S1: i think i can handle it. [SU-F: okay ] podium. there's your podium. 
<SS LAUGH> 
S2: it's, you can even hold onto it [S1: right yeah ] when the, when the lecture gets really going. 
S1: <LAUGH> right 
S2: okay, you guys ready?
SU-F: mhm 
<P :04> 
S2: okay i think we'll get started, um, uh, i wanna welcome everybody i'm Sidonie Smith and i'm director of Women's Studies here at the university and you're in the new home of Women's Studies and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender Lane Hall was just renovated and we moved in over the summer. so it's a lovely building and a building in which uh, uh a lot of things take place a lot of talks like today's talk. um i'm going to introduce Rosemary in a minute but i just want to um, tell you about some upcoming events um Women's Studies and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender uh who co-sponsor almost all the events that are in_ take place in Lane Hall have a series going called Gendered Worlds Women's Lives in Transnational Perspective. um that's throughout this term uh there are s- some of these are, some of these posters are on the table outside so please pick one up, i just call your attention to the next one in the series, um Maria Messner from the University of Vienna is going to be here on Friday at noon and she's going to talk, uh give a talk called the Gender of Politics A Transnational Study of the Meanings of Gender in the Political Field and she's looking at four Eastern European countries, and the ways in which the word gender is invoked and how it means s- signifies differently in these different countries. um, i also wanna call attention to a uh talk this afternoon um we have a the Institute for Research on Women and Gender is um, searching for a new director to take over from Abby Stewart who's be- was the founding director and has been this_ a major leadership force on campus and we have a couple candidates coming in in the next month. the first one is in this afternoon um, i- is in now Barbara Gutech, uh whose fields are in organizational behavior and psychology and she's speaking this afternoon on gender and the reasonable woman standard, in hostile environment cases of sexual harassment and that's over in the, u- East Hall in Psychology Fourth Floor and there are some um flyers for that. um, okay um, now i'd like to introduce our guest speaker. um, and this again this uh talk is sponsored co-sponsored by Women's Studies and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. probably all of you are here because you know doctor Ruether's work um uh, many of us have been reading her for a long time and have appreciated her groundbreaking work. Rosemary Radford Ruether is a Catholic feminist theologian. she teaches at the Garrett Theological Seminary and she's also a member of the graduate faculty at Northwestern University, in Evanston Illinois. um, there she teaches courses on the interrelationship of Christian theology and history to social justice issues. including sexism, racism, poverty, militarism, ecology, and interfaith relations. she holds a B-A in philosophy from Scripps College, an M-A in ancient history, and a PhD in classics and patristics from the Claremont Graduate School, in Claremont California. she also holds twelve honorary doctoral degrees, the most recent from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland in ninety-four and, from the University in Uppsala, Sweden two-thousand just this year. <S1 LAUGH> last year i guess it was. she is the author, of thirty-two books, among these and and many of you have probably read, one or more of these books, are Sexism and God-Talk Toward a Feminist Theology, from nineteen eighty-three, Woman-Church Theology and Practice of Feminist Liturgical Communities nineteen eighty-seven, the Wrath of Jonah, the Crisis of Religious Nationalism in the Israeli Palestinian Conflict from eighty-nine, Gaia and God, an Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing from ninety-two, Women Healing Earth Third World Women on Feminism, Religion, and Ecology from ninety-six and Gender and Redemption, a Theological History, from nineteen ninety-eight. her forthcoming book, 
S1: go ahead <LAUGH> i was just looking at the, podium, the powder blue podium 
S2: the at your a, podium. because we just had a specially designed podium made, <SS LAUGH> for doctor Ruether oh blue will, go outside, <MOVES PODIUM> there we go, that's to cover that this is a ba- a box. um, her forthcoming book is Christianity and the Making of the Modern Family, and i'm sure that that's, uh out of this project is her talk today, Christianity and the Making of Modern Family. thank you so much for the work you've done and welcome, to Lane Hall. 
S1: okay, thank you. boy i wanna first explain that Christianity and the Making of the Modern Family was not my title for this book. <SU-M LAUGH> this was my title Re-imagining Families plural, Gender Home and Work in Christian History. uh i and uh, this is about the most boring cover i've ever seen in my life, you know <SS LAUGH> they should've just uh how about just uh a kin- a a plain brown wrapper you know? um, <SS LAUGH> so uh i complained bitterly to Beacon Press they were completely deaf uh to my cries of rage and uh, <SU-F LAUGH> and came out with this um uh and uh i should have you know sued them or done something drastic uh but i i didn't think they were gonna just ignore me. anyway they have now gotten the point since they've gotten so many complaints. they're gonna put out a paperback with a much better cover, and they're gonna add these words to the title Ruling Ideologies, Diverse Realities. so at least it kind of corrects what could easily be the impression of this title which is that Christianity created the modern family. [SU-F: yeah mhm ] which is exactly the opposite <LAUGH> of the point of the book. so you know and so this is one of these bad experiences that authors occasionally have uh, um so i just wanted to, to introduce that, uh, what i'm gonna do is is kind of, uh, give you a rapid overview <LAUGH> of the, thesis of the book. uh but i wanna start out j- by reading two quotes, uh that kind of set the stage this is in the introduction, the first quote is from something called Focus on the Family everybody knows what Focus on the Family is. it's a right wing, [SS: yeah ] [SU-M: conservative (xx) ] uh think tank on (xx) <SS LAUGH> based in Colorado Springs, <READING> Focus on the Family attempts to turn hearts toward home. by reasonable biblical and empirical insights, so that people will be able to discover the founder of homes, and the creator of families, Jesus Christ. </READING> <SU-M LAUGH> okay the second quote goes as follows, <READING> if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own mother and father, wife and children brothers and sisters yes even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. </READING> Jesus of Nazareth. [SU-M: yeah, (xx) ] so that uh sets a little shall we say a little contradiction. <SS LAUGH> um, right wing uh Christians have tried to portray themselves as restorers of what they call the God, given, biblical form of the family. <S5 LAUGH> what they mean by this is a male headed nuclear family with a working husband, and a um, dependent wife. [S5: hm ] uh but this form of the family is actually the middle-class, white Victorian family, of the late nineteenth century. uh they claimed that this type of family is a, is an expression of the quote orders of creation that's a a heavy duty Puritan term, uh that means that this is part of the structures of God's creation. in other words that this type of family was established by God at creation, <LAUGH> whenever that was, <SS LAUGH> uh and uh therefore of course is unchangeable, and eternal. but this of course is both historically and theologically mistaken. there's no normative biblical family, the Old Testament one finds many forms of the family, uh one of them for example is a tribal clan extended family, very often with multiple wives, and their children and their slaves and their children. uh, so this type of family uh that they're lifting up uh as normative is as i said actually the creation of the white middle class, uh in the West in the nineteenth century. and it is in crisis today in other words this kind of nuclear family is in crisis, uh for the very s- obvious reason that it, never worked for working-class and black people, and it's no longer working for middle-class whites, today. now i thought what i would like to do is is uh, uh sort of focus on two parts of this, book i wanna focus on the on the New Testament piece, uh and then kind of fast forward <LAUGH> through the centuries and talk about the shaping