Olson, Manley
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- | If it won't pick up too much of my blowing my nose, | 0:00 |
and so forth, or coughing. | 0:03 | |
(laughing) | ||
- | Well, it's all part of it, isn't it? (laughs) | 0:05 |
Let me make sure. | 0:09 | |
There we go, all right. | 0:12 | |
First of all, I need some background | 0:14 | |
information from you, your name. | 0:16 | |
- | Okay, Manley Olson. | 0:18 |
- | And are you lay or clergy? | 0:20 |
- | I'm this weird thing in the Presbyterian Church | 0:23 |
called an ordained elder, which is lay, but, | 0:25 | |
in the Reformed Church, you've got the ordained, | 0:30 | |
so I'm an ordained elder. | 0:33 | |
- | And the Presbyterian Church, yeah? | 0:35 |
Manley, when and where were you born? | 0:37 | |
- | Born in Wisconsin in 1936. | 0:40 |
- | Oh, okay. | 0:43 |
So you're a Midwestern person. | 0:45 | |
Where did you go to school? | 0:48 | |
Graduate school, Divinity school, any of those things? | 0:50 | |
- | Got a PhD from the University of Minnesota | 0:53 |
in Constitutional History. | 0:56 | |
- | Oh. | 0:58 |
- | Well, I was in, | 0:59 |
but my dissertation was on Church-State Relations. | 1:01 | |
- | Is that right, I never knew that, really. | 1:05 |
And so what kind of work did you go into? | 1:09 | |
- | Well, I spent 30 years as Dean of Liberal Arts | 1:13 |
at Normandale Community College. | 1:16 | |
- | Okay. | 1:18 |
Great, all right. | 1:19 | |
These interviews are great. | 1:21 | |
I find out all kinds of interesting things. | 1:22 | |
So how and when did you first | 1:24 | |
become aware of Feminist theology? | 1:26 | |
- | I couldn't tell you a specific time or place. | 1:32 |
One of the interesting things is that | 1:39 | |
a lot of things I've gotten involved in the church | 1:42 | |
had been strictly by accident. | 1:44 | |
And, | 1:47 | |
I had agreed to, | 1:50 | |
the Presbytery had a list of committees | 1:54 | |
you could get involved with, | 1:56 | |
and one of them had to do with higher education, | 1:59 | |
so I had checked off that. | 2:03 | |
So I end up with a committee, | 2:06 | |
somebody made a mistake, obviously. | 2:09 | |
I think, I don't know. | 2:11 | |
(laughing) | ||
You basically start to say, well, the Holy Spirit works. | 2:13 | |
I ended up on a committee that, | 2:17 | |
I don't remember what the title was, | 2:21 | |
but it was basically dealing with vocation. | 2:23 | |
And, | 2:28 | |
so we talked about vocation and theology, | 2:29 | |
and one of the things we did was officer training | 2:33 | |
and elder training and so forth. | 2:36 | |
So we started talking about, that was my first | 2:38 | |
real discussion with anybody about theology of any kind. | 2:42 | |
- | Oh, interesting. | 2:47 |
- | Because I went to a public institution, | 2:49 |
and, | 2:54 | |
had no background at all in it, | 2:57 | |
and got involved in some discussions of that. | 3:01 | |
That was one of the two streams. | 3:04 | |
The other was that I worked at the University of Minnesota, | 3:08 | |
and one of my jobs was, the university was | 3:14 | |
the accrediting agency for non-public schools, | 3:18 | |
and so I was in charge of going | 3:21 | |
and setting up visits with high school, | 3:23 | |
this was high schools, of Catholic, | 3:27 | |
Missouri Synod Lutheran, | 3:29 | |
Seventh-day Adventists, | 3:32 | |
prep schools like Blake and Breck. | 3:34 | |
Well, Breck is I guess nominally Episcopal, | 3:38 | |
but (laughs) it's really pretty secular. | 3:40 | |
And so you get involved with these discussions, | 3:45 | |
and one of the funniest things was we had a visit. | 3:47 | |
You're familiar with North Central Association. | 3:52 | |
- | Yes. | 3:54 |
- | We had a visit at St. Cloud Cathedral, | 3:55 |
run by the North Central Association, | 3:58 | |
because we were a part of it. | 4:00 | |
So we're there and we set up. | 4:02 | |
The person who was doing North Central | 4:06 | |
always forgot to set up a religion committee, | 4:07 | |
because they didn't have to worry about that, | 4:09 | |
so we put together an ad hoc religion committee. | 4:11 | |
So I ended up on most of these | 4:14 | |
visits to, we did jointly. | 4:16 | |
I ended up on the religion committee kind of thing. | 4:18 | |
So I got involved and did some discussions and so forth. | 4:21 | |
And it was funny, at one of the schools, | 4:24 | |
at the end, everybody's saying thank you for everybody, | 4:28 | |
and somebody, "It's nice to have a whole bunch of | 4:30 | |
"concerned Catholics at the religion committee." | 4:33 | |
And I said, "Boy, if you're gonna fake it, | 4:36 | |
"fake it with sincerity," kind of thing. | 4:37 | |
So I started getting some interest in those kinds of things. | 4:40 | |
My next committee I got on again by accident, | 4:45 | |
was a women's committee for the Synod. | 4:48 | |
I had put down for something else, | 4:52 | |
and I ended up on a women's committee. | 4:54 | |
So, fine, I'm on the women's committee. | 4:57 | |
And that led to another accident where, | 4:59 | |
the National Presbyterian Church had | 5:04 | |
a committee called Justice for Women, | 5:07 | |
which was just basically what the name implies. | 5:10 | |
I get a phone call late at night | 5:14 | |
from the person I know who was on the committee said, | 5:17 | |
"I just put your name in to be on the | 5:21 | |
"National Justice for Women Committee." | 5:23 | |
I said, "Well, how come," she says, | 5:24 | |
I said "I thought we had nominated so and so for it." | 5:27 | |
"Oh, yeah, but I forgot who it was | 5:30 | |
"and your the only name I could think of, so." | 5:32 | |
(laughs) | 5:33 | |
So from there I went to the Ecumenical Decade Committee, | 5:35 | |
the national one, again because | 5:40 | |
the person who was supposed to serve couldn't, | 5:42 | |
so I ended up filling in. | 5:45 | |
And so because I was on that I said, | 5:47 | |
well, I might as well get involved with the local group, | 5:50 | |
which had just started, so I missed probably | 5:52 | |
the first two or three meetings | 5:54 | |
of the original Re-Imagining group, | 5:55 | |
but I got in at the very ground level, so. | 5:57 | |
- | I love it. | 6:02 |
What a circuitous route, and you got there. | 6:03 | |
That is wonderful. | 6:05 | |
Well, that transitions beautifully | 6:06 | |
into your relationship with the Re-Imagining committee, | 6:08 | |
which I know has been a long one. | 6:10 | |
So could you pick up there, you started on the | 6:12 | |
Ecumenical Decade. | 6:15 | |
- | So I started on the, | |
I was on both the national committee | 6:17 | |
and the local committee. | 6:20 | |
And the national committee-- | 6:22 | |
- | Just to clarify, this is a national committee | 6:24 |
for the Presbyterian Church? | 6:26 | |
- | Presbyterian Church. | |
- | Right, for the Ecumenical Decade. | 6:28 |
