|
Re-Imagining
Revival
"Sophia,
Creator God, let your milk and honey flow. Sophia, Creator god, shower us with
your love...Our sweet Sophia, we are women in your image. With nectar between
our thighs, we invite a lover, we birth a child; with our warm body fluids, we
remind the world of its pleasure and sensations..."
Thus went the prayer offered up
in their pagan service along with replacing the bread and wine of the Lord's
Supper with bread, milk and honey. They continued by singing songs to the
goddess Sophia, the source of their divinity, the creator who dwells within
them and unleashes within them their divine power. Conference participants
worshipped the divine in each other by marking red dots on their foreheads to
signify their divinity, and then bowing to each other in an act of reverence.
National staff and leaders of the Presbyterian Church (USA) gathered
with feminist leaders from other World Council of Churches denominations
including United Methodist, Lutherans, Roman Catholics, United Church of
Christ, Baptists, Episcopalians, Mennonites, United Church of Canada, the
church of the Brethren and the Church Women United.
Themes at the
November 4-7, 1993 conference entitled "Re-Imagining 1993" included destroying
traditional Christian faith, adopting ancient pagan beliefs, rejecting Jesus'
divinity and His atonement on the cross, creating a goddess in their own image,
and affirming lesbian love-making. Their goal and objective was that Christ
would be put down and the feminist goddess, Sophia, which represents
homosexuality and lesbianism, would now be accepted in all of the world
churches and denominations in the World and National Council of Churches.
Pantheism
Chung Hyung Kyung, professor at Korea's Ewha
Women's University, instructed the crowd of women to seek help from the trees
if they are in need of energy: "When we do pranic healing, we believe that this
life-giving energy came from god and it is everywhere, it is in the sun, in the
ocean, from the ground and it is from the trees ... We ask god's permission to
use this life-giving energy for our sisters and brothers in need. If you feel
very tired and you don't have any energy to give, what you do is ... go to a
big tree and ask it to `give me some of your life energy'" (AFA
Journal, Feb. 1994).
Self
god-hood
Delores Williams, theology
professor at New York's Union Theological Seminary, told the gathering: "I
don't think we need a theory of atonement at all...Atonement has to do so much
with death...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."
Lesbianism
During the conference, a group of roughly 100
"lesbian, bi-sexual, and transsexual women" gathered on the platform and were
given a standing ovation by many in the crowd. They were "celebrating the
miracle of being lesbian, out, and Christian."
"The lesbian theme was
heard repeatedly from major speakers. In a workshop called `Prophetic Voices of
Lesbians in the Church,' Nadean Bishop, the first `out' lesbian minister called
to an American Baptist church, claimed that Mary and Martha in the Bible were
lesbian `fore- sisters.' She said they were not sisters, but lesbian lovers.
Janie Spahr, a self-avowed lesbian clergywoman in the Presbyterian Church USA
... claimed that her theology is first of all informed by `making love with
Coni,' her lesbian partner. Judy Westerdorf, a United Methodist clergywoman
from Minnesota, told the workshop that the church `has always been blessed by
gays and lesbians ... witches ... shamans.' In a seminar on `Re- Imagining
Sexuality-Family,' lesbian theologian Mary Hunt said, `Imagine sex among
friends as the norm. ... Imagine valuing sexual interaction in terms of whether
and how it fosters friendship and pleasure. ... Pleasure is our birthright of
which we have been robbed in religious patriarchy" (AFA
Journal, Feb. 1994).
The Re-Imagining community gathered again in
1998 in a darkened hotel ballroom on opening night to the throbbing of
conference drummers. "We are the light of the world," announced Rita Nakashima
Brock.
Brock continued, "What we do with our experience makes us light
to the world." She then named women who are examples of that light, including
"Tina" from Zimbabwe, who is fighting for solidarity with gays, lesbians,
bisexuals and transgendered persons.
Brock, associate professor at
Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota, has been circulating her view
about liberal theology long before addressing the 1998 Re-Imagining group. She
was a keynote speaker at the Re-Imagining conferences in 1994 and 1993.
Brock has suggested Christian missionaries from the West have much to
learn theologically from ancient cultures. She praised Lakota Indians for their
cleansing "sweat lodge" ceremony and Tibetan Buddhists for their selection
process of "the reincarnated" Dalai Lama.
She asserts that biblical
achievements of women were largely omitted because of oppressive patriarchy--a
system she calls the central "cause in evil and suffering." Brock details her
views in "Journeys by Heart: A Christology of Erotic Power" (Crossroad, 1988),
saying Sophia is responsible for resurrecting Jesus. "She is the erotic power,
the Heart of the Universe."
Despite the fact that conference leaders
called themselves Christians, it was Sophia, the goddess of wisdom who emerges
when women reveal their inner selves. "I found God in myself, and I loved her.
I loved her fiercely," declared the 1998 conference program. |
 |
