As the content of last November's "Re-Imagining" Conference continues to be made known, members of congregations in mainline denominations are responding with horror. Not only has this been the reaction within the United Methodist Church but it also has become a common occurrence within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the American Baptist Church, the United Church of Christ, and the Presbyterian Church (USA). In some cases, congregations have notified their denominational leadership that they are withholding funds until the denomination adequately responds to the charges of heresy and paganism.
In the Presbyterian Church (USA), Executive Director James Brown defended his staff's participation at the conference and the use of $66,000 of denominational monies used to support the conference by saying, "Those I've talked with saw this as not a place where orthodoxy is being put to the test, but a place where...folks bring in speakers who are stimulating, [and] they agree with part of what they say or they disagree..."
Mainline denominational executives are justifying their participation in the conference with three explanations. Each of these needs to be addressed.
1. We attended "Re-Imagining" because this was an ecumenical event. Of course, there may have been things said that not everyone would agree with. That is to be expected.
Joyce Sohl, deputy general secretary of the Women's Division of the UM Church, followed this line of rationale by declaring, "In line with the ecumenical stance of the denomination, the Women's Division sponsors attendance at many ecumenical events."
The traditional understanding of ecumenical gatherings, however, demands that those present affirm their own faith but refrain from denigrating the beliefs of others. Also, ecumenical gatherings have historically been respectful and faithful to the parameters of orthodox Christian beliefs, as set forth in historic creeds and confessions. At the "Re-Imagining" Conference, however, not one of the 34 major speakers represented orthodox Christian faith as expressed in the classical creeds or confessions. Rather than being ecumenically grounded in the Christian faith, this meeting was interreligious, with its major emphasis being nonchristian belief.
The speakers attacked the Christian Church and orthodox Christian doctrine as the source of oppression of women, racism, classism, violence in our cities, abuse of children, abusive rejection of gay and lesbian sexuality, and pollution of the environment.
Asian feminist Chung Hyun Kyung said, "[The] Christian Church has been very patriarchal. That's why we are here together to destroy this patriarchal idolatry of Christianity." Lois Wilson, the immediate past president of the World Council of Churches, said, "Christianity as practiced in today's world demonstrates more of a nightmare than a vision." Aruna Gnanadason, staff member of the World Council of Churches, said that the church "centered its faith around the cruel and violent death of Christ on the cross, sanctioning violence against the powerless in society." Radical feminist Virginia Mollenkott told the group, "I can no longer worship in a theological context that depicts God as an abusive parent and Jesus as the obedient trusting child. This violent theology encourages the violence of our streets and our nations."
Chinese feminist Kwok Pui-Lan told the group, "We cannot have one savior--just like the Big Mac in McDonalds, prepackaged, shipped all over the world. It won't do. It's imperialistic." She offered China's 722 gods and goddesses as an example of "radical inclusivity." With reference to the Trinity she said, "I see three as more inclusive, diversity in unity.... If you have one and only one we are even more oppressive."
2. This was a theological smorgasbord. Women in attendance were free to agree or disagree with the content of the conference.
"Because it was an event that was ecumenical and global," said Annie Wu King, a Presbyterian Church (USA) executive, "there were expressions of ways of doing things that were different, but I tried to be open."
Unfortunately, the "Re-Imagining" Conference was not an academic lecture format in which attendees were invited to critically evaluate the speakers' position. Instead, this conference had a worship format in which attendees gave their assent to the content by their participation in the songs, dances, litanies, demonstrations, and rituals.
Any dissent or disagreement by attendees was defined as "listening to an inner critic" or being unwilling to grow. During the first evening, participants were told that "2000 men and women [are] pushing out boundaries of our lives, our traditions, and our understandings of the divine, and community, and the church, and creation...we invite you to enter the process of music and art, dance and the spoken word, even if it feels funny or awkward or strange to us at times. We are midwives of the new life that will be born from our work."
