Reflections Upon Returning From Minneapolis

The Board of the Witherspoon Society (WS) and a Caucus of Voices of Sophia (VOS) recently met in Minneapolis, Minn. The meeting was held in Minneapolis because the 219th General Assembly (GA) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), hosted by the Presbytery of the Twin Cities, will be held in Minneapolis July 3-10, 2010.

By meeting in the host city of the Next GA, Board Members hoped to acquaint themselves with the site with feet exploring the ground, eyes scanning the horizon, and taste buds tsampling local cuisine in addition to attending to regular Board business and continuing to fine tune the merger of the WS and VOS which was announced at the 218th GA in San Jose, CA.

Our meeting venue was the Best Western Normandy Inn and Suites, a clean and friendly establishment which offers milk and cookies to all its patrons at 10:oo PM. As far as we know the Best Western is not an Official GA Hotel but within an easy walk of the Convention Center. We also visited the Minneapolis Convention Center where the GA will be held and were impressed by the enormous size. I think this will be one of the better GA sites in recent years.

This was my first visit to Minneapolis and overall I was impressed. Except for the dust, mud, noise and other disruptions of downtown street work, which will hopefully be completed by next year, the city was clean and welcoming. I was particularly impressed by the system of Skyways which not only connect the convention center to major hotels but which like a spider web weave throughout the city connecting other hotels, office buildings, and shopping venues. Depending on where GA Commissioners and Visitors are staying, it might be possible to attend all the meetings and meals associated with the GA without ever going outside.

It should not surprise anyone that Board and Caucus members especially enjoyed the food and Gastric Gothic ambiance of Hell’s Kitchen, a site those coming to the GA will not want to miss. But we also enjoyed Bombay Bistro, which offers an affordable and quick Indian cuisine buffet lunch, and Key’s Café & Bakery at the Foshay Tower, an economical eatery with a fairly priced and varied menu and great deserts. All three establishments are within an easy walking distance of the Convention Center and most downtown hotels.

Over all, I think Presbyterians will be impressed by and feel welcomed by Minneapolis. For sure, the successor of the merged Witherspoon Society and Voices of Sophia will be there advocating for a less hierarchical and patriarchal and more inclusive, just, progressive Church and society informed by voices long silenced, especially the voices of women, GLBTQs, and people of color.

Sophia’s Daughters Expand Their Voice

You may have noticed that in the past few days I have added a few more blogs to my blog roll. One of the blogs I have added is Voices of Sophia.

In the New Revised Standard Version translation of the Bible, Proverbs 1:20 reads “Wisdom cries out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice.” This verse is an example of one of the many places in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures where wisdom is personified as a female. In the original Hebrew the word translated into English as “wisdom” is chockmah, a feminine noun. When the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek, chockmah was translated as sophia, also a femine noun.

Voices of Sophia (VOS) was organized in 1995 in response to the backlash against the 1993 feminist theological event known as “Re-Imagining.” When a bunch of evangelical conservative dead white Layman found their heretofore privileged positions of patriarchal power threatened and challenged by a bunch of uppity and vocal feminist theologians they went ballistic and forced the ouster of some female staff in the national offices of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). VOS was formed as a response to the response, to support feminists being attacked by the right, and to continue and broaden the discussion and community begun at Re-Imagining.

In a classical dialectic, the Re-Imagining Thesis was countered by the dead white male antithesis of the Presbyterian Layman, which was in turn countered by the synthesis of Voices of Sophia.

In July 1996 my wife learned how to make Southwestern style Santos in a workshop at Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, New Meixico. Ghost Ranch is one of the national conference centers of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). One of her early creation was the Santos pictured top right, which she titled Sophia. VOS later adopted the design to feature on t-shirts and sweatshirts (pictured bottom right) promoting one of their conferences, and the design can still occasionally be seen around the PC(USA) General Assembly.

After fifteen years of continuous scholarship and activism, Voices of Sophia can now be heard in the blogosphere. And in some very exciting news you can read about in their blog, VOS and The Witherspoon Society are joining together in a holy union that promises to strengthen and expand not only feminist voices but all voices calling for peace, justice, the care of creation, and the inclusion of all God’s Children in the leadership of the Church.