Mollenkott, Virginia
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- | Well Virginia, thank you very much | 0:01 |
for agreeing to be interviewed, | 0:03 | |
and if you could just say your full name please? | 0:04 | |
- | Virginia Ramey Mollenkott. | 0:09 |
- | Thank you, and are you lay or clergy? | 0:11 |
- | I'm a layperson. | 0:14 |
- | Yes, and what is your denominational affiliation | 0:15 |
if you have any? | 0:19 | |
- | Yeah, well, currently Episcopal. | 0:21 |
- | Okay. | 0:23 |
- | I was raised Plymouth Brethren. | 0:24 |
I don't whether you even know about that. | 0:26 | |
Some people don't. | 0:29 | |
In England it's the low church opposite | 0:31 | |
of the Church of England. | 0:33 | |
- | Okay, interesting. | 0:35 |
- | Yeah, many kids who want to rebel against parents | 0:37 |
who are Anglican | 0:40 | |
will become Plymouth Brethren and vice versa. | 0:42 | |
There's no ordination, | 0:47 | |
but women are not allowed so much as to ask a question. | 0:50 | |
- | Wow. | 0:53 |
- | You wear a hat to show your subordination to all males, | 0:54 |
even your children, even your small sons. | 0:57 | |
- | Wow. | 1:00 |
- | Yeah, I sat through many a Bible class | 1:02 |
where I could've clarified that two men were arguing | 1:04 | |
just because they had a slight difference | 1:08 | |
in the way they were defining their terms. | 1:10 | |
I had to sit through it | 1:13 | |
because I couldn't so much as point out to them | 1:14 | |
that's what was happening. | 1:17 | |
(laughs) | 1:19 | |
- | Oh my goodness. | 1:20 |
You've come a long way from there, haven't you? | 1:21 | |
- | Oh yes, I certainly have. | 1:23 |
I was still in it into my early thirties. | 1:25 | |
- | Really. | 1:30 |
- | Yup. | 1:31 |
- | Well, I'm interested to hear. | 1:33 |
This might be a good time to ask. | 1:35 | |
So I know it's probably a long story, | 1:36 | |
but what led you to leave that denomination? | 1:38 | |
- | Well it was very slow. | 1:44 |
I was born in Philadelphia in 1932, | 1:47 | |
and attended the assemblies with my mother. | 1:50 | |
My father left us when I was nine. | 1:54 | |
So it was everything I ever heard. | 1:57 | |
You know, we didn't even go to other churches | 2:00 | |
because frankly, the Plymouth Brethren | 2:03 | |
wonder whether anybody else is going to heaven | 2:05 | |
other than themselves. | 2:07 | |
And so we didn't go to any other churches | 2:10 | |
and I didn't hear anything else for many years. | 2:12 | |
It's fundamentalism, essentially. | 2:18 | |
- | Yes. | 2:19 |
- | And so it took me... | 2:20 |
Well, I describe this to some degree | 2:24 | |
in Sensuous Spirituality, | 2:26 | |
which is subtitled Out from Fundamentalism. | 2:28 | |
And in it I describe it was largely my doctorate, really, | 2:32 | |
and working on Milton, John Milton, | 2:37 | |
and reading his divorce tracts, | 2:40 | |
which were so different from... | 2:43 | |
I mean they were all based on scripture. | 2:45 | |
He was, as you probably know, a 17th-century Puritan. | 2:48 | |
And actually Secretary of State under Oliver Cromwell. | 2:52 | |
And he interpreted the Bible so differently | 2:58 | |
that I was blown away. | 3:01 | |
The basic thing for him was that God is love, | 3:05 | |
and anything that didn't teach love | 3:08 | |
was not to be treated like it was divine scripture, | 3:11 | |
but rather as an example | 3:15 | |
of something that was believed at the time, | 3:17 | |
or for some particular historical reason was believed. | 3:19 | |
And that really freed me up. | 3:23 | |
- | Yes. | 3:26 |
- | When Harvard had, | 3:28 |
I don't know whether you know about that conference, | 3:30 | |
there was a big conference at Harvard a few years back | 3:32 | |
about women in religion. | 3:36 | |
And somebody joked at the end, | 3:40 | |
who ever thought that John Milton would be a star? | 3:41 | |
