was | 53:13 | |
and we could tell them what it meant. | 53:14 | |
(both laughing) | 53:16 | |
We need more of that, | 53:19 | |
what it means, rather than what it says. | 53:20 | |
You open for an illustration from Westminster, Minneapolis? | 53:31 | |
- | Sure. | 53:34 |
- | Cause this is a thriving liberal church he's growing. | 53:35 |
- | Yes. | 53:39 |
- | And expanding. We launched groundbreaking | 53:40 |
for a 34 million dollar extension of the church Sunday. | 53:46 | |
- | Wow. | 53:49 |
- | And a lot of important people were there. | 53:51 |
Like the governor, (laughs) and the vice president, | 53:56 | |
and the mayor, not the mayor but the head of the council, | 53:58 | |
and the councilperson and folks like that. | 54:03 | |
And the architect is James Daden. | 54:12 | |
James Daden is the great great grandson of the original | 54:14 | |
founder of the church, George whatever his middle name was. | 54:17 | |
Draper Daden, who originally founded the church | 54:22 | |
and was responsible for the church being on | 54:26 | |
Nicolette and 12th, moved it from Nicolette and 7th | 54:29 | |
to Nicolette and 12th. | 54:32 | |
He thought the 7th would be a better place for a store | 54:34 | |
than a church. | 54:37 | |
And 12th would be better for the church. | 54:38 | |
Anyway that's our history. | 54:40 | |
Our history is the Dadens, | 54:42 | |
and the Cargills, and those folks. | 54:43 | |
- | Oh wow. | 54:46 |
- | And James Daden who's the architect is describing | 54:47 |
this addition that's going on and he says, | 54:54 | |
you got this staid Romanesque church, with magnificent | 54:57 | |
stained-glass windows, and a proud tradition and outstanding | 55:02 | |
worship, and my challenge was to put next door, | 55:07 | |
something for the next 150 years that would be open | 55:12 | |
and glass, and you could see in, and it welcomes | 55:17 | |
the community, and it has space that can be modified | 55:21 | |
for concerts or receptions or funerals or jazz bands | 55:24 | |
or whatever were going on. | 55:29 | |
And space where we can welcome mission groups from | 55:32 | |
other churches to spend the night. | 55:35 | |
And where we're partnering with communities and endeavors. | 55:37 | |
And we're probably will have | 55:43 | |
two community entities in there. | 55:46 | |
And it will be welcome and open and said this | 55:48 | |
and you don't want to lose that Romanesque tradition. | 55:53 | |
But you want to be able to do these other things. | 56:01 | |
And you can't do it in the Romanesque church. | 56:06 | |
So the expansion is one of the future. | 56:10 | |
And that's Re-imagining church. | 56:16 | |
That's saying the very successful way we've been is | 56:20 | |
not what we should be for the next 150 years. | 56:25 | |
We've gotta be different. | 56:28 | |
But we can't throw away that old history. | 56:30 | |
And Mark Daden, who is a member, he was one of those | 56:34 | |
speakers, and he, there was the sermon which kind of | 56:39 | |
gave them vision and then there's this video that | 56:46 | |
showed the thing and all that. | 56:48 | |
And he got up to speak and he says that I am so glad | 56:51 | |
to see that shift in there. | 56:59 | |
And the maintenance of the old, cause he says 24 years ago | 57:06 | |
I was in a rough spot in my life. | 57:11 | |
And he was. And I think that was when he was divorcing | 57:13 | |
and his career was collapsing, the whole thing. | 57:15 | |
And he confessed that he | 57:19 | |
every Monday morning, early morning, | 57:22 | |
he came into the sanctuary at Westminster and the | 57:24 | |
sunlight was coming in from the south windows, stained-glass | 57:28 | |
windows, and just simply bathing him in that sunlight. | 57:31 | |
And he did that for weeks to get through that rough spot | 57:34 | |
and he said, that's what we need to give as a grounding | 57:39 | |
and then move into the future. | 57:44 | |
I think churches, Westminster isn't the | 57:48 | |
only one building downtown. | 57:52 | |
I think there's 10 or 12 entities downtown in the | 57:54 | |
downtown coalition of Minneapolis. | 57:58 | |
Saint Paul doesn't have one. | 58:00 | |
But Minneapolis does. | 58:03 | |
I think eight of them are in renovation | 58:05 | |
or construction processes because people | 58:08 | |
are coming back cause the churches are open | 58:11 | |
and they're allowing those places of safety | 58:15 | |
