Blessed the Waters That Rise and Fall to Rise Again (Part 2)
by Nancy A. Hardesty

Editor's note: The summer issue featured the first part of Nancy Hardesty's plenary address from the 2004 conference in Claremont, CA. In that address, Nancy told the story of how EEWC began, where it has fitted in with the three waves of feminism, and how its vision and mission have expanded. In Part 2, she picks up with the concluding paragraph of Part 1 and talks about challenges EEWC has faced, what we have learned and continue to learn, and how we might view the future. The title of her talk is taken from Carolyn McDade's song, "Gratitude" on McDade's CD, As We So Love.

From the beginning of this organization it was clear that a biblical feminism must include all issues of both gender and sexuality. We argued that this meant liberation for both women and men, boys and girls. And it began to seem obvious to us, as it had to secular feminists, that "women's liberation" did not just apply to some women and not to others. And not all lesbians are non-believers although one must admit that far too many Christian churches are working really hard to make it that way. 

For me at least, homosexuality was a surprise topic at EWC's Washington Conference. Virginia was asked to do a workshop on the Bible and women. I was asked to do one on women's friendships. We agreed to share both workshops, and we titled mine "Woman to Woman Friendships." And I was naive enough to think that that's all we were going to talk about! Of course it was Jeanne Baly's fault that we got off the subject! Although Virginia and I had agreed to take written questions only, Jeanne raised her hand and insisted on telling us about a young coworker who had revealed to Jeanne that she was a lesbian. "What should I say to her?" Jeanne pleaded. Sitting right in the middle of that small but crowded room was one of my former Trinity students who had just informed me that she was a lesbian. And right behind her sat the conservative writer Elisabeth Eliot. I myself had been surprised to discover that year (at age 34) that I was a lesbian and had only very recently shared that information with Letha. Virginia and I had not yet discussed the topic. I was certainly not ready to acknowledge my own sexuality publicly, nor was Virginia. So our comments in the workshop were quite circumspect. Still they created quite a furor in the halls because we were not immediately and emphatically condemnatory. 

The lesbians in EWC first met over a table in the food court and later in my hotel room during the 1982 Seattle conference, thanks to a courageous member of the Seattle planning committee and the help of gay men from a local church who manned the information booth so that no woman would have to miss a session of the conference. 

The issues came to a head at Wellesley College in 1984 and then in Fresno in 1986. Before the Wellesley conference, the National Council formulated a procedure by which members could submit resolutions to the membership for vote. From its beginning EWC had consistently passed resolutions supporting the Equal Rights Amendment and women's ordination. In the election year of 1984 the Council itself brought forward resolutions supporting the political process and calling for the "elimination of military armaments and nuclear weaponry." When Judy Jahnke and Sarah Smith submitted a resolution supporting civil rights for lesbians and gay men, some long-time members were alarmed. The resolutions were tabled. 

Over the next two years, EEWC leadership moaned and fretted, dithered about what to do, but stubbornly resisted formulating a way of responding. The Council came to Fresno, so devoid of a plan that the Council co-coordinators each refused to chair the discussion portion of the membership meeting. I volunteered to do it, really assuming that it would be relatively uneventful. But at a meeting of lesbians and friends the night before the membership meeting, it became clear that many people wished to re-introduce at least some of the tabled resolutions. They set about formulating a strategy. The next day three resolutions were introduced: The first committed the organization to work for racial justice; the second deplored "violence against women and children and misuse of power within the family"; and the third acknowledged the lesbian minority within EEWC and took "a firm stand in favor of civil rights protection for homosexual persons." The rocker caught the cat's tail. Discussion was intense and lengthy. Various members threatened the membership. Some members expressed their fears that membership would cost them their jobs in Christian organizations -- ignoring the fact that those organizations would instantly terminate any other employee honest enough to admit they were gay or even someone they suspected might be a lesbian. And many "Christian" organizations are still fighting for their right to continue that discrimination. I am very grateful to have tenure at a state university. 

But in the end of the discussion at Fresno, very calmly and courageously by standing votes, the members of EEWC overwhelmingly endorsed all three resolutions. Many painful words were said, and some chose to leave the organization; some chose to form another organization for straight people only. We chose to be inclusive. But I need not tell you how much remains to be done in that area. We must continue to struggle against those who would draw lines of discrimination on the basis of gender and sexuality. Virginia is correct when she denounces the binary construct and calls for Omnigender. And as Rosemary Ruether has argued so eloquently for so long: dualism is deadly. Patriarchy, sexism, and heterosexism must still be defeated.

More work to be done 

We have made some progress. Several months ago Sarah Weddington was on an airplane. The young flight attendant noticed the pin she was wearing -- a coat hanger with a red slash across it. Serving the second round of sodas, the puzzled attendant leaned over and asked, "Ma'am, what do you have against coat hangers?" Weddington, of course, is the lawyer who argued Roe v. Wade before the Supreme Court. Most of us have forgotten or never knew of those days when women who couldn't afford to go to another country for an abortion had to take matters into their own hands. Whether we personally would choose to have an abortion or not (and many of us don't have to worry about that anymore!), all of us should be able to agree that individual pregnant women should have the right to make that decision and not have that decision made for them by male politicians or preachers. Again, I need not tell you how strong the pressures are to take that freedom of choice away. 

