EEWC Conference 2006

A California Feminist Visits Charlotte, NC

by Anne Eggebroten

(from the Summer 2006 issue of Christian Feminism Today)

You know you’re in the Bible Belt when you’re standing on the moving walkway at the airport to get to your gate, and you pass by a mural of Psalm 98 and dancing figures:

With trumpets and sound of cornet,
make a joyful noise before the Lord, the King.
Let the sea roar, and the fullness thereof;
the world and they that dwell therein.
Let the floods clap their hands:
let the hills be joyful together.
--Psalm 98

That doesn’t happen in Los Angeles.

You know you’re in the Bible Belt when the highway circling the city is named Billy Graham Parkway.

You realize it again when the Hyatt Hotel staff bends over backward to meet all your conference needs and bills you for less than your contract requires on many items.

This unique location hit me again after the conference when I was taking a cab back to the airport and my driver announced that he had been a missionary to Indonesia, Russia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa with The Evangelical Alliance Mission (TEAM) based in Wheaton, Illinois.

I had jumped into the taxi at 3:25 pm for a 5:11 pm flight, just having visited Letha Dawson Scanzoni, recovering from acute gastritis in Presbyterian Hospital, as well as exhaustion from having co-planned the wonderful conference.

Tired and nervous about catching my plane, I didn’t want to talk, but the driver was definitely feeling talkative.

“Where are you from?  Why are you here?” he asked, an older gentleman, African-looking, with an accent that sounded Caribbean.

“L.A.— I’m here for a conference of Christian women,” I admitted, definitely not using any of the big words: feminist, evangelical, inclusive.  There are times when biblical feminism is the last thing you want to talk about, and the end of a five-day immersion in an EEWC conference and business meeting is one of them.

“Oh, was that at the South Park Hyatt?” he asked.  “I think I drove some of your friends to the airport.  They said they were Christian feminists.”

My cover was blown.  I knew I was in for an intensive twenty minutes.

“We had a great conversation,” he continued.  “Now that book The Feminine Mystique was by a Jewish woman.  It wasn’t Christian feminism—it was more secular.”

“You’re very well read,” I commented reluctantly.

“Yes, I’ve been a missionary in four cultures around the world for twenty-five years, so I had to do a lot of reading to relate to different people,” he explained.

“Oh, so your traveling has educated you,” I said.

“What is your group’s mission?  Do you have a mission statement?” he continued eagerly.

I began fumbling for the EEWC brochure and a newsletter.

“Some churches, like Southern Baptists, don’t allow women pastors,” I began.  “So we work on equality in the church and home.  A lot of churches teach headship, the submission of wives to husbands, from Ephesians 5, but they don’t quote the first verse in the passage, ‘Be subject to one another….’ You just hear, ‘Wives, be subject to your husbands.’”

By now we were launched into a full-fledged theological discussion that lasted all the way to the airport.  He described situations in churches that he had founded and said he was planning a trip to revisit some of those churches.

“You’re a regular Paul the Apostle,” I said as we arrived at the terminal.

After giving him his fare and a tip, I also pulled out a copy of All We’re Meant To Be, third edition, and handed it to him.  “This is a full explanation of what our group’s mission is,” I explained.  “It was written by the lady I was visiting at Presbyterian Hospital and her friend.”

“I’ll read it,” he promised, and I believed him.  I could see Letha’s and Nancy’s gospel flying to the uttermost parts of the earth in his hands.

Entering the terminal, I checked in for my flight, still dazzled by the continuing presence of the Holy Spirit but praying that the person next to me on the flight might be interested only in sleep.

Anne Eggebroten is a writer on women’s issues and a research scholar with the Center for the Study of Women at UCLA. She is a Southwest representative on the EEWC Council.

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