Sohl, Joyce
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- | Joyce, thank you so much for agreeing to be interviewed. | 0:05 |
Some background information would be helpful. | 0:08 | |
Could you please say and spell your name, please? | 0:09 | |
- | Joyce, middle initial, B, Sohl. | 0:13 |
First name spelled J-O-Y-C-E. | 0:19 | |
Last name spelled S-O-H-L. | 0:23 | |
- | Thank you so much, and are you Lay or Clergy? | 0:27 |
- | Lay. | 0:32 |
- | And your denominational affiliation is? | 0:33 |
- | United Methodist. | 0:37 |
- | Thank you. | 0:39 |
- | Joyce, when and where were you born? | 0:40 |
- | I was born in Aurora, Illinois, | 0:43 |
December 15, 1935. | 0:47 | |
- | Okay, thank you. | 0:51 |
And where did you go to school? | 0:53 | |
- | Alright, first, how far back do you want to go? | 0:56 |
(laughing) | 1:01 | |
- | Well, maybe, go ahead. | 1:03 |
- | College was from Westmar College through | 1:05 |
Le Mars, Iowa, BA degree. | 1:10 | |
Then the University of Nebraska with an MA degree | 1:15 | |
in Mathematics and Education. | 1:20 | |
And then Fordham University, New York City with an MBA. | 1:24 | |
- | Whoa, that's very interesting. | 1:30 |
And Joyce, what work or ministry were you doing | 1:33 | |
at the time of Re-Imagining? | 1:35 | |
- | I was the Deputy General Secretary | 1:38 |
of the Women's Division of the United Methodist Church. | 1:43 | |
That's what's now known as | 1:47 | |
the CEO of | 1:50 | |
United Methodist Women. | 1:54 | |
- | Oh, okay. | 1:57 |
Thank you, and what work or ministry | 1:59 | |
did you do after Re-Imagining, Joyce? | 2:01 | |
- | I was Deputy General Secretary til 2001 | 2:06 |
when I retired. | 2:11 | |
I wrote two books in the next five years | 2:13 | |
and then I became a full-time volunteer | 2:19 | |
at Scarritt Bennett Center in Nashville, Tennessee, | 2:22 | |
which is where I'm still at. | 2:26 | |
- | Yes, oh, that's wonderful. | 2:28 |
What were your two books about, Joyce? | 2:30 | |
- | Well, one was on | 2:34 |
women (mumbles) writers | 2:38 | |
and the other one was for one of the mission | 2:41 | |
studies for United Methodist Women on God's Mission, | 2:45 | |
God's song, the role of music | 2:50 | |
in the missionary movement. | 2:54 | |
- | Oh, that's fascinating, that's wonderful. | 2:57 |
So Joyce, how or when did you first become | 3:00 | |
aware of feminist theology? | 3:03 | |
- | Oh, probably from my mother. | 3:07 |
(laughing) | 3:09 | |
She was a Christian educator as well as a pastor's wife | 3:11 | |
and I do remember her saying | 3:16 | |
something to the effect that be careful | 3:20 | |
when you're speaking with this child about God. | 3:26 | |
Don't use God the Father. | 3:31 | |
And that would have been in the 50's. | 3:36 | |
- | Really, do you know how she developed that awareness? | 3:41 |
- | Through the work she had done and the education she had. | 3:45 |
- | Wow, that's impressive. | 3:52 |
Later in life, did you experience | 3:55 | |
feminist theology more formally? | 3:57 | |
- | Probably in my years on the board | 4:01 |
of the Women's Division. | 4:07 | |
I started in the volunteer capacity for nine years | 4:10 | |
before I became staff, | 4:15 | |
so I would say about late 60's. | 4:17 | |
- | Wonderful, so you were on board early on? | 4:23 |
- | Yes, very early on. | 4:27 |
- | That's wonderful, well, if we could move to the-- | 4:30 |
That's great background, thank you. | 4:34 | |
Very interesting. | 4:35 | |
What was your relationship to the Re-Imagining community? | 4:37 | |
- | Actually, I had none. | 4:41 |
- | You experienced backlash from it, however, | 4:46 |
because of your role as Deputy General Secretary, | 4:50 | |
the Women's Division, so I wonder if you could talk | 4:54 | |
about how that happened. | 4:56 | |
- | I was in India, in Nepal | 5:01 |
at the time of the event. | 5:05 | |
I, of course, knew of the planning | 5:09 | |
of the event by others of the Women's Division, | 5:13 | |
was not actively involved as the Division | 5:19 | |
in the planning of the event. | 5:23 | |