- | There was also a United State, well. | 6:29 |
Ecumenical Decade was a World Council of Churches event. | 6:33 | |
Then there was a US committee, | 6:37 | |
and the US committee was co-chaired by Mary Ann Lundy | 6:40 | |
and some bishop from some other denomination, | 6:44 | |
I don't remember who it was. | 6:49 | |
I was on the US committee which had | 6:51 | |
probably 15 people from around the country. | 6:55 | |
I remember we had one meeting in Detroit, | 7:00 | |
where we met jointly with | 7:05 | |
the World Council of Churches folks. | 7:07 | |
So I got to meet a lot of those folks. | 7:09 | |
So I got involved with a local group, | 7:14 | |
and was part of that, | 7:17 | |
up through the start of the conference, | 7:19 | |
and then once the conference ended, | 7:22 | |
and we were gonna fold our tents, | 7:24 | |
and we were gonna have a farewell party, | 7:27 | |
and all of a sudden the flack hit, | 7:30 | |
and so we decided to keep going, so, | 7:33 | |
I was a part of it for the rest of its history. | 7:35 | |
- | I wanna talk more about that decision, | 7:40 |
'cause I think it's really important, but. | 7:42 | |
So were you involved the whole 10 years? | 7:44 | |
And what kind of role-- | 7:47 | |
- | The whole 10 years. | |
- | Were you on the coordinating council the whole time? | 7:49 |
- | I was on the coordinating council. | 7:51 |
- | For the whole 10 years? | 7:53 |
- | For the whole 10 years. | 7:54 |
I was never on the, | 7:55 | |
we had an individual three or four people | 7:57 | |
that were in charge of planning each of the local events. | 8:01 | |
I was never on one of those. | 8:03 | |
I just didn't have time for that, | 8:05 | |
but I was on the coordinating group. | 8:06 | |
So we met probably, I think most of the time, | 8:07 | |
we met about every month, something like that. | 8:10 | |
- | That's quite a commitment for 10 years. | 8:14 |
Were you usually the only guy on the committee? | 8:16 | |
- | Uh, no. | 8:19 |
There were two of us on the committee most of the time. | 8:22 | |
Randy Nelson, | 8:26 | |
and, | 8:28 | |
I don't know if you've heard this story. | 8:29 | |
Do you know Elizabeth Bettenhausen? | 8:33 | |
- | Yes. | 8:34 |
- | Sally Hill tells the story | 8:36 |
of she is meeting with Bettenhausen, | 8:39 | |
and, | 8:42 | |
they're talking about Re-Imagining. | 8:45 | |
I think this is after, | 8:47 | |
no, I think it's before Re-Imagining, | 8:48 | |
before the conference actually happened, | 8:50 | |
and Bettenhausen was surprised. | 8:53 | |
"You have men on this committee?" | 8:56 | |
"Oh, yes, we have men. | 8:58 | |
"Manley Olson and Randy Nelson." | 9:00 | |
"Now, wait a minute. | 9:01 | |
"I can understand, but names like Randy and Manley?" | 9:02 | |
(laughs) | 9:06 | |
- | I love that. | 9:08 |
- | And about, oh, probably the mid-90s, | 9:09 |
several years after Re-Imagining, | 9:13 | |
I was doing a workshop at Ghost Ranch, | 9:15 | |
and Bettenhausen was doing one, | 9:17 | |
and we ended up doing worship, | 9:19 | |
on the worship committee together | 9:22 | |
for a Sunday morning worship. | 9:23 | |
(laughing) | 9:25 | |
She said, "Okay, I'll believe it, there is a Manley." | 9:28 | |
- | There is a Manley, and she got to meet you. | 9:30 |
So I'm just, 'cause ya know, | 9:33 | |
10 years, that's a long commitment. | 9:34 | |
What kept you on that coordinating council for 10 years? | 9:37 | |
- | Two things, I guess. | 9:44 |
One was there was an awful lot that still had to be done. | 9:46 | |
Because we had one conference just scratch the surface, | 9:53 | |
and each of the subsequent conferences dealt with something. | 9:58 | |
But the other was, | 10:03 | |
all the attacks that were coming from the outside, | 10:08 | |
and I thought I was in a position, | 10:13 | |
given the fact that I was very much | 10:15 | |
involved with the Presbyterian Church, | 10:16 | |
that I could be part of telling the story | 10:19 | |
to the insiders in the Presbyterian Church, | 10:23 | |
that a lot of the people couldn't, | 10:27 | |
because most of them, | 10:30 | |
for whatever reason, were not insiders. | 10:34 | |
They were for personal reasons, | 10:38 | |
or professional whatever, they were, | 10:41 | |
many of the people who were involved, | 10:44 | |
were on the margins. | 10:45 | |
- | Involved in Re-Imagining. | 10:47 |
- | Yeah, were involved in Re-Imagining, | 10:48 |
were on the margins of their own denominations, | 10:51 | |
or any denomination, and I was an insider, so. | 10:54 | |
- | A lot of them though were clergy. | 10:58 |
Wouldn't you say? | 11:00 | |
- | Yeah, mm-hmm, yeah. | |
- | Yeah. | 11:02 |
- | But they weren't necessarily people who | 11:02 |
were in the hierarchy kind of thing. | 11:05 | |
They weren't very important. | 11:10 | |
Mary Ann Lundy, who wasn't clergy was, but, | 11:13 | |
a lot of them, | 11:19 | |
most of the rest of 'em weren't. | 11:20 | |
They did have a position, it was in the women's unit, | 11:21 | |
kind of thing, which, | 11:25 | |
was not the most important or prestigious kind of thing. | 11:29 | |
And so a lot of them were involved | 11:33 | |
in the women's part of it. | 11:35 | |
They were involved in Presbyterian Women, | 11:36 | |
or the whatever, the Methodist women's group, | 11:38 | |
and there were a number of Catholic sisters and so forth, | 11:40 | |
again, who had no real input into the hierarchy. | 11:43 | |
- | Right. | 11:49 |
- | And so forth. | |
- | Oh, that's fascinating, that makes sense. | 11:50 |
Let's talk about the backlash after the 1993 conference. | 11:53 | |
I know you were aware of it certainly. | 11:57 | |
Did it affect you directly? | 11:59 | |
- | Yes and no, I mean. | 12:05 |
I caught some of it, | 12:08 | |
but it didn't have any impact on me because I was, | 12:10 | |
I wasn't working for the church. | 12:16 | |
I was working in a Presbytery that | 12:19 | |
is about as liberal as they come. | 12:24 | |
- | In a Presbytery here in-- | 12:29 |
- | Yeah, the Twin Cities area is certainly | 12:30 |
one of the most liberal, uh-huh. | 12:34 | |
So, I mean, you were aware of it. | 12:37 | |
The only, | 12:43 | |
well, backlash. | 12:49 | |
I guess, notoriety was probably more | 12:52 | |
the word I would use. | 12:56 | |
The Presbyterian Layman. | 13:01 | |
Jack Adams, who was, | 13:04 | |
who Parker, you've probably heard the name Parker, | 13:06 | |
Parker Williamson was a long-time editor of it. | 13:09 | |
When he retired, a fellow named Jack Adams took over, | 13:11 | |
and Jack and I got along very well. | 13:14 | |
We kind of bandied about at meetings and so forth. | 13:17 | |
And every time Jack Adams wrote a story | 13:21 | |
about things it was, Manley Olson, | 13:25 | |
who is one of the ringleaders in the Re-Imagining group. | 13:28 | |
I mean, that was sort of his tagline all the way through, | 13:32 | |
