Barbara Harris, Bishop: Silver Anniversary and Ecumenical Reflection

The following essay appeared in the March 10, 1989 issue of the Catholic lay-edited magazine Commonweal under the title "When the Spirit Leads: Barbara Harris, Bishop." The editors cut out the last sentence without consulting me. They made a few less drastic changes which I note below the text of the essay. This text, with some minor copyediting, is my original version.

Barbara Harris was consecrated bishop on February 11, 1989 and served as Bishop Suffragan of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts (1989-2003). She served as Assisting Bishop in the Diocese of Washington (2003-2007). Happily, she is back among us in Massachusetts. We will celebrate the 25th anniversary of her consecration this Sunday, February 16, 2014, with a Gospel Vesper Service.

[February, 1989]

A day or two before the consecration of Barbara Clementine Harris as Suffragan Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, Cardinal Bernard Law and Greek Orthodox Bishop Methodios issue written statements of welcome. The statements are cordial. They also speak of the danger Harris’s consecration presents for reconciliation among Christian churches, or what has become commonly known as “Christian unity.”

At the consecration, the gospel music of St. Paul’s African Methodist Episcopal Church choir alternates with the delicate melodies of the Chinese Congregation and classical European harmonies of Trinity Church choir. The stately cadence of the Book of Common Prayer moves us forward, but in the musical realm there is a preferential option in the air: clearly, the day belongs less to Mozart and more to the music of the Black church. The celebration flows. This is no Tower of Babel: we each hear God speaking in our own tongue.

As Barbara Harris walks down the center aisle, a tiny woman whose voice and presence can fill a cathedral, over 8,000 people burst into applause. (“Not very characteristic of the Episcopal Church,” says one member of the congregation, Mary Shannon.) Throngs of priests, row upon row of beaming women and men, process down the side aisles of Boston’s Hynes Auditorium. Barbara Clementine Harris, a woman and a priest of African descent, is consecrated a bishop by the laying on of hands, according to the tradition of the apostles, by 55 men, most of them white. All through the celebration, the bishops have been purposeful, solemn, and excited, with the calm certainty that God, through them, is doing a good thing.

In describing the celebration, those who were there speak of unity. Mary Shannon repeatedly uses the term “body” to speak of the church and of her experience of this day –“finally being part of the body...” “... all of us together in one body.” She is wearing a locket with a picture of her 80-year-old mother, a member of St. Andrew’s Parish in Seattle, who “still carries her white gloves with her in church yet has rolled with the changes.” She speaks in the plural: her mother, her daughters, her husband, her women friends, all rush into the conversation. “I cried,” she says. “I just felt so happy for all of us.”

Modene Dawson of Philadelphia speaks of another unity. For her, and for many African-Americans in the assembly, the significance of the event extends beyond the church. “It’s beautiful for the country,” she says. “It shows racial harmony.” The church which conducts this celebration is not apart from the world; it is the body which proclaims to the world that God is alive in history.

Paul Matthews Washington, in his sermon, speaks about God and history. Harris’s friend and mentor, he is Rector Emeritus of the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia, which feeds, clothes, and sanctifies the poorest of the city. In this church was held the first ordination of Episcopal women to the priesthood, in the summer of 1974, less than 15 years ago. Harris, a member of the church, led the procession, carrying the cross.

“We cannot,” says Washington, “overlook the fact that this woman being consecrated today is not just an American woman. She is a Black woman... This is a woman... who has had to struggle; she’s been despised, she’s been rejected... God has lifted up one who was at the bottom of society and has exalted her to be one of His chief pastors.”

Washington speaks of Harriet Tubman, who “nineteen times went back into the land of bondage,” thanking God for her freedom by helping to free others. He speaks of Mary, the mother of Jesus, who was raised from her lowly estate and sang of God’s power to raise up the humble and put down the mighty from their thrones: “Mary,” he says after quoting the Magnificat, “was an oppressed woman. That’s how Holy Mary Mother of God felt!” He weeps as he recalls the slavery and oppression of Black people in this country. “Only in understanding the past can we fully appreciate God’s action in this event,” he says.

The Episcopal Church, a church of power and privilege, has chosen “a have-not,” says Washington, but also one who “burns when others are offended,” a “disturbing prophet.” Harris has for years –in her public relations and policy work in the corporate world, in her parish, in her work with the Episcopal Church Publishing Company, in her pastoral ministry—advocated racial and economic justice, taken up the cause of women, spoken out against homophobia; she has, says Washington, devoted enough time to prison chaplaincy “to serve a two-year sentence herself.”

The Right Reverend Barbara Harris, newly robed in bright vestments with Ashanti designs and symbols, presides at her first Eucharist as bishop. Among the concelebrants are Carter Heyward, one of the “Philadelphia Eleven” ordained at the Church of the Advocate, and Florence Tim-Oi Li, the first woman ordained a priest in the Anglican Communion, in Hong Kong, one generation ago. At the distribution, Harris slips over to the far side of the auditorium and gives communion to the people in the hearing-impaired section, who have been singing with their hands for three hours.

