Re-Imagining was a Minneapolis interfaith conference of clergy, laypeople, and feminist theologians in 1993 that stirred controversy in U.S. Mainline Protestant denominations,Peter Steinfels, "Cries of Heresy After Feminists Meet", The New York Times May 14, 1994 ultimately resulting in the firing of Mary Ann Lundy, the highest ranking woman in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).Mary Cartledgehays, Grace (New York: Crown Publishers, 2003), p. 95 Re-Imagining: A Global Theological Conference By Women: For Men and Women, grew out of a U.S.A. Mainline Protestant response to the World Council of Churches' Ecumenical Decade: Churches in Solidarity with Women 1988–1998. Participants met at the Minneapolis Convention Center during November 4 through 7, 1993.
It brought together 2,200 people, one third of them clergy, and most of them women. 83 men registered. Attendees represented 16 denominations, 27 countries, and 49 states. (Nevada was not represented.) All presenters were women.Thelma Boeder, "Re-Imagining Demographics," ReImagining The Newsletter Day 4, (Conference publication) Minneapolis, November 7, 1993, p. 1 The conference aimed to encourage churches to address injustices to women worldwide and promote equal partnership with men at all levels of religious life.Mary Ann Lundy and The Rev. Forrest C. Stith, "Introduction Ecumenical Decade: Churches in Solidarity With Women," Into Action, New York, U.S. Office of the World Council of Churches publication, 1988, p. 1 In recognition of supporters' view that traditional Christianity's male-centered language and images have often stifled and hurt women, organizers chose "re-imagining" as the theme. International theologians were invited to address the theme as it applied to God, Jesus, church, creation, community, and world. Other presentations carried the theme through "Church as Worshipping Community," "Language/Word," "Sexuality/Family," and "Ethics/Work/Ministry."Karen Eileen Dimon, "Introduction, Re-Imagining . . .," Church & Society, 84 No. 5 (May/June 1994) pp.1,2 After four days of community and freedom of discussion with like-minded women, hearing internationally recognized feminist theologians advance new ways of thinking about Christianity, and hearing their deity referred to with female pronouns, attendees reported having a transformational experience.Mary Cartledgehays,Grace, (New York: Crown Publishers, 2003, p. 96Nancy J. Berneking, Preface in Re-Membering and Re-Imagining, ed. Nancy J. Berneking and Pamela Carter Joern (Cleveland, Ohio, The Pilgrim Press, 1995) p.xi A number of similar conferences had been held, but the size, scope and creative atmosphere of Re-Imagining eclipsed anything that had come before.Bill Broadway , The Washington Post, July 2, 1994
Sponsorship and controversy Three Minnesota councils of churches and the Twin Cities Metropolitan Church Commission sponsored the event. The latter organization's director, the Reverend Sally Abrahams Hill, was instrumental in organizing the conference along with Mary Ann Lundy, then director of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s Women's Ministry Unit and Jeanne Audrey Powers of the United Methodist Church.Goode, Stephen (July 25, 1994). "Feminists' crusade sparks holy war: a national conference designed to bring women closer to God by questioning traditional worship only caused greater alienation". Insight on the News. 10 (30). News World Communications, Inc. 140 volunteers helped organize the event during a 3-year planning process.Sally L. Hill, "The Planning Process at the Local Level, The Coordinator's Reflections," Church & Society, 84 No.5 (May/June 1994) pp.117,118
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) donated staff time and $66,000 from an initial grant from its Bicentennial Fund.Robert H. Bullock, Jr. and John Sniffen, "The Re-Imagining Revival," The Presbyterian Outlook, 180 No. 18 (May 25, 1998) p. 1. The Women's Division of the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries paid the way of 46 top staff members to attend the event. Presbyterians sent 20 staff members, and officers in both denominations helped plan Re-Imagining. According to the invitational conference brochure mailed in November 1992, cost per person ranged from $100 for early registration to $150 for late registration.
Several months afterward, conservative newsletters, Good News and The Presbyterian Layman, within the mainline United Methodist Church and Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) denominations respectively, ran articles expressing outrage over what they called goddess worship and heresy at the conference. The controversy they stirred resulted in enough members dropping donations to cause a serious backlash. Mary Ann Lundy was fired seven months later. No United Methodists were fired at a national level.Gwen Veazey, "Women find new ways to talk of God," Charlotte Observer [Charlotte, North Carolina], 12 January 2004, p. 11A
Concerns raised Goddess worship due in part to the "Bless Sophia" chant used throughout Re-Imagining. The conference program printed the chant set to music on page 2: "Bless Sophia/dream the vision/share the wisdom/dwelling deep within." Proverbs 8 and 9 in the Christian Bible refer to Sophia as the personification of Wisdom and supporters say organizers intended to invoke Wisdom's blessing while valuing each woman's life and experiences. Understanding and acceptance for homosexual, bisexual, and transgender persons expressed by speakers from the podium.Kathi Austin Mahle and Mary Kay Sauter, "Alert to Attacks," Re-Imagining Memo,Greater Minneapolis Council of Churches, 2-10-1994 'A Sunday Morning ritual, which reimagined God as feminine, celebrated Sophia and took the place of Eucharist...participants shared milk and honey rather than wine and bread. Interlaced with the celebration of Sophia, was a celebration of God with feminine traits which served also as an affirmation of women's gifts such as bearing children and nursing Milk and Honey Ritual written by the Rev. Dr. Hilda A. Kuester and published in Remembering and Reimagining.edited by Nancy J Berneking and Pamela Carter Joern and published by Pilgrim Press, 1995. A bare-breasted woman depicted in one section of a painting created by Nancy Chinn during the conference near the podium.Nancy Chinn, "Why I Painted a Naked Lady," in Re-Membering and Re-Imagining ed. Nancy J. Berneking and Pamela Carter Joern (Cleveland, Ohio: The Pilgrim Press, 1995), p. 90 A number of what critics called provocative statements and heresy from speakers. One example: Dr. Delores Williams stating, "I don't think we need a theory of atonement (Atonement in Christianity)," and, "I don't think we need folks hanging on crosses, and blood dripping, and weird stuff." These comments came during the question and answer session after her presentation.