Our government has already taken reproductive freedom away from millions of women around the world by withholding our $34 million contribution to the United Nations' Population Fund. Our government's refusal has left millions of couples around the world without safe and effective contraception. The result is approximately 80 million unintended pregnancies each year. And many of these babies are born to AIDS-infected women. In sub-Saharan Africa, 60 percent of people with AIDS are women. I find it ironic that some evangelicals have recently discovered the AIDS epidemic now that it has devastated Africa. The late Ronald Reagan and his oh-so-Moral Majority ignored AIDS for nearly a decade while it was ravaging the gay community in the 1980s. Perhaps if those influential Christians had put less energy into attacking the disease's victims and urged the government to pour some resources into attacking the disease, we might have found a cure by now. And still those same Christians now proclaiming their compassion for Africans with AIDS are fighting to keep condoms out of the hands of young people in this country and around the world. It's certainly not a cure for AIDS, but it is one small, inexpensive, and relatively effective way to avoid exposure to the virus.

Being ecumenical 

In 1990 we voted to become the Evangelical and Ecumenical Women's Caucus -- EEWC. And in more recent conferences we have chosen to include women of other faiths. "Ecumenical" was a dirty word for some of us back in the day when we were growing up in the OTC, the "One True Church"'(of course, we grew up in different denominations, but each of them was the OTC). Now we have come to appreciate the strengths that our diversity of Christian communities has to offer. And as I have taught world religions over the past decade or so, I've come to a conclusion. If we truly believe there is only one God who created human beings in that divine image, then however people express their yearnings toward that One, they worship the One to whom we too are devoted. 

Within our religious communities there is much to do. Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong has written a very insightful and provocative book titled Why Christianity Must Change or Die! While I do not agree with a number of his conclusions -- I'm not as uncomfortable with supernaturalism as he is, although I do agree that it may be time to give up thinking theologically in terms of a three-storied universe! -- I am certainly convinced that Christianity as we know it is in the midst of change -- as it has always been. In this country the number of people who have no religious affiliation has doubled in the past decade to 29.4 million. The Barna Research Group found that a full 72 percent of Generation X, those born between 1964 and 1981, do not attend religious services at all. But that doesn't mean these people aren't spiritual or that they haven't tried religious communities. Many are spiritual orphans. If we are to be salt and light in the world, we must expand our vision and our experience of the Divine. We must continue to work to eradicate the chauvinism, xenophobia, and religious bigotry that fuels racism, ethnic exclusivity, nationalism, and militarism. We must celebrate diversity and respect every individual, each culture, and all religions. Phyllis Trible taught us so long ago that Genesis 2 says we all have our origins in ha'adam from ha'adamah, earthlings from the earth, or as I've always liked to say, humans from the humus. We must realize that we are one with the earth; as we desecrate it, we desecrate ourselves. 

We must continue to strengthen our analysis and refine our strategies. In whatever sphere to which God has called us and in which God has placed us, we must work for justice, for a better life for those who will follow. We each do our part. I think it was Reta Finger who reminded us a few years back that individually we don't have to tackle everything. Maybe the Kin-dom of God is like a potluck. We each bring our own best dish, and the Spirit works out a healthy balance. If each of us keeps doing our best, working on our particular project, we can make the world a better place. Justice will roll down like water.

Looking back, looking ahead 

Finally, I'm a historian -- I am very comfortable looking back. I'm not a visionary. I have no five-year plan for myself, so I certainly don't have one to offer EEWC! I appreciate this opportunity to review our history, and I am blessed by your celebration of All We're Meant to Be. I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but let me just say, "Enough already!" We have been there, done that! If EEWC is to survive and thrive in the twenty-first century, we need to stop looking backward and concentrate on the future. We have ridden the second wave of feminism. As we ebb back into the arms of Mother Earth, we know that the Third Wave is already rising again. Younger women are surging forward and will rise higher and sweep farther. 

As a historian, I use the past to find perspective. Remember how long women worked, unsuccessfully, to pass the Equal Rights Amendment? That's why I don't get particularly alarmed by President Bush's call for a marriage amendment. I also find in the past models of hope and courage for the future. And so I would offer two thoughts from my most recent study, Faith Cure; Divine Healing in the Holiness and Pentecostal Movements. (Yes, that is a shameless plug!) The book is about faith and healing. 

If we are to find healing ourselves and to be a healing force in our world, we must abandon the gospel of negativity so many preach today. It seems that even those who rebelled against the petty legalism of their youth (we didn't drink, smoke, dance, play cards, go to movies, or join secret societies) have adopted a larger legalism, trying to encode their beliefs in legislative agendas and Constitutional amendments. We need to identify ourselves as Christians by what we're for, not what we're against. We need to embrace the people of the world rather than denounce them and distance ourselves from them. Jesus did not say that people would know who were his disciples by the rules they kept, the moral proclamations they made, or the degrees of separation they maintained from everyone else. Jesus said that true disciples would be distinguished by their love for one another, for their neighbors, and for the Holy One. Love is our positive and healing message. 

And the other healing power is found in faith. In scripture, faith is not a set of beliefs but an abiding relationship with the Divine. The women and men I describe in the early divine healing movement found physical health through a profound faith in the power of God at work in their daily lives. If this organization is to survive and persevere; if we as individuals are going to sustain our work of love and justice, we need to know that behind the ebb and flow of waves and water there is a Power, an Energy, a web of Wisdom we call God, creating, empowering, sustaining. "Blessed the waters that rise and fall to rise again."

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Nancy Hardesty teaches religion at Clemson University, Clemson, SC. She is the author of numerous books, including Women Called to Witness; Inclusive Language in the Church; and most recently Faith Cure: Divine Healing in the Holiness and Pentecostal Movements; and is coauthor with Letha Dawson Scanzoni of All We're Meant to Be: Biblical Feminism for Today.

© 2004 Evangelical and Ecumenical Women's Caucus