A bishop is, among other things, a maker of unity. Barbara Harris has already begun to make unity; but not in the ways in which unity was previously understood or structured. Her brother bishops, Law and Methodios, fear for the health and welfare of Christian unity. But where are the real rifts in our lives today? Are they doctrinal? Where is the real, urgent need for unity? And when we say “unity,” what do we mean? Whose unity, which unity, and at what cost?

The deeper chasm today is not between Protestants and Catholics, or Greek Orthodox and Episcopalians. It is, much more, between haves and have-nots, between Blacks and whites, between men and women, between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. These are the wounds in need of healing, in church and in society. As for denominationalism, it is no longer the principal intrachurch split. Far deeper is the gap within each of our faith communities between fundamentalists and non-fundamentalists.

Early in the service, the Presiding Bishop, Edmond L. Browning, asks if anyone knows of any reason why the consecration ought not to proceed. Two men come to the microphone. The first calls the consecration “a sacrilegious imposture,” the second “an impediment to the realization of the visible unity of the Church for which Christ prayed.” There will be a problem, they argue, with the value of any sacrament celebrated by Harris.

Bernardine Hayes, a computer systems analyst, self-described “dormant Catholic,” and veteran civil rights and peace activist (she is currently Vice President of WAND, Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament), had never before today “seen a woman offer the sacraments. She is so clearly affiliated with the poor,” Hayes adds. “She strikes me as a true minister.” Hayes feels something stir within her during the liturgy –“the realization that the piece of my life which is missing is the spiritual piece.”

This was, she says, "like a Pentecost."

Whose unity?

The intervention of the dissenters highlights the lack of unanimity in the church about the consecration (although Browning is quick to point out, at the post-consecration press conference, that the overwhelming majority of Episcopalians support it). But it is, in its way, a step on the road to greater unity. Perhaps the two men will change their minds; perhaps never. What is hopeful and healthy and makes a body strong is that their pain was not swept under the rug. However token, this part of the ceremony honors difference: and the unity of the Episcopal Church around this celebration –the unity behind the liturgy— is not the easy unity of unreflecting liberals. It has been hard won, tempered by prayer and struggle, and forged through the participatory process of decision-making in the Episcopal Church, a community that gave us two-thirds of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Elizabeth Pearson Rice-Smith, a United Church of Christ minister who witnessed both the ordination of the “Philadelphia Eleven” and Barbara Harris’s consecration, believes that “if our vision of church unity embraces diversity in God’s ministries and the human experience of faith, there is much less need to split off. I think,” she adds, “that women are willing to say things about the messy stuff that don’t condemn or blame or banish. We want to create spirited change that doesn’t mean war, that doesn’t mean people don’t talk to each other, that doesn’t mean annihilation.”

Which unity, and at what cost?

Christians do still need to speak with one another about Eucharist and ministry, about theological thought and ecclesial practice. But the context of this discussion has changed, and so have the discussion questions themselves. Unable and unwilling to hide her particularity, unlikely to temper her prophetic stance, Barbara Harris –not in spite of this but because of this—is a maker, not a breaker, of unity.

(c) Jane Redmont 1989

A few other changes – skip this if you don’t care about the minutiae: The editors also lower-cased “Black,” which I had in upper case, and made a spelling change that eliminated my metaphor “singing with their hands.” They changed it to “signing with their hands.” Of course the congregation members in question were signing –but adding “with their hands” would in that case have been unnecessary. The celebration was full of song, and part of the beauty of it was that people sang with both voice and hands. I was seated in the section next to the one using American Sign Language. The editors also deleted the paragraph with Rice-Smith’s quote.

I was still a Roman Catholic at the time I wrote this essay.

 A decade later, in 1999, a few years after I moved to California, I was invited to be on the panel of speakers at the 10th anniversary celebration of Bishop Harris’s consecration. The invitation came from the Rev. Canon Edward Rodman, with whom I had often been on the television show “In Good Faith” on WCVB-Channel 5 (then the ABC affiliate in Boston). I served as the Roman Catholic voice on the panel and offered some insights from a Catholic feminist perspective.

A few years later –12 years ago last month— I was received into the Episcopal Church. The discernment leading to this reception –and the lengthy process toward ordination to the priesthood, a vocation dating back to the 1970s– are another story for another time and place.

 

Thanks be to God for Bishop Barbara!

More on inclusive language and public prayer

Re: the post below and its many comments (read it and them first), it turns out I had posted a little piece of the Jaci Maraschin essay a little over a year ago.

You can read that post here.

For another Brazilian perspective, from Silvia Regina de Lima Silva, posted around the same time, see here. (Tracie, this may speak to you, though Silvia doesn't use "Goddess." But she is a radical woman after your own heart, and full of passion and fire.) It is important to listen to this voice from a Black woman of the Southern Hemisphere.

For the struggle to come to words we barely know are within us, especially if we are women, see here. (Nelle Morton's classic essay on "Hearing to Speech.")

One among many examples of the beautiful Anglican, inclusive prayers by Janet Morley of England.

