Rev. Joseph Boyd I’ve admired people throughout history who have dared to challenge the illusion of the status quo, and show the true power that each of us as individuals have to transform our lives and transform the lives of others. Shirley Chisholm was one of those people. Ms. Chisholm was the first African-American woman elected to Congress and the first African-American woman to run for President of the United States under a major party in 1972. But that is only a tip of the iceberg about what impresses me most about her. She said: “I want history to remember me…not as the first black woman to have made a bid for the presidency of the United States, but as a black woman who lived in the 20th Century who dared to be herself.” That is where she impresses me the most. Her perspective on all her success within the American system was not about exceptionalism, not about being better than others, more qualified, or more talented. She was being herself as a woman with ambition and fearlessness and boldness, and her hope was that other African-American women would too be able to live at peace with themselves, and Shirley Chisholm knew firsthand the personal cost of that in our culture. She shared publicly: “being female put many more obstacles in my path than being black.”
I respect her daring spirit, her outspokenness, and her sensibility of wanting all people who lived in her identities to be free to be themselves. Reading this as a man in the 21st century, I feel both a tremendous respect for women like Shirley Chisholm who seek to lift everyone as they rise, and a tremendous sense of outrage that we still live in a culture that makes it especially difficult for women to live as fully as their male counterparts. This can only be the case in a country that deep down is afraid of itself, for most of the people in this country are women.
It makes me think that we are still in a period when we are measuring the worth of people by such a narrow yardstick, and that yardstick is optional. We still are trying to fit all different kinds of people, including women, into a political, social and economic system that only seems to understand the experience of being white, male, heteronormative, and without visible infirmary. Many of us already know this, and I can’t help but wonder how long we are going to try to fit ourselves and encourage each other to fit into this grossly narrow system of being. How long are we going to measure ourselves and each other by a yardstick that doesn’t even understand who we are?
Many women have told me that they have to combat sexism daily at work. And I’m talking about women who are living now in 2021, decades after the Women’s Liberation Movement, decades after the push to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. Many of you may already know this, but I learned that the Equal Rights Amendment, introduced back in 1972, was never actually ratified. The ERA was introduced to end legal distinctions between men and women based on sex, and would serve as the basis for laws that granted equal pay and prohibited gender discrimination. It needed 38 states to ratify it in order to be amended to the Constitution. The final three states needed to ratify the ERA let the deadline pass, and just in 2020 Virginia became the last state to ratify the amendment, decades past the deadline. However, a Federal district judge just this past week on March 5 ruled that because the deadline expired long ago, it was too late to ratify it. Many of you know through lived experience how deeply patriarchy and misogyny is entrenched in nearly everything: our law, our systems of government, our language, our religious texts, our own families. More than once, I’ve been told by women how they’ve been silenced or punished for having ambition and seeking to be themselves. The reason I bring this up this morning is not to further depress you, but to bring to light some of the challenges women are facing today (and I’m certain I’m not being exhaustive), and see how we might respond as women, men, and non-binary members of this beloved community to this situation and predicament.
Gloria Steinem who is a native of Ohio, came to speak at Youngstown State University in 2017, and was shocked to learn there was no Women’s Center on campus to give support to women who have been assaulted, and who need general support navigating the academic world. Ms. Steinem offered to finance a Women’s Center on campus, and I know many of you have been involved in that effort. It has been a struggle because the administration has not been cooperative, even though the funds and plans are available.
Most of our congregation is women. This place wouldn’t exist or be functioning without women, and that’s true for most churches and most workplaces. So my question is: what may be of benefit to women in this community, in this country, and in this world? I’m sure there are lots of answers to this question, and I don’t assume I have it. As a church and as your minister, I’m committed to listening to any response that may come to this question, so that we can further commit ourselves to the dismantling of oppression of women that is so prevalent everywhere in all parts of life.
This month’s theme is commitment, and I plan to talk about this more next week, but commitment to all people being able to live to their potential, to live their lives fully, even if that means forming a kind of resistance to the culture, is what we’re about. We should be committed to uncovering the lies of our culture and be unafraid to confront them with an ethic of love. Patriarchy and misogyny are a disease in our culture; in the same way racism and economic exploitation are diseases in this land. They all depend on each other to flourish, and when we commit ourselves to addressing one of these, we can’t help but address all of them.
