By Steve Beard*
February 1994 – A standing ovation for lesbians. A service of milk and honey to the goddess Sophia. A presentation denying the atonement of Jesus Christ. What is going on here? And why is this conference sponsored by mainline Christian churches?
Billed as “A Global Theological Conference By Women; for Women and Men,” this conference would shock many traditional Christians if they were to discover what their mainline denominations supported financially. Convening November 4-7 in Minneapolis, this was “Re-Imagining,” an ecumenical gathering associated with the World Council of Churches (WCC) for those of the feminist, “womanist,” or lesbian perspective. Most of the speakers voiced condemnation of patriarchy and the exclusion of lesbians and homosexual men in the church.
Of the registrants, the largest representatives were Presbyterians (405) and United Methodists (391). Other well-represented religious bodies included Lutherans (313), Roman Catholics (234), and members of the United Church of Christ (144). There were also Baptists, Episcopalians, Mennonites, as well as members of the United Church of Canada, and the Church of the Brethren.
The largest amount of financial support for the conference was $66,000 from the Bicentennial Fund of the Presbyterian Church (USA). The funding list included 24 organizations ranging from regional women’s organizations and local Catholic and Protestant religious bodies to national entities such as the Division of Congregational Ministries of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, the National Ministries of the American Baptist Church, the Board for Homeland Ministries of the United Church of Christ, and the Women’s Unit of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
The Women’s Division of the United Methodist Church not only was listed as a conference funding source, but also chose to have its staff and directors attend the Re-Imagining conference as a special theological workshop. Many high-level Presbyterian and United Methodist leaders attended.
“They are exploring the sensual and sexual side of the divine, rooting around in the contemplative and introspective interplay with God,” observed reporter Martha Sawyer Allen of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Participants gathered around “talking” tables and were asked to scribble out spiritual thoughts with crayons, re-imagine God through emotional images, and sing a song of blessing to Sophia, the goddess of Wisdom.
At one point in the conference, Melanie Morrison, co-founder of Christian Lesbians Out Together (CLOUT), requested time to celebrate “the miracle of being lesbian, out, and Christian.” Then she invited all other lesbian, bisexual, and transsexual women to join hands and encircle the stage. Religious News Service (RNS) estimates that “roughly 100 women converged upon the dais, many smiling. One held high the rainbow flag, which has become a symbol for the diversity among lesbians and gay men. Many of the women remaining in the audience rose to their feet and began to applaud.” The Rev. Kittredge Cherry, a minister in the predominately homosexual Metropolitan Community Church, was one of the women holding the rainbow flag. She told RNS that the goal of the demonstration was to help people “re-imagine” the church as the embodiment of justice for everyone, including lesbians and homosexual men.
The lesbian theme was heard repeatedly from major speakers. In a workshop called “Prophetic Voices of Lesbians in the Church,” Nadean Bishop, the first “out” lesbian minister called to an American Baptist church, claimed that Mary and Martha in the Bible were lesbian “fore-sisters.” She said they were not sisters, but lesbian lovers.
Janie Spahr, a self-avowed lesbian clergywoman in the Presbyterian Church USA who was prevented by that denomination from serving a local church, claimed that her theology is first of all informed by “making love with Coni,” her lesbian partner. She then gave this challenge: “Sexuality and spirituality have to come together – and Church, we’re going to teach you!”
Judy Westerdorf, a United Methodist clergywoman from Minnesota, told the workshop that the Church “has always been blessed by gays and lesbians,... witches,... shamans.” She joked about the term “practicing homosexual,” noting that her partner says she’s not practicing, she’s pretty good.
In a seminar on “Re-Imagining Sexuality-Family,” lesbian theologian Mary Hunt said, “I have far more hope in substituting ‘friendship’ as a metaphor for family....Imagine sex among friends as the norm, young people learning to make friends rather than to date. Imagine valuing genital sexual interaction in terms of whether and how it fosters friendship and pleasure. Imagine, just imagine. Imagine the many ways friends are together since many of us do not have the time or inclination to go to bed together. But imagine the embodied ways of being together in all of their diversity which would expand their focus of sexuality from our genitals to our whole being, from who does what with whom, to how do they love one another.... Pleasure is our birthright of which we have been robbed in religious patriarchy. It is time to claim it anew with our friends.”
Theological Smorgasbord
The “Re-Imagining” event presented a smorgasbord of cultural ideas and religions, allowing attendees to pick and choose. “Be speculative,” participants were told by conference organizers, “there is no ‘answer.’ We can’t imagine what God is like. Being together in our own images is the ultimate.”
Many doctrines essential to orthodox Christianity were repudiated at this conference, often in a spirit of derision. This includes the doctrine of God, the deity of Christ, his atoning death, the sinfulness of humanity, creation, the authority of Scriptures, the church, and the biblical understanding of human sexuality.
The re-imagining of God began in the first session when all repeated the litany: “Most of all, it is time to state clearly and dream wildly about who we are as people of God, and who we intend to be in the future through the power and guidance of the spirit of wisdom whom we name Sophia.” This was followed by a chorus often repeated throughout this event: “Now Sophia, dream the vision, share the wisdom dwelling deep within.”