The group was then led in "scribbling." They were told, "Some of you have a tiny little voice inside that says, `this is silly. You can't do this.' Well, welcome, that's the inner critic." They were instructed to write the words that kept them from enjoying the experience on a piece of paper and then to tear it up and throw it on the floor. "Tear out those words that aren't useful. Tell them they can't be part of you. Banish them."
When Chung Hyun Kyung led the conference through New Age pranic healing techniques, she labeled the reluctance that anyone might have felt as their unwillingness to "stretch themselves."
She told the group that when they are tired they should "go up to a big tree and ask the tree `give me some of your life-energy.' Or ask the sun to give you some life-energy. Then you spread this life-giving energy to your brothers and sisters in hurt and pain." She explained, "I want to practice with you this energy sharing.... If you feel goose bumps you don't have to do it. But, you know, it's wonderful sometimes to stretch yourself so you grow more than you think you can."
When a United Methodist Women's director was concerned that the activities were not consistent with her faith and refused to participate, she was quickly informed by a table facilitator that the conference leadership wanted everyone to participate.
3. References to Sophia were consistent with the Old Testament use of wisdom.
Two members of the "Re-Imagining" Conference steering committee have defended the references to Sophia. Jeanne Audrey Powers, an executive at the UM Church's Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns, simply defined Sophia as "the encountering of divine wisdom." She also declared her disappointment that some feminist scholars who have "begun to find feminine elements in the godhead and who are seeking to remain within the church are sometimes condemned as radicals for trying to find elements in Scripture and tradition that they can relate to as women."
Mary Ann Lundy, a high-level Presbyterian Church (USA) executive, defended the references to Sophia by saying they were to "invoke God's blessing of wisdom on the speaker." She continued, "For me, the whole thing about goddess worship is really ridiculous because part of what the conference did was raise up many of the biblical images."
The god that was celebrated at the "Re-Imagining" Conference was not the Christian God. It was not simply using a new name for the biblical God of the Old and New Testaments. The religion promoted at the conference was pantheism and monism in which a universal divine energy permeates all matter thus making the material world, including human beings, sacred and divine.
Conference speaker and dance leader Carla DeSola told the group to "feel your being, this being is sacred like the earth....When we really move in an integrated way of body and soul together we know who we are on a deeper level; and knowing who we are, we can garner that power and energy into our prayer. It becomes the full expression because we are in touch with our deep self and we release the spirit into the world. We become like Sophia, a tree of life for the healing of ourselves and the nations."
The conference participants were led by Aruna Gnanadason in putting red dots on their foreheads, supposedly representing the divine within each of them. They then bowed to each other--to this divinity.
Virginia Mollenkott explained this pantheism or monism saying, "everything that lives is holy....The monism I'm talking about assumes that god is so all-inclusive that she is involved in every cell of those who are thoughts in her mind and embodiments of her image....Like Jesus, we and the source are one....We would understand Jesus to be our elder brother, the trailblazer and constant companion for us who are here in time and space, but ultimately one among many brothers and sisters in an eternally, equally worthy siblinghood. Firstborn only in the sense that he was the first to show us that it is possible to live in oneness with the divine source while we are here on this planet."
Rita Nakashima Brock told the group that they must reject a transcendent personal god and instead view god as a verb. The women become the incarnation of god as "[we] use our power to love, to nurture, to enable freedom and willfulness of others "
Explaining this new religion, Kwok Pui-Lan said, "If we cannot imagine Jesus as a tree, as a river, as wind, and as rain, we are doomed together. If we are forever anthropocentric in our search for the redeemer we are doomed." She then directed the group to stand and "imagine yourself a tree, move as a tree."
In the new religion where the material world is divine and sacred, all sexual acts become sacred. Radical feminist Mary Hunt said during one seminar that it was time to substitute "friendship as a metaphor for family." She said, "imagine sex among friends as the norm...pleasure is our birthright of which we have been robbed in religious patriarchy. Responsible relational sexuality is a human right. I picture friends, not families, basking in the pleasure we deserve because our bodies are holy and our sexuality is part of creation's available riches."
One wonders how any of this can be construed to be consistent with the Old Testament use of wisdom.
