A converted conference - RE-Imagining

Christian Century, Feb 16, 1994

Charging that pagan acts occurred at a recent church-sponsored women's conference, two conservative religious publications are demanding that their mainline denominations formally distance themselves from the event. Reacting to the criticism, women who participated in the event are now speaking out in its defense. "We thought [the conference] was a safe place, and it wasn't," said Peggy Halsey, a laywoman with the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries. "Women felt they could really be themselves--how naive."

Destroying traditional Christian faith, adopting pagan beliefs, rejecting Jesus' divinity, and affirming lesbian lovemaking were all recurrent conference themes, charged an article in the Presbyterian Layman, a publication of the Presbyterian Lay Committee, which is an evangelical caucus in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Similar charges were leveled in articles and an editorial in the January/February issue of Good News, the evangelical counterpart to the Layman in the United Methodist Church. Both journals voiced objections to "RE-Imagining," an ecumenical women's conference held at the Minneapolis Convention Center November 4-7. Good News editor James v. Heidinger II characterized his magazine's report as "the most disturbing news story we've ever published."

A defining point of the conference, according to some of its critics, was the use of the name Sophia, or "Divine Wisdom" personified in the Book of Proverbs, as a feminine name for God. Organizers developed elaborate worship rituals using feminine imagery, including that of Sophia. Among other conference happenings that have provoked controversy:

* An unscheduled gathering of about 100 lesbians on the dais, followed by a standing ovation from the audience.

* A panel on Jesus, in which Union Theological Seminary professor Delores Williams was quoted as saying, "I don't think we need folks hanging on crosses and blood dripping and weird stuff ... we just need to listen to the God within."

* A prayer offered to "earth maker Mauna, our creator," led by Melanie Morrison, cofounder of Christian Lesbians Out Together.

* A closing worship service featuring a ritual of milk and honey rather than the traditional bread and wine and including the words: "Our Sweet Sophia, we are women in your image. With the 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..."

Central to the complaints of Good News and a related organization, the Evangelical Coalition for United Methodist Women, is a claim that their denomination helped finance the RE-Imagining conference, which they say "applauded heresy and celebrated blasphemy." In a December 15 letter to all United Methodist bishops, Heidinger called the themes and speakers at the conference "theologically aberrant." Heidinger charged that the Women's Division of the Board of Global Ministries, the church's missions arm, "betrayed its trust with [UM] women and should rightly be asked to disavow the radical substance of the conference and apo12 ogize to the church for supporting such an event."

Meanwhile, the Presbyterian Lay Committee issued a "Leadership Alert" to selected denominational leaders; it claimed that the RE-Imagining conference included "services worshiping the Goddess 'Sophia,"' was sponsored with a denominational grant of $66,000, and was led by high-ranking Presbyterian officials. "Conference leaders rejected the atonement of Jesus Christ, celebrated lesbianism and called for adding books to the Bible that could then be used to justify radical feminism and homosexual activism," contends the alert, which preceded critical comments in the January/February issue of the Presbyterian Layman.

The alert lists 27 Presbyterian Church (U.S.A. ) staff members as participants in the conference and urges Presbyterians to demand the firing or disciplining of all such staff members and a "public repudiation" of the conference by the 2.8-million-member denomination's General Assembly Council.

Both denominations have issued fact sheets in response to criticisms. Joyce D. Sohl, deputy general secretary for the UMC's Women's Division, wrote in a January 4 statement that the presence of people at ecumenical events "does not indicate approval of everything that happens." Responding to complaints that the conference affirmed homosexuality, which the 9-million-member denomination considers contrary to Christian teaching, Sohl noted that participation "includes the risk of encountering ideas that are not in harmony with United Methodist positions." Thirty-six of the 65 directors of the Women's Division and 20 other division representatives attended the conference, with their expenses paid by the division, according to Sohl.

In apparent response to the Lay Committee charges, Neil Weatherhogg and James D. Brown, top executives of the Presbyterian Church's General Assembly Council, issued a fact sheet about the conference that says, "Participants were challenged to expand their horizons, to be enriched and nurtured spiritually, and to engage in dialogue with women and men from around the world." The document confirms that the church allocated $66,000 from its Bi-Centennial Fund so that conference planning could begin in 1989 and also notes that "no single denomination was a sponsor of the conference." The conference coincided with the midpoint of the Ecumenical Decade of the Churches in Solidarity with Women, an initiative of the World Council of Churches that started in 1988. Only a handful of the 2,200 participants were men.