THANKS FOR THE WITNESSES

THANKS FOR THE WITNESSES

            I have always been intrigued at the intersectionality of the season of Lent with Black History Month and Women’s History Month.  Easter comes later this year, so Lent did not begin until Black History Month was over (of course, Black History continues all through the year!)  Both of these seasons point to the heart of Lent, a time when Christians are asked to contemplate our captivity to the powers of this world.  Racism and patriarchy are right up at the top of the list of those powers. 

            As I noted in the February 28 Blog, the metaphor of the “power of the prince of the air” from Ephesians 2 is a powerful image of our captivity.  We have breathed in these ways of imaging ourselves and others, with hierarchy and domination as the chief operating principles.  That passage in Ephesians indicates that God does not leave us in the morass of captivity but is working daily to help us to move towards liberation.  One of those ways of God’s movement is to bring witnesses into our path who can engage us, challenge us, and help to transform us.

            At the end of this Women’s History Month, I’m giving thanks for those women and men who have been witnesses to me concerning my captivity to patriarchy and to the exciting possibilities of seeing the world in a different way.  There have been many of those witnesses, but I want to lift up my spouse and partner, the Reverend Caroline Leach, as the central witness.  Although I was already on the liberation road when I first met Caroline in 1972, she has been the principal witness to me about understanding women’s liberation and my own liberation.

            Caroline has been a primary witness for most of her life – she had strong women witnesses in her own life – her mother and grandmothers, the Girl Scouts, Sandy Winter, and Joyce Tucker (these two later became Presbyterian ministers in their own right).  She came to Columbia Seminary in 1969 and was one of 5 women there in the ordination track.  Male students there often quoted Bible verses to her to remind her that God did not want her to be an ordained minister.  She persevered through all this and was the 21^st woman to be ordained as a pastor in the “southern” Presbyterian Church, the PCUS, in 1973.   Because of her gender issues, no church would consider calling her as a pastor.  The Rev. Woody McKay hired her as a campus minister at Georgia Tech to work with the growing number of women who were students there.  After my graduation from Columbia in 1975, she and I were the first clergy couple to serve in a local church in the former PCUS, as we became co-pastors at St. Columba Presbyterian Church in Norfolk in a low-income housing complex with 5,000 residents.  Caroline got to work quickly there, organizing summer programs for children and forcing the Navy to release income levels of their sailors in order for their families to receive food stamps.  She also was the author of our application to receive the Presbyterian Women Birthday Offering.  We received that in 1978 and established St. Columba Ministries, which is thriving today.  She also was one of the driving forces to establish the first shelter for battered women in the Norfolk area.

            She joined me as co-pastor at Oakhurst Presbyterian in 1984, and she developed Christian education programs and worship approaches that helped us attract young adults and children of all classes, races and ages.  Oakhurst became such a success that our denomination asked us to write a book about it, and it was published in 2003.  At her retirement in 2012, some seventy-five of those children and youth came forward in worship to bring her flowers in appreciation of her gifts to them.  

            She learned early on that her primary definition was not property of men but rather child of God, and her adult life as a minister has been to teach this orientation to every one whom she encounters.  She has also been a powerful witness to me in those places where I remain testosterone bound.  I am grateful for her witness to me and to so many others.  Let us all take time in the next few days to remember and to give thanks for those women and men in our lives who have helped us to see our captivity to male domination and to see a new vision based not in hierarchy but rather in equity and justice.

THE CROSSROADS

THE CROSSROADS

            I was in Baltimore earlier this month, helping the Open Door Community move from Atlanta to Baltimore, and one of the great benefits of that effort for me was that I got to stay with our daughter Susan, who lives there.  The new immersive play by Submersive Productions, that she is co-directing, is called “HT Darling’s Incredible Musaeum” and will open the first weekend in April, and Caroline and I will  be back up to see it (and Susan!).  Check it out and go see it!

            Now, with that commercial out of the way, I want to note that while I was visiting with Susan earlier, I read the February/March issue of her Bust Magazine, a very intriguing read!  In it was an interview with bell hooks, one of the deans of the intersection between gender, race and class. (Thanks to Anna Smith for introducing me to Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, who is credited with the term “intersectionality.”)  bell hooks currently directs the bell hooks Institute at Berea College in Kentucky. The interviewer for Bust Magazine, Lux Alptraum, was asking her about the defeat of Hilary Clinton by the ultimate white man, Donald Trump, and hooks made a strong case that it was gender that brought about Clinton’s defeat.  She also added that misogyny is a greater enemy for black women than race.  Here are some of her words from that interview:

            “It’s funny because one of my best women’s studies colleagues here at Berea would always be frustrated with me because I would tell her that I felt very strongly that sexism and misogyny actually posed a greater threat to black women and all women than racism. She just thought, ‘Well, that’s ridiculous.’ She’s black. The night of the election she called me and was like, “You’ve been right all along.” The sexism is so deeply, deeply embedded. If you think about public discourses on race in this past year, where are the big public discourses on feminism? They don’t exist.”