so I got, I mean, the Layman once, | 13:35 | |
on the pages of the Layman, I got called apostate, | 13:38 | |
and people said, "How'd you manage that?" (laughs) | 13:42 | |
So, I mean, I got, | 13:46 | |
I got noted, but, no. | 13:48 | |
It had no negative impact at all. | 13:50 | |
- | As an, one of the, | 13:56 |
involved in the initial conference, | 13:58 | |
did you have any idea | 14:00 | |
that it would have this kind of backlash? | 14:03 | |
- | No. | 14:05 |
I don't think anybody did. | 14:06 | |
I think that the... | 14:09 | |
Excuse me. | 14:13 | |
- | Sure. | |
- | The people who were... | 14:14 |
(blows nose) | 14:18 | |
Well, the... | 14:21 | |
I can remember when I had heard a little bit about | 14:24 | |
that this conference was being organized, | 14:28 | |
because I sat on, | 14:31 | |
I was on the Presbytery women's committee, | 14:35 | |
among other things. | 14:37 | |
But, and, so, | 14:38 | |
several of the people who were on that committee, | 14:40 | |
Judy Strauss Clemons was one, | 14:44 | |
and I don't remember who else was on there, | 14:46 | |
were involved on that, on the original group. | 14:49 | |
So we heard a little bit about it, | 14:52 | |
but we were sort of fighting our own battles | 14:54 | |
in the Presbytery in terms of, | 14:55 | |
just getting women more involved | 14:58 | |
in positions and everything else. | 14:59 | |
So it was... | 15:03 | |
Yeah, we heard about it, and then when I got to the, | 15:08 | |
I remember the first meeting of the Ecumenical | 15:10 | |
Decade Committee was in Atlanta, | 15:12 | |
and, so, | 15:15 | |
I had breakfast with | 15:17 | |
Mary Ann Lundy and a couple other people, | 15:20 | |
and, so, | 15:25 | |
Mary Ann kind of outlined what it was. | 15:27 | |
And it was very clear that this was envisioned as | 15:30 | |
a very high-level academic conference | 15:35 | |
of women theologians, to talk about their issues, | 15:41 | |
and how those issues affected the Christian Church. | 15:47 | |
And, so, | 15:54 | |
as the, | 15:56 | |
as the conference went along, | 15:58 | |
and we started getting numbers, | 16:01 | |
then we started looking at | 16:06 | |
what other kinds of things might we do | 16:12 | |
apart from the content, which was this group of | 16:18 | |
20 or so theologians talking about various issues. | 16:24 | |
So we started adding various kinds of things, so, | 16:29 | |
Pam Joy wrote a play, for example, | 16:34 | |
and we set up a number of mission trips | 16:37 | |
for people to go out and look at ministries, | 16:40 | |
particularly involving women in the area and so forth, | 16:44 | |
and there were discussion groups set up, | 16:48 | |
and I think there were even, I don't know, | 16:50 | |
I think there were even exercise groups, or things like, | 16:54 | |
I mean, there were other kinds of things. | 16:56 | |
But it was clearly viewed as that, | 16:58 | |
and I think everybody was surprised. | 17:01 | |
Nobody expected 2,000 people were going to show up for this. | 17:03 | |
I think the hope was that, | 17:07 | |
maybe 100, 150 kind of thing. | 17:11 | |
- | Wow. | |
Do you recall, was liturgy or worship | 17:13 | |
always gonna be a part of it, | 17:16 | |
or did that come later on? | 17:17 | |
- | There was always gonna be worship as a part of it, and, | 17:22 |
I'm not quite sure how the liturgy part developed, | 17:28 | |
as far as the detail of the program. | 17:37 | |
You know, I couldn't say. | 17:40 | |
- | Sure. | |
- | Either Mary Kay or, | 17:43 |
- | Kathi Austin Mahle? | 17:47 |
- | Kathi would probably be better. | 17:48 |
- | Well, how do you account for the backlash, Manley? | 17:53 |
What do you think caused that? | 17:56 | |
- | The Presbyterian Church, | 18:05 |
and the Methodist Church, | 18:09 | |
had been, | 18:12 | |
under major tension, | 18:16 | |
over, | 18:21 | |
a couple of issues. | 18:24 | |
The main one was, | 18:27 | |
the whole issue of GLBT. | 18:31 | |
Except then, it was just sort of | 18:35 | |
the gay issue, kind of thing. | 18:37 | |
And so that had been, | 18:39 | |
in the Presbyterian Church, had been a major flap at | 18:44 | |
the 90 or 91 general assembly, | 18:53 | |
and the Methodists were having their | 19:00 | |
discussions of the same thing. | 19:02 | |
So the conservatives were riled up about that. | 19:04 | |
And I think because most of the women were also | 19:09 | |
sympathetic to that, and, | 19:16 | |
a fairly large number | 19:21 | |
of the women theologians were lesbians, | 19:22 | |
not necessarily out lesbians, | 19:27 | |
but at least, I know a number that are or were. | 19:30 | |
So I think it was, | 19:38 | |
that's the enemy, in all of these kinds of things, | 19:43 | |
and, | 19:47 | |
part of it was also the, | 19:49 | |
well, the other hang-over issue was abortion. | 19:50 | |
So you had | 19:54 | |
these issues of abortion, | 19:57 | |
GLBT, | 20:01 | |
and uppity women, | 20:04 | |
and we had to do something about that. | 20:07 | |
- | What was your reaction to the decision | 20:11 |
by the general assembly, after the conference? | 20:15 | |
- | In one way, it was surprising, | 20:37 |
in another, it wasn't surprising. | 20:38 | |
Because I... | 20:41 | |
The Presbyterian Church merged in 1983, | 20:44 | |
and the Southern Church was much more conservative. | 20:51 | |
And just the nature of the way the reunion came about, | 20:58 | |
the Southern Church ended up with | 21:04 | |
a disproportionate amount of | 21:07 | |
power in the new church, just because | 21:12 | |
when there was competition for positions, | 21:15 | |
the Southern Church was small and fairly united, | 21:18 | |
and their candidates, they tended to have, | 21:20 | |
their candidates tended to, they had a sort of, | 21:23 | |
they were much more organized in terms of positions, | 21:27 | |
so that the church was, | 21:30 | |
had a very strong conservative wing, | 21:35 | |
in the Presbyterian Church. | 21:38 | |
I can't speak for the Methodists, | 21:41 | |
but guessing they also had that. | 21:43 | |
And it was also, there were also, | 21:47 | |
a lot of people from the Northern Church, | 21:52 | |
particularly from smaller rural areas, | 21:54 | |
and so forth, who were also quite conservative, | 21:57 | |
and there had been a big backlash | 22:01 | |
in the Presbyterian Church over, | 22:03 | |
I don't know if you've ever heard | 22:06 | |
of the Angela Davis situation. | 22:08 | |
- | Uh-uh. | 22:11 |
- | Angela Davis was a black activist, | 22:12 |
who was involved in... | 22:16 | |
(sighs) I don't remember all the details, but, anyway. | 22:24 | |
She and several other people were charged with murder, | 22:27 | |
and the question was, was it racially motivated or not, | 22:31 | |
and Angela Davis, | 22:36 | |
the Presbyterian Church voted to spend, | 22:38 | |
I think it was $10,000 for the Angela Davis defense fund. | 22:41 | |