of this uh, uh middle-class nuclear family in the late nineteenth century and why it's in crisis today. in the New Testament, there is a deep conflict, between a negation of the biological family, a negation that w- was typically a part of the language of the Jesus Movement, uh and then you find in the later strata of the New Testament a restoration of the patriarchal slaveholding family, that had been rejected in earlier Christianity. uh in the Gospels one finds a strong criticism of the biological family. Jesus is portrayed as rejecting his own family, his mother and brothers, um he had a by the way a big family he had four brothers, a couple sisters uh we don't have a good idea <LAUGH> but um, but he's described as critiquing uh that kind of f- family in favor of the community of believers. and o- and one scene that you find in in uh, all of the Gospels his mother and brothers come uh and try to uh, uh, seize him th- they- they're described as believing him to be mad and coming to seize him. uh, i once uh gave a sermon on this and as a kind of throwaway line i have the, tendency to do these throwaway lines <SU-M LAUGH> and i said that they were trying to get him to come home and take care of his wife and children. <SS LAUGH> and this, this created a lot of consternation in the church. <SS LAUGH> but anyway whatever they were coming for, they- they're portrayed as believing him to be mad and, coming to seize him. and Jesus is then described as repudiating them by saying who are my mother and my brothers and my sisters. and looking around at those who sat around him he said here are my mother and my brothers and my sisters, whoever does the will of God is my brother my, sister and my mother. in other words the new community of faith is seen as negating the natural biological family, uh or in Luke's words which i just quoted <READING> if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own mother, father, wife and children brothers and sisters he cannot be my disciple. </READING> uh now what's going on in in this kind of, language about the family. um i think that this negation of the family in the Jesus tradition reflects, um three different things. uh first it, it reflects an eschatological belief. everybody know what eschatological means? 
S3: i don't 
SU-M: no 
S1: it means uh a rejection of a, uh of a heavenly time that is believed to soon be coming or some redemptive new age believed to be coming. uh in the Kingdom of God where there will be no more marrying and giving in marriage. uh and it's assumed i- uh it is it is said in the New Testament those who are anticipating this new age, where there'll be no more marrying or giving in marriage do not marry now in other words they they begin to anticipate this new age where there's no marrying, or giving in marriage. secondly uh, many people in Jesus' time could not marry. slaves were forbidden to marry, uh... soldiers could not marry during their time of duty, um many poorer people uh could not afford to marry or were not allowed to marry outside of their ethnic group. uh and early Christianity seems to have been made up of many disenfranchised people without families. thirdly uh the church or the community of believers is seen, uh then as their alternative family, um, you might say their surrogate family, uh the true family of brothers and sisters gathered outside of these oppressive systems of society, and supporting these disenfranchised people. now this view of the church as a new or true family continues in Paul, Paul's writings are larded with analogies drawn from the family and from the, patriarchal slaveholding household of the Roman world. Christians are said to be like slaves, who have been emancipated, and who have been adopted by the father of the household as true children. or, this is an <LAUGH> interesting analogy they are said to be like a wife, who has been emancipated because the husband who held control over her has died. <SS LAUGH> that's what it says. um, <SS LAUGH> <P :05> the fleshly family of Israel is said to have been superceded by this new people the spiritual people of God, and and the upshot of all these family analogies in Paul, is that the church is a new family related by faith replacing old ties of kinship, race and class. however... Paul gets nervous when this these ideas are pushed uh, in a certain direction in terms of slaves and women. i mean he's kind of happy with these analogies, when they overcome the distinction of of Jew and Greek which is kind of his main thing. but when it they got get pressed to sort of, emancipate <LAUGH> women and slaves, he gets a little more nervous. um, and there rises particularly a conflict over the idea, that women, are liberated from subordination and the patriarchal h- family, by negating marriage and joining the church. uh, and such women and you have a, considerable tradition in early Christianity with the reflected in uh, a number of of writings many of them, um, in in the apo- what's called Apocryphal Gospels and Acts of the Apostles. that depict uh, this class of women who who reject marriage, uh and join the church and in and this, they're seen as uh emancipated to then travel around, uh and uh, uh preach and teach and baptize. uh s- uh, i remember we did we did a uh, a study of this in one of the uh, American Academy of Religion sessions or maybe it was the Early Christian Session i forget. but anyway we titled it, Have Celibacy Will Travel <SS LAUGH> because of, that's the story line you know. Paul comes to town, converts women women reject, their fiance uh repudiate their household, dress as a man travel around and uh and uh you know hit the road and uh, and evangelize um and and one of the major examples of this kind of genre of writing is the acts of Paul and Thekla. uh, exalting a woman who rejects the demands of her family repudiates her subordination to her, parents, um rejects her fiance, uh and um then travels uh around um, uh preaching uh baptizing and teaching. and Paul is depicted as affirming her choice and commissioning her, uh to go back to her hometown and preach. um so you have a v- what i'm saying you have a very different Paul in these writings which is interesting. uh now the Paul of the New Testament epistles, shared part of these assumptions, uh he believed that celibacy was the anticipation of the Kingdom of God, and therefore it relativized marriage. um, uh he was himself, one of those people who didn't marry um, uh, i- so he thought that the most committed people would be like himself and not married, uh but he was also clearly threatened by independent women, who claimed that their conversion to Christ uh emancipated them from these family relationships and allowed them to engage in itinerant preaching. uh so you you see that kind of ambivalence in in the historic uh, Letters of Paul and then in the post-Pauline Letters which come from the next generation after Paul, uh namely letters like First Timothy, we see an attack on these kind of women church leaders, an effort to silence them. <READING> let a woman learn in silence and all submissiveness i permit no woman to teach or have authority over men she is to keep silent </READING> that's in First Timothy, and what this text unwittingly reveals of course is that women were indeed, commonly teaching and having authority over men in Paul <LAUGH> these Pauline churches in other words you don't forbid what is not going on right? <SS LAUGH> um, so Timothy uh or the writer of this this epistle is championing, uh or attempting to restore a traditional patriarchal slaveholding family, as normative for the church uh, over against what had been a disruption of these patterns um, and th- and one then finds repeatedly in this second uh later strata of the New Testament, the threefold uh command wives obey your husbands slaves obey your masters children obey your parents. <S5 LAUGH> uh obviously trying to reestablish this kind of structure of the family. uh and yet single women, uh that is to say w- uh, women who were never married or widows uh continue to play a major role in Pauline churches. as i said the the Acts of Paul and Thekla and other such literature give us a glimpse, of this alternative Pauline, Christianity which looked to Paul, for their mandate, that that women converted to Christ could leave their families repudiate the authority of their parents, and their, prospective husbands and travel and preach. and Paul himself is depicted as blessing Thekla and commis- commissioning her to preach. so that's that's a little bit on the on this New Testament framework. uh now what happened to that tradition? uh in the post-New Testament uh, and medieval period um, and uh here's where i do a