Participants were led in a Native American Tobacco Ritual and they took part in the “Anointing with Red Dots,” during which presenter Aruna Gnanadason lashed out against alleged oppression by Christian missionary teachings in India. Gnanadason, a native Indian feminist, explained that the red dot on her forehead was a form of protest against those who said her forehead was only a place for the sign of the cross. She invited participants to join her in protest by crayoning a red dot on their foreheads as well. Gnanadason said that the red dot represented the “divine in each other.”
Regarding the passage from Joel (“I shall pour out my spirit on all humanity”), Lois Wilson, immediate past president of the World Council of Churches, asked, “Surely God didn’t mean all humanity; did he mean neo-pagans, did she mean the Wiccans, the Sikhs, the Muslins, the Hindus, the men and the women? Or did she?”
Another presenter, Asian feminist theologian Kwok Pui-Lan, indicated that the humanistic-Confucian tradition emphasizes the propensities in human nature for good, not evil. Barbara Lundblad, a Lutheran pastor, acknowledged: “Some would call our worship of last night verging on heresy....We did not last night name the name of Jesus. Nor have we done anything in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Laughter and cheers followed her observation.
There were other workshops that dealt with feminist theology, politics, music, and even belly dancing. Feminist theologian Chung Hyun Kyung claimed that the ideal is the “reincarnation of good,” explaining that Asian theology totally rejects the idea of sinful man, propagating the understanding that humans are good and become better from the god within. She led participants in an exercise that she called “pranic healing.” “When we do pranic healing, we believe that this life-giving energy came from god and it is everywhere, it is in the sun, in the ocean, from the ground and it is from the trees...We ask god’s permission to use this life-giving energy for our sisters and brothers in need. If you feel very tired and you don’t have any energy to give, what you do is...go to a big tree and ask it to, ‘give me some of your life energy.’”
One major seminar was titled “Jesus,” although no orthodox Christian understanding of Jesus was discussed. This seminar, attended by about 500 individuals, began with singing to Sophia and participants were told that the ideal is to re-image Jesus within the feminist understanding.
Presenter Delores S. Williams, a “womanist” theology professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, said, “I don’t think we need a theory of atonement at all.” Her remark was greeted by applause. “Atonement has to do so much with death,” she said. “I don’t think we need folks hanging on crosses and blood dripping and weird stuff.” Continuing, she said, “We do not need atonement, we just need to listen to the god within....If Jesus conquered sin, it was in the wilderness and life, not his death (resurrection). The first incarnation of God was not ‘some dove on the shoulder,’ but in Mary and her body.”
Conference leader Rita Nakashima Brock declared that God is “not transcendence—that orgy of self-alienation beloved of the fathers—but immanence, god working out god’s self in everything.”
Another feminist theologian who led the “Jesus” seminar was Kwok Pui-Lan. She said the Asian experience can’t image any Jesus. She stated, “We cannot allow others to define our sin. What is our sin? Who is this funny God that would sacrifice a lamb. We don’t even see a lamb in the Asian experience. The Chinese do not have a word to compare to the Hebrew/Greek word for God.” Dr. Pui-Lan indicated that the Chinese do not believe God stands outside creation. The humanist-Confucian tradition emphasizes the propensity for good in humankind, and asserts that people develop moral perfection and sainthood by maturing. The emphasis is on enlightenment.
“The seminaries and the Vatican can keep on defining orthodoxy largely for the passing-on of the traditions through the ordained clergy,” conference speaker and feminist theologian Elizabeth Bettenhausen told the Star-Tribune. “But we laity have always crossed our fingers behind our backs when they lay out what orthodoxy is. We know in our daily lives theology has to be much fresher and more flexible than the definitions of orthodoxy can ever be.”
For a conference which drew upon the mainline Christian denominations for support, funding, and participants, this event utterly failed to represent the historic Christian faith of these denomination. To the contrary, the “Re-imaging” conference truly abandoned any form of orthodox Christian theology. As evidence, read the following liturgy of the service of milk and honey dedicated to Sophia:
“Our maker Sophia, we are women in your image: With the hot blood of our wombs we give form to new life. With the courage of our convictions we pour out lifeblood for justice....
“Sophia, Creator God, Let you milk and honey flow. Sophia, Creator God, Shower us with you love....
“Our sweet Sophia, we are women in your image; With nectar between our thighs we invite a lover, we birth a child; With our warm body fluids we remind the world of its pleasures and sensations....
“Our guide, Sophia, we are women in your image. With our moist mouths we kiss away a tear, we smile encouragement. With the honey of wisdom in our mouths, we prophesy a full humanity to all the peoples....
“We celebrate the sensual life you give us. We celebrate the sweat that pours from us during our labors. We celebrate the fingertips vibrating upon the skin of a love. We celebrate the tongue which licks a wound or wets our lips. We celebrate our bodiliness, our physicality, the sensations of pleasure, our oneness with earth and water.” 
* Steve Beard is the executive editor of Good News, a magazine for evangelical United Methodists. This article is based on the on-site reports of Dottie Chase, a United Methodist laywoman who covered the event for Good News, and Susan Cyre, a Presbyterian (USA) laywoman who covered the event for the Presbyterian Layman.
