Today marks the anniversary of the beginning of the National Woman's Suffrage Association. It seems fitting to highlight some of the women that were part of the giant movement that eventually led to women's right to vote. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a women's rights activist, feminist, editor, and writer.(Although she wouldn't have called herself a feminist then.) Born on November 12, 1815, in Johnstown, New York. The daughter of a lawyer who made no secret of his preference for another son, she early showed her desire to excel in intellectual and other "male" spheres. She graduated from the Emma Willard's Troy Female Seminary in 1832 and then was drawn to the abolitionist, temperance, and women's rights movements through visits to the home of her cousin, the reformer Gerrit Smith. In 1840 Elizabeth Cady Stanton married a reformer Henry Stanton (omitting “obey” from the marriage oath), and they went at once to the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London, where she joined other women in objecting to their exclusion from the assembly. On returning to the United States, Elizabeth and Henry had seven children while he studied and practiced law, and eventually they settled in Seneca Falls, New York. With Lucretia Mott and several other women, Elizabeth Cady Stanton held the famous Seneca Falls Convention in July 1848. At this meeting, the attendees drew up its “Declaration of Sentiments” and took the lead in proposing that women be granted the right to vote. She continued to write and lecture on women's rights and other reforms of the day. After meeting Susan B Anthony in the early 1850s, she was one of the leaders in promoting women's rights in general (such as divorce) and the right to vote in particular. During the Civil War Elizabeth Cady Stanton concentrated her efforts on abolishing slavery, but afterwards she became even more outspoken in promoting women suffrage. In 1868, she worked with Susan B. Anthony on the Revolution, a militant weekly paper. The two then formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) in 1869. Stanton was the NWSA’s first president - a position she held until 1890. At that time the organization merged with another suffrage group to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Stanton served as the president of the new organization for two years. As a part of her work on behalf of women’s rights, Elizabeth Cady Stanton often traveled to give lectures and speeches. She called for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution giving women the right to vote. Stanton also worked with Anthony on the first three volumes of the History of Woman Suffrage (1881–6). Matilda Joslyn Gage also worked with the pair on parts of the project. Besides chronicling the history of the suffrage movement, Elizabeth Cady Stanton took on the role religion played in the struggle for equal rights for women. She had long argued that the Bible and organized religion played in denying women their full rights. With her daughter, Harriet Stanton Blatch, she published a critique, The Woman's Bible, which was published in two volumes. The first volume appeared in 1895 and the second in 1898. This brought considerable protest not only from expected religious quarters but from many in the woman suffrage movement. Elizabeth Cady Stanton died on October 26, 1902. More so than many other women in that movement, she was able and willing to speak out on a wide spectrum of issues - from the primacy of legislatures over the courts and constitution, to women's right to ride bicycles.This is the quickest overview of her and her work. There is so much more, especially interesting to me is the friendship between Stanton and Anthony, how Anthony never married and devoted her whole life to the struggle for women's rights. The stories of their friendship could fill a book all on its own. This is your new blog post. Click here and start typing, or drag in elements from the top bar.
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Dorothy Bernard (25 June 1890 – 14 December 1955) was an American actress of the silent era, and was one of the very first female film stars. She appeared in 87 films between 1908 and 1956.She was born Nora Dorothy Bernard in Port Elizabeth, South Africa to William H Bernard and Roy Elizabeth Ayrd. Her father was from Auckland, New Zealand, and her mother was born in Sligo, Ireland. Although her birth date is listed as July 25, 1890 in many biographies, her death certificate and U.S. passport both state her birth date as June 25, 1890. An only child, she spent her formative years in Portland, Oregon where her father, William H. Bernard (1864–1915), worked as a stock company manager and was a well-respected actor. As a child actress, Bernard appeared in several plays in Portland under "Dot Bernard" in the Baker Theater Company. Her stepmother, actress Nan Ramsey, also appeared in several productions. In 1905, her family moved to Los Angeles, California, and her father accepted a position to manage the Balasco theater. She was married to fellow actor, A.H. Van Buren (1879–1965), on July 5, 1909 in Washington D.C., and they had a daughter named Marjorie "Midge" Van Buren born on June 30, 1910 in Jamaica, New York. Films she appeared in: A Flash of Light (1910) Ramona (1910) The Two Paths (1911) His Trust Fulfilled (1911) His Trust (1911) For His Son (1912) A Sister's Love (1912) A String of Pearls (1912) The Girl and Her Trust (1912) The Goddess of Sagebrush Gulch (1912) One Is Business, the Other Crime (1912) An Outcast Among Outcasts (1912) The House of Darkness (1913) The Sheriff's Baby (1913) Near to Earth (1913)A Chance Deception (1913) Today's post is sort of an obituary, sort of a celebration of life. Beloved Ada Maria passed away today from cancer. As a Hispanic theologian, Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz was an innovator of Hispanic theology in general and specifically of Mujerista theology. Isasi-Díaz also was founder and co-director of the Hispanic Institute of Theology at Drew University. Before I let you know more about her, I have to say that she was one of a handful of women working in the niche of feminist Liberation Theology. Her Mujerista theology is compelling, brave work. A list of her books is here. She definitely helped me understand how we are all connected in the struggle of gender and class and race and sexuality. She was born and raised in La Habana, Cuba. The third of six sisters and two brothers, she received all of her primary and secondary school education at Merici Academy, a school ran by the nuns of the Order of St. Ursula. While she was growing up her father worked in different sugar mills in three different provinces of Cuba and that gave her an opportunity to spend summers away from the capital and to experience widely her country and its people. Brought up in a practicing Catholic home, early on she began to have and nourish a concern for the poor and the oppressed and a love of religious practices. At the same time, particularly from her mother, she learned the importance of struggling (la lucha) for what one believes without ever giving up. She left Cuba and became a political refugee in 1960. She first lived in the USA where she entered the convent (the Order of St. Ursula), and went to college earning a B.A. in European History from The College of New Rochelle in New York. In January 1967 she arrived in Lima, Peru as a missionary and lived there for three years. This experience has marked her for life. She often says that it was there that the poor taught her the gospel message of justice. It was there that she learned to respect and admire the religious understandings and practices of the poor and the oppressed and the importance of their everyday struggles, of lo cotidiano. It was there that she realized the centrality of solidarity with the poor and the oppressed in the struggle for justice. She returned to the USA December of 1969 and taught high-school for several years in Louisiana and lived in Spain for 16 months. Upon return to the USA, she settled in Rochester, New York. Thanksgiving weekend 1975 she became a feminist. It was at the first Women's Ordination Conference in Detroit, Michigan that she began to realize that oppression was caused not only by poverty but also is the result of sexism. For seven years she worked indefatigably in the women's movement focusing on women's oppression in churches, religion and theology. During this time she began to understand the interconnections of sexism, ethnic prejudice-racism, and economic oppression-classism. In 1983 she began to pursue a Master of Divinity Degree at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where she also completed a PhD with a concentration in Christian Ethics in 1990. Her studies and involvement in the feminist theological movement made her see the need to begin to develop a theology from the perspective of Latinas in the USA. Thus she became an activist-theologian and began to elaborate Mujerista Theology. In 1991 she began teaching at the Theological and Graduate Schools of Drew University. Immensely enriched by opportunities to speak with women all around the USA as well as in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America, she continued to elaborate Mujerista Theology. She did so in dialogue with other women-centered theologies and liberation theologies which have emerged all around the world. Throughout her life she stayed very close to her family and was very grateful for its on-going support even when they did not agree with her views. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer about a month ago. Today, she has left us to join the spirit world. Helen Barrett was born on July 31, 1861 in Kingsville, Ohio. She was the oldest of three children born to Adoniram Judson and Emily Barrows Barrett. Both of her parents were teachers. As a child her father moved the family to Rochester, New York so that he might attend the Rochester Theological Seminary. Upon his graduation in 1876, he became pastor of the Lake Avenue Baptist Church, in Rochester, a position he held until his death in 1889. Helen Barrett graduated from Wellesley College in 1884 and became a teacher, first at the Rochester Free Academy and then for two years at the Wellesley Preparatory School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She then returned to Rochester, where she married William A. Montgomery, a businessman, on September 6, 1887. Mr. Montgomery’s business, North East Electric Company, would later become the Rochester Products Division of General Motors. During the early years of her marriage, Helen Barrett Montgomery and her husband adopted a daughter, Edith. Montgomery