The backlash started, I would say | 5:28 | |
in December following the Division, | 5:33 | |
and of course, that's right in the midst | 5:39 | |
of Christmas and so forth. | 5:41 | |
We received, | 5:45 | |
we being the Division, received thousands of post cards, | 5:49 | |
mail, that was before the active days of email, | 5:56 | |
thank heavens (laughs). | 6:01 | |
It was my responsibility to work with staff | 6:07 | |
and officers of the Division to redo | 6:12 | |
the necessary revise so | 6:17 | |
we spent probably a good four to five months | 6:23 | |
dealing with the heavy mail. | 6:28 | |
It didn't stop after five months | 6:31 | |
but that was when the heavy mail was there. | 6:34 | |
- | Wow. | 6:39 |
- | We did a fact sheet | 6:41 |
giving the facts of what-- | 6:46 | |
We were charged with all kinds of things, | 6:50 | |
but one of them was why did we send people | 6:55 | |
to this heathen event and things of that nature. | 6:59 | |
We did have 36 Women's | 7:05 | |
Division directors, nine staff, | 7:09 | |
and 11 conference officers at the event itself, | 7:12 | |
and in the eyes of some, | 7:18 | |
this was not a proper place for them to be. | 7:21 | |
So we developed a fact sheet. | 7:28 | |
We developed a statement | 7:31 | |
of our administrative committee | 7:34 | |
who have the authority to act | 7:37 | |
for the Division in between Division meetings. | 7:42 | |
We did various studies, you know, | 7:47 | |
trying to help the constituency understand | 7:55 | |
wisdom, understanding of | 8:01 | |
the meaning of wisdom literature in the Bible. | 8:06 | |
We did, you know, | 8:13 | |
have to have telephone conversations | 8:18 | |
and et cetera, around the topic. | 8:21 | |
- | Oh, wow, there's a lot there, Joyce. | 8:27 |
First of all, how would you describe | 8:29 | |
the nature of the mail that you received? | 8:31 | |
You said these were post cards? | 8:33 | |
- | Well, we received, you know, stamped post cards. | 8:36 |
Somebody duplicated the post cards | 8:41 | |
and people would sign their names, and they'd send them in. | 8:43 | |
We did not bother to answer those. | 8:49 | |
We mean, that was just ludicrous. | 8:54 | |
I don't remember what the post cards said. | 8:58 | |
You'd have to do research in the office files | 9:02 | |
to find that out. | 9:05 | |
We received letters and in my report | 9:08 | |
that you have a copy of, I have dedicated and quoted some | 9:14 | |
of the things from the letters we received. | 9:19 | |
- | You did, and you kinda put them in four categories, | 9:24 |
which was helpful. | 9:26 | |
- | That's right. | 9:28 |
We saw this as a continuation of our support of | 9:31 | |
The Ecumenical Decade, Churches, and Solidarity with Women. | 9:36 | |
We did not see this as anything that | 9:41 | |
was beyond our Ecumenical reasons. | 9:47 | |
- | I'm curious, how is the fact sheet, | 9:55 |
I do have a copy of that, it's very good. | 9:58 | |
How was that distributed? | 10:00 | |
- | How was what distributed? | 10:03 |
- | The fact sheet. | 10:05 |
- | The fact sheet? | |
- | Yes. | 10:06 |
- | It would have been mailed out to all conference officers | 10:08 |
and they would have duplicated as they needed to. | 10:13 | |
- | And did you get any responses to the fact sheet | 10:20 |
or the statements? | 10:24 | |
- | Oh, yeah, we got some, I don't believe this, so forth. | 10:25 |
- | Oh. | 10:30 |
You mentioned studies you did on Sophia. | 10:34 | |
Just so I'm clear, who were the studies for? | 10:37 | |
Was it a United Methodist Women's study? | 10:39 | |
Is that what it was? | 10:41 | |
- | Yeah, we had some studies that we did | 10:43 |
for our own staff. | 10:48 | |
We had some studies that were | 10:50 | |
prepared for workshops. | 10:55 | |
For instance, we had done a study | 11:01 | |
on Sophia way back in 1991, so, you know. | 11:05 | |
- | Oh. | 11:11 |
(laughing) | 11:12 | |
- | It was part of our theological program. | 11:18 |
We worked with various agencies within | 11:23 | |
the United Methodist Church to aid in the understanding | 11:27 | |
