Emerging Women

By Onleilove Alston

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

-Martin Luther King, Jr.
Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence
Delivered April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City

On Tuesday January 20th, 2009 I was blessed to be in Washington, D.C. to witness history. As a descendent of one of the largest slave holding families (the Alstons of North and South Carolina) it was surreal to realize that less than 200 years after the Emancipation the first African-American president was sworn in on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible. I have been overwhelmed with emotion and still cannot believe that the new first family looks like my own. I am very proud of how far African-Americans have come towards freedom and though a major part of Dr. King’s dream was realized we are still not at the Promised Land. Many leaders from the Civil Rights movement have alluded to fact that it has been 40 years since Dr. King’s assignation. This fact has made me think about the Exodus story which has given African-Americans encouragement and a framework for their experience in America. The Exodus story is the foundation of the Black Church and I think it can provide important insights for how we as an American people can make it to the Promise Land Dr. King preached about in his Mountain Top sermon given the night before his death.

Though the Exodus account ends with the Children of Israel entering the Promised Land, not everyone was able to enter. Moses himself had to be left behind, and some from the older generation passed without entering the Promised Land. As a nation if we truly want to enter into the Promised Land Dr. King preached about, we have to continue to challenge the three ills Dr. King discussed: Poverty, Militarism, and Racism. We have to hold our president accountable to addressing these ills through his policies. In my opinion we need to have a revolution of values, a revolution that places the least of these at the top of our agendas. The time has passed for the Greed is Good ethic that has characterized the last twenty years, the time has passed for patronizing charity, and the time is now to reignite Dr. King’s Poor People’s Campaign. The Poor People’s Campaign brought poor African-Americans, Whites, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans together to converge on the nation’s capital to challenge our government to address the needs of the poor. As people of faith we must challenge this new administration to deal with the scourge of poverty once and for all. With the current economic crisis the ranks of the poor are growing to include not just the homeless or the welfare mother, but to include the former Lehman Brothers employee, or our suburban neighbor. Now that the issue of poverty is at the forefront we can begin to address issues of sexism, racism, and militarism; which all feed into poverty. Now is the time to challenge President Obama to continue the unfinished work of the Poor People’s Campaign, least we are left behind like Moses and the Children of Israel who did not completely yield to God’s call and missed entering into the Promised Land. Will we yield to Christ’s call to “preach good news to the poor” or will we be left behind?

Organizations dedicated to ending poverty:

The Poverty Initiative at Union Theological Seminary
Sojourners Mobilization to End Poverty
Micah Challenge
New York Faith & Justice
Domestic Workers United
Christian Community Development Association

Onleilove Alston is a former Beatitudes Society Fellow at Sojourners. She serves on the Servant Leadership Team of NY Faith & Justice, is a nominated Poverty Scholar and a Faithful Democrats Fellow.

As we enter into the season of Lent I wanted to point out that Christine Sine is coordinating a Lenten Synchroblog and has provided with Mustard Seed Associates a Lenten Guide. So if you are looking for ways to connect with God and with others this seasons, I recommend checking them out.

And feel free to share your plans or thoughts on Lent here. What does the season mean to you? How are you observing it? What would you suggest to those who may be unused to observing the season?

By Beth Booram

“You never know what’s comin’ for you.”

During Christmas vacation, one of our favorite family traditions is to head out to a movie theater and watch one of the new releases. For those who did the same, you likely know by the above heading which one the Booram family enjoyed—The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Rather than explain the premise of the movie and spoil it for you, I’ll simply mention that this line was spoken first by Queenie, Benjamin’s “adoptive” mother, and subsequently repeated several times throughout the movie. Queenie urged Benjamin to be prepared for what life brings; not to fight it, or resent it, but respond with acceptance and openness—a philosophy that she exemplified.

The movie has a fanciful and curious story line, great character development, and brilliant acting. I highly recommend it, though be prepared for a nearly three hour stay in your seat! What I’m musing about today is this idea that you never know what’s coming for you.