also organized a women’s Bible class at the Lake Avenue Baptist Church, which she taught for forty-four years. In 1892, the same church licensed her to preach. During the 1890s, Montgomery was involved in a number of efforts on behalf of women’s rights. In 1893, she and Susan B. Anthony formed the Woman’s Educational and Industrial Union of Rochester (WEIU), and Montgomery became its first president. Modeled on similar associations in Buffalo and Boston, the WEIU served poor women and children in the City. It established a legal aid center, public playgrounds, a "Noon Rest" house for working girls, and safe milk stations for mothers. These "stations" later evolved into public health centers. Montgomery, a teacher before and after her marriage, also became a spokesperson for educational reform in the 1890s, and tied this interest to her work on behalf of women’s rights. When she served as the president of the New York State Federation of Women’s Clubs (1896 - 1897), she was known for her public addresses on education issues. In 1898, she joined with Anthony in order to raise funds to open the University of Rochester to women students, a venture that finally succeeded in 1900. In 1899, as a result of the efforts of the women’s rights movement, the WEIU, and the Good Government movement, she was elected to the Rochester School Board, the first woman ever elected to public office in the City. Montgomery served on the Board for ten years, during which time she was instrumental in effecting the implementation of many Progressive reforms -- including the introduction of kindergartens, vocational training and health education. During this time, she also helped to pioneer the use of schools as community social centers in poorer neighborhoods, starting with Public School No. 14 in Rochester in 1907. Throughout her tenure on the school board, Montgomery maintained close ties to Susan B. Anthony and the suffrage movement as a member of the Women’s Political Equality Club of Rochester. Shortly after Anthony’s death in 1906, Montgomery served as the second vice-chairman on of the Susan B. Anthony Memorial Association, a Rochester committee established to ensure that Anthony’s pioneering work for women’s rights was properly recognized. Montgomery became increasingly involved in the women’s missionary movement, as she grew older. In this work too, her activities were often closely linked to furthering the rights of women. In 1910, she published Western Women in Eastern Lands (1910), a study that surveyed the status of women in Asia. The study also examined women’s mission boards, women missionaries, and women’s right to control their own mission funds and programs in Asia. In 1910 - 1911, Montgomery embarked on a national tour promoting Protestant women’s mission work, and through her efforts helped to raise $1 million dollars, much of which went to establish Christian women’s colleges in Asia. In 1913, at the request of the Federation of Women’s Boards of Foreign Missions, she traveled around the world in order to survey and report on missions. Her report, The King’s Highway, was published in 1915 and sold more than 160,000 copies. Montgomery also served as the president of the Woman’s American Baptist Foreign Mission Society (1914 - 1924). In this position, she sought to increase access to education and health care for women and children. In 1915 she, along with two other prominent women of faith, founded the World Wide Guild, the purpose of which was to encourage young women to pursue missionary work. She presided over the National Federation of Women’s Boards of Foreign Missions (1917 - 1918), and in 1921 became the first woman to be elected president of the Northern Baptist Convention. In 1924, Montgomery published The Centenary Translation of the New Testament. In this translation, the first by a woman scholar, she sought to make the Greek New Testament more accessible to the "ordinary reader" by using "everyday" language. Montgomery ensured that her good works would continue after her death. Her will left over $450,000 to more than 80 institutions, including colleges, churches, missions and hospitals. Montgomery died at the home of her daughter Edith (Mrs. George F. Simson) in Summit, New Jersey on October 19, 1934 at the age of 73. Farmers, and all those who support family farms, farm markets, and CSA's, this one's for you!! As a milk and vegetable farmer, Svetlana Maksimova knows firsthand about the challenges facing fellow farmers living around the Russian city of Tver, 250 km northwest of Moscow. "The issue is that farmers have no access to markets as it’s controlled by big companies," Maksimova said. To tackle the problem, Maksimova has set up special distribution centres, making it easier and cheaper for farmers to get their produce to customers. She has also organised local food fairs where farmers can showcase their organic produce such as potatoes, cabbages and apples, as well as more informal food markets with farmers selling vegetables from their car boots. Amid the economic and political turmoil that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, Maksimova managed to build a milk and vegetable farm in 1997. She then formed a union of 500 local smallholder farmers, based on her belief that if farmers work together they can achieve better results and yield more influence. Last year, the farmers union nominated Maksimova to run for political office and she became an elected official in the Russian parliament, from where she continues to lobby for the rights of small farmers in the Tver region. Maksimova's daughter is following her mother's footsteps and has taken over the running of the family farm. Ok, I'm probably cheating by posting a link only. However, the Washington Post has a great article on Barbara Annette Robbins here . It's a great story, complete with primary resources such as letters home to her parents, and it's chock full of mystery and CIA what if stories.