This is a very powerful interview, so please go read the rest of it in Bust Magazine.

            I’m reminded of the intersection between race and gender (and other powers) and how difficult the conversations often are between many of us of different categories, who seek justice and equity.  One of the most explosive forums for discussion that we ever had in my time at Oakhurst Presbyterian was over the intersection between gender, race and sexual orientation.  Was oppression of women worse than the oppression of African-American people?  Why couldn’t white women and black women talk about these issues?  Was the oppression of LGBT people equal to the oppression of African-American people?  There were so many sparks and hostilities flying around, that I felt like I must be back at that legendary crossroads in Clarksdale, Mississippi, where Robert Johnson supposedly made his deal to sell his soul to the devil in order to be able to play the blues guitar so well.  While there was heat on that day, there was also light, as many people began to see the difficulties of this crossroads but also the very necessity of going to the crossroads and seeking to find our way.

            Those conversations at the crossroads are even more essential now. As the powers and principalities regain their strength, seeking to re-establish for all to see, that white men are meant to rule the world, we must strengthen our efforts on our own journeys and on our journeys together.  Our white, male history as users and abusers of power is a terrible one, but here it is:  53% of white women voted for Donald Trump for president.  I am not blaming white women, but I am noting the deep-seated belief in all of us that white men are meant to rule the world, and that we all have a lot of work to do.  We must be on our own journeys at times, as we work on our syndromes, but in order for us to find some measure of justice and equity, we must go to the crossroads sometimes and engage one another.   I am grateful for those pioneers and leaders who are showing us the way. 

THE ERA, TENNESSEE, AND ME

THE ERA, TENNESSEE, AND ME

            My birth state of Tennessee figured prominently in the history of the 19^th Amendment and in the Equal Rights Amendment.  In 1920 the issue of ratifying the 19^th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, came to the Tennessee legislature.  Thirty-five states had ratified the amendment, and only one more state ratification was needed for it to become law.  The vote looked dim in Tennessee.  It looked like the vote would be a tie, and thus the amendment would fail.  It had sailed through the state Senate but was bogged down in the state House.  On August 18, 1920, the vote was called, and Rep. Harry Burn from east Tennessee, who had worn a red rose on his lapel to indicate his opposition to the amendment, stood up and shocked everyone, likely even himself, by voting “aye” on the amendment. It passed the state House by that one vote and became federal law eight days later.  Why did he change his mind?  The stories have been embellished over the years, but the basic line is that his mother Phoebe Ensminger Burn, known as Miss Febb, had sent him a note urging him to vote in favor of the amendment.  And, he did!

            Tennessee became the 10^th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972, but as many of us know, the ERA failed by 5 states – it still needs 5 more states to ratify it.  Tennessee later rescinded its ratification in 1974, but the legal status of that action is not clear.  The ERA seems dead in the water because no state has ratified it since 1973.  The text of the ERA is pretty simple:  “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” 

            Why not revive that campaign again?  It may seem hopeless in this political climate, but think of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony and Ida Wells, all of whom worked on this amendment in a political and cultural climate much harsher than the present one.  I’m going to begin thinking about this in Georgia and in Congress, and I hope that you will let your imagination take you to a place where you can begin this work again.  I know that Senator Tammy Duckworth has introduced bills in Congress on this, so there are folk working on and thinking about it – let us each find our place in this crucial work.

            I have many inspirations on this, including my partner Caroline Leach (born in Tennessee), daughter Susan (born in Tennessee), son David, mother Mary Stroupe, daughter-in-law Erin, granddaughters Emma and Zoe and many other friends and colleagues.  I will visit some of them in my weekly blogs in this Women’s History Month.  I want to visit one more person in today’s blog.   I met her in 1974 in Tennessee, and her name was Sophie Leach.  She was Caroline’s paternal grandmother, and at that time, she lived in McKenzie in west Tennessee.  She told me that she remembered coming east (not west) from Oklahoma as a girl in a covered wagon to west Tennessee.  She also told me that she did not work for the 19^th Amendment because she did not think that women should have the right to vote, but once they got the vote, she saw it as her duty to vote in every election.  And, vote she did, in every election until the cancer that took her life in 1978 made her too feeble to vote.  She was what was called a “yellow-dog Democrat,” meaning that she would vote for the Democrat in Tennessee, no matter who he or she was.  Since race has recaptured Tennessee and the rest of the South, we would now call them “red-herring Republicans,” who would vote for a person like Donald Trump for president, especially with Hilary Clinton as the opponent.  I’d like to think that Sophie would have marked Hillary’s name on her ballot.  