Well, and she was a devout communist as well, | 22:45 | |
or at least a communist sympathizer. | 22:47 | |
So you had all of this, you had the racial, | 22:50 | |
the communist, all of these kinds of things, | 22:53 | |
and the Lay Committee originally was formed | 22:56 | |
as an anti-communist group. | 23:00 | |
I mean, to fight the communism | 23:03 | |
of the World Council of Churches. | 23:06 | |
- | The Lay Committee, you mean-- | 23:09 |
- | The Presbyterian Lay Committee. | 23:10 |
- | Okay. | 23:11 |
- | That published the Presbyterian Layman. | 23:12 |
- | Oh, I see. | 23:14 |
- | That was their start, | |
was this anti-communist kind of thing. | 23:16 | |
And so they just picked up on | 23:22 | |
all of the conservative kinds of issues. | 23:25 | |
So you had a group that, | 23:29 | |
like some of the Republican candidates today, | 23:32 | |
who jump on any conservative issue. | 23:36 | |
And so, that-- | 23:40 | |
- | So you said it surprised you in one way, | 23:42 |
and it didn't surprise you in another. | 23:43 | |
- | Well, it surprised me, | 23:44 |
I didn't think that the leadership would knuckle under | 23:48 | |
to the degree that they did. | 23:54 | |
That surprised, | 23:57 | |
I was not as involved, | 24:00 | |
at the national level. | 24:06 | |
I mean, I was involved but it was, | 24:08 | |
again, it was on the fringe kinds of things. | 24:10 | |
It was in social justice and women's areas and so forth, | 24:13 | |
and not in the central kinds of things. | 24:16 | |
That came later. | 24:20 | |
So I was... | 24:22 | |
And so while I knew some of the people and so forth, | 24:26 | |
as I say, I was both surprised and not surprised. | 24:32 | |
- | Yeah, yeah. | 24:36 |
Was that similar to Mary Ann Lundy's resignation? | 24:37 | |
- | Well, yeah, that was a part of it. | 24:40 |
That was a part of it. | 24:42 | |
In fact, we were, | 24:47 | |
we were at the assembly | 24:51 | |
when that whole thing happened. | 24:53 | |
- | You were, yeah. | 24:55 |
- | Well, we had not planned on going, | 24:56 |
but we started hearing all the reports of | 24:58 | |
what was gonna happen, and so we went. | 25:01 | |
- | Yeah. | 25:05 |
And do you remember what your reaction was, | 25:07 | |
or the reaction of other people at that? | 25:08 | |
What were the feelings? | 25:11 | |
- | Well, again it was, | |
depending on where you were, | 25:14 | |
that the whole, | 25:19 | |
women's part of it, | 25:22 | |
and the women's unit then was a pretty, | 25:24 | |
a fairly extensive kind of thing in terms of | 25:27 | |
numbers of programs and so forth. | 25:29 | |
But the women, the justice kinds of things, | 25:32 | |
were aghast that this kind of thing would happen. | 25:34 | |
The arch conservatives were, well, this is just | 25:39 | |
the first head that's gonna roll kind of thing. | 25:42 | |
And, | 25:46 | |
the guy who was her boss, who acquiesced to it, | 25:48 | |
the next assembly, he was dumped. | 25:55 | |
- | Really. | 25:56 |
- | Yeah. | |
Or, no, I guess it was two years later. | 25:58 | |
But, yeah, he had a term, | 26:00 | |
and his term was not renewed, yeah. | 26:04 | |
- | Was it because of this whole thing? | 26:07 |
- | Yeah, in fact, it was the next, | 26:08 |
because Mary Ann was dumped in the '94 assembly, and, | 26:11 | |
was it '95 or '96, Jim Brown was dumped, yeah, so. | 26:19 | |
- | And why was he? | 26:23 |
- | Partly because he hadn't been tough enough on women. | 26:28 |
- | Really, okay. | 26:31 |
- | Mary Ann had been the only one who'd been fired. | 26:33 |
All these other 20-some women, | 26:35 | |
or I don't remember how many women from. | 26:38 | |
The Presbyterian Church paid for people | 26:41 | |
from the national office to attend, | 26:43 | |
and none of them were fired. | 26:46 | |
- | I see. | 26:48 |
- | Well, you just got rid of one, | 26:50 |
but you got all these other people still around. | 26:52 | |
- | I see, okay, I didn't know about that piece of it. | 26:54 |
Talking about the Re-Imagining community, | 26:57 | |
how would you define Re-Imagining? | 27:00 | |
- | You ever read Animal Farm? | 27:20 |
- | Yes. | 27:22 |
You've got me intrigued. (laughs) | 27:24 | |
- | Well, they finally end up at the very end, | 27:27 |
the sign on the barn that says, "All animals are equal, | 27:30 | |
"but some are more equal than others." | 27:33 | |
- | Yes. | 27:36 |
- | Re-Imagining basically, was to try to carry out | 27:38 |
the idea that all people are equal, period. | 27:44 | |
And that was basically the gist of it. | 27:50 | |
And because that wasn't the case, | 27:56 | |
people involved in Re-Imagining were, | 28:03 | |
I think for the most part, motivated by | 28:07 | |
not just bemoaning how bad things were, | 28:11 | |
but what can we do to change it. | 28:16 | |
So I think it was basically a group motivated | 28:19 | |
to try to change the position and perception | 28:22 | |
and influence of women in the church. | 28:27 | |
- | Nice. | 28:31 |
You alluded a little bit to this, | 28:32 | |
but I'm really fascinated with how and why | 28:34 | |
the Re-Imagining community was formed. | 28:36 | |
Could you say a little bit more about that? | 28:39 | |
You said something about the celebration. | 28:46 | |
You were supposed to have a celebration at the end. | 28:48 | |
- | Well, I think there are, | 28:50 |
there are a couple of Re-Imagining communities. | 28:54 | |
One of the things that happened after Re-Imagining, | 28:59 | |
is that in a number of communities, little groups | 29:03 | |
coalesced and kept meeting and doing things. | 29:07 | |
I mean, the only one I really had | 29:11 | |
anything to do with was Santa Fe. | 29:14 | |
There was a group in Santa Fe, | 29:17 | |
and because I was out in Ghost Ranch a lot, | 29:19 | |
I was out there, but there were something like | 29:22 | |
eight women from Santa Fe, who came to Re-Imagining, | 29:25 | |
and when they went back, they were enthused, | 29:33 | |
and they set up their own little community. | 29:38 | |
So there were a number of these little | 29:40 | |
Re-Imagining communities around, | 29:42 | |
and there were a number of them in the Twin Cities, | 29:44 | |
and there were a few that are still hanging on. | 29:45 | |
So I mean I think you've got that | 29:48 | |
kind of Re-Imagining community. | 29:50 | |
But then I think you have the people who | 29:53 | |
were part of the organization, | 30:01 | |
which included two dozen people who were on the | 30:05 | |
main committee, plus all of the other people | 30:11 | |
who worked on various kinds of committees, | 30:14 | |
and about the time, I suppose it was January, | 30:18 | |
we, | 30:25 | |
had a, | 30:28 | |
I don't remember if we had a meeting to plan the party, | 30:34 | |
or if we just were gonna have a party, but anyway, | 30:36 | |
I can remember talking to Sally Hill, | 30:41 | |
