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.