I've got a chapter on language in When in Doubt, Sing: Prayer in Daily Life, as I mentioned in the Comments section of the post below. Thought I had posted part of it once to this blog, but perhaps not. It's not showing up in two searches I just did in the archives. I'll look again later. Some of you have the book, anyway. (The rest of you should buy it ;-) - just sayin'. And thank you.)

Lots more on language, prayer, and gender in the church in the archives of Acts of Hope.

For instance, Julian of Norwich (14th century) on the Trinity. Today some of us would find the language less than satisfying but in the context of the 14th century, it's marvelous. So, as many pointed out when our Presiding Bishop began to use mothering language for Jesus and some got their knickers in a knot about it, this is not exactly a newfangled idea. Even earlier in Christian history, there were maternal images for Godde. There are also such images in the Hebrew Bible, though the patriarchal images dominate.

I thank you all for your courtesy and honesty in this conversation. Let it continue, and do share resources with us.

Speaking of the Daily Office: the St. Helena Breviary - and some musings on inclusive language in liturgy

I want one of these (the full monastic edition) in the worst way. I think that part of what keeps me from praying the Daily Office when I don't pray it is the language.

Interestingly, sexist language bothered me less when I went to pray with the monks in Berkeley (they've now closed their Priory and merged with the two other houses in the U.S.), the brothers of the Order of the Holy Cross, Anglican Benedictines. Perhaps because of the chant, perhaps because there isn't much macho-ness or hierarchy there. I miss those times of going up the street for Vespers.

In Berkeley, I worshipped at a congregation that had done a thorough revision of the liturgy, under the careful shepherding of a liturgical scholar who is also a priest and a feminist, and it was the first time I didn't have what I call "the cringe reflex," both because there were women clergy (and men clergy too) and because of the language. Female clergy alone won't do it, friends. What words do we use to talk about God and about each other?

It really is possible to name God and to preserve the Holy Trinity without being male-dominant. It takes work and mindfulness. I am always amazed that the conversation about inclusive language, which began when I was in divinity school 35 years ago and which we took to congregations and judicatories of many denominations and communions, is still in its infancy in some parts of our church -- and invisible in others. It's as if our conversations of the 1970s (and 1980s, and 1990s), with some serious thoughtful work and plenty of theology and poetic compositions by now) had never happened.

This is true in other communions, but I wonder if in the Episcopal Church it has to do with a certain literalism of the Prayer Book and the way we use the book. Is the Prayer Book a springboard or a stranglehold? Discuss.

The New Zealand Prayer Book is beautiful and many of us use it. But we are mostly not authorized to use it in public worship, e.g. for the Eucharist. And it is inculturated for Aotearoa New Zealand, not for the U.S. The issue isn't only language that is gender-inclusive (or, as some in the Episcopal Church formal commissions and publications name it, expansive language) but also language that includes images of nature and creation and that is rooted in the life of our local church, in the country or rather countries of the Episcopal Church.

In any event, as soon as I have a bit of disposable income I am going to invest in a St. Helena Breviary and Psalter.

Note: The great irony is that there is sometimes more linguistic change going on in Roman Catholic churches than in Episcopal churches, because parish priests sometimes just go ahead and change the language. Because hierarchy in the Episcopal Church is in some ways more functional than it is in the Roman Catholic Church, it has more of an influence on whether or not folks change language at the local level. I have seen far more Episcopal churches not change the language "because the bishop won't allow it" than Catholic churches; the Catholic churches just go ahead and do it. The bad side of this being that often it's spontaneous and less studied and thoughtful, with a few exceptions. In the Episcopal Church, when the language changes, it's often after a lot of work. (Note: when we changed the language in Berkeley after all the scholarly and pastoral study, it was with the bishop's permission and blessing.) But does this also hold us back?
Yes, we have Enriching Our Worship. But if it's not in regular use at Sunday Eucharist and other public prayer of the church, what use it is?

You want to start a firestorm in the church? Never mind the discussion on lgbt people (well, do mind it) - try changing the language.

And these discussions are not unrelated. They all upset people's cosmologies -- the way they view the order of the universe and who decided and decides what it should be. (Certain blog sites that will remain nameless, in fact, are as upset about language as they are about gay bishops.)

Also, remember, the Daily Office isn't everyone's way of praying. Just a reminder brought to you by When in Doubt, Sing. ;-)

Photo: Sr. Cintra Pemberton, OSH, with the Breviary.

A note on the reactions to the death of John Updike (R.I.P.)

This isn't really about John Updike, may he rest in peace, but about the descriptions of John Updike on the radio.

I found myself yelling at the radio this morning. Yes, me, yelling at my blessed NPR shows in the car on the short drive to work.

Updike was a great writer, no doubt about it, and an art critic and thinker and many other things. So this isn't a dissing of Updike.

What is getting to me is how everyone is speaking of him as a writer about (the United States of) America, American post-war life, the American middle.

Excuse me?!

Updike wrote about white American post-war life.

Of course, he wrote about other things too. I have had his novel about a fictional African country, The Coup, on my shelf for years and have been meaning to read it, and I will read it in memory of him. Updike was, as one critic said, kaleidoscopic.

But Rabbit is not (the U.S. of) America.