(interviewer laughs) | 3:45 | |
at a conference on women in religion? | 3:46 | |
Because there were feminists | 3:47 | |
who wanted him out of the curriculum. | 3:48 | |
- | Yes. | 3:51 |
- | Because he describes so well | 3:52 |
what an angry man will do to his wife, you know, | 3:53 | |
when Adam is angry at Eve in Paradise Lost. | 3:56 | |
Well yeah, but that's not Milton's view, | 4:00 | |
that's his view of what an angry husband will say. | 4:01 | |
(laughs) | 4:05 | |
And so it was a big mistake to want to throw Milton out. | 4:06 | |
But he certainly was my liberation, you know? | 4:11 | |
- | I love it. | 4:14 |
That is great. | ||
- | Yeah, I needed somebody to show me | 4:16 |
that you really could read the Bible | 4:19 | |
in a liberating fashion. | 4:22 | |
And that's what he did. | 4:24 | |
- | And it was John Milton. | 4:26 |
- | And of course he was arguing for divorce | 4:27 |
for incompatibility, | 4:28 | |
on the basis of scripture in the 17th century. | 4:29 | |
And it took New Jersey a few years to come around to that. | 4:33 | |
(Interviewer laughs) | 4:38 | |
A few hundred years. | 4:39 | |
- | Right. | |
So where did you go to graduate school, Virginia? | 4:43 | |
- | Graduate school, well, | 4:47 |
I got my B.A. from Bob Jones University. | 4:48 | |
You should make note of that. | 4:50 | |
- | Yes. | 4:52 |
- | I was so fundamentalist, | 4:53 |
although I certainly didn't agree with their racism. | 4:54 | |
And many things I didn't agree with. | 4:58 | |
But I kept my mouth shut or you would get thrown out. | 5:00 | |
You know, couldn't disagree with anything. | 5:03 | |
And I got my Master's at Temple University in Philadelphia | 5:05 | |
and my Ph.D. at New York University. | 5:09 | |
- | Okay. | 5:12 |
- | So that was all very liberating for me, | 5:14 |
each step of the way. | 5:16 | |
I came out of that. | 5:18 | |
Bob Jones wouldn't even teach modern poetry | 5:20 | |
because they thought it wasn't spiritual enough. | 5:22 | |
- | Wow. | 5:24 |
- | And a young actor named Ronald Reagan came | 5:25 |
when I was an undergraduate, | 5:30 | |
and read some modern poetry at Bob Jones. | 5:32 | |
And I thought my gosh, this is marvelous. | 5:34 | |
So as soon as I got to Temple, | 5:37 | |
I took a modern poetry course, | 5:39 | |
and it was taught by an atheist. | 5:40 | |
- | Really. | 5:42 |
- | Yeah, who, I had never seen anything like it. | 5:44 |
I mean, she was teaching Gerard Manley Hopkins, | 5:47 | |
who was a Jesuit, so I wrote a paper on Hopkins. | 5:50 | |
And of course approached him from a Christian perspective. | 5:53 | |
And she wrote on my paper, | 5:56 | |
"I don't agree with the words you say, | 5:57 | |
"but this is wonderful." | 5:59 | |
and gave me an A+. | 6:01 | |
And I thought, well, I'd never seen that before, you know. | 6:03 | |
At Bob Jones you either agreed with the party line, | 6:06 | |
or you had a bad grade. | 6:10 | |
So this was again very liberating for me. | 6:12 | |
- | Yes. | 6:15 |
So Milton and Ronald Reagan have been influences on you. | 6:16 | |
(both laugh) | 6:19 | |
- | Well, he kinda gave me a nudge, you know? | 6:21 |
He read some T.S. Eliot, and oh my goodness, | 6:23 | |
to say that that's not spiritual | 6:26 | |
is really very blind-siding it. | 6:28 | |
- | Yes, oh, it is. | 6:31 |
So what were you doing at the time of Re-Imagining, | 6:33 | |
Virginia? | 6:36 | |
- | I was teaching, so that was 19, what, 90? | 6:38 |
- | 93. | 6:42 |
- | What year was that? | |
93, yes. | 6:43 | |
I was teaching at William Patterson University, | 6:44 | |
when it was a college. | 6:48 | |
I had gone there because I could see a divorce coming | 6:51 | |
when I was at teaching at Nyack Missionary College. | 6:54 | |
And in Nyack, | 6:57 | |
there's this Christian and Missionary Alliance. | 6:58 | |