A context for Williams's statements is her complete answer to the audience question, "What is our theory of atonement to be? For what did Jesus come?"Delores Williams, "Re-Imagining Jesus," 1993 Re-Imagining Conference Audiotapes, Resource Express, Apple Valley, MN, Album One, Tape 3-2.
Williams: "I don't think we need a theory of atonement at all. I think Jesus came for life and (to show us) how to live together, what life was all about." She references visiting a Catholic church in which the only divine images were the Virgin and Child, the Cross, and the empty tomb. "No images of ministry, of the mustard seed, fishes and loaves. I don't think we need folks hanging on crosses, and blood dripping, and weird stuff. We need the sustenance, the faith, the candles to light. Jesus' mandate is that we pass on tough love, love that's whipping the thieves out of the temple. I don't see that the cross does that. I think the cross ought to be interpreted for what it was, a symbol of evil, the murder of an innocent man and victim. When we confront the status quo as Jesus did, when we raise questions about the poor and empowering people who've never had power before, we're more than likely going to die for it."
Program and speakers According to conference materials, organizers called their schedule a "Time Flow" and encouraged participants to express themselves via art materials at every table, dance movements, and Talking Circles. Each attendee received a program book filled with songs, chants, and liturgies used throughout the presentations.
Thursday
Religious Imagination
Mary Bednarowski, a Roman Catholic layperson and Ph.D. professor of religious studies at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. Her publications include the books, American Religion: A Cultural Perspective, (Prentice-Hall, 1984) and New Religions and the Theological Imagination in American Culture (Indiana University Press, 1989.) Bernice Johnson Reagon, Ph.D. a curator in the Division of Community Life at the Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History. A member of the original Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Freedom Singers, she founded Sweet Honey in the Rock, an African American women's a cappella quintet. Chung Hyun Kyung, Ph.D. Assistant Professor in theology, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea. Author of Struggle to Be the Sun Again: Introducing Asian Women's Theology, (Orbis Books, 1990.)
Bednarowski set the stage for the conference with her remarks. She said, "We have come to claim the deepest depths of Christianity. . . . We have come together to do this work out of our experiences as women of faith who share the conviction that our tradition has the resilience, the inexhaustible resources and creativity, to sustain a re-imagining of its most central symbols."Mary Farrell Bednarowski, "The Spirit of Re-Imagining Setting the Stage," Church & Society, 84 No.5 (May/June 1994) pp.12,13
Reagon began her presentation by singing encouragement for those who suffer. "We'll stand the storm It won't be long We'll anchor by and by."Bernice Johnson Reagon, "The Spirit of Re-Imagining," 1993 Re-Imagining Conference Audiotapes, Resource Express, Apple Valley, MN, Album One, Tape 1-1. She said, "The storm is the only way I know what an anchor is." She sang: "My God is a rock in a weary land I know He's a rock in a weary land."."
Hyun Kyung invoked her Asian heritage and experiences to discuss her way of understanding God and theology. She asked for a theology and theologians who go beyond naming evils such as racism and sexism and become "alive" and "whole," centered in the reality of the world. She ended by saying, "We need to remember within us there must be men and women, East and West, past and future. Deep within us . . . how do we live with a cosmic connectedness? This is our task."Hyung Kyung Chung, "The Spirit of Re-Imagining," 1993 Re-Imagining Conference Audiotapes, Resource Express, Apple Valley, MN, Album One, Tape 1–2.
Friday
Re-Imagining God
Chung Hyun Kyung discussed her difficulty being both fully Christian and fully Asian. She noted that Korea had 5,000 years of Shamanism, 2,000 years of Taoism, about 2,000 years of Buddhism, and 700 of Confucianism. Then her country had 100 years of Protestantism. "All of them are within me."Hyung Kyung Chung, "Re-Imagining God," 1993 Re-Imagining Conference Audiotapes, Resource Express, Apple Valley, MN, Album One, Tape 2-2. She invoked three Asian goddesses which transformed her understanding of God, bringing into focus the need for justice, wisdom, compassion, persistence and resilience. Rita Nakashima Brock was an associate professor at that time who held the Endowed Chair in the Humantities at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. Author of Journeys By Heart: A Christology of Erotic Power (Crossroad 1988.)