of so, you know, it was our normal response, | 11:33 | |
I'm trying to see whether there was interesting, | 11:42 | |
any interesting things of-- | 11:45 | |
I think that's about it. | 11:55 | |
- | Yes, that's fine. | 11:57 |
Just to clarify, the 1991 study, was that a study for staff? | 11:59 | |
Was that a larger United Methodist study? | 12:03 | |
- | It was a workshop on theology | 12:05 |
that we did for the membership. | 12:07 | |
- | I'm sorry, the membership of the? | 12:13 |
- | United Methodist's Women, primarily conference leadership. | 12:16 |
- | Okay, thank you, that's helpful. | 12:21 |
How would you describe the reaction among your staff, | 12:25 | |
if you feel comfortable doing that, | 12:29 | |
that attended the Re-Imagining Conference | 12:30 | |
and that were experiencing this? | 12:32 | |
- | They weren't upset. | 12:36 |
That was part, you know. | 12:40 | |
They knew that the Re-Imagining Conference | 12:41 | |
was a discussion, a chance | 12:45 | |
to look at various theological points, | 12:51 | |
and that was not disturbing to them. | 12:56 | |
- | Were you or they surprised by the backlash | 13:00 |
after the conference? | 13:03 | |
- | No. | 13:05 |
- | Oh, interesting, why is that? | 13:07 |
- | Because we, everything we did in that period of time | 13:09 |
was contested by the Conservative Branch | 13:17 | |
of the United Methodist Church. | 13:21 | |
- | Would this be Good News? | 13:26 |
- | It'd be Good News and their women's organization. | 13:29 |
- | Just so I'm clear were the post cards | 13:34 |
coming from Good News? | 13:36 | |
- | I imagine so, some of the people were Good News followers. | 13:40 |
- | Yeah. | 13:44 |
So this was a part, just to get a larger context for this, | 13:47 | |
because this is what I've been learning. | 13:50 | |
This was not an isolated event at all. | 13:54 | |
Could you say a little bit more about how | 13:57 | |
the Women's Division had been targeted, | 14:00 | |
to use that word, I guess, before? | 14:04 | |
- | Well, we were on the cutting edge of some of the issues | 14:07 |
and we were, you know, we followed | 14:12 | |
the teachings of, not only scripture, but the discipline | 14:17 | |
of the United Methodist Church. | 14:22 | |
We talked about the rights of women | 14:24 | |
to have an abortion. | 14:29 | |
We talked about welfare reform. | 14:31 | |
We talked about peace. | 14:36 | |
We talked about things that they didn't like | 14:39 | |
and so we were always attacked, | 14:44 | |
either through mail campaigns | 14:48 | |
or through their magazine, or so forth. | 14:53 | |
- | Were there threats at all to withdraw funds? | 15:00 |
- | I'm sorry? | 15:03 |
- | Were there threats to withdraw funds, money? | 15:06 |
- | Some probably did, but that was not noticeable | 15:12 |
at all in our budgeting processes. | 15:16 | |
- | Good. | 15:20 |
Did you receive support during this? | 15:21 | |
- | Support? | 15:25 |
- | Yes. | |
- | Yes, definitely. | 15:28 |
We received support from some Bishops. | 15:30 | |
We received support from | 15:35 | |
various organizations within the United Methodist Church, | 15:41 | |
the Commission on Ecumenical Relations, | 15:49 | |
the Commission on Status Enrollment | 15:52 | |
and various people in leadership roles within the church, | 15:56 | |
and many of the membership. | 16:03 | |
- | That's good to hear. | 16:09 |
You mentioned that you had been targeted before. | 16:11 | |
Was the attack on the Re-Imagining Conference | 16:14 | |
of a different scale of the other ones? | 16:17 | |
Was it different? | 16:21 | |
- | That was probably the largest one during my tenure, | 16:29 |
but before that, I'm sure there were some | 16:33 | |
equally large, if not larger, when we were | 16:37 | |
taking on some of the social issues. | 16:41 | |
- | Well Joyce, how did you, you were Deputy General | 16:45 |
for quite awhile, how did you maintain your, | 16:50 | |
your work, your enthusiasm? | 16:55 | |
- | Because I felt we were doing what we were told to do. | 17:00 |
- | That's great, yes. | 17:08 |