Queenie warned that there is some force beyond us that can and will sweep us up in its foment, whether we want it to or not. We are in a position to respond and cooperate, whatever that means, with the momentum this force generates. Not that we are helpless or passive, non-agents in our destiny. But we swim in a current of life that sometimes swirls us around and delivers us somewhere we weren’t expecting.

Now, allow me to make a leap….into a book I finished last night. (If this begins to read like a book review, it unapologetically is!) It is called The Great Emergence by Phyllis Tickle. The sub-title reads, “How Christianity is Changing and Why.” If you get the sense, as I do, that a momentum of change is building within Western Christianity, “that something is coming for us,” you are right.

According to Tickle,

“As a phenomenon, the Great Emergence has been slipping up on us for decades in very much the same way spring slips up on us week by week every year. Though it may have sent us a thousand harbingers of its approach, we are still surprised to wake up one balmy morning to a busy, chirping world that, a mere twenty-four hours before, had been a gray and silent one.”

Tickle goes on to explain, with helpful clarity and profound insight, that every five hundred years the Church feels compelled to hold “a giant rummage sale.” And we are in the midst of one of those times, a time of monumental change when something comes for us and we don’t know exactly what that something is.

As I interface with a broad spectrum of Christians, I observe a variety of reactions to this “emerging” Christianity. Some seem oblivious, content with their faith context, and unconcerned with the gathering storm. Others are battening down the hatches, vehemently committed to protecting themselves from the onslaught of the storm, convinced it is a tsunami of destruction. Others are indifferent, so far gone in their cynicism and disillusionment that if the storm hits and wipes us clean of any vestige of the institutional church, that would be just fine.

Others, like me, are mostly hopeful. Reading The Great Emergence has helped me frame our current history within a backdrop of five hundred year cycles of reformation. Tickle explains that each period of upheaval has resulted in three things: a new and more robust form of Christianity; a reconstituted previous form of Christianity that becomes more vital; and the spread of Christian faith and practice. That is good reason for hope.

For the last decade of my life, I have had the sense that “something was coming” for those of us who follow Christ and find community within the church. Whatever it is, I don’t think it can be stopped or avoided. Some interject this phenomenon is a consequence of our neglect of God, national moral decline or disregard for the Bible. I, on the other hand, think that God is up to something—that He is in this thing that is coming.

Whatever you think about the great emergence, please become educated about the history of the church and what’s coming for us today. This book will help explain how Christianity is changing and why.

Beth Booram has a passion to explain and model a way of living responsively to God in the midst of life’s varied landscapes. As a writer and speaker, she is highly creative, often utilizing artistic elements , contemplative exercises, and engaging interaction. Beth has authored a number of excellent works. Her most recent are The Wide Open Spaces of God (Abingdon Press/ September, 2007) and Picturing the Face of Jesus (Abingdon Press/April, 2009).

Pam at How God Messed Up My Religion has a great recap of this year’s Convergence gathering of emerging women leaders this past weekend.

Often when the topic of women in ministry is brought up, I inevitably hear someone say that the issue is just too controversial for them to deal with.  Either the topic is not permitted in their church context or they have very complementarian friends who might “be offended” if they broached the subject.  So for them keeping the peace dictates their behavior.  They just don’t go there.  Others may be supportive of women in ministry, but just don’t want to rock the boat or may think that there are far more important issues to address.

Whatever the case, the outcome is that the topic of women in ministry is simply brushed aside.  The problem with that is that in choosing not to engage the issue, those people are, for all practical purposes, making a choice to keep women silent.  To defer judgment on whether or not to let women pursue their callings is to say no to women.

So the question is – is risking offend a few people, getting personally ostracized, or having some tough conversations worth hurting not just women but those that they could be serving?