And I knew that in any fundamentalist area, | 7:00 | |
it's always the woman's fault no matter what. | 7:03 | |
She gets a divorce, it's her fault, | 7:06 | |
because she should have been submissive | 7:09 | |
to whatever her husband wanted (laughs) | 7:12 | |
And I became aware of feminist theology | 7:14 | |
reading Betty Friedan, like so many other women, you know? | 7:17 | |
- | Yes. | 7:20 |
- | The Feminine Mystique. | 7:21 |
And I thought, my eyes were on stems, | 7:22 | |
and oh I'm not the only one, you know? | 7:24 | |
I was at this college where I was a full professor | 7:27 | |
and heading the English Department, | 7:31 | |
but I was the only professor | 7:34 | |
who was asked to bake cookies and stuff for meetings. | 7:36 | |
- | Seriously. | 7:40 |
- | And one of the male professors who liked me a lot | 7:41 |
saw me coming in a little bit late to an afternoon meeting | 7:44 | |
after we'd had a meeting all morning, and he said | 7:48 | |
"the rest of us went home and had our lunch served to us. | 7:53 | |
"You went home and had to make your own lunch | 7:55 | |
"and do the wash, didn't you?" | 7:57 | |
And I said yeah, I did. | 8:00 | |
(laughs) | 8:02 | |
- | Wow. | 8:03 |
- | Anyway, Friedan made me realize | 8:04 |
how widespread the feelings were. | 8:07 | |
When you begin to get that sense of solidarity | 8:11 | |
with other women, | 8:14 | |
of course that empowers you. | 8:15 | |
- | Yes. | 8:16 |
How did you become aware of feminist theology in particular? | 8:17 | |
- | Well, of course immediately, having lived on the Bible, | 8:22 |
I mean we read through the Bible. | 8:27 | |
When I was four I was reading out of the King James Version | 8:29 | |
out loud already, with the family. | 8:32 | |
So I had been through the King James Version | 8:35 | |
over and over again. | 8:37 | |
So everything I read I would immediately be comparing | 8:38 | |
to what I understood scripture to say. | 8:40 | |
And so immediately reading Friedan, | 8:44 | |
I began to think about a lot of things in scripture | 8:46 | |
from a different perspective. | 8:50 | |
I mean, already I was intuitively going | 8:52 | |
to what feminists have taught. | 8:54 | |
That you ask yourself who profits from this interpretation? | 8:56 | |
- | Right. | 9:00 |
- | You know, I never had asked myself that question, | 9:01 |
because it was just assumed | 9:03 | |
that white male supremacy was right | 9:05 | |
(laughs) | 9:09 | |
and the other interpretations were wrong. | 9:10 | |
It was very simple. | 9:13 | |
But when I began to have a whole range of options, | 9:14 | |
and the question was who's profiting from this, | 9:17 | |
everything begins to look very different. | 9:20 | |
- | Absolutely. | 9:24 |
Well if we could move to Re-Imagining. | 9:26 | |
This is great, Virginia. | 9:28 | |
I know that you were a presenter | 9:29 | |
at the '93 conference on church, | 9:31 | |
and I kinda sent you a synopsis of your talk. | 9:34 | |
I wonder if you have any thoughts | 9:36 | |
about your presentation then? | 9:38 | |
It's been a while. | 9:40 | |
- | Yeah, well, thanks for sending me that synopsis. | 9:42 |
- | Of course. | 9:48 |
- | What struck me about it was that it wasn't a topic, | 9:49 |
as you can tell by just comparing what I told you | 9:53 | |
about the Plymouth Brethren, | 9:56 | |
I had no interest in church organization. | 9:58 | |
That is, the way the Methodists differ from the Lutherans, | 10:02 | |
differ from the Presbyterians and so forth. | 10:06 | |
This was not my thing, you know? | 10:10 | |
Because I had never been involved in any of that, | 10:13 | |
although I was by then speaking in a lot of these churches | 10:17 | |
and conferences and so on. | 10:20 | |
But to be asked to speak | 10:22 | |
about re-imagining a church structure, | 10:23 | |
this was really a shock to me. | 10:26 | |