little fast forward, <LAUGH> to kind of, go from the second century to the nineteenth century. um, from the second to the fourth century, this conflict between unmarried women, uh single women, uh and widows and and the patriarchal family this conflict continued in Christianity. uh and there were many radical forms of Christianity such as Montanism, m- Marchinaites Valentinians, who championed the idea of the Christian community as a community of single men and women, who are equals in a new spiritual community of brothers and sisters. but but these movements, became increasingly marginalized by a patriarchal Christianity, which now idealizes celibacy but rejects women's leadership. <S5 LAUGH> uh, in other words what what happens by the fourth century is a kind of synthesis, of patriarchy or male domination and celibacy. um, in in this new construct, males alone are allowed public leadership, uh women celibates are idealized but but they're only allowed private forms of asceticism, in other words they can't have th- they can't be public teachers, and married people uh fall into kind of a third rate status, [S5: mhm ] uh uh increasingly falling under church discipline, in their marital lives um, but treated as people who had chosen a lesser way of life. uh, allowed but uh, not as holy as celibacy. now from from the late, uh Ancient World the fifth century uh into uh, uh the High Middle Ages the Western church engaged in three struggles, in relationship to family and women. uh, first there was a, a continual effort to force celibacy onto priests. now priests had been married in the earlier church and there was an effort to force celibacy onto them, this largely failed uh largely because, no man could survive without a wife unless he was in a monastery <LAUGH> um, so it was re- uh it was really a monastic movement and finally uh this was, legally solved by simply declaring all married priests to be uh in in concubinage and their children as bastards, <LAUGH> <S5 LAUGH> uh but it didn't actually change uh what people were doing. uh except that of course, it demoted the status of the wife and children. uh and so that was one kind of s- movement uh, that goes on. uh, secondly there's an effort to force monogamy, with no divorce or remarriage, uh and no marriage between uh, uh several degrees of kinship uh, for married people. so the church gets into this business of trying to construct, a type uh a type of marriage um, that which only is monogamous, no divorce or remarriage uh no marriage between kin and so on. uh and and here it was i- it was battling against Celtic and German law that allowed polygamy, easy divorce for both men and women, and marriage between relatives. finally there was a constant effort to cloister women cel- the celibate women and to forbid them public ministry, and self-government of their communities and this, didn't really work until the Late Middle Ages because you have Hildegaard of Bingen and_ very much ruling, <LAUGH> abbesses in the high- um Early and High Middle Ages and, and and those women like Hildegaard of Bingen (who) goes around preaching and so on. so this is only really forced uh, onto women's communities by the end of the Middle Ages in the Counter-Reformation. okay uh moving right along, <LAUGH> i wanna say something about how the Reformation, restructures this um, this picture... the main stream of the Protestant Reformation, Luther Calvin so on, uh, um uh Anglicanism to some extent uh rejected the celibate ideal that had dominated Christianity for fifteen hundred years. now this not only meant rejecting celibacy for the priesthood, but also rejecting or abolishing monastic life for men and women, uh and this had quite a different effect on women than on men. in other words the the old monk could now become a Lutheran pastor and marry, <LAUGH> which is what Luther did. but women uh were really, lost a whole alternative, in other words earlier they had had, an alternative now they had no alternative. um, uh in other words women had no more uh no other alternative other than marriage. uh and Protestantism championed a a a patriarchal concept of marriage, and as uh as the order of creation this concept of, of marriage as the order of creation comes to m- modern right wing Protestants from uh the Reformation. uh and they also believed that everybody ought to marry. <P :04> um essentially what Luther uh believed i mean he still very much believed that uh human sexuality was was fallen and sinful. um and uh, the only way to contain lust, was to marry. <LAUGH> but nobody was capable of of b- of being celibate so it actually c- this insistence comes out of a kind of negative view, of sexuality but there is a seat here how about coming right in here? [S4: oh i'm i'm just- i'm ] d- d- do not be shy. <SS LAUGH> okay so you have this this effort to force everybody to marry and to ab- and to abolish monastic life. and and this this had a limiting uh effect on women. secondly and this this u- u- may be surprising uh because we think of Protestantism as elevating the status of marriage, Protestantism al- the Protestant reformers also rejected, the sacramentality of marriage. uh, in other words they they said marriage is not a sacrament. uh, and this was basically because they thought that marriage was a quote natural institution of creation, not a redemptive expression of the new creation in Christ. in other words for them, sacraments belonged to the new creation of Christ they're not a- and marriage was not part of the new creation of Christ it was an institution of of of the natural world. um... now this desacramentalizing of marriage, meant that divorce was allowed. because the old view that there could be no divorce was dependent on the idea that a marriage uh th- a a marriages are sacraments and sacraments cannot be, negated. so, now divorce is allowed, although the grounds for this, the Anglican church by the way didn't accept that and still has a problem with, the idea of divorce. but Lutheran uh the Lutheran Calvinist tradition, allowed divorce but the grounds for it were very narrow. adultery or desertion. uh, and in desertion the woman had_ and it was usually the woman <LAUGH> being deserted, had to wait a li- you know number of years before you know she could be remarried. uh, and domestic violence was not seen as ground for a divorce. [S5: hm ] uh a th- a third piece here um, the sixteenth seventeenth century also n- saw an increasing shift, in the economy that marginalized women from skilled paid work. uh n- this was going on in both the Catholic and the Protestant areas it's a general movement in, uh, early modern Europe uh in the Protestant areas, single women were looked at with suspicion. uh and uh, made to live in households, headed by men. in other words a wome- a single woman couldn't live by herself or or head a household. uh, married women were also being removed from guild membership or craft union membership in their own right, and they were allowed only unpaid domestic work or occasional, um marketing in the informal economy. informal economy not the organized craft unions but you know they could, maybe make hairbrushes and peddle them (in the) in the marketplace and so on so they were really, being demoted into these uh, uh unpaid or low paid areas and this made it very difficult for a woman to be self-supporting, as a householder. Protestantism of course also did not allow women, public ministry, preaching or ordained ministry. and women could not at- uh attend universities, in Europe. um, basically till the twentieth century. so those trends begin in terms of women's economic opportunities, uh and this continues uh, i- uh, as we move toward the nineteenth century. um, the movement from the seventeenth to mid-nineteenth century in Western Europe and the United States saw a series, of economic developments that is reshaping, the whole work relationship. and the gender definitions of male and female roles... basically what happens from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century is the artisan household economy, now the artisan household economy basically was the, the cl- the classic um pre-industrial economy, uh of middle-class households where, the uh the household was essentially a workshop, <LAUGH> and the wife the husband the children the apprentices uh servants and so on all essentially were a a work force, a household work force. so this uh artisan uh type of household economy, where husband wife sons daughters uh resident apprentices all worked together, was being gradually destroyed. uh paid work and even a subsistence household economy was being gradually removed from the household. uh in other words the production of goods and