Episcopal Women's Caucus News: Closing

On this International Women's Day, the Episcopal Women's Caucus is celebrating the achievement of the singular goal for which it was formed in 1971, to work within the polity of The Episcopal Church to gain for women the right and privilege to be ordained to the priesthood and consecrated to the episcopate. Today, we are also taking the bold step of sunsetting this organization to make way for something new as the work for justice for all women in the Church continues. Please read the news release below.

THE EPISCOPAL WOMEN’S CAUCUS IS SUNSETTING;

THE WORK OF JUSTICE FOR WOMEN GOES ON

Thursday, March 8, 2018

After 47 years of facilitating transformation in The Episcopal Church, the Episcopal Women’s Caucus is taking the bold step of sunsetting the Caucus so that justice for women – lay and ordained – can continue to be pursued in the Church in new ways with new goals.

Founded in 1971, the Episcopal Women’s Caucus was formed to be a change agent in The Episcopal Church. Through political means, the Caucus had a singular strategic goal: to gain for women the right and privilege to be ordained to the priesthood and consecrated to the episcopate. The Episcopal Women’s Caucus has accomplished this.

Obviously, the work of gaining equity and justice for women is far from complete. The Church needs more women clergy serving in positions of leadership, including large congregations, cathedrals and the episcopate. The #Metoo Movement has made it clear the Church is as involved in sexual harassment, misconduct, and abuse as any other institution in our society. Women of color are at particular risk living as they do at the intersection of race and gender. Gender non-conforming people are extremely vulnerable to violence and discrimination. Now more than ever the Church needs to continue to be a change agent within our congregations and out into our communities to “strive for justice and peace and [respect for] the dignity of every human being.”

This work – ranging from fighting for salary equity for women to ending sexual abuse and harassment to seeking racial reconciliation to caring for the most vulnerable among us – needs to be accomplished in new ways, ways which include the kinds of political gains made through the Caucus, but achieved through other strategies and with voices of people throughout the whole Church. 

In this time of both opportunity and challenge in so many areas, having achieved the goals the Caucus was created to achieve, we believe the best way to serve the Church is to close the Caucus in order to make room for new and different vehicles for activism on women’s issues to rise. The decision to bring the Caucus to a close is in keeping with the Caucus’ history of providing leadership and creating space for prophetic visionary work.

At General Convention in July, the work of the Caucus will be acknowledged at a service of the Holy Eucharist, followed by an opportunity for fellowship. The liturgy of the Word at this Eucharist will be a celebration of the history of the Caucus and of women who have led TEC forth so bravely in transformation for women.

More information about activities at General Convention to celebrate the work of the Caucus will be forthcoming.

The members of the Board of the Episcopal Women’s Caucus are Terri Pilarski, Kate Bradsen, Amy Haynie, Robin Woods Sumners, and Janet Waggoner. 

For more information, connect with media coordinator Katie Sherrod at katie.sherrod@edfw.org or 817-909-0070.

Women Rising

The Episcopal Women’s Caucus has long been an advocate for justice and a change agent in the Episcopal Church, standing firmly at the nexus of sexism, misogyny, racism, ageism, and heterosexism in the church. It formed in 1971 as a caucus, not a committee or task force, making explicit its founders’ intention to be a politically potent agent in the polity of the church.

The Caucus’ advocacy initially focused on advocating for women’s ordination and the full inclusion of women in the governance and ministries of Church life. The Caucus’ focus on gender equality not only raised the Church’s awareness of adverse practices that enable sexism and other power inequities, it also worked with other social justice advocacy groups to help the church understand the interlocking nature of oppressions. The Caucus works under the umbrella of The Consultation, which also includes Associated Parishes for Liturgy and Mission, Episcopal Asiamerica Ministry Advocates, Episcopalians on Baptismal Mission, Episcopal Network for Economic Justice, Episcopal Peace Fellowship, Episcopal Urban Caucus, Integrity, TransEpiscopal, and the Union of Black Episcopalians. These groups joined forces to advance an agenda of social justice based in the baptismal imperatives of seeking and serving Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves, striving for justice and peace among all people, and respecting the dignity of every human being.  

The Caucus understands that politics is simply the way humans organize to get things done. From its beginning it has helped members learn how to be effective workers within the polity of the Church. From helping members be effective deputies to General Convention by understanding convention protocol and Robert’s Rules of Order to initiating resolutions and organizing people to testify effectively before committees and on the floor of the House of Deputies and the House of Bishops, the Caucus has worked to shape people and policies in the church. The Caucus effectively organized and helped pass the resolution granting women ordination to all orders in The Episcopal Church. In the decades that have followed the Caucus has worked on justice issues from racism to the rights of the LGBTQI community. 

On June 22-23 the Caucus is convening “Women Rising” in Dallas, Texas to honor our history and to plan our future. The gathering will consider the deep seated ways sexism and misogyny are being revealed in our world today, how we can become more aware of how these reside in each of us, and how we can work within the Church and society to overcome this. We will develop tools that invite us to deeper awareness of ourselves and increase our capacity to be supportive of others.  We will create plans of action and ways to implement those plans, both at General Convention 2018 and in our home dioceses and parishes. 

For more information and to register to attend please go to the Episcopal Women’s Caucus website: 

http://www.ewc-ecusa.com

Stand Your Ground - Black Bodies and the Justice of God - Chapter 5 - Jesus and Trayvon: The Justice of God

The Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas continues to relay the story of Trayvon Martin to us through the words and interviews with his parents. She uses their own words to illustrate their faith in God and then pulls the lens back to also use those same words to illustrate the historic faith of Black Christians in the United States. In this fifth chapter, Dr Douglas draws sharp parallels between the death of Trayvon and the death of Jesus Christ, in that they were both innocent men who were executed by the powers that be of their individual time periods.

Dr Douglas utilizes the story of the Samaritan woman at the well to show how a male Jewish Jesus uses his privilege to balance out the demonization of the female Samaritan woman. In balancing out the power by giving up his privilege, Jesus places himself in solidarity with those who did not have the social power to move freely in his society. In this movement of Jesus, from the place of privilege equalizing the place of subordinate, we find an example to follow to move from our places of sacred white space to places in solidarity with those in the cross hairs of Stand Your Ground culture today.

Dr Douglas uses the interviews with Trayvon's parents to show how they continually try to turn the conversation toward resurrection by speaking of their beloved Trayvon with pride and love. They refuse to allow Trayvon's character and life to be further crucified. According to Dr Douglas, this is in harmony with their Black Christian faith which places more weight in the resurrection than teh crucifixion. I have to say that I have never been a big fan of Matt Lauer, but Dr Douglas' reporting of his interviews with the parents make me never want to watch him again.

At the end of this chapter, Dr Douglas names Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism as America's original sin - from which most all other sins originate. It has been there since our inception as a country (chapter one) and Stand Your Ground Culture is merely the newest manifestation.

Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God - Chapter Four - A Father's Faith: The Freedom of God

The Reverend Dr Kelly Brown Douglas helps us all examine Black Faith in God in chapter four. Using the Exodus Story as the primary lens, she explains that Black Faith is essentially grounded in the belief that God is completely free and therefore seeks freedom for all people. The people in the Exodus story were oppressed and that oppression led to them being God's Chosen People.

I am very appreciative of the information Dr Douglas writes about the function of music in Black Faith. "Music allowed the captured and enslaved Africans to speak to one another across the barriers of their indigenous language and dialects that their enslavers did not respect" (pg 141). The music allowed for the transfer of information, the learning of language, and the expression of hopes and fears. It also allowed the enslaved to sing about the God they already knew from their homeland, a God that was free and demanded the freedom of everyone. This was not the same God that was preached to them as enslaved people by white preachers. The God of Home was a God who called them into being the fulness of who they were created to be (pg153). Home was a free and safe space to fully be who God created them to be.

The discussion of the people who already inhabited the Promised Land is deft and challenging. It allows for the God of Freedom to call the oppressed Home, while leaving space open to say that Home might already be occupied. Dr Douglas does not condone the acts of violence that might be attributed to God that clear out Home for others. She specifically names Native Americans again and their losses to the Manifest Destiny war.

Black Faith, as explained by Dr Douglas, does not blame God for injustice, but rather assumes that God prefers and gives strength to everyone who opposes the injustice and protests for justice.

Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God - Chapter Three: Manifest Destiny War

I am finally on the other side of beginning the new Sunday School season. One Sunday was Homecoming Sunday, the next started Sunday School, and then the next was Ministry Fair Sunday. It has been a busy month and I did not get back to this as quick as I thought I would. Here we all are, a few weeks later, ready to discuss Chapter Three: Manifest Destiny War in Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God by the Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas.

Dr. Douglas begins the chapter by giving us a history of the term, Manifest Destiny: the combination of Anglo-Saxon as the epitome of humanity finding their place in a whole new world and setting up a societal paradise known as the United States of America. According to Manifest Destiny, the USA was a blank slate ready for the experiments of democracy as imagined by Anglo-Saxon ways and culture. God had declared Anglo-Saxons as superior and all other races were to assimilate as quickly as possible. Assuming that whiteness is superior is troublesome enough, but then requiring assimilation from every other race is a “declaration of war” (pg 107) against non-white bodies. Because God had ordained the Anglo-Saxons as superior, then the war declared against the non-whites was a religious & just war. People indigenous to the USA were killed or segregated using the ideology of Manifest Destiny. All immigrants and non-whites were expected to assimilate as fully and quickly as possible. White Space was to be defended at all costs.

Dr. Douglas then neatly traces the ideas of Manifest Destiny straight into the beginning of the Stand Your Ground Laws. If White Space is the most valuable space, then defending White Space is paramount to fulfilling Manifest Destiny and Stand Your Ground laws allow for the use of deadly violence in that protection of White Space.

The rest of the chapter explains the intersection of Stand Your Ground and White Backlash. Even before Stand Your Ground laws were enacted, non-whites could be killed with impunity simply for being in White Space. If a white person felt threatened in any way by a non-white person, and especially by a black male, that “threatening” presence could be killed or otherwise removed with no further thought. Lynchings, imprisonments, and now police shootings are the direct result of the backlash against black people for simply being in a white space. Militarized police officers and departments continue to fight the war of Manifest destiny every day.

Dr. Douglas ends the chapter by pointing out that having a Black President of the United States has triggered a whole new level of White Backlash. She ponders the idea that the only place her Black son is safe is in her own home.

I am so glad I started this book. Now that I have been introduced to these ideas of White Space and Manifest Destiny and Anglo-Saxon Superiority I cannot un-see it unfolding all around me. I admire Dr. Douglas’ methodical, logical outline of the foundations of the United States and how we got to this place that so many of us find appalling. In some ways, I wonder how we can unravel racism from the fabric of our culture, when it has been woven in so tight and methodically from the very beginning.  

Chapter Four will begin Part Two of the book, which also has three chapters. We are halfway finished reading at this point. Where are your thoughts?

Stand Your Ground - Chapter Two - The Black Body: A Guilty Body

This chapter begins with another intriguing question: "Why are black murder victims put on trial?" (pg 48). Lower on that same page, Dr. Douglas writes, "Black victims of fatal violence are presumed guilty of bringing their deaths upon themselves. Their white killers are given the benefit of the doubt. It is readily assumed that the white killer acted as a reasonable person would who is in fear for his life."

In helping us to understand how this has historically developed,  Dr. Douglas revisits the Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism and how it lead to the belief that black people could be excluded from consideration as being human (pg 52). She then tracks the concept of "Black Body as Chattel" (pgs 52-56). She shows how the church and state affirmed that not only were black people not equal to white people, but that "equality with white people - and certainly not to speak of superiority over them - is immoral" (pg 57).

I found it hard to read the "Hypersexualized Black Body" section (pgs 64-68). It makes logical sense that in this terrible way of perceiving black bodies, the charge of rape would be unfathomable; I had never allowed my thoughts to wander that far. The sexual abuse of slaves was another way to de-humanize them, force a higher birth rate, and set them apart as "other," specifically the blacks males as threats to white women.

"The Dangerous Black Body" was illustrative for me for what seems to be happening over and over again in the killings of black bodies by police officers right now in America (pgs 68-76). "When black people step into [white/public] social space, they do so as intruders, and thus they have created a dangerous situation because white people are compelled , by divine law nonetheless, to protect their space from intruders" (pg 69). A lot of the calls to the police in the instances of the killings that have necessitated the Black Lives Matter movement, incorrectly identify black bodies as threatening in some way: carrying a weapon. threatening property, threatening suicide, etc. The police then respond with preconceived notions of danger and act without truly assessing the situation.

The dangerous black body then becomes the "Criminal Black Body" for the rest of chapter two (pgs 77-89). If you have not yet read Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow, it should be the very next book on your White Person's Reading List on Racial Reconciliation. It is a dense read, and as well-researched and well-written as Stand Your Ground, in my opinion.

As Dr. Douglas traces how the anti-vagrancy laws came to reinforce a new type of forced labor for the males (pgs 77-82), she also shows how black women are dismissed as "criminally immoral" or "mean and angry" (pg 83). In the week or so since I read this section, I have noticed the stereotype of "Angry Black Woman" (pg 85) more then I ever have before in my lifetime.

So then, if black men are criminal, and black women are so angry as to be irrational and then become criminal, then Dr. Douglas' last stories in chapter two show how "free black bodies have to be guilty of something" (pg 86). Therefore all black murder victims are ultimately put on trial for their own murder. The story Dr. Douglas tells of her toddler son's interaction with an elementary-age white boy at a playground is heart-wrenching (pgs 86-87).

**Aside for Chapter Three: I may not be able to post again next week, so there may be a two-week lapse until the next post. There are some program-year tasks I need to get accomplished to get the Sunday School year started well.**

Stand Your Ground - Chapter One - America's Exceptionalism

Dr Douglas begins this chapter with the question, "If Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk?" (pg3). In the next 44 pages, she presents a well-researched position that traces writings concerning Anglo-Saxon superiority to 98 CE (pg4). Those writings are quoted in the founding documents of our country, and are used to strengthen and legitimize white "as Cherished Property" (pg 23). Thus, white as supreme: skin color, cultural norms, etc. The very foundations of culture and religion are built on white supremacy.

The rights of white supremacy include the rights to exclude, the rights of property ownership and the rights of personal space. These are only some of the privileges I have been historically able to hold as a white person. While those first two may be lessening, it is the third one that I see causing the clashes more and more in our society today. It seems like the calls to law enforcement go something like this, "There is a Black person outside with a gun." Law enforcement shows up, assumes the truth of the call and a Black person is detained, arrested, or killed = a Black person in a white space is seen as the problem. Public streets, even in Black neighborhoods, are seen as white space.

Dr Douglas has opened my eyes to how I travel trough daily life. I do not feel safe everywhere, but I certainly expect that my body and my rights will be protected everywhere, as a white person. I now see how our forefathers could write about the rights of all, yet truly mean only those of white heritage. This is a suspicion I held before this, and I am thankful to have such a tightly-researched chapter to trace the lineage of influence.

What are your thoughts as you digest chapter one and ponder what exceptionalism means? Where are you and your family history weaved in and out of this story? How have you noticed your privilege differently since reading this chapter?