and Sally was showing me just all the correspondence | 30:45 | |
she was getting from people. | 30:52 | |
I mean, negative letters from people that | 30:56 | |
were reacting to this horrible event that happened, | 31:04 | |
and letters from people who had been at Re-Imagining, | 31:07 | |
who were passing on what the flack they had gotten, | 31:11 | |
and everything else, and, | 31:17 | |
so anyway the, | 31:22 | |
we had, | 31:25 | |
and the event was just for people | 31:26 | |
who were involved in planning, | 31:28 | |
so I don't know how many people were there, but, | 31:29 | |
it was pretty clear that | 31:33 | |
there was just so much misinformation | 31:38 | |
being spewed out there, | 31:42 | |
that | 31:46 | |
we decided that we need to figure out | 31:49 | |
some ways to respond to that at least. | 31:53 | |
And so initially, it was to support Sally Hill, | 31:57 | |
and Mary Ann Lundy and Jeanne Audrey Powers, | 32:03 | |
who were the people who were getting the flack, | 32:09 | |
as well as maybe a few others that we knew about. | 32:13 | |
But, | 32:18 | |
I don't know exactly at what point, we decided, | 32:20 | |
one of the things that we started getting was, | 32:25 | |
"Are you gonna do this again?" | 32:27 | |
So we did. | 32:31 | |
And so we started doing another series of conferences, | 32:32 | |
and all of a sudden, started shifting the mechanism from | 32:39 | |
well, let's see now, how do we wind down all this, | 32:42 | |
and what do we do with all this stuff, | 32:45 | |
to let's keep going, and so we did. | 32:48 | |
And so we ended up opening an office | 32:50 | |
in the church center, and, | 32:53 | |
- | Going on for 10 years. | 32:57 |
- | Going on for 10 years. | 32:58 |
- | Mm-hmm. | |
How would you say, how did Feminist theology | 33:01 | |
affect the structure and functioning of the community? | 33:04 | |
- | I think it was, | 33:15 |
tried to be as much as possible, | 33:19 | |
a nonhierarchical organization. | 33:21 | |
I mean, it was, | 33:25 | |
obviously, there were people who were making decisions | 33:27 | |
because of the necessity to do so, | 33:31 | |
but it was certainly an attempt to | 33:34 | |
get as many people involved as possible. | 33:38 | |
I think one of the failings was that it became, | 33:42 | |
for the most part I think, | 33:47 | |
a group of privileged white women. | 33:52 | |
And a few white men. | 33:56 | |
- | Right, yeah. | 33:57 |
Do you have any idea why that was? | 33:59 | |
I mean, that was a concern along the way, but. | 34:01 | |
- | Well, I think part of it was, | 34:04 |
part of it was (sighs) | 34:09 | |
the structure in the Twin Cities | 34:15 | |
of, | 34:20 | |
there were not a lot of, | 34:24 | |
at least, I don't think people were aware of, | 34:30 | |
the number of, that there were a lot of people | 34:32 | |
outside of the main, mainstream, | 34:35 | |
denominations and so forth, who were interested in this. | 34:40 | |
And so while there were some involvement, | 34:46 | |
it was that those were the people who | 34:54 | |
sort of gravitated to it kind of thing. | 34:57 | |
And even though there had been, | 35:00 | |
and at a national level, | 35:03 | |
well, there were really wasn't a national, | 35:05 | |
there was the local organization, | 35:09 | |
which did conferences and drew in people from the outside, | 35:12 | |
but the people who were invited to conferences and so forth | 35:16 | |
didn't have a long, | 35:22 | |
an ongoing relationship with, | 35:26 | |
with the organization. | 35:33 | |
I mean, the African American women for example, | 35:34 | |
Katie Cannon did not have. | 35:40 | |
Rita Brock had some, because for a while, | 35:42 | |
she was in Hamlin, so she was here, | 35:45 | |
but there wasn't an ongoing kind of thing, | 35:49 | |
so it was pretty much | 35:53 | |
an older, middle-class, white women's group. | 35:57 | |
- | So the speakers were often women of color, | 36:02 |
but they didn't-- | 36:04 | |
- | Oh, the speakers were I mean | |
the speakers, there was an attempt | 36:06 | |
to try to get as broad a range as possible. | 36:08 | |
And even from the, | 36:14 | |
at the first one, there certainly was an array, | 36:17 | |
and there was an attempt to get them down. | 36:20 | |
And then there was a flap at the beginning one, | 36:24 | |
as to whether or not there was enough diversity. | 36:26 | |
And some of the women were pretty critical of that. | 36:31 | |
Joan Martin and Delores Williams. | 36:40 | |
Joan Martin particularly I think | 36:43 | |
was pretty concerned about that kind of thing. | 36:45 | |
- | Diversity among the speakers? | 36:50 |
Diversity among the participants? | 36:51 | |
- | Well, just the whole nature of things. | 36:53 |
I think there were speakers but the, | 36:56 | |
the issues seemed to be white women's issues. | 36:59 | |
- | Yeah, mm-hm, mm-hm. | 37:01 |
Were there efforts during the 10 years | 37:04 | |
to try to address those issues of race? | 37:06 | |
- | (sighing) I, well, from the, | 37:09 |
The Re-Imagining committee basically was doing two things. | 37:14 | |
It was doing annual conferences, | 37:22 | |
or just about annual conferences. | 37:25 | |
I don't know if we had 10 conferences, | 37:27 | |
but there were probably at least eight I think. | 37:30 | |
- | I think there were six more. | 37:35 |
- | Okay, yeah, okay. | 37:36 |
- | Yeah. | |
- | So there were the original and six more. | 37:38 |
Okay, so there were seven, okay. | 37:40 | |
But that was about, | 37:41 | |
and so there was a lot of work on those, | 37:44 | |
and then there was the newsletter that was published. | 37:46 | |
And beyond that, | 37:52 | |
there wasn't a lot being done I don't think | 37:55 | |
by a central group or anything. | 37:59 | |
- | Right. | 38:02 |
Were there other challenges | 38:03 | |
the organization faced during those 10 years? | 38:05 | |
- | Well, it was just how to keep going. | 38:10 |
Finances, kind of thing. | 38:15 | |
That was, | 38:19 | |
and keep the interest up and so forth, | 38:22 | |
and to some degree, | 38:26 | |
the Presbyterians spun off their own group, | 38:33 | |
which lasted a little bit longer. | 38:37 | |
- | Voices of Sophia? | 38:39 |
- | Voices of Sophia. | 38:40 |
- | And you were involved in that as well. | 38:47 |
- | Yeah. | 38:49 |
- | Mm-hm, mm-hm. | |
- | I did not make the original meeting. | 38:53 |
My wife still is upset that, | 38:57 | |
they had this organizing meeting, | 39:01 | |
I got invited, she didn't. | 39:02 | |
- | Really. (laughing) | 39:04 |
- | I wasn't at the pre-meeting. | 39:06 |
I was actually in Detroit for | 39:08 | |
the meeting with the World Council of Churches. | 39:10 | |
But then we had a meeting and we had | 39:14 | |
50-some people, I think four or five men. | 39:19 | |
We had, Jeanne Audrey Powers was there, | 39:22 | |
