Oral History Project
Candler School of Theology
Challenges
Below is one sample story of a woman facing challenges. We will later add other stories and audiovisual clips; however, this sample gives you a picture of women's courage.
ROSE THOMASON-- High school teacher, author, activist
Presentation on 11 April 2000, Candler School of Theology, Women in Theology and Ministry Spring Dinner [Narrative is lightly edited for a written manuscript.]
"Before we got to General Conference in Atlanta in 1972, I was pretty overwhelmed. We established a Women’s Center with the Women’s Division, where the women delegates and lobbyists could gather. The Caucus met and planned strategy into the night. First, our legislation had to be steered through committee. When it finally reached the floor the second week, we had floor plan A and B … … …
"Images that have stayed with me from those two interminable weeks are: Georgia Harkness and Thelma Stevens sitting together in the Women’s Center, holding hands and talking about retirement centers; Thelma Stevens, Theresa Hoover, and Peggy Billings standing with their heads together, plotting floor strategy before the vote on establishing the Commission on the Status and Role of Women (COSROW); Nan Self leading the liturgy at the love feast the Caucus hosted for delegates; then, Nan taking over leadership of the Caucus during General Conference and watching her cry in the hallway and then meet the press with poise and composure.
"After the conference was over and we’d been successful in establishing the Commission on the Status and Role of Women, and almost everyone had gone home, I remember sitting in a deserted church basement with Judy Leaming-Elmer, discussing what would come next. We wanted to be sure that our goals did not get lost in the institutional church. We had been socked on the funding; there was barely enough money allocated for one executive to run COSROW. We both felt that was disastrous. One person alone could not do the job.
"Later, she and Nan applied for the position as a team, sharing one salary. She wanted to know if I was interested in the job, and I could not imagine doing that job and told her I didn’t know the first thing about setting up a national agency. Well I didn’t know that she and Nan didn’t know how to do it either. But they did it anyway. It was a heroic effort, I can assure you. How they managed it, I have no idea. They’ll have to tell that story. Judy left after four years, and then Nan carried the whole load alone until more money was available and Kiyo and Trudie were hired to join her as the secretariat, which is a very interesting model that COSROW developed—a model of shared leadership, a non-hierarchical model that we used in the Caucus and then in COSROW.
"Barbara Thompson was elected as the first president of COSROW and was an outstanding leader. The Women's Caucus met yearly during that quadrennium, in Kansas City; Austin, Texas; Dallas, Texas; and San Francisco. We began publishing The Yellow Ribbon. The yellow ribbon was a symbol of suffrage. Anna Howard Shaw, the first Methodist minister who was a woman, looked out over the congregation and saw on the bosom of every woman the yellow ribbon of suffrage. We adopted that as our theme, and, at General Conference, we handed out yellow ribbons. People wore yellow ribbons. We named our newspaper The Yellow Ribbon, and that newspaper was a very important news organ because we could communicate with each other and with everyone else who received it. It became the news organ for COSROW before they began publishing their own, The Flyer.
"Now I wasn't a very popular Methodist in Georgia during those years. I'd stepped out of the mold. I didn't fit. I was a minister's wife who had already, in an early appointment, gotten my husband moved for my Civil Rights work, and here I was meddling again in places that weren’t my role. So I wasn't asked to be on the first Commission, although I wanted to be very badly. But I continued to work with the Caucus. In 1976, the 2nd quadrennium of COSROW, Dr. Louise Branscomb from Birmingham, Alabama, worked very hard to get me selected as a member at large for the 2nd quadrennium. I was thrilled with being able to do that and threw myself into the work, accepting the role as chair of the laywomen’s concerns.
"Now, one of the things that had always been my problem in the church was being a minister’s wife. I didn’t marry Robert to be a minister’s wife. As a matter of fact, he was an attorney when I married him. I thought I was going to be rich. Instead, it has been enriching. I always kind of felt that ordination was a weapon being used against me as a minister’s spouse, not that he laid that on me, but I think I laid it on myself. I mean, when I wanted to change jobs or his job was changing and I didn’t want to move, which was usually the case, I wasn’t just up against a boss or two bosses; I was up against GOD. This was not easy for me. My biggest problem was the itinerancy. It was awful. You just got moved, I’d just get a job started, and there I was, off again. So it seemed to me that something ought to be done about that. We’d done some other things, so why couldn’t we do something about that? Then, there came an opportunity.
"The Board of Ordained Ministry formed a national commission to study the itinerancy, and COSROW was asked to have a representative, so I got myself on there. I said, 'We're going to do something about this itinerancy, and what it's doing to families.' It was quite a struggle, I can assure you. People in other parts of the church, other parts of the country, didn’t even understand what I was talking about when I said: 'There's no consultation, people just get moved; they get moved every two years.' How can the spouse have a career? Well who cared if they did? It was bad.
"So, when you read your Book of Discipline (UMC), look at the section on consultations about appointments. Robert and I wrote that. He helped me do it because I didn’t know enough. He was better informed than I was, and I took it to this itinerancy committee. It was passed, it went through the committee, it went through General Conference, and it is in the Discipline. But you can change the Discipline easier than you can change behavior … At least you have the Discipline to back you up if you want to challenge it.
"I attended the 1980 General Conference as a lobbyist for COSROW but I found the experience very, very disillusioning. Everything we had worked so hard for in 1972 was being threatened and we had to hold on for dear life, for what we had accomplished."