you can ask questions. | 58:20 | |
So Re-imagining was part of that movement. | 58:23 | |
I don't think it started it. | 58:28 | |
I don't think it sustains it. | 58:30 | |
But it certainly was a part of it. | 58:33 | |
And it was a very significant one because it got | 58:36 | |
raised to the national and international levels | 58:38 | |
in a way that said to all these folks who kind | 58:43 | |
of took it for granted that we're going in this direction. | 58:46 | |
Well wait a minute, we gotta fight for this. | 58:49 | |
It's not a given. | 58:53 | |
Well that's a pretty good heritage. | 58:55 | |
- | Wow. That's great. | 58:59 |
I love that illustration. | 59:01 | |
Actually you summed it up really well, | 59:03 | |
but I'll ask if there's anything else you wanna add. | 59:05 | |
(laughs) | 59:07 | |
cause that was great. | 59:07 | |
- | Yeah I do. | 59:16 |
One thing I do wanna see in the future is the effective | 59:17 | |
Re-imagining, | 59:20 | |
I think Re-imagining and the whole feminist movement | 59:21 | |
in the church, | 59:24 | |
really did open the way for women in ministry. | 59:29 | |
There was a pretty big glass ceiling. | 59:35 | |
A lot of associate pastors, not very many pastors in '93. | 59:38 | |
Some of both the Methodists that I know, | 59:46 | |
some of the Lutherans, not as many. | 59:50 | |
A lot of the Presbyterian mega-churches are headed | 59:53 | |
by women now. | 59:57 | |
It did open doors for folks. | 1:00:03 | |
And a lot of folks paid their dues. | 1:00:07 | |
I'm sitting here watching Westminster and I've only | 1:00:10 | |
been with it 17 years. | 1:00:14 | |
And we're going through pastoral changes right now. | 1:00:20 | |
Elderly pastors are retiring. | 1:00:25 | |
And I'm watching it in the Presbytery as we | 1:00:32 | |
ordain new people and take new people under care | 1:00:34 | |
for ordination. | 1:00:36 | |
I am so impressed with the people who seek ministry now. | 1:00:39 | |
And I think having dealt with the culture wars, | 1:00:47 | |
these people know all about those culture wars. | 1:00:52 | |
They grew up with them. | 1:00:55 | |
And they're over, these people wanna be part of the mainline | 1:00:58 | |
churches that have survived | 1:01:04 | |
and thrived the progressive agenda. | 1:01:07 | |
And I'm looking at our associates. | 1:01:11 | |
One of my friends said, when I look at seminary graduates | 1:01:17 | |
or cohorts of seminarians, or these, | 1:01:20 | |
I look at it from the perspective, | 1:01:24 | |
would I want them to be my parent's pastor? | 1:01:25 | |
Would I want that person to be a pastor to my parents. | 1:01:29 | |
I don't see very many that would not fit that right now. | 1:01:34 | |
They are incredible people. | 1:01:38 | |
And they're not frozen in the past. | 1:01:41 | |
They're looking to the future. | 1:01:46 | |
You know, we got an associate pastor | 1:01:49 | |
for our youth and families, | 1:01:51 | |
he can't wait til the new meeting hall is opened up | 1:01:53 | |
cause he's got so many ideas of how he's gonna use it. | 1:01:58 | |
(laughs) and you just sit there and say, Yes! | 1:02:00 | |
And I think we had to work our way through that. | 1:02:07 | |
And for once, maybe the church is ahead of the politics. | 1:02:12 | |
Usually we're years behind politics, our business. | 1:02:15 | |
You know business tries something it fails, | 1:02:22 | |
and then we adopt it. | 1:02:24 | |
(both laughing) | 1:02:25 | |
that's the norm. | 1:02:26 | |
I think maybe this time we're ahead of it. | 1:02:28 | |
The mainline churches who are surviving. | 1:02:31 | |
Diminished, but still there. | 1:02:34 | |
We're all looking to the future now. | 1:02:39 | |
We're not having to fight those battles anymore. | 1:02:42 | |
Now we will fight them in Mississippi | 1:02:45 | |
and (laughs) South Carolina. | 1:02:47 | |
But they're political battles now and they're gonna lose. | 1:02:49 | |
I mean when you had the latest Supreme Court decision | 1:02:53 | |
with the split it got was eight-nothing? | 1:02:57 | |
(laughs) I mean certainly | 1:03:00 | |
there are values in this country now. | 1:03:03 | |
And you can't go to the extreme. | 1:03:07 | |
So I'm very optimistic actually. | 1:03:11 | |
- | I think that's a very encouraging way to end. | 1:03:14 |
That's great. | 1:03:17 | |
Thank you so much. | 1:03:18 | |
- | Yeah. | 1:03:19 |
Item Info
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