Was it those months when you're receiving the mail, | 17:10 | |
were those very difficult months for you and the staff? | 17:12 | |
- | After awhile it became just one more nuisance | 17:19 |
that you had to deal with. | 17:23 | |
It is not good to have to deal with these kind of things | 17:25 | |
over the Christmas holidays. | 17:31 | |
So, you know, at first it was probably difficult, | 17:37 | |
but after awhile it just became the way things were. | 17:41 | |
- | Did you feel as if the Good News was able | 17:46 |
to have an impact on the Women's Division | 17:50 | |
through this or other attacks? | 17:53 | |
- | I'm sorry. | 17:59 |
Think that the conservative groups had an impact? | 18:00 | |
- | Yes, did they have an impact on the Women's Division? | 18:06 |
- | I don't, not in our purpose, | 18:16 |
not in what we were trying to do in the world, | 18:21 | |
not in carrying out our responsibilities, no. | 18:26 | |
- | Yes, well, good. | 18:30 |
I know you didn't attend Re-Imagining, | 18:33 | |
you weren't even directly involved, but do you have | 18:35 | |
a sense of how you would define Re-Imagining? | 18:39 | |
- | The word? | 18:45 |
- | Yeah, that, yes. | 18:46 |
- | Well, to re-imagine something is that | 18:49 |
you look at it differently. | 18:52 | |
- | And you felt that's what | 18:56 |
the Re-Imagining Conference was doing? | 18:57 | |
- | Yeah, at least from my perspective. | 19:00 |
They were taking a look at a biblical situation | 19:05 | |
and some old doctrines in a different way. | 19:12 | |
In (mumbles), we do it every day. | 19:19 | |
- | Yes, yeah, yes. | 19:23 |
- | Up to the present time. | 19:26 |
- | So in the end, what do you think is, or was, | 19:31 |
the legacy of the Re-Imagining movement? | 19:34 | |
- | Well, I think there was, | 19:41 |
on the part of the | 19:44 | |
first event, I think there was some naivety | 19:49 | |
that it would be a safe place for the women | 19:55 | |
to express their feelings. | 19:58 | |
There was just too much going on in many denominations | 20:01 | |
at the time that should include somebody that this was | 20:06 | |
not the way you need to approach some of these things. | 20:11 | |
And I'm not saying they shouldn't have done | 20:17 | |
the Re-Imagining, but the safety that | 20:20 | |
they assumed they had was not present. | 20:23 | |
- | Yes. | 20:27 |
- | And that's the sad part of the whole thing. | 20:29 |
One of the things that we have that's | 20:38 | |
in the United Methodist discipline | 20:41 | |
is something called | 20:45 | |
our Theological TASC. | 20:55 | |
Do you have a copy of that? | 20:59 | |
- | I don't think I have it right in front of me, no. | 21:02 |
- | But do you have one? | 21:05 |
- | Yes, I do. | 21:07 |
- | Okay, because see, that is pretty rounded | 21:08 |
in re-looking at things, | 21:14 | |
and so one of our responses was we were upholding | 21:20 | |
the discipline | 21:24 | |
by participating in an event. | 21:31 | |
- | Actually, I see in your report to the Women's Division | 21:36 |
Executive Committee, you quote from that Theological TASC. | 21:39 | |
- | Yeah, somewhere. | 21:44 |
- | Yes, that's very helpful. | 21:45 |
So you saw this as part of, this was certainly within | 21:49 | |
the theological work of the United Methodist Church. | 21:53 | |
- | Yeah. | 21:58 |
- | You mentioned, you know, the naivete | 22:00 |
and they thought it was a safe place. | 22:02 | |
Do you have an idea of a better way to go about this? | 22:06 | |
- | Some ways you might do by invitation only. | 22:20 |
Some ways you might make it a smaller group | 22:27 | |
of people. | 22:32 | |
Opening something up to the general public | 22:34 | |
means you also open it up to | 22:37 | |
the press and Good News and the women | 22:43 | |
that were against what was happening always | 22:49 | |
saw themselves as the press and they would get | 22:54 | |
press credentials to anything that was open to the public. | 22:59 | |
And they attended our board meetings, every meeting we had. | 23:06 | |
- | As press? | 23:11 |
What was their role? | 23:12 | |
- | What? | 23:15 |