I’ve been thinking of the divine feminine that is in each and every one of us. I’ve been thinking in my own life how that spirit has been crowded out by other energies, and how I too am missing a part of myself. I think as a people we are missing this feminine wisdom that comes to each of us in many ways. It seems to me that environmental devastation and complacency is related to our wrongful views of women. We call this place Mother Earth, and then do nothing to help her thrive. That needs to change, and supporting those who identify as women is critical to saving our planet. In this era, we still listen to Father Time, and in this country time is money, and that is the dominant religion of this place – the worship of money. Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to worship other things. I like money, but in the end, money won’t save us.
We have a covenant at this church, but the specifics of our covenant I want to leave for another time. Instead I will say that the most powerful covenants in our life are the ones that are unspoken. For those who don’t know, a covenant is a sacred agreement between different people, a guide for our behavior toward one another. The most significant covenant is the one that is unspoken. It is significant, because the agreements that are unspoken almost always go unquestioned. And without questioning and challenge, there is no transformation. I’ve been thinking of the covenant we have between men and women. For some heterosexual couples, they have a marriage covenant, typically a series of promises toward each other. I have yet to officiate a wedding, where a couple pledges to each other’s liberation. This idea may seem the antithesis of marriage which is often thought of as binding or joining, but I think without committing to each other’s freedom as souls in these very bodies, in this political and social climate, we can never bind ourselves or join completely.
I’m inspired by bell hooks who says that she believes you don’t need to be part of the oppressed group to do something about the oppressed, because anyone can change their mind and behavior. I like how simple and clear that is. Anyone can change their mind and behavior. If white people can change their mind and behavior to dismantle racism, men can and should feel empowered to change their mind and behavior to dismantle misogyny.
Misogyny is a cancer, and the only way it exists is through repeated habits of mind and behavior passed down without question. Once we see it, we expose it. And once it’s in the light of day, we have the power to do something about it.
I agree with bell hooks that if you would ask most people what they thought about violence toward women, they would be opposed, but if you go on to explain how this violence comes from patriarchy, you will get pushback. But a love ethic demands that you connect how social and cultural conditions impact how we interact in our intimate relationships. This is one reality, and you can’t heal one without being committed to healing the other. And I think the power of this commitment, much like the anti-racism work we’ve done, relies on humility. For men, it’s not assuming we know the right response, and remaining open to listening and paying attention.
Liberation for women is liberation for all of us. And to be honest with you, I have no exact idea what that really means. What I imagine it means is the freedom to live your life in the 21st century, and a commitment to being a change maker with a community that has your back and is here to support you. But I’m willing to listen and learn, and be open to further insight.
This Sunday marks a year that we at this church have been holding virtual services due to the pandemic. I’ve had some people ask me what I hope for once we’re able as a country to freely gather in person, and my answer has been: I hope we keep questioning the assumptions we’ve had about how our civilization needs to function, and keep challenging it until everyone not only has a place at the table, but can come together and build a new table. We have witnessed the opportunity to connect to each other more intimately even while being apart, and we’ve been able to include those who have been left out. I think a new covenant is emerging in living rooms across America, a new way of relating to what is most important about being alive, and respect for how fleeting and precious this life really is. My sense is this time can make us less hesitant to do what is right, to commit ourselves to what is long overdue, to relish the opportunity to change our minds and our behaviors. I see a new covenant emerging that is global in scope and is less about power over, but power with, I see a covenant emerging that sees that we are in a new moment, and that a new moment deserves a new mind, a new outlook, and new path. We are on that new path now, whether we are aware of it or not. We are prompted by the will to survive, but we are committed to much more than survival. We are on the path of salvation potentially – the salvation of our Mother earth, which depends on our respect for the feminine, the embodied women of all races and expressions. We are on the path to realizing what our life has depended on all along, the very oxygen that fills our lungs and gives us life, and we give a joyful cry for all that is our life, and all that our life could be. And in that joyful cry is the beginning of a new covenant.