and there was an Episcopal nun, | 39:26 | |
and a couple of other people from outside things, | 39:30 | |
but it was pretty much a Presbyterian kind of thing. | 39:34 | |
And again that group basically, | 39:36 | |
for the most part, did events at general assembly. | 39:40 | |
And had a breakfast meeting and a booth, | 39:47 | |
and that kind of thing. | 39:51 | |
- | Did they choose the name Sophia because of Re-Imagining? | 39:52 |
- | Oh, sure, yeah. | 39:55 |
- | Mm-hm, mm-hm, mm-hm. | |
Neat. | 39:59 | |
Talking about the significance of Re-Imagining, | 40:00 | |
what aspects of Re-Imagining | 40:03 | |
were most significant to you and why? | 40:05 | |
- | At the time, | 40:11 |
I suspect it was just being | 40:16 | |
sort of overwhelmed by how many | 40:20 | |
extremely talented women there were doing theology. | 40:29 | |
I mean, I was a novice to the area. | 40:37 | |
I know a heck of a lot more about it now than I did then. | 40:39 | |
I was just amazed by who was out there | 40:45 | |
and how talented they were, and, | 40:51 | |
how strong they were in terms of what they were doing. | 40:54 | |
- | And at that time, were you mostly | 40:58 |
introduced to them through the conferences? | 41:00 | |
- | Yeah, most of them, I didn't, | 41:03 |
I didn't really know very many of them | 41:06 | |
from other kinds of things until later. | 41:11 | |
I later got to know | 41:13 | |
a number of them. | 41:19 | |
Beverly Harrison and Carter Heyward for example, | 41:26 | |
I got to know them in North Carolina and so forth. | 41:30 | |
And they had a little house church, | 41:35 | |
and I've been there a couple of times, | 41:37 | |
and so forth, before Beverly died. | 41:39 | |
And so I got to know some of the others as well | 41:43 | |
in various other kinds of capacities, but at the time, | 41:46 | |
I really didn't know a lot of them and so forth. | 41:51 | |
So I think that was sort of my initial reaction. | 41:55 | |
What was the question? | 42:00 | |
- | How was it significant to you and why? | 42:01 |
- | Well, I think the, | 42:04 |
the other is that I could see cases | 42:10 | |
where it was seemingly making a difference | 42:14 | |
in some parts of the church. | 42:17 | |
People were raising these kinds of questions and so forth. | 42:19 | |
One place where it was happening, | 42:25 | |
I think it happened for a while, was in Presbyterian Women. | 42:27 | |
Presbyterian Women was the women's group, | 42:32 | |
and it was | 42:36 | |
a combination of, | 42:41 | |
somebody said, pastor's wives and sewing circles, | 42:46 | |
and that kind of thing, and, | 42:49 | |
there were some agitators in the group, | 42:52 | |
but for the most part, they were, | 42:55 | |
they were content to do things from the back, | 42:59 | |
from the back of the room kind of thing. | 43:04 | |
And one of the things that I think Re-Imagining did | 43:06 | |
was to energize that group to start getting, | 43:09 | |
taking more stands on issues and so forth. | 43:15 | |
- | Is that because some of them attended Re-Imagining? | 43:18 |
- | Some of them attended, | 43:20 |
and they saw other women out there doing things. | 43:21 | |
I think a lot of the women who were involved, and speakers, | 43:24 | |
probably had very little to do with Presbyterian Women. | 43:29 | |
They were the academics, they weren't... | 43:33 | |
And so I think it, | 43:38 | |
I don't know that that lasted terribly long, | 43:41 | |
but I think it brought women together | 43:44 | |
from a variety of perspectives in the church. | 43:48 | |
- | And what kinds of things did Presbyterian Women | 43:52 |
at that point get involved with? | 43:54 | |
- | Their conferences, | 43:58 |
I think had more sessions that dealt with issues. | 44:03 | |
The Presbyterian Women was, | 44:11 | |
up until that point I think their issue was mission, | 44:15 | |
broadly defined, whether it was overseas mission | 44:17 | |
or a local mission and so forth. | 44:20 | |
And it seemed to me that there was a lot more emphasis | 44:23 | |
in discussions about women's issues | 44:29 | |
and getting women involved in all levels of the church. | 44:34 | |
- | Very interesting. | 44:44 |
How did your involvement in Re-Imagining change your | 44:46 | |
perspective on Feminist theology and/or the church? | 44:47 | |
- | Well, as far as Feminist theology, | 45:03 |
I learned a heck of a lot more about it. | 45:05 | |
- | Yes. (laughs) | 45:07 |
- | That's the quick and easy answer, kind of thing. | 45:09 |
I was involved in these kinds of discussions that, | 45:16 | |
you had to know something about it to be involved. | 45:23 | |
But as far as the church, | 45:29 | |
when I got involved in the church, | 45:37 | |
it was pretty obvious that the Presbyterian Church | 45:47 | |
was pretty divided on social issues. | 45:51 | |
Social justice, broadly defined, | 45:59 | |
racial issues, ordination issues, abortion. | 46:04 | |
And I think one of the things that being involved | 46:09 | |
in Re-Imagining made me aware as to | 46:12 | |
how divided the church really was. | 46:20 | |
Both in terms of the Presbyterian Church | 46:23 | |
and the Christian community as a whole. | 46:25 | |
And I started, | 46:30 | |
attending events where there are people there | 46:36 | |
from other churches and so forth, | 46:39 | |
and you start talking to people | 46:42 | |
who come from different perspectives, | 46:44 | |
and you just understand the depth of that, | 46:46 | |
of those differences that exist | 46:50 | |
on so many kinds of issues as to | 46:53 | |
what is the church and what is... | 46:59 | |
Well, I guess it's the old focus on | 47:05 | |
is the prime concern the salvation of the individual's soul, | 47:10 | |
or is the emphasis on justice? | 47:15 | |
And it seems to me that on that issue, | 47:20 | |
is where an awful lot of the divisions exist, | 47:26 | |
and I'm sure teaching at a Catholic institution, | 47:31 | |
you get hit with another set of issues relating to that. | 47:34 | |
- | Mm-hm, mm-hm, mm-hm. | 47:39 |
- | And one of the side kinds of things is that, | 47:42 |
I got involved in the Catholic Church from... | 47:46 | |
Bit of history. | 47:54 | |
I grew up in a community where we joked about | 47:57 | |
the one minority family in our school | 48:01 | |
was the one Catholic family, so I mean it was, | 48:04 | |
it was Scandinavian, Lutherans, and New England | 48:08 | |
Congregationalist and Methodists kind of thing. | 48:13 | |
Now, there was a primarily German community | 48:17 | |
10 miles away that had a Catholic grade school, | 48:20 | |
and a Catholic church, but we didn't have any, | 48:22 | |
so I didn't really know anything about | 48:26 | |
Catholicism or anything like that, | 48:29 | |
or Catholics (laughs) kind of thing, | 48:31 | |
as my Swedish neighbor used to talk about. | 48:34 | |
When I got to the university and I ended up | 48:37 | |