services were being separated out from the household of the family and collectivized in the public economy, removed from the household. um, in other words, um textiles were being removed from the family to factories <LAUGH> this is, uh what i'm basically saying here. and the and poorer women and children along with men were then being drawn into low paid factory work. whereas the poorest woman and children would work as servants uh in other households. so that's one whole direction in which you're losing the household economy and, and you know what's appearing is the factory. secondly the middle-class household, itself was being removed from areas of town related to paid work factories offices. uh in other instead of having the boss of the factory live, in a big house next to the factory and have his wife perhaps be the bookkeeper for the factory, <LAUGH> uh you're you're taking the household where where boss's family lived and you're moving it out of the area where the factories are. uh and you're moving it into some kind of, uh, uh sort of, purely d- uh, p- uh realm of purely domestic houses you know the kind of the first range of suburbs and so on. <SU-M LAUGH> so you're separating the the spheres, uh of paid work and hous- of houses, and these new houses where where the boss's family are being lodged, now um are not only disconnected from the place of paid work, uh and and the wife no longer can participate in that work, uh but, you're also removing any subsistence economy from the household i mean, ch- no more chickens, <LAUGH> herbal gardens vegetables and so on you you're r- you the the ideal is grass lawn, ornamental gardens. uh, [S5: hm ] so the ideal family comes to be defined as the white middle-class, family uh with a domesticated wife who d- quote does not work. that is to say she does not have any paid work, uh and, does not even do subsistence household production like growing herbs, making medicine veget- canning vegetables fruits keeping chickens and so on now a lot of that actually went on but the ideal, is to increasingly remove production from the household. and to create the the uh, the ideal that the wife and children are to be, uh entirely supported by the husband's wages, which he earns in work that is now disconnected from the household. in other words the role of the wife is to be the full-time, mother and uh wife which uh a concept which it basically never had existed, earlier. now this ideal was unattainable, for most working-class families in the nineteenth century black women h- of course had to work, to support the family, uh but they had only the poorest work available to them such as sharecropping domestic service and, laundry. uh immigrant women worked in domestic service but also in factories often did piece work, uh in their homes uh, um, but the labor movement which rose in the late nineteenth century in this country championed the middle-class white family ideal. in other words they tried to raise the male wage to the level, where the wife could become a full-time housewife. and therefore b- by and large the labor movement in this country did not s- support, women's, union struggles. or by the way, black union struggles. <LAUGH> in other words they it was a white male movement. then in the late nineteenth century white middle-class women who were beginning to get into higher education and so on, begin to uh revolt against this isolation and domestication. uh and they begin to organize to g- get the vote to get higher education and to be admitted to professional employment. so that's the a movement of of of educated white middle class, and most of these new professional white women, reformers tended to remain single. many choosing, lifelong relations with other, professional women, rather than marriage. what was called the Boston Marriage. <LAUGH> have you ever heard the phrase Boston Marriage? <LAUGH> well this is a very typical late Victorian, women professionals. uh, the assumption of course is that women simply could not do professional work have a career and also marry. um... so you you you get that kind of, f- first wave you might say of feminism um, then what begins to happen to that as we get into the twentieth century? um, in the twentieth century uh one of the things that's really struck me and and i detail this in the last chapters of the book, is the rapid shifts of ideology, that take place between the twenties, the thirties, the forties, the fifties, and the sixties. you know, uh so there's this extraordinary shifts of ideology, but under the appearance of these shifts of ideology there's actually a continual, trend in one direction. and that continual trend in one direction is more and more, two worker families. <LAUGH> more and more families w- uh, where both husband and wife work and and the wife working, earlier and earlier after the birth of children. so that's that's the the trend that goes on, under the you might say the surface of these rapid shifts of ideology. um, now it's important again to emphasize that this idea of the nonworking wife never of course worked, for anybody but but somebody with a fairly wealthy income i mean unless you can't have a nonworking wife unless your husband gets a certain level of income right? <LAUGH> so it never worked for black people and working-class people, uh you always had black women working long hours and s- uh laundries and uh, and so on or Polish women doing uh, piece work in sweatshops while leaving their children to largely take care of themselves and none of this working wife and mother was seen as a social problem. it became a social problem when white women, wanted to work, [SU-M: hm <LAUGH> ] <LAUGH> and have families. and of course they weren't working in laundries they wanted to work, at the University of Michigan or <LAUGH> something you know. in other words when white middle-class women began to want to move into professional work and also marry and have children suddenly the working wife and mother became a social problem. and were seen as neglecting their husbands and children and causing all manner of social pathology. <SS LAUGH> now they the the nineteen twenties um, there's the first of these shifts uh, of ideology the nineteen twenti- twenties saw a rejection of the, single female bonded lifestyle that had been typi- typical of the suffragists uh generation and women reformers. uh, somehow that, that women bonding pattern associated with a certain kind of, high moral ideals, this was uh, seen as you know kind of old fashioned stuff. and the new um, the new uh idea was, sexual pleasure. <GASP> new idea i mean the- these old women of course were supposed to be essentially incapable of <LAUGH> sexual pleasure. <S5 LAUGH> so now the sexual pleasure of women was uh, was kind of in, of course it was assumed to be marital sexual pleasure. uh and the role of birth control then began to be raised something which the suffragists had sort of avoided, as they avoided this, sexuality issue. uh Protestants as well as Catholics thought that birth control was immoral and and and kept it illegal, Protestants didn't really change on this till the fifties. well some some in the thirties but mostly in the fifties. um so you have the birth control issue uh, and professional women began to argue for the combining of work and family, but there was also a countera- uh attack, a counterattack on the working wife. expressed in the popularizing of Freudian psychology. uh, condemning the independent working wife as pathological. <SU-M LAUGH> so the whole popularization of Freudianism in this country, very much is an attack on, the woman who wants to be an independent professional, and that she is rejecting her destiny you know as uh, a uh wife and mother... so that's that kind of thing is going on in the twenties then comes the Depression, in the thirties, uh and there is a stepped-up attack on the working wife, and this becomes installed as public policy of governments and businesses. uh it is said that working wives are the cause of male unemployment. although there was actually no <LAUGH> no connection, between working wives, and the men who were being unemployed because the men who were being unemployed were not being unemp- empl- were not employed in the places where women were working, <LAUGH> doing different jobs. so this was basically a lie, uh but women were nevertheless uh fired from teaching and from government services and so on on the idea that that the work should be uh reserved for men. but of course the women with unemployed husbands had to work all the more, but they were being pushed out of better paid work into lower paid work. uh, a- while men took the upper level of what had been female