Speaking of the CIA and stories, have you seen Ashley Judd on the new show Missing? I kinda love it. Anyway, have fun reading about Barbara Robbins-- Irena Sendler is an unfamiliar name to most people, but this remarkable woman defied the Nazis and saved 2,500 Jewish children by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto. As a health worker, she sneaked the children out between 1942 and 1943 to safe hiding places and found non-Jewish families to adopt them. Today the old woman, gentle and courageous, is living a modest existence in her Warsaw apartment - an unsung heroine. Her achievement went largely unnoticed for many years. Then the story was uncovered by four young students at Uniontown High School, in Kansas, who were the winners of the 2000 Kansas state National History Day competition by writing a play Life in a Jar about the heroic actions of Irena Sendler. The girls - Elizabeth Cambers, Megan Stewart, Sabrina Coons and Janice Underwood - have since gained international recognition, along with their teacher, Norman Conard. The presentation, seen in many venues in the United States and popularized by National Public Radio, C-SPAN and CBS, has brought Irena Sendler's story to a wider public. The students continue their prize-winning dramatic presentation Life in a Jar. Irena Sendler was born in 1910 in Otwock, a town some 15 miles southeast of Warsaw. She was greatly influenced by her father who was one of the first Polish Socialists. As a doctor his patients were mostly poor Jews. At the time of the Nazi in, Irena was a Senior Administrator in the Warsaw Social Welfare Department, which operated the canteens in every district of the city. Previously, the canteens provided meals, financial aid, and other services for orphans, the elderly, the poor and the destitute. Now, through Irena, the canteens also provided clothing, medicine and money for the Jews. They were registered under fictitious Christian names, and to prevent inspections, the Jewish families were reported as being afflicted with such highly infectious diseases as typhus and tuberculosis. But in 1942, the Nazis herded hundreds of thousands of Jews into a 16-block area that came to be known as the Warsaw Ghetto. The Ghetto was sealed and the Jewish families ended up behind its walls, only to await certain death. Irena Sendler was so appalled by the conditions that she joined Zegota, the Council for Aid to Jews, organized by the Polish underground resistance movement, as one of its first recruits and directed the efforts to rescue Jewish children. To be able to enter the Ghetto legally, Irena managed to be issued a pass from Warsaws Epidemic Control Department and she visited the Ghetto daily, reestablished contacts and brought food, medicines and clothing. But 5,000 people were dying a month from starvation and disease in the Ghetto, and she decided to help the Jewish children to get out. For Irena Sendler, a young mother herself, persuading parents to part with their children was in itself a horrendous task. Finding families willing to shelter the children, and thereby willing to risk their life if the Nazis ever found out, was also not easy. Irena Sendler, who wore a star armband as a sign of her solidarity to Jews, began smuggling children out in an ambulance. She recruited at least one person from each of the ten centers of the Social Welfare Department. With their help, she issued hundreds of false documents with forged signatures. Irena Sendler successfully smuggled almost 2,500 Jewish children to safety and gave them temporary new identities. Some children were taken out in gunnysacks or body bags. Some were buried inside loads of goods. A mechanic took a baby out in his toolbox. Some kids were carried out in potato sacks, others were placed in coffins, some entered a church in the Ghetto which had two entrances. One entrance opened into the Ghetto, the other opened into the Aryan side of Warsaw. They entered the church as Jews and exited as Christians. "Can you guarantee they will live?" Irena later recalled the distraught parents asking. But she could only guarantee they would die if they stayed. "In my dreams," she said, "I still hear the cries when they left their parents." Irena Sendler accomplished her incredible deeds with the active assistance of the church. "I sent most of the children to religious establishments," she recalled. "I knew I could count on the Sisters." Irena also had a remarkable record of cooperation when placing the youngsters: "No one ever refused to take a child from me," she said. The children were given false identities and placed in homes, orphanages and convents. Irena Sendler carefully noted, in coded form, the children's original names and their new identities. She kept the only record of their true