dealing with accreditation of schools, | 48:40 | |
I mean, I was on a first-name basis with | 48:47 | |
Roach and Jim Habiger and Ray Lucker. | 48:54 | |
So I got involved with a lot of those folks. | 49:02 | |
Terry Murphy, who was St. Thomas. | 49:11 | |
Colman Barry at St. Johns. | 49:14 | |
So I worked with those people, but knew them as individuals, | 49:17 | |
not as necessarily church officials kind of thing. | 49:22 | |
So I got to know quite a bit about that, | 49:28 | |
and as I got involved in writing my dissertation | 49:31 | |
on Church and State Relations, | 49:35 | |
there's a very strong Catholic | 49:39 | |
presence in that whole discussion. | 49:42 | |
And so I got into some very interesting discussions | 49:47 | |
with some of the, | 49:52 | |
well, at that time, there was an organization | 49:56 | |
called Citizens for Educational Freedom, | 49:58 | |
which was essentially a group that was | 50:00 | |
advocating for public aid to private schools. | 50:03 | |
And so I got involved, | 50:10 | |
And most of the leadership were Catholic. | 50:14 | |
There were a few Missouri Synod, | 50:16 | |
but not a lot, most of them were Catholic. | 50:20 | |
In fact, yeah, I think, | 50:26 | |
no, I was gonna say the one Lutheran, | 50:28 | |
but I think he was Wisconsin Synod, kind of thing. | 50:29 | |
So I got to know something about | 50:33 | |
them and their perspective and so forth. | 50:37 | |
So I basically read America | 50:40 | |
and Commonweal on a regular basis, | 50:42 | |
and have National Catholic Reporter on my computer. | 50:45 | |
- | Very Ecumenical Presbyterian. (laughs) | 50:53 |
Would you say, | 50:56 | |
are there certain specific contributions you think | 50:58 | |
Re-Imagining made to Christian theology and/or liturgy? | 51:00 | |
- | Oh, I think it has opened up liturgy a lot. | 51:06 |
I think just the, | 51:11 | |
and hymnody. | 51:16 | |
And those aren't necessarily divisible, | 51:17 | |
but I think that, | 51:20 | |
created a lot of | 51:25 | |
diversity in terms of the images | 51:30 | |
that we use in liturgy and-- | 51:34 | |
- | Do you think that made it into | 51:38 |
the individual congregations, into churches? | 51:40 | |
- | Only to the degree that there was a catalyst, | 51:46 |
either a pastor or some people | 51:50 | |
on a worship committee that did it. | 51:54 | |
And I mean, | 51:59 | |
I attended a church that was liberal Presbyterian. | 52:01 | |
I mean, we had 10 people at Re-Imagining. | 52:10 | |
But yet when one of the pastors talked about | 52:15 | |
praying to our father and our mother, | 52:23 | |
a few people got very, very incensed about it. | 52:26 | |
- | What do you think that's about? | 52:35 |
- | I think for a lot of people, religion is an anchor. | 52:46 |
And, | 52:53 | |
it's a central kind of thing, | 52:56 | |
and if you start chipping away at that central | 52:58 | |
set up of beliefs and so forth, | 53:04 | |
what else is there we can believe in? | 53:10 | |
And I mean, these were not people who were | 53:14 | |
biblical literalist or anything like that, | 53:18 | |
but they just, there are certain things that... | 53:22 | |
And I used to have a lot of arguments | 53:29 | |
with some fairly close friends who were, | 53:31 | |
he was a self-proclaimed Kentucky redneck. | 53:36 | |
And we used go around and around on it kind of thing. | 53:42 | |
- | And yet you were still friends. | 53:46 |
- | We managed to, you know. | 53:47 |
There were a lot of other things I didn't like about him, | 53:49 | |
but he was an interesting guy and you know, | 53:52 | |
and his wife were friends and everything. | 53:56 | |
- | Yeah, neat. | 53:59 |
Well, to end with, | 54:01 | |
we still have a few minutes if that's okay. | 54:03 | |
- | Sure, we got plenty of time as far as I'm concerned. | 54:05 |
- | Good, well, this is very fruitful and helpful. | 54:07 |
Looking toward the future, | 54:10 | |
what do you think is the greatest legacy | 54:12 | |
of the Re-Imagining community? | 54:14 | |
- | The term Re-Imagining. (laughs) | 54:19 |
- | Yeah, oh, interesting, yeah. | 54:21 |
- | Well, you don't have to go very far to see it, | 54:23 |
and I don't know whether or not | 54:31 | |
that term was used before the 1990s or not, | 54:35 | |
but everybody is re-imagining. | 54:42 | |
The Catholics are re-imagining, | 54:52 | |
the Lutherans are re-imagining, | 54:54 | |
the car dealers are re-imagining. | 54:56 | |
(laughs) | 54:59 | |
So that was sort of a flippant kind of response, | 55:05 | |
but I think it did put the word out there. | 55:09 | |
From what I gather, it has made a difference | 55:22 | |
in terms of, at least in the Presbyterians, | 55:26 | |
and probably in some other denominations, | 55:32 | |
has made some difference in terms of seminary curriculum, | 55:36 | |
at least it seems to be out there more | 55:45 | |
than there are people talking about it. | 55:49 | |
Now, it's not new. | 55:52 | |
I can remember at the height of Re-Imagining, | 55:53 | |
Tom Gillespie, who was the president of Princeton, | 55:58 | |
and Tom was a pretty conservative guy, | 56:01 | |
and I know Tom pretty well, | 56:03 | |
Tom said once, | 56:08 | |
in the debate about Re-Imagining he said, | 56:10 | |
"There isn't a single idea that was raised with Re-Imagining | 56:13 | |
"that hasn't been espoused in some class | 56:16 | |
"at Princeton in the last five years." | 56:18 | |
Tom was much more, | 56:21 | |
Tom's issue was much more ordination. | 56:23 | |
He was totally and completely opposed to GLBT ordination. | 56:26 | |
But as far as the women's issue... | 56:33 | |
I get the sense that if you look at | 56:38 | |
the mainline denominations that | 56:43 | |
there is much more of an equality, | 56:47 | |
it isn't equality yet, but at least things are moving | 56:51 | |
in terms of women's perspectives. | 56:55 | |
And I think there are a lot more | 56:58 | |
women faculty in seminaries. | 57:00 | |
As far as, but on the other hand, | 57:05 | |
I think that to some degree, | 57:08 | |
we're losing ground with the younger generation. | 57:15 | |
I'm not sure how many, and I think that's | 57:18 | |
one of the key things that I think is so important | 57:20 | |
about what we're doing now, is to just get | 57:23 | |
the generation who grew up that didn't know Joseph. | 57:29 | |
- | Before I move on to that, | 57:33 |
and I think that's really important, | 57:34 | |
in terms of worship, | 57:36 | |
I think part of the purpose of Re-Imagining | 57:37 | |
was to bring Feminist theology to churches, to the pews. | 57:39 | |
What is your perspective on inclusive | 57:44 | |
or expansive language, in terms of Feminist theology | 57:47 | |
and worship in mainline churches, | 57:50 | |
maybe specifically Presbyterian church? | 57:52 | |
Where do you think it is today? | 57:54 | |