professions such as librarianship and, public school teaching. so women really were not, pushed out of the workforce they were pushed down in the work force during the, Depression. uh then during the Second World War there was a kind of temporary reversal of these uh policies, with men away at war, women's work was valued, women were encouraged to take up employment in all areas, Rosie the Riveter i think there's just been a new monument to Rosie the Riveter is that right? so women encouraged to take up employment, uh and uh, contrary to the to the myth that women war workers were single white women wai- waiting for their boyfriend to ge- come home and marry, in fact most of the war workers, were uh, uh women who'd already worked. and many of them had children. uh and for the first time, uh in American history the federal government actually sponsored a child care program. inadequate but nevertheless significant that they did this, in order to because they [SU-F: child care? ] had to have women work they also sponsored child care program. uh then the fifties, uh the end of the war the return of the vets. total switch in this policy, women laid off in droves to make room for the vets the government, uh subsidizing housing and higher education for the vets, while working women were again attacked as pathological. so th- so it's the fifties that really is the the n- nostalgic apogee of this, myth of the family for the for the Christian right. it is is the uh is the fifties, uh, for a brief period women's educational level actually fell in the fifties. uh i mean wo- women had been climbing up in the educational level it actually fell, and they n- uh men and women married earlier than they had at any other time in in American history. women typically married at twenty men at twenty-two whereas the the norm had been women, twenty-four men twenty-six or seven. so that it was it was actually an aberrant period. of course black and working-class women continued to work um, uh then the then the decade of sixty-five to seventy-five, uh a new uh, revolt of middle-class uh women uh, against this domestication this feminine mystique as Betty Fried- Friedan called it, and they began to organize a new feminist movement, uh to complete the agenda of the women's movement in terms of equality legal equality educational equality economic equality. and there were many uh uh legislative victories, sixty-eight to seventy-two a number of legislative victories, the capstone of this being the passing of the Equal Rights Amendment in Congress in nineteen seventy-two which had been held in Congress, not out of committee since nineteen twenty-three. <SS LAUGH> nineteen seventy-two it's taken out of committee and passed, uh and then in seventy-three the Supreme Court passes Roe versus Wade uh legalizing abortion in the first two trimesters. uh feminist movement had not actually been inv- involved in that but of course it was blamed on feminism. then seventy-five eighty-five a new backlash. major anti-feminist backlash, uh by a rise of uh uh right wing Christians into political power in which the, right wing Christians had tended to be sort of apolitical they became politicized, uh the Equal Rights Amendment was was blocked from passage in the states, uh and there has been a continual effort to roll back reproductive rights and women's legal political and economic gains. uh i think we might be seeing uh another stage of that in the, uh in the present uh presidential administration. uh, welfare rights were de- were attacked as anti-family. uh by the way that reflects the fact that welfare rights were first passed for white women in the thir- late thirties. and then the sixties saw a great effort to, to allow black women to get on welfare, to which they had legal rights but they had, not been allowed to get on welfare and then suddenly welfare becomes, some way in which black women are being lazy and we ha- we need to abolish welfare. <SU-M LAUGH> you know as black women are getting on it. and actually uh a- uh uh at the same time there's all this notion that these people are being lazy from being, on welfare the actual, stipends of welfare are are sinking, uh from being roughly at the at a uh subsistence, uh um so-called poverty level to being half the poverty level. um... so those that's the the kind of roller coaster you see, from the twenties to the eighties, uh and it but at the same time there's a continual trend and that continual trend is a k- a, is an increasing a continual increase in the two, o- the two worker, that is to say husband wife, two worker uh household. uh as well as an increase in the number of working single women single women or or actually single, person households are about twenty percent of all American households, are single people. <LAUGH> uh and also uh, uh an increasing number of female headed households uh that is to say female headed with dependent, people in it um, and at the same the gap between rich and poor has widened and the middle class has shrunk creating a two tiered economy, uh with the lower third of the economy living on uh, uh sort of hourly wages of s- six seven to, ten dollars and hour, which is barely a a, poverty wage, in other words if you have a full-time ten hour, uh, a ten dollar an hour job your annual pay is eighteen thousand. and of course typically uh many of these people were ge- were part-time uh no benefits no wage- uh no uh no pensions no medical benefits and so on. so you had this low wage, area, and then you have the professional upper-class, at a starting wage of fifty thousand or more with full benefits. but but the other piece is that these this professional class is now expected to work longer and longer hours. forget the the forty hour week. <LAUGH> now if you really expect to make it as a professional you should have a ten hour, you should be there n- ten hours, or or maybe even longer, uh and i and i know my daughter is in computer animation in Hollywood and, a lot of the the contracts for these people are actually, the minimum is ten hours a day. [S5: damn ] <LAUGH> so obviously this makes it increasingly difficult for somebody to have a full time job and also, have any time for their family. <LAUGH> in other words it it it heightens the contradiction, between home and work um, okay now having uh, dragged you through that very rapidly i want to end by saying, what should the church be doing. this may not be interesting to s- all of you but, i'll tell you about it anyway. <SS LAUGH> [S5: go for it ] uh, <LAUGH> uh i think that there is an urgent need for the churches to critique the unjust situation of women, and families, and to disassociate themselves from the right wing rhetoric of quote family values, which is actually an attack on women and children. [S5: right on ] uh adding to the stress and poverty of actual families. now i think there're three areas the church should work in. they should support, more equal wages for all men and women together with shorter work, days, flex time jobs, with full benefits, medical care and affordable child care in the, either in the neighborhoods or at the workplace. now this would really make it possible for men and women to balance, work and family, with both men and women having income producing jobs and also being able to really share child raising with more adequate family time. i mean i personally think that children not only need two parents they probably need three or four but um, <SS LAUGH> so i mean i sort of think you also need sort of extended, <LAUGH> commadres and compadres uh, and so on uh, but you can't do that unless you're really able to to uh have a kind of reasonable balance between work and family time. uh secondly the church should stop sacralizing the Victorian uh, uh white middle-class family uh as if this were the orders of creation. uh this type of family was never available to poorer or black Americans and has today become basically, unattainable for most uh middle-class white families. uh churches should recognize that men and women, have and they should have equal roles in both family care and work and public involvement, in other words both men and women should be, full human persons. <LAUGH> uh and they accept and support a diversity of household and family forms, notice the the plural, part of this. single people, gay and lesbian couples and their children, blended families extended families. they should make the church a welcoming place for the actual diversity of households that in fact exist in our society. and then thirdly i su- uh i suggest there should be a separation between the legal and the sacramental, uh in in terms of social sexual relations, the government should be in charge of