I’ve also been in churches that acknowledged that this can be a controversial issue – but that choose to err on the side of love.  They didn’t want to risk muzzling the spirit of God because of a theological (cultural?) debate.  They admitted that they could be wrong, but that they would rather respect and affirm the image of God in women than risk being judged for silencing God.

What’s the experience in your churches?  Is this issue addressed or avoided with a litany of excuses?

I am happy to announce that the long awaited changes here at Emerging Women have finally arrived. I’m excited to be moving ahead with this community and look forward to our future conversations. Most of the Emerging Women members already know about these changes, but for the broader community of readers, here’s a summary of what’s happening and why.

- From now on, Emerging Women will exist exclusively at this domain – www.emergingwomen.us. Some of you may already be using this address, but until now it simply forwarded to the blogspot site. We will no longer be hosted at Blogger, so please update your links!

- The continued growth of Emerging Women means that we can no longer function as a membership based blog – there’s just too many of us! But we will continue to be as open source as possible. We still want the blog to represent the voices and thoughts of a wide variety of women, so we are looking for your submissions. We are still looking for articles, book/movie reviews, stories, interviews, creative writings, questions, resources, links, and news items to share on the blog. So feel free to send those submissions at any time to emergingwomen(at)gmail(dot)com to be posted.

- But even without membership, Emerging Women desires to be a resource helping connect those in the emerging church to the women’s voices in its midst. We will continue to have two blogrolls for this purpose. One will feature any (appropriate) emerging woman blogger who wants to be on the list. The other will include any websites, organizations, or men’s blogs who want to be “friends of emerging women.” The point is to connect us all together.

- All of the old posts are here at the new blog. It just might take some time to update the author info on each one.

I’m excited to see how the conversation develops and look forward to reconnecting with all of you here.  As we get the conversation rolling here, I’d love to hear your thoughts.  How can this blog be improved? What topics do you wish we would cover?  What activities should we resurrect (book club, weekly round-ups…) or create for the blog?  What resources should we provide?  How can we best serve women in the emerging church conversation?

- Julie Clawson

by Sonja Andrews

It’s just too bad she won’t accrue any benefits from it.

Maybe you remember Lilly from last year’s presidential campaign. Or if you’re really observant, from the news in May 2007. If you don’t, allow me to tell you a little bit of Lilly’s story.

Lilly Ledbetter worked for the Goodyear Tire & Rubber company down in Alabama. She was an Area Manager (aka plant supervisor). She worked at Goodyear from 1979 to 1998. When she retired in 1998, she was the only female Area Manager, the rest of her colleagues were male. All 15 of them. Another unique characteristic that her colleagues shared was that they all earned more than she did. Every single one of them. Even those who had worked at Goodyear less time than Lilly had. Even those who did a worse job than she did.

Sometime in early 1998, Lilly began to get suspicious and she filed paperwork with the EEOC (that’s the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission). She retired in July and in November she filed a lawsuit against Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company claiming that they had discriminated against her on the basis of her gender. That’s when the legal wrangling began. I’ll spare you the details. But it went all the way up to the highest court in the land.

The Supremes got it. No, poodles, not Diana Ross and the Supremes. The Supreme Court. The Nine in Black. However, their decision made just about as much sense as MacArthur Park.

Now you can read the ruling in it’s entirety if you’d like. You can download it for yourself here. However, the essence of the majority (5 to 4) decision, handed down by Justice Alito, was that Ms. Ledbetter had missed the boat. You see, Lilly had filed suit saying, in essence, that because there was discrimination in her pay at the end of her employment, there had been ongoing discrimination for a long period of time. Justices Alito, Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas (who, being African American, ought to know better) disagreed and wrote, essentially that Ms. Ledbetter ought to have known about the discrimination in her salary from the very beginning and in order to have gained redress, should have filed grievances at every instance. They used plenty of the court’s own rulings as precedence for this. Every single one of which as been overwritten by Congress. They ignored the intent and the scope of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, and the National Labor Relations Act.