But that was part of what I think is valuable | 10:29 | |
about Re-Imagining. | 10:33 | |
That it brought together women from many angles. | 10:34 | |
They assigned people to speak, | 10:38 | |
and I was glad I'm not the only one | 10:41 | |
who got assigned to something | 10:42 | |
that in a sense forced me to look at things | 10:44 | |
from the angle I'd already been speaking from, | 10:48 | |
but I hadn't applied it to that particular topic. | 10:50 | |
So I was speaking all along | 10:55 | |
about the importance of inclusion of everybody | 10:58 | |
and particularly including LGBT people | 11:02 | |
because I was one (laughs) | 11:06 | |
and so I was forced to be concerned about that, | 11:08 | |
and I'd been speaking | 11:12 | |
about the right to reproductive freedom, | 11:14 | |
mutuality, my concern has always been tremendous | 11:20 | |
about mutuality in marriage and in other relationships. | 11:24 | |
And I was forced to take that and apply it to the church | 11:28 | |
and the church community. | 11:32 | |
So that was a good thing. | 11:35 | |
So I think we were all, in a way, | 11:38 | |
brought into closer connection with one another | 11:41 | |
by being asked in some cases to speak about things | 11:45 | |
we really hadn't thought about from that angle before, | 11:48 | |
you know? | 11:50 | |
- | Yes, yes. | 11:51 |
Do you have any, I know it's been a long time. | 11:52 | |
Do you have any memories from that conference at all? | 11:55 | |
- | Yeah, my chief memory was when all the lesbians | 11:58 |
were called to the platform. | 12:03 | |
- | Yes. | 12:05 |
- | And I remember so well | 12:06 |
walking by tables after tables of women, | 12:10 | |
many of whom had tears in their eyes. | 12:12 | |
And I'm sure part of it was grief | 12:16 | |
for the suffering that they knew we had gone through, | 12:19 | |
but I think some of it was the grief | 12:22 | |
that they couldn't come and join us, | 12:24 | |
that they wouldn't dare to get up there | 12:27 | |
and admit they were lesbian | 12:30 | |
because that would be it for them at their particular jobs. | 12:31 | |
But it was such a feeling to be called to the platform | 12:37 | |
in honor rather than in disgrace. | 12:40 | |
And to be there and look out, | 12:43 | |
and know that these women supported us and cared for us | 12:45 | |
and cried for us, and cried with us. | 12:49 | |
That was stupendous. | 12:53 | |
And the other thing is | 12:55 | |
being introduced to a widespread use, | 12:57 | |
it's not I hadn't heard of it, | 13:00 | |
but a widespread use of Sophia as the image for the Christ. | 13:01 | |
And that was a tremendous gift. | 13:08 | |
To hear it done rather than just argue that it can be done | 13:11 | |
because scripture allows it and scripture does it. | 13:16 | |
But to hear it done, that was another story entirely, | 13:19 | |
and just wonderful. | 13:23 | |
- | That's good to hear. | 13:26 |
That was the only conference you participated in, | 13:27 | |
is that right? | 13:30 | |
- | Yes, that's right. | |
Because I was teaching in a secular university, | 13:33 | |
and traveling a lot, and speaking a lot | 13:38 | |
in various Methodist women's conferences | 13:40 | |
and Mennonite youth conferences, | 13:43 | |
and Episcopal student conferences, and so forth. | 13:45 | |
You know, Quaker seminary. | 13:49 | |
And so I was around a lot, | 13:53 | |
but I wasn't anywhere near | 13:56 | |
where the Re-Imagining group continued to function. | 13:59 | |
- | Sure, sure. | 14:04 |
Well, you were doing important work! | 14:05 | |
Glad you were doing it. | 14:07 | |
- | They were doing important work too, | 14:10 |
and I was glad to know it. | 14:13 | |
I was very aware of the backlash, of course, | 14:15 | |
and very sorry and angry about it, | 14:18 | |
that people should lose their jobs | 14:21 | |