identities in jars buried beneath an apple tree in a neighbor's back yard, across the street from German barracks, hoping she could someday dig up the jars, locate the children and inform them of their past. In all, the jars contained the names of 2,500 children ... But the Nazis became aware of Irena's activities, and on October 20, 1943 she was arrested, imprisoned and tortured by the Gestapo, who broke her feet and legs. She ended up in the Pawiak Prison, but no one could break her spirit. Though she was the only one who knew the names and addresses of the families sheltering the Jewish children, she withstood the torture, refusing to betray either her associates or any of the Jewish children in hiding. Sentenced to death, Irena was saved at the last minute when Zegota members bribed one of the Germans to halt the execution. She escaped from prison but for the rest of the war she was pursued by the Gestapo. After the war she dug up the jars and used the notes to track down the 2,500 children she placed with adoptive families and to reunite them with relatives scattered across Europe. But most lost their families during the Holocaust in Nazi death camps. The children had known her only by her code name Jolanta. But years later, after she was honored for her wartime work, her picture appeared in a newspaper. "A man, a painter, telephoned me," said Sendler, "`I remember your face,' he said. `It was you who took me out of the ghetto.' I had many calls like that!" Irena Sendler did not think of herself as a hero. She claimed no credit for her actions. "I could have done more," she said. "This regret will follow me to my death." She has been honored by international Jewish organizations - in 1965 she accorded the title of Righteous Among the Nations by the Yad Vashem organization in Jerusalem and in 1991 she was made an honorary citizen of Israel. Irena Sendler was awarded Poland's highest distinction, the Order of White Eagle in Warsaw Monday Nov. 10, 2003. This lovely, courageous woman was one of the most dedicated and active workers in aiding Jews during the Nazi occupation of Poland. Her courage enabled not only the survival of 2,500 Jewish children but also of the generations of their descendants. She passed away on May 12, 2008, at the age of 98. Rigoberta Menchú was born on January 9, 1959 to a poor Indian peasant family and raised in the Quiche branch of the Mayan culture. In her early years she helped with the family farm work, either in the northern highlands where her family lived, or on the Pacific coast, where both adults and children went to pick coffee on the big plantations. Rigoberta Menchú soon became involved in social reform activities through the Catholic Church, and became prominent in the women's rights movement when still only a teenager. Such reform work aroused considerable opposition in influential circles, especially after a guerilla organization established itself in the area. The Menchú family was accused of taking part in guerrilla activities and Rigoberta's father, Vicente, was imprisoned and tortured for allegedly having participated in the execution of a local plantation owner. After his release, he joined the recently founded Committee of the Peasant Union (CUC). In 1979, Rigoberta, too, joined the CUC. That year her brother was arrested, tortured and killed by the army. The following year, her father was killed when security forces in the capital stormed the Spanish Embassy where he and some other peasants were staying. Shortly afterwards, her mother also died after having been arrested, tortured and raped. Rigoberta became increasingly active in the CUC, and taught herself Spanish as well as other Mayan languages than her native Quiche. In 1980, she figured prominently in a strike the CUC organized for better conditions for farm workers on the Pacific coast, and on May 1, 1981, she was active in large demonstrations in the capital. She joined the radical 31st of January Popular Front, in which her contribution chiefly consisted of educating the Indian peasant population in resistance to massive military oppression. In 1981, Rigoberta Menchú had to go into hiding in Guatemala, and then flee to Mexico. That marked the beginning of a new phase in her life: as the organizer abroad of resistance to oppression in Guatemala and the struggle for Indian peasant peoples' rights. In 1982, she took part in the founding of the joint opposition body, The United Representation of the Guatemalan Opposition (RUOG). In 1983, she told her life story to Elisabeth Burgos Debray. The resulting book, called in English, I, Rigoberta Menchú, is a gripping human document which attracted considerable international attention. In 1986, Rigoberta Menchú became a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the CUC, and the following year she performed as the narrator in a powerful film called When the Mountains Tremble, about the struggles and sufferings of the Maya people. On at least three occasions, Rigoberta Menchú has returned to Guatemala to plead the cause of the Indian peasants, but death threats have forced her to return into exile. Over the years, Rigoberta Menchú has become widely known as a leading advocate of Indian rights and ethno-cultural reconciliation, not only in Guatemala but in the Western Hemisphere generally, and her work has earned her several international awards. I have