legal arrangements for partners, and this would allow for a variety of types of partnership, uh different ways of arranging perhaps medical benefits uh inheritance and so on. and the church should uh uh get out of the business of acting as an agent for the state in legalizing marriage, and instead uh, create a variety of ways in which people can covenant together and receive sacramental blessings for the community building relations, uh that they are, uh, putting together to support love friendship and fidelity in in the many ways that people are finding, uh themselves able to do that and to r- and to raise children together. and i think this would allow the church to reclaim something of the radical critique of the, oppressive family uh that's found in early Christianity, together with creative expressions of sacramental covenanting that can, support the many, ways in which we are uh seeking to uh, bond together. uh it seems to me that the churches have failed to visualize family, uh not as some fixed part of some past uh divinely established order but rather as, a new creation. in other words that, that we really should think about family as a redemptive possibility, which criticizes systems of family and society that oppress, women children the aged and the poor. uh creating good loving and just families is a part of redemptive process, that is making creation ever new. it is a call to personal and social transformation. in other words we can imagine and reconstruct various ways of creating sustainable relationships with each other, between partners between partners and children at different stages of our lives, and of course since we live longer than ever we have, more stages of our lives, <LAUGH> uh than we did in a earlier period of human history. now once we take family out of the mythic notion of a fixed institution mandated by God from the beginning, and recognize it as a part of a continually renewed redemptive hope, we can perhaps reinterpret the idea that marriage is sacramental. mirroring the relationship of, the Christian tradition g- uh Christ and the church not in the sense of patriarchal hierarchy but in the sense of a new, uh community uh redemptive community. the union of Christ and the church of messianic hope and redemptive community could then be seen as anticipated and prefigured, in the union of lovers becoming friends building nurturing families and becoming coworkers, in bringing about the reign of God's, justice and peace on Earth. so that's the basically the last chapter of the book goes into, a lot of those things in terms of new covenantal relations and, um, family building and stuff like that. so we have uh half a minute for discussion, <LAUGH> i'm not actually,
S2: no we have some more time. 
S1: yeah. 
S1: i think we can (actually) stay here till about one-thirty right? 
S2: yeah yeah we have it until one-thirty. 
SU-F: thirty-one minutes 
S1: so we actually have plenty of time for discussion although some of you may need to rush off to your, one-fifteen class or something, uh yeah? 
S5: are are are you suggesting that in the in the last few minutes of your talk you you said the church should uh, look at different uh different mo- it appeared to me that you were saying different models of relationships and so forth. are you saying that uh, that the union of the male and the female should not be something intended uh, until death do do them part?
S1: uh i w- was not, primarily talking about temporary unions. uh although i think that there there is, perhaps a place for the church uh to work with young people, who are forming um live-in relations prior to permanent commitment. uh i think the church has, abandoned young people at this stage of life and basically, said that you know between puberty at twelve and marriage at, thirty you know when you finish your PhD at the univers- <SS LAUGH> you know you're you're just on your own, you know. uh and uh and i think there may be a way uh of of helping young people uh, uh really celebrate commitments that are that are intentionally short-term um and nonchildbearing. intentionally short-term and nonchildbearing with 
S5: the main focus here is that once you have a child, you have a a child lives a very long time. [S1: right ] are are you suggesting the child is, yeah are you suggesting 
S1: right. there certainly is uh now that's what i just said. uh i i suggest that people sh- should be trained in birth control as part of their puberty, right. <LAUGH> which is what African t- uh, traditions did except the missionaries came in and destroyed it. um, but i also take very seriously the idea that that that when a couple decides, that they're gonna, create a child or adopt a child, uh then they have at the very least a permanent responsibility to that child. [S5: now is that perman- ] uh and they should covenant together in a way that really uh, is very seriously, uh intending to make that relationship, uh permanent and and e- even if they do not succeed, you know humans are not perfect, uh in making their relationship to each other permanent that the relationship with the child has got to be a permanent commitment. uh so i i i talk about different uh kinds of states there but obviously we're also talking about, other kind of configurations because many uh, uh lesbian couples are having shall we say a modest baby boom and uh uh and are are are having having children, uh of their own and uh and uh, gay men are adopting children i had a a 
S5: as a Catholic, yeah i mean you came here as a Catholic 
S2: excuse me i think there'll be other_ i think there are other people that have questions that, why don't we go to other people. 
S1: right and and i, and i think i think that that, raising children has got to be understood the decision to have and raise children has to be understood as a permanent commitment of a convenant 
S5: did you say there's a long time for questions or or, short [S2: is, pardon? ] time for i got the impression there was something like thirty minutes for questions. 
S1: yeah but 
S2: yes but there're other people that had their hand up so let's go to somebody else and then we can circle back to you when other people have had a chance to speak.
S1: yeah?
S6: you use the word redemptive, several times redemptive community. could you, expand on the word redemptive? 
S1: what i mean by redemptive is just and loving. in other words redemptive communities are communities which are, which which do not ap- one person is not oppressed by the other, uh the women are not expected to to to uh do all the serving and get no d- none of the development which is the traditional patriarchal marriage that is not a redemptive relationship that is an unjust relationship. uh, um, you know children are not obviously beaten and raped and so on. so and so that one, one has to uh, uh much of the traditional patriarchal family has been um, violent and unjust. and it has been sanctioned as as normal because it's somehow blessed and and and uh, and and officially married uh you might say all of the energy of the church has gone into, uh condemning uh people for having uh relationships outside marriage. um, but there has been no effort to say that uh, oppre- you know uh, wife rape or ch- uh you know, abusing your children or or simply assuming that your wife should, uh should be the uh dependent person who doesn't, isn't allowed to really develop her own uh, life uh that that these are in fact uh, violent and sinful relationships. so i th- i think th- uh one has to critique that as, i- first of all i- it's it's not the order of creation. <LAUGH> i mean God didn't create that kind of structure in the beginning. uh so that whole ideology about orders of creation has to be rejected. it it is a particular historical construct that kind of family, uh and it needs to be uh, uh questioned as uh, as uh unjust and violent which is to say nonredemptive. uh redemptive relationships are relationships where people really learn to love, and value each other help each other to to grow into full persons and, and and make a a kind of commitment to each other that really allows each other t- to grow and to, uh sustain uh raising children sustain children that really are able to grow into full personhood. uh that is that to me is is a is a re- re- redemptive process it's a very, um, uh c- creative hopeful, open to the future kind of possibility so that's what i'm talking about. and tha- it's at that context that i think we can, break this impasse of the reformation of of talking about, marriage as nonsacramental because it's identi- the the patriarchal marriage was assumed to be the order of creation. i think we need to question both of those assumptions. yeah?