over something so honorable. | 14:24 | |
- | Yeah. | 14:30 |
It didn't affect you directly, I'm assuming. | 14:32 | |
- | As far as I'm concerned, | 14:33 |
the way I account for the backlash | 14:35 | |
is the patriarchy hates to give up power. | 14:36 | |
All it is was the sheer jealousy. | 14:39 | |
It's the same reason that gay marriage is so dangerous. | 14:43 | |
Because a gay marriage, | 14:49 | |
you have two people of the same gender coming together, | 14:51 | |
usually, occasionally it'll be different than that. | 14:54 | |
But they're coming together | 15:00 | |
assuming the equality of friendship. | 15:01 | |
They're not coming together | 15:05 | |
assuming that one of them is in control | 15:06 | |
and the other one submits. | 15:08 | |
And so that's very dangerous to patriarchal marriage | 15:10 | |
as it's been understood for centuries. | 15:12 | |
I know why the patriarchs are not comfortable with it. | 15:15 | |
(laughs) | 15:19 | |
And it looks like here it goes, you know. | 15:21 | |
And it will undercut, and it's already undercutting | 15:22 | |
the idea of... | 15:27 | |
a hierarchy in marriage. | 15:30 | |
- | So how would you define re-imagining? | 15:34 |
- | I understood it as | 15:42 |
we're coming at the whole thing with new eyes. | 15:43 | |
So we're re-envisioning our interpretations. | 15:46 | |
And we're re-envisioning the way we get along | 15:49 | |
with one another, | 15:53 | |
the way we function together as a community. | 15:55 | |
We're looking at it all, | 15:59 | |
as I said in one article I wrote, | 16:01 | |
we're looking at it all from low and inside, you know. | 16:02 | |
That's a baseball term. | 16:05 | |
I don't know whether you're a baseball fan. | 16:07 | |
- | I'm not. | 16:08 |
You're gonna have to tell me, Virginia! | 16:09 | |
- | When the pitcher pitches the ball, | 16:12 |
and it's just a little lower than the strike zone, | 16:14 | |
and a little bit inside, so it cramps the batter | 16:17 | |
so he can't get a good swing, you know? | 16:20 | |
And that's how we started to read the Bible, | 16:23 | |
from low and inside, as far as the... | 16:27 | |
Our position in the church was low, | 16:29 | |
and yet we were inside, you know? | 16:32 | |
(Interviewer laughs) | 16:34 | |
And we could see things very differently. | 16:36 | |
And it was a bad shakeup for the patriarchs | 16:38 | |
who had always felt like their interpretation | 16:42 | |
was the only one. | 16:45 | |
Now of course what we've had to find out, | 16:47 | |
what white women have had to find out, | 16:48 | |
is that our interpretation isn't the only one either. | 16:50 | |
Black womanists have a lot to teach us, | 16:53 | |
and Hispanic womanists have a lot to teach us, | 16:57 | |
and so on. | 17:01 | |
So we too have had to learn | 17:02 | |
who profits from this interpretation. | 17:04 | |
Watch out that it's not us, | 17:07 | |
and not some of our sisters that we're stepping on. | 17:09 | |
- | Exactly. | 17:14 |
I think you might have already said this, | 17:15 | |
but what aspects of Re-Imagining | 17:17 | |
were most significant to you? | 17:19 | |
- | Well it was the Sophia thing | 17:23 |
and the recognition of lesbians as part of the community. | 17:25 | |
Those were the two things. | 17:30 | |
But I also loved having people able to draw artwork | 17:32 | |
even while they were listening. | 17:37 | |
Those were some very creative things to do, you know? | 17:40 | |
To allow everybody to use whatever gift they had | 17:46 | |
in whatever way they had. | 17:48 | |
So that was good. | 17:52 | |
- | Did it affect at all | 17:53 |
your perspective on feminist theology or the church? | 17:55 | |
Well, it strengthened what I already knew. | 18:00 | |
I knew the church was not gonna like | 18:04 | |
when women began to think for ourselves | 18:06 | |