Is Rabbit a part of it? Of course. A significant part of it? Of course. The whole story? No. "Representative" (of the whole story)? No.

We are so (as the kids would say) not out of the era of white privilege.

If we're going to name the fact that people are chroniclers of Jewish life or Black life in these United States, then let's name the fact that people are chroniclers of White or White Protestant life in the United States. (Or, for that matter, of the U.S. white middle class, or of middle-class Northern men.)

Either that or I want the obits for Toni Morrison (long may she live and continue to write) to say as much as the obits for Updike that she wrote the Great American Novel.

'Cause if you think that slavery and its aftermath or love and work in Harlem or the U.S. South have not been as American as apple pie and as the life of suburban white businessmen, you are still thinking of white America as normative --as the rule, the standard, the "normal"-- and the rest of these United States as the exception or the other.

White privilege is not just present in what we do or in what happens to us, but in how we think and how we speak. *

Think about it.

*See, for instance, re: the American novel, item 7 in the list on the document at the "white privilege" link above.

Spirit, Structure, and Flesh: my friend Deidre Crumbley's new book

I am just back from the book party for my friend Deidre's new book, held at St. Ambrose, Raleigh, a historically African American Episcopal church. The publisher (a university press) priced the book high and it's a hardback, but I am happy to say that Deidre's friends showed up and bought a lot of books -- and the founder of the church's Jazz Mass Quartet came and played the saxophone! There was food, particularly some excellent spinach balls. And a big cake saying "Congratulations." Here's a reproduction of the book cover.


It's a fascinating book and Dr. Crumbley (that's Deidre) has worked on it for something like 20 years. Four years of field work in Nigeria, countless rewrites, and the search for a publisher, plus illness and search for funding and all manner of obstacles. I gather there was also a cat involved at some point. Of course.

Rejoice with Deidre in her great achievement!

By the way, there are now members of African Initiated Churches, including the Aladura churches in this book, here in the U.S. -- including here in North Carolina. As Deidre noted in her short talk at the party, the African Diaspora did not end with slavery; indeed, our President-Elect is a child of this diaspora. So the African Initiated Churches, which began in the 20th century as indigenous African forms of Christianity, have migrated to other continents and are undergoing changes there.

More on the book on the publisher's website here. The full name of the book is Spirit, Structure, And Flesh: Gendered Experiences in African Instituted Churches among the Yoruba of Nigeria.

No more Opus :-(

Click to enlarge.

Salon has an interview with Berkeley Breathed, creator of Opus the Penguin and his band of friends, on why he's ending his strip. It has something to do with the quality (if you can call it that) of our national discourse.

Sarah Palin, politics, the Episcopal Church, and the culture wars

I am having some thoughts about the connections among the above and at some point will write them down. I am more and more struck by what is best called a culture (or subculture) gap and some would call the culture wars and by the way it plays out both in the Episcopal Church and U.S. politics, in some of the same ways. Hearing Sarah Palin (bits - I was at work all evening yesterday till very late but listened to radio later and this a.m.) also reminded me, as does the larger religious and political scene, of a very helpful book that came out two decades ago, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhoodby Kristin Luker. It is as much about the cultures behind and around the abortion divide as about the divide and the subject itself. (The reviews on Amazon.com don't really note that.)

More when I can on this topic. Stay vigilant.

Violence against women: they did talk about it at Lambeth

Jim Naughton has a detailed and powerful report on the Lambeth conversations on domestic violence. It is one of his most thorough reports from Lambeth and I hope many people read it.

I had written my June (published early July) essay for the Episcopal Café on women as global church with attention to the issue of violence against women, which has surfaced worldwide in women's ecumenical conversations as one of the main issues for women in churches. Clearly the Lambeth planners have listened to the voices of women in the global church and to World Council of Churches project participants and local advocacy groups around the world. Kudos to them, and a ray of hope for women in families everywhere.

When was the last time you or your congregation addressed the reality of domestic violence?

Are there resource cards on domestic violence (with hotline and agency phone numbers) in your church or synagogue rest rooms?

When was the last time you heard or preached a sermon that mentioned domestic violence?

It's everywhere, you know. Yes, in nice middle-class families too.

You heard it here first: Mark Jordan hired at Harvard

This news just in from a friend at Harvard Divinity School.

"The Mother-Daughter Wars" (on Alice and Rebecca Walker)

Salon has a poignant, thoughtful, sharp commentary by Phyllis Chesler on the very public mother-daughter tensions between the writers Rebecca Walker and Alice Walker, who are daughter and mother.

You should be able to get into Salon with no trouble. (If you get a message asking you about Salon Premium membership, just ignore it and click on. Look toward the top right of the page if you can't find a place to click forward.)

The essay is here.

P.S. PJ makes a very good point in the Comments about a point I had managed to overlook -so much for mindfulness in the summer- so the piece isn't perfect (far from -- "emphasizing abortion"?) but I do think the major point about mothers and daughters and about the public nature of the discussion was spot on. More comments and criticism welcome! Thanks, PJ.

Sensible advice: "No grave-dancing, please."