S7: um can you say a little bit more it seems like there's a growing gap between the uh Christian right, and the, uh Christian left <SS LAUGH> i suppose. 
S1: right, there is 
SU-M: or what's left over of it 
SU-M: <LAUGH> yeah 
S7: um, and so (i feel) like in some ways, uh, uh, no, comment on you but your preaching to the converted perhaps, [S1: uhuh ] um and i feel like i'm often like preaching to the converted, in terms of people in the church who, share ideas of liberation and equality and justice in a way that when i read about the Christian right in the paper in the politics, i don't know where they're coming from. [S1: yeah ] i can't get on the same plane. and so i really wonder, where that communication where that bridge can be built?
S1: yeah. i don't believe that the Christian right and the Christian left are in communion with each other. they may be in the same denomination they're not in communion. essentially what we have is, is schism, within almost all our denominations. uh, uh between um, you know let's say in the Methodist church between Good News Methodists who i refer to as Bad News Methodists and, <SS LAUGH> um, you know Christians for Social Justice, um, Methodists for Social Justice so on. so i think, you know in other words we we've had a kind of reconfiguration of the church in the last fifty years (coming up,) where the old uh divisions between denominations the o- uh the the old hostilities and schisms between, different groups of Protestants uh repudiating each other and then of course all of the Catholics and Protestants repudiating each other. that that has kind of shifted, to somewhat ecumenical relations. uh you know i mean people sort of seeing each other's, so e- ecu- ecumenical relations have grown between Christians, between historic churches at the same time that there has b- uh there has erupted often unnamed a a deepening schism within each of these denominations. so that so that, Christians and the progressive Christians, that the kind of liberation feminists and so on respected, uh whether they're you know, Unitarians, Congregationalists Lutherans Episcopalians Catholics, they're actually, are kind of i- within the same, perspective. which is <BREAK IN RECORDING> <LAUGH> [S5: yeah ] but it's probably not going to happen [S5: good idea ] for the simple reason that there's buildings and pensions involved. <SS LAUGH> uh, but they actually have much less in common with each other than than Christians on on the progressive wing, although th- as i said an- and and a certain amount of fundamentalist Christians, i mean there's a certain shall we say ecumenism <LAUGH> on the right as well. uh where uh, notions of you know the scripture is is lo- inspired in every word literally uh which of course is is untenable for anybody who, studies historical uh understanding of the scripture um, the idea that the patriarchal family is you know the creation of God uh <S5 LAUGH> hostility towards uh women's reproductive rights all of these kind of things are, are part of the world of right wing uh, Christians. and they, i think they come out of uh the- they're really totally two different, radically different constructions of the Christian faith. and they're n- they're not gonna be reconciled, there's no way to reconcile them. [S5: hm ] because they do not share the same religion. so i just wanna, make that real clear. uh and then by and large w- progressive Christians are are are sort of handicapped because they're always trying to concede to right wing Christians and create some middle ground. but you can't really concede to them cuz you don't share the same faith. so that's my view. 
<SS LAUGH> 
S8: given what you said about the long term trend towards both having two workers uh, in in families, um i wonder if you could explain_ my understanding of fundamentalist movements whether they're Christian Buddhist Muslim Jewish, are that their agenda is the re- reestablishing of the patriarchal family that that is their political agenda. why, why is it that then, these movements are growing in low income communities in the black community. why is the fundamentalist church growing in the black community at this point? 
S1: uh, well i i i first wanna say that that it is startling the extent to which all of the fan- fundamentalisms share, this agenda about controlling women and putting them back in their place. um i think the idea of uh, of the nonworking wife, is very attractive to poor people who haven't had the luxury of work- of of hav- <LAUGH> of being a nonworking wife. uh in in other words that that the right wing holds out certain promises to women that sound very good, uh if you're if you have grown up uh in uh violent households where your father abandoned you and (your) mother had to do all the work and raise the children, uh and or your and and he was also an alcoholic and blah blah blah. so if you grow up in that kind of uh uh uh of very dif- or even if it's not, he wasn't violent you know you had this terrible struggle, to survive and your your mother was doing much of the work and so on. uh the promise that's held out by the Promise Keepers, <SS LAUGH> uh is this ideal family where this guy is going to uh, uh shape up, uh stop drinking, stop beating his wife and children um, <SS LAUGH> work hard uh, bring his_ not drink his money away but bring it home support the family and she will then be able to stay home and take care of the family that just that sounds like heaven, <LAUGH> you know compared to what's uh going on in disrupted families. so that's that's the promise and it's it's not too surprising that a lot of, poor black people buy into that because what they've known is the mother trying to do everything. um, uh, the p- problem is that the promise is largely deceptive. uh except for a a fairly high income level, men are not, earning the kind of wage that allows the woman not to work. there's no way that you can reconstruct that nonworking wife except at, uh a high income level and the high income level of course by and large, is precisely where you want to have an even higher income <LAUGH> by having a professional working wife. and you know they can then hire somebody to take care of the children and so on. so it it the problem is that it is is essentially delusionary it's a h- trying to hail back to a, a a pattern of life which is just not really available anymore. and o- and of course it's preparing a lot of, young women uh, for disaster because then they're they're gonna, commit themselves to the idea they're gonna marry some guy who's gonna take care of them for the rest of their life. and then when they get abandoned divorced or or or he simply is not able to, to do that kind of work they have not, e- gotten the educational skills for a good job. and and and of course, we could uh, uh i mean even if you have a fairly good partnership the, the likelihood, of a, you know husband dying and the wife having to survive for a number of years is s- still open in other words if if women do not prepare themselves, to to be able to be self-supporting and if they commit themselves to the idea that they're gonna be supported for the rest of their lives they're committing themselves to a delusion. so it's really ultimately very cruel yeah? 
S9: um, i have been an an Episcopal minister for about forty-five years. [S1: uhuh ] and i share completely and totally your vision of the church as all inclusive, of all races and all configurations of commitment, um, the issue that i see and i'm trying to face this pragmatically are one, how do you bring a congregation to some kind of unity about that and if you are able to do that then how do you communicate that to the people outside, whom you really want to have come in? 