and speak for ourselves. | 18:09 | |
And so the backlash just says, | 18:12 | |
yeah you were right about that, weren't you? | 18:15 | |
(laughs) | 18:17 | |
And that women were bright and smart | 18:21 | |
and capable of reading well, | 18:23 | |
and supporting one another. | 18:24 | |
What I hoped, | 18:28 | |
well one of the things I think happened was... | 18:29 | |
men have known all along to praise one another. | 18:31 | |
You know, just listen to... | 18:36 | |
a baseball player, a basketball player, | 18:41 | |
talking about his team. | 18:43 | |
He's always gonna praise his team. | 18:44 | |
You're never gonna brag on just himself. | 18:46 | |
He'll always praise the others. | 18:51 | |
Otherwise he would be very quickly in trouble. | 18:53 | |
And I think that getting together like we did | 18:57 | |
at Re-Imagining | 19:02 | |
began that process of standing together as sisters. | 19:04 | |
Praising one another's work, lifting up one another's work. | 19:09 | |
I think we could still do a better job of it, | 19:14 | |
but I think we've done much a better job since Re-Imagining. | 19:16 | |
- | Yeah, yeah. | 19:20 |
What do you think re-imagining means today, Virginia? | 19:23 | |
- | It continues to mean | 19:28 |
that we have to be open to new ideas constantly. | 19:29 | |
There's always more light to bring forth, you know? | 19:37 | |
We can't afford to say, | 19:40 | |
no we've already imagined it all the way it is, | 19:42 | |
and there's no opening in our vision for anything new. | 19:46 | |
- | Where do you think it's happening today? | 19:53 |
- | What do you mean happening today? | 19:58 |
Politically? | 19:59 | |
- | Or, well, honestly one thing that comes to mind | 20:00 |
is the Christian feminists today that I just learned about | 20:04 | |
from reading Jann Aldredge-Clanton's book. | 20:08 | |
I mean, do you feel like there are movements or places | 20:10 | |
where the re-imagining... | 20:12 | |
- | That's my basic group. | 20:14 |
I was part of the founding of that. | 20:18 | |
I've been one of the major speakers | 20:21 | |
at almost every single conference that they've held | 20:22 | |
except that I had to stop now. | 20:27 | |
I guess I put an end to it in about 2012, 2013. | 20:30 | |
Because I'm so crippled with arthritis. | 20:35 | |
I have to use a wheelchair. | 20:39 | |
It's very difficult to take, | 20:41 | |
I can't take the automated wheelchair with me. | 20:43 | |
So it was just too much, | 20:46 | |
and I decided, well that's that, you know? | 20:48 | |
I still do a lot of writing on the web site, | 20:50 | |
do a lot of book reviewing and articles on their web site. | 20:53 | |
We're very happy to have Jann, | 20:59 | |
but she's only been with us a couple years. | 21:00 | |
She's doing wonderful work, | 21:02 | |
but we've been doing that work for years already. | 21:04 | |
It's a great organization, | 21:08 | |
and I would like to see even more interlinkage | 21:10 | |
with re-imagining, interlinking with all such organizations. | 21:14 | |
There's a split off from Evangelical Women's Caucus, | 21:20 | |
which is now Christian Feminism Today. | 21:23 | |
And they believe in male-female equality, | 21:26 | |
but no homosexual women or men. | 21:31 | |
So it's like Women and Men Together, see, | 21:34 | |
so you get the picture. | 21:36 | |
Don't come here if you don't have a man in your life, | 21:38 | |
if you're a woman, you know? | 21:40 | |
But even then, you know, | 21:44 | |
they're doing work too that's important. | 21:45 | |
And to the degree | 21:47 | |
that they're getting male-female equality right, | 21:48 | |
we're supportive of them as Christian feminists today. | 21:51 | |
But the big difference is that Christian feminists today | 21:58 | |
work with and honor the lesbians among us. | 22:02 | |