            One more story about Sophie Leach to emphasize her engagement and her timeliness.  Caroline and I got married in May, 1974, and during that summer we took a tour of family members and friends to introduce ourselves.  On a hot summer August afternoon in McKenzie, we gathered at Sophie’s house in order for her friends to congratulate Caroline and to meet me (to see if congratulations were really in order!)  Just after 3 PM, Sophie (age 92) announced to her friends that the party was over and that it was time now to turn on the TV to see if President Nixon would resign or be impeached – either way, she was hoping that he would go!  Her friends could stay and watch, but now the conversation would turn to the nation’s situation rather than her granddaughter’s.  As we move into the Trump presidency, I don’t know if we will get to a similar point, but his presidency makes me tremble.  All the more reason to remember witnesses like Sophie Leach and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony and Ida Wells and so many others.  We’ll need to move into their modes in these days.  Let us all find our places in this cloud of witnesses.

HIGH HEELS AND THE "V" WORD

HIGH HEELS AND THE “V” WORD

            According to an AP article this morning, today the British Parliament is debating a proposed ban on a corporate dress code that requires that women wear high heels to work.  Although British law forbids companies from discriminating against women, practices such as this fashion requirement are commonplace.  As we begin Women’s History Month, I am reminded of the “power of the prince of the air,” the title of last week’s blog.  That stark metaphor from Ephesians 2:2 is a proclamation of the depth of captivity in all of us in regard to these communal standards and expectations that men are superior, that white people are superior, that money is the center of life, that people who love people of the same gender are a distortion, and many others such as these – the list seems endless. 

             I am a white, straight, comfortable male, and thus I have many captivities.  Thanks to many women and men who have engaged me and challenged me and loved me, I am at least aware of some of the depth of captivity in my own self and in the larger world.  In regard to race, my friend David Billings calls it IRS (Internalized Racial Superiority) in his fine book “Deep Denial.”  In Women’s History Month, perhaps we should call it IMS (Internalized Male Superiority).  From the image of the “power of the prince of the air,” it is not only “superiority” that is part of the issue – there is also the inferiority that is breathed in by the people whom society wants to oppress and suppress.  In regard to gender, perhaps we should call it IFI (“Internalized Female Inferiority’), and this intersection of IFI and IMS is part of the root of Women’s History Month.  The first demonstration organized around Women’s History Month was in New York in 1909, in celebration of the International Ladies Garment Workers Strike of 1908.  In 1977 the United States General Assembly adopted the resolution, and it began in earnest.

            I was thinking about a lot of these issues as Caroline and I went up to Athens, Georgia, two weeks ago to see one of our friends and church members Bemene Baadom-Piaro, act in Eve Ensler’s “Vagina Monologues,” sponsored by Project Safe in Athens. Project Safe is an organization working to end domestic violence.  Though I had seen sketches from “Vagina Monologues,” I had never seen the play in its entirety.  I was struck by many things in the play.  First was its adaptability – it seems to be more a work in progress rather than a play set once and for all.  In its earlier form, it seemed to speak only about white women, but the production that we saw in Athens had a diverse cast and flavor, and indeed there were two interpretive pieces written and performed by two of those diverse cast members in the play.  What engaged me in the play, overwhelmingly, was the refusal of the women to adopt IFI.  There was a direct engagement of the “V” word, of vagina, and of women reclaiming their bodies and their selves from the oppressive structures of males.  It was a strong celebration of women and their selves as “embodied spirits.”  They even sought to get the audience to appropriate the “C” word for vagina in a positive way, but I only heard a few call it out when the cast asked us to do so – just too much negative stuff attached to the “C” word, especially in light of the Presidency of one of the most blatant misogynists.

            As we start Women’s History Month, with Women’s Day on March 8, let us all, especially we males, examine the many places where our hearts and imaginations are captured by the power of the prince of the air in regard to the humanity and equality of women as human beings.  All of us males suffer from captivity to Internalized Male Superiority (IMS), and we are asked to come to recognition of that captivity and to seek to move towards liberation.  Let all of us celebrate the greatness and power of women and to help those women who suffer from IFI to begin to find their voice.  I’ll continue on this next week, but for now I give thanks for those women who have engaged me and helped me to begin to find some liberation.

            There are many places to read about these issues - I'd suggest my
friend Marcia Mount Shoop's book "Let The Bones Dance" as an entry
point.  For an interesting intersection of high heels, gender, and race, read the book “Hidden Figures,” by Margot Lee Shetterly, upon which the movie is based.