And please, no misogynist comments. Even those of us who have not been supporting Senator Clinton's candidacy have come to her defense when faced with the misogyny and sexism in the media, among political activists and commentators, and in casual conversation. She's not the Wicked Witch of the West. She's a politician.

Not that we have any illusions about politicians. But that is a different matter.

For the rest, I refer you to the eminently sensible FranIAm, who reminds us of the need for decency and decorum. (Sure you're not an Anglican, Fran? Oh wait, we Anglicans haven't been very decorous of late.)

Acts of Hope seems to be posting a lot about politics these days. If you want a break from that, see the post on Blandina and her martyr companions below. Which is not to say that martyrdom at the hand of empires isn't political...

Feline photos coming soon. Maya Pavlova, the publicity hound (yes, she approved the interspecies terminology) has been complaining that you haven't seen her gorgeous face in a while.

An addendum:

Two worth-the-read op-eds, from mainstream media, no less:

1. How Obama Won and Clinton Lost (Matthew Dowd, ABC TV)

2. What Obama and Clinton Underestimate (Mark Halperin, Time magazine)

Bayard Rustin and Reading Days

We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers. -Bayard Rustin.

We are entering Reading Days, which come before Finals, except that I don't believe in giving final exams for religious studies courses. I require a final research paper (on which the students have been working for weeks, in stages) and after that's all done, a final reflection paper so people can think about their learning experience of the past few months.

These are Reading Days for me too, and for others on the faculty, since I have to read all those student papers, plus the three last senior theses which the little darlings are "defending" tomorrow afternoon.

But tonight and tomorrow night I have final meetings of my evening classes* and in addition to handing out evaluations (required here in U.S. colleges and universities so students can --anonymously-- evaluate the course and the instructor, and yes, it counts toward tenure) and having a short discussion of one piece of reading, I am showing a movie.

* really class, this semester I had two sections of the same course, first time that has ever happened, so I teach the same course twice -- and the dynamics couldn't be more different, but more on that some other time.

I had scheduled the movie for a few weeks ago when it fit into the syllabus sequence, but someone (a faculty member whose name I am not allowed to know) did not return the DVD to the library. I had reserved it three months ago, too, AND my teaching assistant had contacted the library to remind them ten days before the class. Long story short, the library rush-0rdered a new copy of the DVD and it arrived before the end of term, hallelujah thank you Jesus, so I am showing "Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin" and if you have not seen it, you must must must.

Don't know who Bayard Rustin was? Have a look here.

Remember the March on Washington? The 1963 one with MLK, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech? Rustin organized it. The whole thing.

He has many other claims to fame, too. A remarkable man in the 20th century.

He was, by the way, an out gay man in a fiercely homophobic era. Which is part of why we don't read about him in the history books.

Bayard Rustin, ¡Presente!

People in the military: an update

Thanks very much to PJ, without whom I would have forgotten that the "Winter Soldier" conference is going on right now in Washington, DC. I read about it a while back and in the last couple of weeks it went clear out of my mind.

The conference features testimony from U.S. veterans who served in the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, giving an accurate account of what is happening on the ground, with video and photographic evidence.

The conference also includes panels of scholars, veterans, journalists, and other specialists to give context to the testimony. These panels will cover everything from the history of the GI resistance movement to the fight for veterans' health benefits and support. Spread the word, please, and go to the conference Web page for information on conference. PJ also has a link to a video of conference testimony on her blog.

As for our men and women in the military, they also endure sexual harassment, especially the women. A new Pentagon survey reports that one-third of the women in the military suffer sexual harassment, as do six percent of the men.


P.S. (a few days later) FranIAm has had a fine post up during this time, "Long for Peace, Work for Peace, Live for Peace, Be Peace," which has touched the hearts and minds of many, as witness the many comments in response to it. Thank you, Fran. I was grateful for the reminder of the words of the Talmud:

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief.

Do justly, now.

Love mercy, now.

Walk humbly, now.

You are not obligated to complete the work,

but neither are you free to abandon it.

Laughter and justice

Some friends and I just went to a hilarious and moving one-woman show by Jennifer Lanier this evening. I almost didn't go, but it was well worth it and everyone needs a good laugh.

I recommend Jennifer Lanier to you. Note that she does shows for schools (high schools, colleges, et al.). The show we saw is called "None of the Above." The title makes sense as soon as you learn that Ms. Lanier is part African American, part American Indian and a little bit of White Euro-American and that she is a lesbian who tried for seven years to be both heterosexual and "feminine" -- and is much, much happier and saner now.

One of the evening's sponsors was the local organization GSAFE, which stands for Gay Straight Advocates for Education. Their mission statement is here. (With passive verb forms, oy, but the mission is a worthy one.)

There were also people there from Equality North Carolina with information on the School Violence Prevention Act, which "would require schools to adopt strong policies against bullying and harassment, including bullying based on sexual orientation and gender identity or expression."

Another sponsor was the Johnnetta B. Cole Global Diversity and Inclusion Institute. Dr. Cole (an Oberlin alumna, yay!) is president emerita of Bennett College for Women, a historically African American institution in Greensboro. (She was president of Spelman College before that.)