S1: uhuh, well maybe you just can't do all that. <SS LAUGH> [S9: maybe you (can't do all that) ] maybe what you could do is try to create a community that's that has worked through this to the point where they they, they really can welcome, uh let's say uh a lesbian couple who's, raising a child and and so on. uh and uh, and you're not gonna be able to, to to ex- um, get everybody in the world on board with it a- like in your denomination and so on uh s- because i do think there's this this profound, um division in the churches where where people really do not share uh the same presuppositions. uh, but i but i'm seeing all kinds of wonderful things happen i mean there there's um, a Methodist church of f- f- friends of mine uh in a a a very poor working-class area of Chicago, that where where the older strata of the church are are mainly uh, elderly white people, and then there's a whole new group of people move in that are that are mainly gay and lesbian, [S5: cool ] uh and the older people are just, they're learning to love each other. and the gay and lesbian folks are you know uh, you know a- as one friend mine said the the there's ab- the church is about fifty percent gay and lesbian but the but it's, uh the choir is ninety-five percent gay and lesbian. <SS LAUGH> you know in other words the the people who [SU-F: that's true in a lot of churches ] are really working to create [SU-M: cool ] community. and and the and they're they're the r- and and the the older people are are really learning that these are very loving people and they're and they're really giving them uh uh a concern, uh about their lives that that they haven't experienced i mean their own children have abandoned them and suddenly there's, these young folks who really care about these older people so i i mean i, i'm just saying that there're, ways in which, this kind of diversity is actually working in reality. yeah? 
S10: i was just having another idea that i i probably uh shouldn't say but if everybody doesn't sit under a klieg light and know exactly what everybody else is doing there're an awful lot of churches where there are very far right, and very far left people and they don't quite know what each other think and they aren't very thoughtful, and philosophical so they don't hate each other. [S1: yeah that's true ] they know each other and they go to the same picnics. my brother's church is like that that uh, so 
S1: that's right, right yeah i mean yeah most cath- most Catholic churches are like that. <SS LAUGH>
SU-M: at best 
S1: i mean it's kind of you know anonymous and there's ten thousand of you anyway and there's eight masses and you know and, uh and so you can kinda get along because you communicate on a kinda superficial level so that's you know one way to do it, <SS LAUGH> yeah?
S11: but some of that is because, uh i think, Christians in churches are, encouraged not to talk, about something that would be a- uh appear to be anti-scriptural. [S1: uhuh ] and so uh people have not shared, which is what she seems to be saying [S1: yeah ] what they think or what they worry about, or wonder about, and so there isn't an inter- there is not an interchange of ideas. 
S1: yeah, well i want to pick up the on what they think is nonscriptural because this is very interesting. es- essentially, uh i think one of the crimes of uh the uh contemporary um clergy, the theologically educated strata of the church is that they've gone to seminaries, they know better. <SS LAUGH> they know better. [SU-M: or they should ] uh well by and large they do i mean they a- they've studied historical, critical, they've studied the Bible. they know, that you cannot have a Christian Bible with Hebrew scripture and New Testament and believe that every word is literally inspired. be- for the simple reason that the New Testament critiques, uh about thirty percent of Hebrew scripture and invalidates it. [SU-M: yeah ] <LAUGH> so you cannot and you never_ and the Christian church has never read those texts about kosher laws and so on, as scriptural precisely because you come out of a, tradition that critiques this. this is why the rabbis uh, orthodox rabbis in Israel forbid Jews to read a Bible that has the New Testament in it. did you know that? <SU-M LAUGH> they do, uh and and quite understandably, <LAUGH> you know because the New Testament is, invalidates, uh the law uh, so it's impos- it's literally impossible uh, to treat all the Bible as all literally inspired and so this idea is basically uh not a way anybody actually reads the Bible what it is it's an ideology, [SU: mhm ] that only works if you keep the Bible zipped up, and use it to hit people with. <SS LAUGH> you don't actually study it. so um, i really think that we have to stop this and and and the clergy, have to be educators of their people, and they have to bring the people on board with a version of the same education they receive. cuz what we're jus- we're opening ourself up to the schism which happened in the Southern Baptists. where where where the fundamentalists, essentially engaged in a kind of backlash against the educated, strata of the church and tried to drive them out of the seminaries. which is what happened to the Southern Baptists, [S5: yeah ] uh and then it's straight comes straight out of the fact that the clergy have neglected, their job, one of their jobs which is to educate their people. and really to create an adult, laity that, that uh, you know knows, <LAUGH> at least basic um understanding of of the Bible church history of theology and so on. yeah?
S12: what are you gonna think_ what's gonna happen in the United States now cuz we have like a John Ashcroft there and i believe he's a fundamentalist. [S1: right ] and uh, of course we have Pat Robertson which is he's continually around. and uh now i'm a Catholic, and um, so the Pope has appointed a lot of, bishops that are Opus Dei, [S1: right ] uh and i i, had somebody run that off on the internet for me, and uh definitely women er- have to do all the housework men cannot do any of the housework. 
S1: oh really? 
S12: yeah it i- you run that off the internet and you'll find out. 
S1: okay, <SS LAUGH> now uh, i guess these these priests uh have_ can't do any housework either then. <SS LAUGH> they have to uh hire uh, [SU-F: right ] high school students uh, cuz they don't have any wives, uh at least theoretically. uh, well i think i to me this is this is just a continuation of what i said, this profound polarization, and this polarization is now deeply into our public political system. i mean you have somebody who who, ran for president, you know uh claiming that he, uh his main consultant in political decisions was Jesus. uh and and his first question in any decision was what would Jesus do? but he seemed to think that this Texas Jesus was very hot on crim- uh, capital punishment. <SS LAUGH> and so uh, and so i mean i i just think we have this profound polarization, which is which is not simply the church's it's a- it's across the whole uh society. so i mean uh i mean when, Bush was elected i didn't like Gore that much but i mean i really, the thought occurred to me to just, join some other country. <SS LAUGH> i mean i i i'm not gonna do that but uh, well let me uh okay yeah (i think) we have time. 
S13: uh well people are always saying uh the progressives don't have, the power in the church because the conservatives have, m- so much more money and, and stuff um, can you speak to that? 
S1: i i think the the lib- the liberals have uh adequate num- amount of money i mean a lot of the conservatives are not [SU: mhm ] wealthy people but there th- there has been a way of_ they've been working on_ or some leaders have been organizing. i think the liberals have to organize. <SS LAUGH> yeah Betsy?
S14: i just wanted to say that i have a few copies left of both of your books Woman and red- Redemption and Christianity and the Making of the Modern Family. they're at a discount which we got especially for the presentation so, see me afterwards. 
S1: well i have to go and jump on an airplane so i'm gonna say good-bye to you all. 
S5: thank you 
S2: thank you very much 
{END OF TRANSCRIPT}