huge issues with the United Methodist Church. I'll just come out and say that right up front. I grew up in the UMC, and tried, for about one second, to be a pastor in one of their congregations. Today, at a general conference of gathered delegates from all over the world, the UMC's deciding body choose to keep excluding gays, lesbians, and transgender people from their clergy. I've met Beth Stroud personally. She says that it is important for her to stay in this church body. I can't imagine the heartache this church has caused her, yet she chooses to remain because she believes in something bigger. I couldn't do it. I didn't do it. I have to say, though: there are very few people throughout the whole arc of history who can say they've been defrocked.Even fewer who can say they've been defrocked over a justice issue. There's something to be said for that. The United Methodist Church should be ashamed of themselves. They are moving backward, not forward, and in 20 years, where will they be? Beth Stroud served as an ordained United Methodist pastor for six years before losing her clergy credentials in a 2004 church trial. In the trial, Beth was found guilty of “practices declared by the United Methodist Church to be incompatible with Christian teaching” because she acknowledged living in a committed relationship with another woman. The process that led to the trial began in April, 2003, when Beth told her congregation, the First United Methodist Church of Germantown, PA about her relationship with Chris Paige, a consultant to small businesses and nonprofit organizations. The congregation offered nearly universal support to Beth, setting up a legal fund to assist with her defense and hiring her as a lay minister after she lost her credentials. Beth continued to serve as a member of the church staff until 2008, when she decided to pursue an academic career. The trial verdict was overturned on appeal, but the original verdict was reinstated by the Judicial Council of the United Methodist Church in October, 2005. The Judicial Council is the highest judicial body of the United Methodist Church. There is no further avenue of appeal. Beth is the author of You! A Faith That Fits, the official youth curriculum of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches. Beth accepts guest preaching and speaking invitations, and is working on an advanced graduate degree from The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. Beth holds an MDiv from Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, and a bachelor’s degree from Bryn Mawr College. Before going into professional ministry, she worked as a writer and editor in New York City. Beth and Chris make their home in Philadelphia. They serve their community as foster parents, and are currently blessed to share their life with their daughter, who was born in 2005. She's a cutie! Here's the Washington Post article from the time of the trial:The highest court in the United Methodist Church yesterday defrocked a lesbian minister in Philadelphia and reinstated a Virginia pastor who had been suspended for denying a gay man membership in his congregation. The nine-member Judicial Council also rejected a declaration by Methodists in the Pacific Northwest that there is a "difference of opinion among faithful Christians regarding sexual orientation and practice." The court said the declaration was a "historical statement without prescriptive force" and had no bearing on church laws. The decisions amounted to a clean sweep for conservatives who believe gay sex is a sin and want to strictly enforce a Methodist rule against "self-avowed, practicing homosexuals" in ordained ministry. They were the latest in a series of defeats for liberals in the nation's second-largest Protestant denomination who have sought to be more welcoming toward gay men and lesbians. The court rulings, which are final, put an end to the Rev. Irene "Beth" Stroud's hopes of remaining an ordained Methodist minister. Stroud, 35, said she thought she "was prepared for whatever might happen" but found it impossible to master her emotions yesterday. "It's been tears off and on all morning," she said. Stroud said she will continue working at Philadelphia's First United Methodist Church of Germantown as a lay minister, which means she cannot administer Communion and baptisms. Her case began when she told her congregation in 2003 that she was living in a "covenanted relationship" with another woman. Her message from the pulpit violated the church's "don't ask, don't tell" policy toward gays in the clergy and resulted in a formal charge by her bishop. In December 2004, a jury of 13 ministers convicted Stroud of "practices declared by the United Methodist Church to be incompatible with Christian teaching" and removed her ministerial credentials. But a regional appeals panel overturned the verdict, citing legal errors and an ambiguous clause in the church's constitution that pledges no discrimination on the basis of "status." Yesterday, the Judicial Council reaffirmed the original jury's verdict by a 6 to 2 vote, with one judge absent. Wary of such a decision, Stroud had not resumed ordained ministry since the original trial. "If it's a choice between serving in the ordained ministry with my credentials intact, and serving as an 'out' lesbian person acknowledging the most important relationship in my