The evening was also sponsored by New Garden Friends School, the Quaker private school down the road from Guilford College (yes, they have common origins), and by Greensboro College, where the performance took place.

First a sermon on Scarlett, now a trip to Atlanta

We are being SO Southern.

One of my students and I are off to a conference tomorrow (an annual gig for professors and scholars of religious studies in the region, i.e. the U.S. Southeast, and a regional unit of the big huge conference I go to in November) to learn various things and make a presentation.

The presentation is a workshop of the AAR/SBL Consultation on Teaching Feminism/Womanism and it is called "Religion, Ecofeminism, and Environmental Justice: A Pedagogical Workshop on Engaged Learning & Community Commitments." (I know, very crunchy-granola plus liberation-theology. Yes, I do teach History of Christianity, but that is another course -- which is not easy and has acquired the street name of "the Organic Chemistry of the Religious Studies Department" according to one of my colleagues, though it does have its own grooviness.)

Undergraduates do not usually present at these conferences or even attend them, but it seemed like a bad idea to have a pedagogy workshop on a particular course without the perspective of a student who actually took the course. The same student was my teaching assistant the following year for an introductory-level offshoot of this course called "Health, Spirituality, and Justice." (Another interdisciplinary crunchy-granola course. One a year, whether I need it or not. ;-)) This is also a more feminist way of doing things. And we're driving, not flying. (I don't know how pedagogical that is, it's more like girlz gotta go on road trips.)

I will be making a blog after the conference which will have resources related to this course and to the workshop. Stay tuned.

The other workshop of the AAR/SBL Consultation on Teaching Feminism/Womanism will be by A. Nevell Owens on the topic "Can A Man Teach Women Anything About Women in Religion?: A Pedagogical Workshop on Men in the Feminist Classroom."

Also, Dr. Musa Dube, who was here in the Triangle and Triad regions of North Carolina this week, will be the keynote speaker at the conference, which covers a range of topics but has a focus this year on religion and health.

Her talk is entitled "Go tla Siama, O tla Fola: Doing Biblical Studies in an HIV & AIDS Context" and it will take place at 11 a.m. on Saturday. If you are in Atlanta, write me if you want details, I think we may be able to make arrangements for non-members to come and hear this one. Leave a note in the comments section or write to me at missmayapavlova at gmail dot com.

When I return after the weekend it will be Spring Break, GLORY BE TO GODDE!

Botswana, Bible, women, HIV/AIDS: Musa Dube Wednesday!

North Carolina and Southern Virginia folks:

We are very fortunate to have with us this week
Dr. Musa Dube, scholar and activist from Botswana

Wednesday, March 5

at Guilford College, Greensboro, NC

1:00 p.m. "African Women and the Bible: Other Ways of Reading"
Hosted by Jane Redmont's Liberation Theologies seminar
at Jane's house on campus
(e-mail for directions if you wish to attend)

7:00 p.m. "Reading the Bible in Botswana in the Age of HIV-AIDS"
Lecture, Moon Room, Dana Auditorium

Dr. Dube is a feminist postcolonial biblical scholar and has been doing a great deal of work on biblical interpretation in the age of HIV/AIDS, particularly in the African context. She is a member of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians and holds a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University. She has taught at Scripps College and the University of Botswana and is the author, editor, and coeditor of many works including:
Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible
The Bible in Africa: Transactions, Trajectories, Trends
Other Ways of Reading: African Women and the Bible
Grant Me Justice! HIV/AIDS & Gender Readings of the Bible.

This is a unique opportunity. Dr. Dube has come all the way from Botswana and we were able --at the last minute-- to get some time with her between her lectures at Shaw University and Wake Forest University.

It's only fair: Senator Clinton's acceptance speech

It's not about charisma or moments, but still. We savored the Barack Obama moment, let's savor the Hillary Rodham Clinton moment.

Video here.

"I listened to you, and in the process I found my own voice."

Echoes of this.

"Women Are Never Front-Runners"

Important op-ed by Gloria Steinem in today's New York Times. I'm pasting the whole thing here since you might have trouble with the web link to the Times if you don't have a login (it's free though, so I will also post the link for you in case you want to start reading the Times online).

Read. Discuss.

WOMEN ARE NEVER FRONT-RUNNERS

The woman in question became a lawyer after some years as a community organizer, married a corporate lawyer and is the mother of two little girls, ages 9 and 6. Herself the daughter of a white American mother and a black African father — in this race-conscious country, she is considered black — she served as a state legislator for eight years, and became an inspirational voice for national unity.

Be honest: Do you think this is the biography of someone who could be elected to the United States Senate? After less than one term there, do you believe she could be a viable candidate to head the most powerful nation on earth?

If you answered no to either question, you’re not alone. Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House. This country is way down the list of countries electing women and, according to one study, it polarizes gender roles more than the average democracy.

That’s why the Iowa primary was following our historical pattern of making change. Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women (with the possible exception of obedient family members in the latter).

