 ReImagining God movement will observe 10th anniversary By John H. Adams The Layman Online Tuesday, November 5, 2002 The movement to re-imagine the God of Scripture – sometimes as a goddess named Sophia – will mark its 10th anniversary with a three-day meeting in Minneapolis on June 19-21, 2003.
In Minneapolis in June, ReImagining leaders again are likely to espouse radical revision of Christian doctrine to refute the maleness of God and the atoning work of Jesus Christ. Two of the principal speakers will be Rita Nakashimi Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker, who have written against the orthodox understanding of saving work of Christ through his death and resurrection. Brock is a research associate at the Starr King School for the Ministry of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif. Parker is president of Starr King School and an ordained Methodist minister in dual fellowship with the Unitarian Universalist Association.
"We were convinced Christianity could not promise healing for victims of intimate violence as long as its central image was a divine parent who required the death of his child," Brock said in their prelude to the book. "You couldn't look on the man of sorrows and give thanks to God without ending up a partner in a thousand crimes," Parker wrote. The gist of their argument is that the death of Jesus Christ is not a work of salvation, but that it encourages social violence and particularly violence against females. The coordinator for the 2003 conference is Sarah Evans, professor of women's history at the University of Minnesota. Evans will speak on "A Conversation about the Future of Feminism." On the Web site for the 2003 conference, Evans applauds the work of Presbyterian women, and particularly Mary Ann Lundy, in bringing about the first conference in 1993. She said Lundy came up with the idea for "a global theological colloquium" as part of the World Council of Churches' "Ecumenical Decade: Churches in Solidarity with Women." Lundy was national staff director of the Women's Ministry Unit in the Presbyterian Church (USA) in 1993. She became one of the principal planners of the 1993 ReImagining God Conference and helped secure financial support for the event – a $66,000 grant that was diverted from the PCUSA's Bicentennial Fund. About 20 members of the PCUSA staff participated in the 1993 conference at the denomination's expense. In 1998, the fifth anniversary of ReImagining God, staff members were told that they would not get time off or be paid to participate in the second event. In 1994, Lundy lost her job at the PCUSA Center in Louisville, Ky., and later became a deputy director of the World Council of Churches. PCUSA Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick is a member of the Central Committee of the WCC. In 1998, Lundy, now retired, spoke at the fifth-anniversary event in the ReImagining God movement. She encouraged members of the ReImagining community "to be ecumenical in the broadest sense of the word." Specifically, she encouraged connections not only across lines of gender and geography, but those of "religion as well. We are learning that to be ecumenical is to move beyond the boundaries of Christianity. You see, yesterday's heresies are becoming tomorrow's Book of Order." About 900 people attended the 1998 event, where they heard:
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