life and not having those credentials, I'll take being out. I think it's better and more honest, and more healthy in the long run," she said. The Judicial Council's rulings also represented a significant change in fortune for the Rev. Edward Johnson, pastor of South Hill United Methodist Church in South Hill, Va. Johnson, 58, had been on an involuntary, unpaid leave since June, when Methodist ministers in Virginia voted 448 to 114 to discipline him for refusing to allow a gay man to become a member of his congregation. His district superintendent and his bishop had urged Johnson to admit the man. Yesterday, the Judicial Council reinstated Johnson, with back pay, with a 5 to 3 vote. It said local pastors have the discretion to decide on members. Johnson was traveling yesterday and did not return messages. The Rev. Tom Thomas, who served as Johnson's legal counsel, said the decision "salvaged" the career of a good pastor and "preserves the way pastoral ministry has been done in our church for 200 years." The Judicial Counsel viewed the case as a question about a pastor's authority, rather than a question about whether people in same-sex relationships are eligible to join the church. In a dissenting opinion, Judicial Council member Susan T. Henry-Crowe said the decision "compromises the historical understanding that the Church is open to all." Like many other Protestant denominations, the Methodist Church has been struggling with sexual issues for 30 years. Its legislative body, the General Conference, meets every four years and has, in recent sessions, reaffirmed the prohibition on "self-avowed, practicing homosexuals" in the clergy by increasing margins. Because of a changing geographic formula, conservative Methodists from the South have been gaining influence in the General Conference and have helped elect more conservatives to the Judicial Council. In May 2004, delegates also voted to tighten church laws, making it easier to charge, try and convict gay ministers. "A lot of loopholes have been closed, but I believe in risky ways," said the Rev. Thomas E. Frank, director of Methodist Studies at Emory University and a proponent of welcoming gays into the church. "There's a lot of ambiguities in the judicial procedures because the church has never tried that hard to get people out; instead, it's emphasized being a big tent and getting everybody in. It's a sharp reversal when we start heading in the other direction." Mark Tooley, a conservative Methodist at the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, said the rulings show that Methodism "is not moving in the direction of the Episcopal Church and declining liberal Protestantism in the West." Rather, he said, it "is moving in the direction of global Christianity, which is robustly orthodox." It takes an awesome amount of courage to hold your head high after "The Church" tells you that you are 'incompatible with Christian Teaching.' Today's post is dedicated to Beth and all the brave souls who continue to struggle inside an institution that refuses to love each person equally, just as God made us. It is also dedicated to all the people who are no longer with us because they fought the same battle and lost. Dame Jane Morris Goodall, DBE, Ph.D. (born Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall on 3 April 1934), is a British primatologist, ethologist, anthropologist, and UN Messenger of Peace. Considered to be the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, Goodall is best known for her 45-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania. She is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and has worked extensively on conservation and animal welfare issues. In July 1960, at the age of 26, Jane Goodall traveled from England to what is today Tanzania and bravely entered the little-known world of wild chimpanzees. She was equipped with nothing more than a notebook and a pair of binoculars. But with her unyielding patience and characteristic optimism, she won the trust of these initially shy creatures. She managed to open a window into their sometimes strange and often familiar-seeming lives. The public was fascinated and remains so to this day. Today, Jane’s work revolves around inspiring action on behalf of endangered species, particularly chimpanzees, and encouraging people to do their part to make the world a better place for people, animals, and the environment we all share. The Jane Goodall Institute works to protect the famous chimpanzees of Gombe National Park in Tanzania, but recognizes this can’t be accomplished without a comprehensive approach that addresses the needs of local people who are critical to chimpanzee survival. These programs began around Gombe in 1994, but have since been replicated in other parts of the continent. Likewise, Jane Goodall’s Roots & Shoots, which Jane started with a group of Tanzania students in 1991, is today the Institute’s global environmental and humanitarian youth program for young people from preschool through university with nearly 150,000 members in more than 120 countries. She's an amazing woman. We went and saw the Chimpanzee movie--it was great--the kids loved it. There's so much to learn about Jane Goodall. I invite you to find out more... |
DawnWomen's history geek, mom, lesbian, theologian, dreamer. Archives
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