You see, the original court in which Ms. Ledbetter filed her claim she was given redress for the wrong and was awarded $3.5 million dollars in lost income. That seemed a little steep to me when I first saw the number, because at the time of her retirement the disparity in income was not that great. Ms. Ledbetter was earning $3,727 per month; the lowest paid male area manager received $4,286 per month, the highest paid, $5,236. However, then I realized that while the immediate difference was not great, this difference would play out for perhaps 30 years or more during her retirement. Ms. Ledbetter had not had the opportunity to save as much for retirement, nor Social Security as her male counterparts and so that must also be accounted for in the redress.

You may be wondering why Ms. Ledbetter won. Well, until the Supreme Court ruling, the presumption was that the clock (180 days) started running on the day that one recieved the most recent (or current) discriminatory paycheck, NOT the first discriminatory paycheck. So the court in which she originally filed suit found that she presented a valid case and gave her redress. Goodyear Tire did not like that answer and filed an appeal. Thus the case wound it’s way to the Supreme Court.

Think back for a moment to your employment experiences. Go ahead. I’ll wait. Think about the notion that salary decisions might be public knowledge.

Have you finished guffawing yet?

That’s exactly what Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg thought too. She wrote the dissenting opinion. Then took the unusual step of reading it from the bench after the majority opinion had been read. If you’ve never read Supreme Court decisions, this is a good one to cut your teeth on. It’s fairly straightforward and you already know what’s going on. Even more interesting (to me) are the dissenting opinions. The writing in those are more relaxed and less full of legalese, because they don’t count for as much. That is, future jurisprudence will not necessarily be relying upon the dissent. Reading the dissenting opinion from the bench is very unusual. It carries a certain weight; it goes beyond saying, “We in the minority disagree.” to also spitting on your shoes. In public. Here is some of what Justice Ginsburg had to say:

The Court’s insistence on immediate contest overlooks common characteristics of pay discrimination. Pay disparities often occur, as they did in Ledbetter’s case, in small increments; cause to suspect that discrimination is at work develops only over time. Comparative pay information, moreover, is often hidden from the employee’s view. Employers may keep under wraps the pay differentials maintained among supervisors, no less the reasons for those differentials. Small initial discrepancies may not be seen as meet for a federal case, particularly when the employee, trying to succeed in a nontraditional environment, is averse to making waves.

Pay disparities are thus significantly different from adverse actions “such as termination, failure to promote, . . . or refusal to hire,” all involving fully communicated discrete acts, “easy to identify” as discriminatory.

There is so much more. This may not sound like much to the untrained ear/eye, but in the language of the Supreme Court it is a stinging rebuke. Especially since it was delivered in a public address.

And so things stood for nearly two years. But two days ago, President Obama and the U.S. Senate set the scales of justice just a little bit right again. The Senate approved legislation which would establish that the clock starts with the most recent discriminatory paycheck NOT the first one. Then President Obama signed it into law. It was the second law he signed since taking office. It’s known as the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. And, God bless her, Lilly won’t get one thin dime from it. The rest of us will. Or not. But at least we will have gained an equal footing on which to stand up for ourselves.

As Gail Collins wrote in yesterday’s NYTimes:

Ledbetter, who was widowed in December, won’t get any restitution of her lost wages; her case can’t be retried. She’s now part of a long line of working women who went to court and changed a little bit of the world in fights that often brought them minimal personal benefit.

I highly recommend that op-ed piece. For two reasons. First, you’ll read about women who have paved the way for the rest of us, the un-sung heroines in mostly blue-collar jobs who made it possible for us to get where we are today. Second, many of the cases that Gail writes about, were also used as precedence by Alito, et al; cases the Court ruled on which were then overwritten by Congress.

So, if you think about it today, say a prayer for Lilly Ledbetter and Eulalie Cooper and Patricia Lorance and Lorena Weeks. They fought so we could stand.