- | How would they attend the board meetings? | 23:16 |
Were they open public meetings? | 23:18 | |
- | Well, anybody can attend. | 23:20 |
Church meetings can't be closed. | 23:23 | |
- | Right, and then they would write articles in Good News? | 23:25 |
- | Of course. | 23:30 |
- | My reports got plenty of critique, I can assure you. | 23:32 |
- | Joyce, you're very involved | 23:44 |
in the United Methodist Church. | 23:46 | |
Do you think that inclusive language and feminist theology | 23:49 | |
have become a part of the Methodist Church? | 23:55 | |
- | In some places, yes, and in some places, no. | 24:03 |
I mean, you know, we are a broad spectrum of congregations | 24:09 | |
and theologies and so forth. | 24:15 | |
- | Yes, yes. | 24:20 |
- | Couple of final questions. | 24:23 |
What does Re-Imagining mean today, and I don't just mean | 24:26 | |
the Re-Imagining movement, but how does the church | 24:32 | |
or theology need to be re-imagined for today? | 24:36 | |
- | Well, for instance, it's summer here | 24:43 |
at Scarritt Bennett Center and we have a weekly | 24:48 | |
Vespers and All That Jazz service on Sunday evening, | 24:53 | |
45 minutes of contemporary readings, | 24:58 | |
prayers, scripture, poetry, and all the music, | 25:03 | |
there's usually six numbers, | 25:08 | |
are jazz coming from all kinds of sources, | 25:11 | |
and this summer, we're doing a series on | 25:16 | |
the parables of Jesus. | 25:20 | |
And yes, we will be re-imagining | 25:23 | |
those parables to fit contemporary society. | 25:26 | |
- | That sounds wonderful. | 25:33 |
- | You know, I think that there are groups, churches | 25:36 |
that are doing, re-looking at theology all the time. | 25:43 | |
I've had several theo thespians | 25:51 | |
from Vanderbilt Seminary that I've worked with here. | 25:55 | |
It's something that happens. | 26:03 | |
- | My last question is about | 26:09 |
a re-imaginging website that we're developing. | 26:13 | |
Do you have ideas about what to include | 26:18 | |
or who would benefit from it? | 26:21 | |
- | Well, I think you need a clear statement of purpose, | 26:31 |
an understanding of what it means to use | 26:39 | |
the imagination in the interpretation of scripture, | 26:43 | |
(mumbles). | 26:49 | |
I mean, he's done a lot of work | 26:54 | |
on imagination and interpretations. | 26:56 | |
I think that it needs to be, | 27:03 | |
it could have two different audiences. | 27:08 | |
One would be the professionals and the other would be | 27:11 | |
the average woman who sits in the pew | 27:16 | |
and they would each need different information. | 27:22 | |
- | Yes. | 27:25 |
That's excellent, that's very helpful. | 27:28 | |
Thank you. | 27:31 | |
Joyce, is there anything you would like to add | 27:32 | |
that we haven't discussed? | 27:36 | |
- | One interesting thing, after I gave that report | 27:43 |
in April of '94, | 27:47 | |
there was a couple in attendance that had been sent | 27:54 | |
by Good News. | 27:59 | |
Once they heard my report, they told the | 28:04 | |
Good News people that were there that they no longer cared | 28:09 | |
to be part of this protest and they left. | 28:14 | |
- | Really? | 28:18 |
- | Yup. | 28:20 |
- | Wow, that's amazing. | 28:22 |
- | Do you know what changed their mind specifically? | 28:26 |
- | Well, just some of the things, the comments. | 28:30 |
You know, it was basically from hearing my report. | 28:33 | |
- | Wow. | 28:37 |
- | And you've got a copy of that. | 28:38 |
- | I sure do, it's a great report. | 28:39 |
That's great to hear that. | 28:42 | |
I'm glad you said that, Joyce. | 28:43 | |
That's very powerful. | 28:45 | |
- | You have talked to Mary Ann Lundy? | 28:49 |
- | I have, yes. | 28:52 |
- | How's she doing? | 28:55 |
She's the one who really took the brunt. | 28:56 | |
- | She did, and you know, I'm gonna turn off | 28:58 |
the recording now, and then we can have a conversation. | 29:01 | |
- | Please do. | 29:04 |
- | I will. | |
I'm gonna stop it now. | 29:05 |
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