If the lawyer described above had been just as charismatic but named, say, Achola Obama instead of Barack Obama, her goose would have been cooked long ago. Indeed, neither she nor Hillary Clinton could have used Mr. Obama’s public style — or Bill Clinton’s either — without being considered too emotional by Washington pundits.

So why is the sex barrier not taken as seriously as the racial one? The reasons are as pervasive as the air we breathe: because sexism is still confused with nature as racism once was; because anything that affects males is seen as more serious than anything that affects “only” the female half of the human race; because children are still raised mostly by women (to put it mildly) so men especially tend to feel they are regressing to childhood when dealing with a powerful woman; because racism stereotyped black men as more “masculine” for so long that some white men find their presence to be masculinity-affirming (as long as there aren’t too many of them); and because there is still no “right” way to be a woman in public power without being considered a you-know-what.

I’m not advocating a competition for who has it toughest. The caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together. That’s why Senators Clinton and Obama have to be careful not to let a healthy debate turn into the kind of hostility that the news media love. Both will need a coalition of outsiders to win a general election. The abolition and suffrage movements progressed when united and were damaged by division; we should remember that.

I’m supporting Senator Clinton because like Senator Obama she has community organizing experience, but she also has more years in the Senate, an unprecedented eight years of on-the-job training in the White House, no masculinity to prove, the potential to tap a huge reservoir of this country’s talent by her example, and now even the courage to break the no-tears rule. I’m not opposing Mr. Obama; if he’s the nominee, I’ll volunteer. Indeed, if you look at votes during their two-year overlap in the Senate, they were the same more than 90 percent of the time. Besides, to clean up the mess left by President Bush, we may need two terms of President Clinton and two of President Obama.

But what worries me is that he is seen as unifying by his race while she is seen as divisive by her sex.

What worries me is that she is accused of “playing the gender card” when citing the old boys’ club, while he is seen as unifying by citing civil rights confrontations.

What worries me is that male Iowa voters were seen as gender-free when supporting their own, while female voters were seen as biased if they did and disloyal if they didn’t.

What worries me is that reporters ignore Mr. Obama’s dependence on the old — for instance, the frequent campaign comparisons to John F. Kennedy — while not challenging the slander that her progressive policies are part of the Washington status quo.

What worries me is that some women, perhaps especially younger ones, hope to deny or escape the sexual caste system; thus Iowa women over 50 and 60, who disproportionately supported Senator Clinton, proved once again that women are the one group that grows more radical with age.

This country can no longer afford to choose our leaders from a talent pool limited by sex, race, money, powerful fathers and paper degrees. It’s time to take equal pride in breaking all the barriers. We have to be able to say: “I’m supporting her because she’ll be a great president and because she’s a woman.”

Correction: An earlier version of this Op-Ed stated that Senator Edward Kennedy had endorsed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. He has not made an endorsement in the 2008 presidential race.

Gloria Steinem is a co-founder of the Women’s Media Center.

"Isolating the Images" (more from Nelle Morton)

Here is the second half of the essay excerpt my students read for today in the "Feminist Theology" class. (I'm going to have the registrar change the title to "Feminist Theologies" for the next time I teach it.) We discussed the excerpt from the writings of Nelle Morton (see my previous post for context and this for some background on Nelle Morton) in class today and students also wrote a page of reflection on it. We had a great conversation -- and a very moving one at times.

Isolating the Images

When we want to begin with the image out of which we live most of the time, we are not aware of what that image is or how to isolate it. We may find it at the end of a diffused pain, difficult to follow to its source. It comes clearer in telling one’s story or in keeping a journal. This is not like the early consciousness-raising sessions in which women took turns telling their stories. A woman must be granted all the time she needs when it appears that her story is being told for the first time. Depth hearing dares not interrupt but deepens when the telling halts or the pain becomes intense. Hearing walks alongside the teller all the way down to her most excruciating agony. At such a point one suburban women cried out, “I’m a sex object. I have been one all my life. I am one, now! Oh-o!”

Once the image is isolated a woman may savor its fit; ponder its power, the grip it has on her life; trace it to its source. Stay with it until it breaks from the inside and she touches her real self –that part of the self that the image has bound. The stereotyped image keeps us imprisoned. It is a false image to be shattered from within—false because it was assigned. The woman who discovered she was a sex object discovered also that when she dealt with it the image shattered and another more positive image emerged to take its place. The new image enabled her to affirm her sexuality –far more pervasive than she had thought – as a spiritual gift.

Women have tried to get at the image through drawing the self, then dealing with what the drawing indicates about our self-image. Often in such an exercise a woman may draw a much younger self than she really is. When this happens it may mean that there are experiences and living that she inadvertently has evaded, perhaps that she is not willing to take responsibility for. After I had turned gray, I found myself continuing for a year or so to put “black” on questionnaires asking for color of hair.

When working with children in the Deep South Robert Coles used the method of drawing the self. He discovered little black children often drawing themselves with some sort of physical handicap when, as a matter of fact, they were not physically handicapped at all. Societal structures and cultural images had functioned so powerfully that the children had developed handicapped self-images long before they had come to the age of conceptualization. One child drew himself as a small and insignificante figure until he went to visit his grandfather who owned a farm in another state and who cultivated his own field. The boy he drew on his return covered the entire page and was colored very black. His only comment: “When I draw God, He’ll be a great big man.”