- | Speaking of the Presbyterians, | 58:00 |
it's clearly there in terms of | 58:02 | |
the official prescribed kind of situation. | 58:07 | |
And I think it shows up a lot | 58:15 | |
in local churches and so forth, | 58:20 | |
particularly if there has been a woman pastor, | 58:25 | |
and just the growth in terms of number of women pastors. | 58:29 | |
I think it's there. | 58:34 | |
It's still, | 58:41 | |
for those people who | 58:45 | |
aren't really sure that that's a going thing, it's, | 58:51 | |
well, we'll do it kind of thing, grudgingly. | 58:55 | |
We say a lot of things we don't necessarily believe. | 59:00 | |
- | Just to clarify something. | 59:04 |
When you say it's prescribed, how is it prescribed? | 59:05 | |
- | If you look at the Presbyterian Church | 59:07 |
at a national level and at the Presbytery level, | 59:13 | |
at policies about use of inclusive language, | 59:17 | |
and the question is how far it goes. | 59:26 | |
And it's both inclusive language for people, | 59:29 | |
and expansive language for God. | 59:34 | |
- | Yeah, right. | 59:37 |
- | I think there is probably more in terms of | 59:38 |
the inclusive language for people, | 59:43 | |
than there is expansive language for God. | 59:45 | |
- | Good. | 59:51 |
I wanna get back to what you were talking about today. | 59:52 | |
I mean, a minute ago about Re-Imagining today. | 59:55 | |
You were talking about younger people. | 59:58 | |
What does Re-Imagining mean today? | 1:00:00 | |
What needs to happen now? | 1:00:03 | |
- | Again, I'm not as up on this, | 1:00:13 |
but as I listen to people who are involved in seminaries, | 1:00:17 | |
and so forth, | 1:00:23 | |
it sounds like Feminism is sort of | 1:00:25 | |
accepted as, well, something that's there, | 1:00:32 | |
but, | 1:00:37 | |
nobody's really paying much attention to it. | 1:00:41 | |
- | So it's this generation, that it needs to be passed on? | 1:00:48 |
- | Yeah, it needs to be passed on. | 1:00:51 |
I was on a committee for the Presbyterian Church | 1:01:03 | |
that was a national fundraising kind of thing, | 1:01:07 | |
and one of the things we were looking at, | 1:01:11 | |
in terms of a target population, | 1:01:17 | |
were churches over a certain size. | 1:01:20 | |
And I don't remember how many we had on the list. | 1:01:26 | |
I think it was something like 150 churches. | 1:01:28 | |
I think three of them had women as the senior pastor. | 1:01:30 | |
- | Wow. | 1:01:35 |
- | I think those are the kinds of things that | 1:01:38 |
have not yet come to pass. | 1:01:42 | |
It's the kind of thing that I think | 1:01:48 | |
people believe is possible, but, | 1:01:50 | |
haven't necessarily seen it with their own eyes. | 1:01:56 | |
I don't know if there are a lot of | 1:02:02 | |
young women in seminary who's goal | 1:02:04 | |
is to be the pastor of a 3,000-member church. | 1:02:07 | |
- | That's good. | 1:02:17 |
You know, we're working on a Re-Imagining website. | 1:02:18 | |
Do you have any ideas about | 1:02:21 | |
what you think should be included, | 1:02:23 | |
or who would benefit and why? | 1:02:25 | |
Any thoughts about that? | 1:02:28 | |
- | I think the big thing about websites is that, | 1:02:30 |
the audience that you end up with | 1:02:36 | |
is often not the intended audience. | 1:02:37 | |
That you end up with people just | 1:02:42 | |
browsing websites and finding things. | 1:02:45 | |
- | Good point. | 1:02:48 |
- | So I think it's... | |
You have to somehow steer between | 1:02:55 | |
having it so simple that it insults people, | 1:02:59 | |
versus having it get bogged down in jargon, and, | 1:03:02 | |
something people don't understand what you're talking about. | 1:03:12 | |
- | That's a good point. | 1:03:18 |
It's a broad audience, isn't it? | 1:03:19 | |
- | It's a broad audience, and people end up | 1:03:20 |
visiting websites, | 1:03:25 | |
probably, | 1:03:29 | |
an awful lot of 'em just are either sheer accident | 1:03:33 | |
or they're kind of searching for something | 1:03:36 | |
in a vague way and they hit on something. | 1:03:39 | |
I think that certainly the history of what has happened | 1:03:43 | |
and how it's connected to where things are now, | 1:03:52 | |
I think it would be very useful to have | 1:03:55 | |
people who have, | 1:04:09 | |
women who have made it as, in churches, | 1:04:10 | |
either as professors or as pastors, | 1:04:15 | |
to just talk with them and, | 1:04:20 | |
what impact did they make, and because of | 1:04:25 | |
Feminism and these kinds of things, | 1:04:31 | |
or did they make it sort of in spite of? | 1:04:34 | |
I think of women that I know who are in key positions. | 1:04:40 | |
Most of them are strongly Feminist, | 1:04:49 | |
but it's not necessarily a point of emphasis with them. | 1:04:56 | |
- | Is that what you mean by in spite of Feminism? | 1:05:05 |
What does that mean? | 1:05:08 | |
- | Yeah, yeah. | |
That they make it because they were | 1:05:10 | |
good strong intelligent people who got through, | 1:05:16 | |
figured out how to work the system and so forth. | 1:05:21 | |
- | So how much did their Feminism actually influence? | 1:05:29 |
- | Yeah, yeah, I mean, | 1:05:32 |
I think that any time you get | 1:05:33 | |
an organization that feels pressure to | 1:05:39 | |
provide diversity, | 1:05:51 | |
and a lot of organizations are | 1:05:55 | |
being pressured to become more diverse. | 1:05:58 | |
And whether there's a commitment to it or not, | 1:06:03 | |
we've at least got to have the visible symbols of diversity. | 1:06:07 | |
I think part of the problem in Minneapolis public schools, | 1:06:13 | |
is they were looking for a particular, | 1:06:16 | |
superintendent with particular characteristics, | 1:06:19 | |
and didn't look very much further than that. | 1:06:21 | |
And I have seen some horrendous hires | 1:06:26 | |
of people who were hired because they were | 1:06:33 | |
women or minorities or whatever the case was. | 1:06:37 | |
People looked on them with one characteristic. | 1:06:43 | |
That one maybe wasn't enough to overcome | 1:06:52 | |
all sorts of other issues. | 1:06:58 | |
Just like the Catholic Church has found out, | 1:07:02 | |
just because somebody's male doesn't mean | 1:07:04 | |
that they don't have a bunch of other flaws. | 1:07:06 | |
- | Is there anything we haven't discussed, | 1:07:10 |
that you would like to mention? | 1:07:13 | |
- | Oh, I don't know, I've wandered all over the place-- | 1:07:16 |
(laughs) | 1:07:18 | |
- | Well, it's been very productive wandering. | 1:07:19 |
It's been very thoughtful answers, | 1:07:21 | |
and you provided really useful context for a lot of this. | 1:07:23 | |
Thank you so much, Manley. | 1:07:26 | |
- | Oh, well, thank you. | 1:07:28 |
- | I really appreciate it. | |
- | And thank you so much for doing all this. | 1:07:29 |
- | Oh, I'm-- | 1:07:30 |