- | I'm sorry, what was the name of the group | 22:05 |
that doesn't honor lesbians? | 22:07 | |
- | Well, one of the things they call themselves | 22:10 |
is Women and Men together. | 22:14 | |
That's not the official name, | 22:16 | |
and I'm not exactly sure of it, | 22:18 | |
but check into it. | 22:20 | |
- | I will. | 22:21 |
- | It's bigger than Christian Feminism Today. | 22:23 |
- | Oh, is it? | 22:24 |
- | Yeah. | 22:25 |
Jann Aldredge-Clanton could tell you exactly. | 22:30 | |
- | Good, good. | 22:34 |
- | My memory is not what it used to be. | 22:36 |
There are also even more organizations | 22:39 | |
that try to say they're feminist, | 22:45 | |
but they're really into complementarity. | 22:46 | |
And that's just another name for... | 22:50 | |
a less threatening name for patriarchy. | 22:54 | |
And then there's a whole movement of Christian patriarchy, | 22:57 | |
they're proud of it! | 23:00 | |
They get thousands of women to turn out | 23:02 | |
to be told how subordinate they are. | 23:04 | |
I don't understand it, what's with women? | 23:06 | |
Those conferences have been extremely popular. | 23:11 | |
And no backlash (laughs) | 23:14 | |
No backlash to that! | 23:17 | |
Nobody lost their job | 23:18 | |
over telling women that they're subordinate to men, so. | 23:19 | |
That's amazing to me. | 23:23 | |
- | Well, I did want one last question | 23:26 |
and then I want to hear | 23:28 | |
if there's anything else you want to bring up, | 23:29 | |
but we are starting a web site, | 23:32 | |
and I am in conversation with Christian Feminism Today | 23:33 | |
to kind of work together, to get our organizations together. | 23:37 | |
But I'm wondering if you have any ideas | 23:40 | |
about other organizations, or who would benefit from it, | 23:42 | |
or what we should include. | 23:46 | |
Any ideas you have would be really appreciated. | 23:47 | |
- | Well, I can think about that. | 23:54 |
What springs to mind is the feminist organizations | 24:00 | |
within various church structures. | 24:05 | |
I would assume that you're aware of Methodist Women | 24:09 | |
and so on. | 24:12 | |
- | Right, that's a very good idea, yes. | 24:13 |
- | Any of that, the women's organizations | 24:16 |
within denominational organizations. | 24:20 | |
And also the LGBT ones, | 24:25 | |
because to the degree that they have knowledgeable lesbians | 24:26 | |
they're gonna be feminist. | 24:31 | |
So you wanna work with them. | 24:35 | |
Bring them forward as much as possible. | 24:39 | |
- | Absolutely. | 24:41 |
- | And above all, | 24:44 |
check into the Black and Hispanic organizations. | 24:47 | |
Give them voice and leadership. | 24:53 | |
- | Absolutely. | 24:58 |
Is there anything that we haven't discussed | 25:01 | |
that you would like to add, Virginia? | 25:03 | |
- | Well, just my feeling | 25:09 |
that the function for the re-imagining community ongoing | 25:11 | |
is to continue to coordinate efforts | 25:15 | |
that would otherwise be separate. | 25:17 | |
Cuz you know, you got everybody working, | 25:20 | |
and all this energy going in separate denominations | 25:23 | |
and separate organizations, | 25:27 | |
and it's a shame that this doesn't get coordinated | 25:32 | |
because there's so much more bang for your buck | 25:35 | |
if you put it together and work in a coordinated way. | 25:38 | |
The more emphasis is placed on coordination | 25:42 | |
and intercommunication and mutual support of this, | 25:45 | |
the better. | 25:48 | |
- | That is wonderful. | 25:49 |
Absolutely. | 25:51 | |
And that is kind of our vision. | 25:52 | |
Both preserving our history, and coordinating. | 25:54 | |
That's great. | 25:56 | |
I'm gonna turn off the recording then, | 25:58 | |
if that's okay with you. | 26:01 | |
- | Sure, sure. | 26:02 |
Item Info
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