An image is not just a picture in the mind’s eye but a dynamic through which one communicates publicly or which communicates oneself. An image is its functioning – whether it operates consciously or deep in the unconscious; whether it operates in an individual or in the body politic.

For next time, they're reading essays by Susan Secker and Jeanette Rodríguez, among others. Shortly we will get to Rosemary Radford Ruether and Katie Geneva Cannon.

Meanwhile, we're in the first few centuries of the church in "History of Christianity" and the very recent post-9/11 era in "History of Religion in America" (which is actually 3/4 history and 1/4 contemporary, and we're starting in the present; two weeks from now we'll start back in the 16th/17th centuries) -- I think I have historical-theological whiplash. But it's been fun, though tiring, and the students participated really actively today even in the heat.

Happy eve of St. Bartholomew's day!

"Hearing to Speech"

This is a well-known piece of writing by the late theologian Nelle Morton, from her 1977 essay “Beloved Image,” reprinted in the book The Journey is Home. She used the expression "hearing to speech" before 1977, though; in another part of the book there is a journal entry from 1971 recounting one of the stories in the passage below. Some of you may already be very familiar with it, but I thought others might not have seen it.

My students in the Feminist Theology course are reading and reflecting on this and another passage (which I will enter here later) for the course this week. Yesterday was the first meeting of the course, which covers feminist, womanist, and other women-defined theologies in the U.S. and internationally.

Hearing to Speech

It was in a small group of women who had come together to tell our own stories that I first received a totally new understanding of hearing and speaking. I remember well how one woman started, hesitating and awkward, trying to put the pieces of her life together. Finally she said: “I hurt… I hurt all over.” She touched herself in various places as if feeling for the hurt before she added, “but… I don’t know where to begin to cry.” She talked on and on. Her story took on fantastic coherence. When she reached a point of most excruciating pain no one moved. No one interrupted. Finally she finished. After a silence, she looked from one woman to another. “You heard me. You heard me all the way.” Her eyes narrowed. She looked directly at each woman in turn and then said slowly: “I have a strange feeling you heard me before I started. You heard me to my own story.” I filed this experience away as something unique. But it happened again and again in other such small groups of women. It happened to me. Then, I knew I had been experiencing something I had never experienced before. A complete reversal of the going logic in which someone speaks precisely so that more accurate hearing may take place. This woman was saying, and I had experienced, a depth hearing that takes place before the speaking – a hearing that is far more than acute listening. A hearing engaged in by the whole body that evokes speech –a new speech—a new creation. The woman had been heard to her own speech.

While I experienced this kind of hearing through women, I am convinced it is one of those essential dimensions of the full human experience long programmed out of our culture and our religious tradition. In time I came to understand the wider implication of this reversal as revolutionary and profoundly theological. Hearing of this sort is equivalent to empowerment. We empower one another by hearing the other to speech. We empower the disinherited, the outsider, as we are able to hear them name in their own way their own oppression and suffering. In turn, we are empowered as we can put ourselves in a position to be heard by the disinherited (in this case other women) to speaking our own feeling of being caught and trapped. Hearing in this sense can break through political and social structures and image a new system. A great ear at the heart of the universe –at the heart of our common life—hearing human beings to speech—to our own speech.

Since this kind of hearing first came to me, I have tried to analyze the process, but it resists analysis and explanation. It traffics in another and different logic. It appears to belong in woman experience, and I have found it in some poetry and some Eastern religions. The Pentecost story reverses the going logic and puts hearing before speaking as the work of the spirit.

There is no doubt that when a group of women hear another woman to speech, a presence is experienced in the new speech. One woman described the “going down” as non-speaking—or speaking that is a lie. Even though she used the common vernacular she said she used it in the clichéd manner of her conditioning. It was the language of the patriarchal culture—alien to her own nature. “Coming up,” she explained, “I had no words. I paused. I stuttered. I could find no word in the English language that could express my emotion. But I had to speak. Old words came out with a different meaning. I felt words I could not express, but I was on the way to speaking –or the speaking was speaking me. I know that sounds weird.”While all liberation movements may be expected to rise with a new language on their lips, I have been particularly conscious of the new woman speech. Perhaps because it portends such vast changes of both a personal and political nature. It is as if the patriarchal structures had been called into question and the powerful old maleness in deity had been superseded by the new reality coming audible in woman speech.

The phenomenon of women speaking runs counter to those theologians who claim that God is sometimes silent, hidden, or withdrawn (deus absconditus), and that we must wait patiently until “He” deigns to speak again. A more realistic alternative to such despair, or “dark night of the soul,” would see God as the hearing one—hearing us to our own, responsible word. That kind of hearing would be priori to the theologians’ own words. It might even negate and ruffle their words and render them unable to speak until new words emerge. Women know hearing to speech as powerfully spiritual, and know spirit as movement and presence hearing us until we know and own the words and the images as our own words and our own images that have come out of the depths of our struggle.