219th GA: Dancing the Night away at the Witherspoon Society Dance

I am biased, but I think the Witherspoon Society dance is, without a doubt, the most fun event at the General Assembly. This GA’s dance was held last Tuesday from 9:00 PM to 1:00 AM Wednesday in the Hyatt’s Nicollet Ballroom. By the time I arrived, around 10:00 PM, the room was already buzzing with several people on the dance floor.

This year’s DJ was one of the better ones over the past few years, playing three to four songs from the same genre, such a rock, before switching to another genre, such as hip-hop. As usual these days, the DJ not only played dance tunes but provided a light show which illuminated the dance floor with various lighting effects, adding to the celebrative mood (photo right).

With a cash bar that offered soft drinks as well as beer and wine, and perhaps mixed drinks (but I really don’t know), there were many opportunities for liquid refreshment at the dance. Our beveridge of choice for the evening was red wine. Those of legal drinking age had their hand or other body parts stamped so the bar tenders could identify them and those under legal drinking age were required to sign a covenant, stating that they would not drink alcohol. Free munchies, including pretzels and dip, nuts, potato chips and popcorn were also available and widely consumed.

The room exploded into applause when General Assembly Moderator Cynthia Bolbach entered the venue. Even though I got down on my knees and pleaded with her to give me the honor of the first Moderatorial dance, I was rebuffed. I later learned that while our Moderator has many attributes, dancing might not be one of them.

The last several years it has seemed that those responsible for the Young Adult Advisory Delegates (YAADs) have scheduled activities for them which conflict with the timing of the dance. For instance, this year YAADs were given the opportunity to be bused to the nearby Mall of America, yet a few opted to skip the mall and come to the dance, and a few younger people who were not YAADS also attended the dance.

I think attending the Witherspoon Dance would have been a better GA experience for YAADS than going to the Mall of America. The Witherspoon Dance is a fully inclusive celebration of life and an opportunity to either relax and unwind or dance away pent up energy after days of sitting in meetings, scheduled for the evening after committee work has concluded and before the plenary work begins. Busing YAADS to the Mall of America only helps perpetuate a culture of decadent consumerism that is often at odds with the gospel.

I heard there was a rumor circulating before the dance that the Witherspoon Dance was “the Gay Dance”. Because of the open and inclusive justice stance of the former Witherspoon Society, now Presbyterian Voices for Justice, LGBTs have always felt safe attending to the dance and dancing with one another. The largest percentage of people at the dance, however, was probably not LGBTs, and there were at least a few heterosexual married couples in the room as well as on the dance floor.

For the record, my wife and I, as we at several Witherspoon Dances, were two of the last people on the dance floor, staying till the very last dance.  And for the record, as the evening drew to a close and only three men and sevral women were still on the dance floor, two of the men were members of New York City Presbytery and the third was a member of Hudson River Presbytery, proof positive that New Yorkers rock.

Presbyterian Voices for Justice is Born

Last Wednesday, the website of the former Witherspoon Society announced that it has a new name. It is now the website of Presbyterian Voices for Justice, a union of the Witherspoon Society and Voices of Sophia. According to the announcement:

We have a new name!

We are delighted to announce the new name of the merged organization of Witherspoon Society and Voices of Sophia: Presbyterian Voices for Justice. We offer our thanks and congratulations to Anne Barstow for offering the winning entry in our contest to find a new name -- and our thanks to all the others who have offered very good ideas as well.

We believe it is clear about who we are as a merged organization, maintaining both the “Voices” aspect of the former Voices of Sophia and the broad-reaching “Justice” concerns of the former Witherspoon Society. And it makes clear that we are Presbyterian in membership and outlook. Also, it has a short and easy acronym! We look forward to continuing our discernment of God’s “voice” for justice in church and society.
The union of these two progressive grass root Presbyterian voluntary associations has been in the making since the 218th General Assembly (2008) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in San Jose when it was first publicly announced that the two organizations would be merging. The Boards of the two groups met in a combined meeting last May in Minneapolis to begin massaging the union. The photo of notes on newsprint, to the right, is a small sample of their joint work.

As Eugene TeSelle has noted in his A Network of the Concerned, a brief history of the Witherspoon Society published in 2003, “The Witherspoon Society, organized in 1973, is often called the ‘liberal caucus’ or the ‘Common Cause’ of the Presbyterian Church. While there are a number of special-purpose organizations in the progressive wing of the church, the Witherspoon Society has tried to deal with all the issues and relate to all these kindred organizations.”

I have thought of the Witherspoon Society as a gadfly, calling the PC(USA) and its leaders to account when they back away from the Social Gospel. With a small but passionate membership, the Witherspoon Society has provided theological reflection and community organization for many progressive causes, sometimes acting as a mediator or peacemaker among other progressive organizations whose more focused agendas sometimes find their strategies conflicting.

According to a post on the Voices of Sophia blog, “VOS was organized in 1995 in response to the backlash against the 1993 feminist theological event known as “Re-Imagining.” It was felt by many who were active in the PCUSA at the time that those who advocated feminist values, particularly women staff, were under siege and needed a critical mass of support outside the structures of the church.” Voices of Sophia was intended to be that critical mass and ever since has been “a community of women and men in the larger community of the Presbyterian Church (USA) being reformed by God through the Spirit of the living Christ, and working toward the transformation of the church into a discipleship of equals.”

If both former organizations bring their strengths to this union, progressive peace loving, justice minded, creation affirming, feminist, proponents of the full inclusion of LGBT Presbyterians will have the opportunity of associating with a group that is neither single issue focused or dominated by Pastors of tall steeple large churches. On the other hand, if both partners to this union contribute their weaknesses it will be only a matter of time before its combined membership dwindles and the organization becomes irrelevant. I hope and pray for the former.

Disclaimer: My wife has been a member of Voices of Sophia and both she and I have been members of the Witherspoon Society, both of us having served at separate times on Board of the Society. The opinions expressed above, however, are my own and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of the former Witherspoon Society, Voices of Sophia, or the current Presbyterian Voices for Justice or any other former or current Board Members of the previous or current organizations. Anne Barstow, who suggested name was selected from numerous entrys as the best, is a member of the Rutgers Presbyterian Church in New York City and was a member of the New York City Commission which installed me as Designated Pastor of North Church Queens.

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.