At the closing milk and honey ritual, complete with a pseudo-sexual responsive reading, the group invoked the goddess by referring to her as: "Our maker Sophia," "Our mother Sophia," "Our sweet Sophia," "Sophia, Creator God," and "Our guide, Sophia." Are these the terms we would use simply to encounter divine wisdom?
Through their participation and funding of the "Re-Imagining" Conference, staff and elected leadership of mainline denominations have supported a gathering which turned away from Jesus Christ and worshiped a false god. As leadership, as shepherds having responsibility for the flock, they have violated and jeopardized the trust of their denominational membership and have led the world outside our denominations to question our fidelity to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. If our denominations are to remain faithful to Jesus Christ, our grassroots membership must insist that our leadership repudiate the heresies promoted at the conference and reaffirm the lordship of Jesus Christ.
Susan Cyre attended the "Re-Imagining" Conference as a press representative of the Presbyterian Layman, a bimonthly, independent newspaper. She is currently a candidate for Minister of the Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA).
As a woman, I suppose I ought to have felt affirmed by news of feminists coming together to deify their own femaleness. But my hormones just didn't come through for me, and I was only saddened and disgusted.
The people who gathered at the "Re-Imagining" Conference desired to concoct a "theology" dependent on "women's daily experiences." This is indeed an innovation, for how can the starting point of theology (literally, "talk about God") ever be anything but God? The proper talk about God begins with God--what God has done, proclaimed, and promised--not with humanity or what it thinks it has experienced of the divine.
But it is inevitably the human desire to place ourselves at the center of conversation. We want to talk about God purely on our own terms, make God into just one more thing that must revolve around our own demands. Thus, we imagine that we are speaking of God when we are only talking endlessly about ourselves. The theological scene has become cluttered with customized theologies: liberation theology, black theology, feminist theology, etc. Such "theology" always produces a god of its own, one that closely resembles whoever is doing the talking.
And so it came about that the participants of the "Re-Imagining" Conference decided to worship "Sophia, the biblical goddess of creation." In seminary I learned that sophia is simply a Greek word meaning "wisdom." In other words, these people have produced the first cult devoted to the worship of a noun. Idolatry is an absurd thing, after all--as Isaiah showed when he spoke of the faithless Israelites burning half of a block of wood in their kitchen stoves, and making the rest into an idol before which they fell down in worship and adoration.
In a similar way, both absurd and self-glorifying, the conference participants prayed to Sophia in a litany of praise to their own bodily fluids ("the hot blood of our wombs," "nectar between our thighs," "our moist mouths," and on and on, ad nauseam). Is the explicitly sexual nature of the prayer to their idol an acknowledgment that idolatry is, as declared by the prophets, an act of adultery?
But these people (and others who want Christ's Church to accept similar absurdities and abominations) claim to be prophets themselves. They hope to grasp for themselves an office that is laid only upon those called and ordained by God, not to mention the fact that this office came to an end when John the Baptist pointed to Christ as God's chosen Messiah. They claim, further, to be undertaking "the second Refor-mation." The true Reformers undertook their task only with fear and trembling, knowing the gospel to be the timeless and priceless treasure of the Church. They saw themselves not as rebels, radicals, or innovators, but as preservers and protectors; and they knew that the price of carelessness with such a treasure is faithlessness before God, the betrayal of Christ and Christ's Church. Such care for the gospel and such humility seem to be universally lacking in all those who put themselves forward as modern-day reformers.
In the very midst of their idolatry the conference participants still resist being known as heretics or pagans. A heretic is one who distorts the gospel. A pagan is one who casts it aside in favor of an idol. Sadly, these people have done both, and it is time for the Church to discipline those who still claim to be its own. It is time for pastors, bishops, presbyters, church councils, and religious orders to call to repentance those who worship false gods, and to remove from the clergy rosters and membership rolls those who refuse to repent.
There is a line between Christianity and paganism. When people choose to cross that line it is right and proper for the Church to recognize that fact.
The Rev. Sally Nelson is pastor of Sion Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Lancaster, Minnesota. She is a graduate of Luther Theological Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota.