learning from the past

Today's young women take their education, job opportunities, and career options forgranted. We oldsters remember when birth control was limited and abortions performed in back alleys and women died! When college's had curfews for women but not men, women wore hats and gloves and dresses to go shopping, only men's names were listed in the telephone book. and an unmarried woman was disparagingly called “an old maid.” I am appalled at the growing move to limit access to birth control and abortion, because the real issue is not protecting unborn babies but controlling women, their bodies, and their lives. If the concern was for the babies we'd have different social policies, child care and educational systems.

Remember the Clarence Thomas hearings when Anita Hill was pillared for daring to raise the issue of sexual harrassment? When many churches taught the “chain of command” wherein the man, as head of the household, had the right to dictate everything in the home, and it was legal for husbands to beat and rape their wives?

Fortunately, women turned the church and world upside down by challenging patriarchial language and practices. Back then our “brothers in Christ” insisted male references were inclusive, until they weren't. Men “preached” in church, but women could only “talk,” if that. I attended a workshop where the leader deliberately used only feminime pronouns when reading Scripture, referring to leadership in the church, and God. By the end of the first day, one male pastor acknowledged there was a language problem. After listening to only female references and pronouns he said he felt so excluded he wanted to leave.

And women pastors! God forbid! Women were considered too emotionally and spiritually unstable to think clearly or lead! Their monthly cycles and menopause, you kmow. So when Fairfield Mennonite called me to pastor the church in 1980 that was pretty radical stuff! Granted Mennonites are not the most progressive of demoninations,and after a lengthy application process we were told that while I had all of the attributes they (white ordained men) wanted for pastoral leadership, they (white ordained men) could not ordain me because I was a woman! Fortunately, Fairfield Mennonite did not accept “no” as an answer. I happily pastored Fairfield Mennonite for 20 years, building on my feminine perceptions and skills.. 

Much has changed in the past 50 years, but prejudice and discrimination persist. Women still get blamed for provoking rape and sexual harrassmen, implying that men aren't responsible for their sexual impulses. Really? The glass ceiling continues in business, athletics, the arts, politics. White supremacy is alive and well. Many of Obama's problems stem from his race, just as Nancy Pelosi is pillared because she is an asserrtive female. If she were male she'd be candiate material for the presidency!

While none of us can control the color of our skin or being born male or female, we can control our responses to the hand life deals us. Every painful experience carries with it the opportunity to grow and change, to better understand others' struggles, and to guarantee discrimination and bigotry stops with us.
We can learn from our past and make this a truly great country instead of defending the outdated prejudical ideas we grew up with.

Joyce Shutt is pastor emeritus of the Fairfield Mennonite Church.