Building Bridges

Letha Dawson Scanzoni and Friends

Weddle, Aldredge-Clanton

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781532631894
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religious Biographies

Letha Dawson Scanzoni changed the landscape of American evangelicalism through her groundbreaking work on the gospel-based intersection of gender and LGBTQ justice. She coauthored two of the first books that support women's equality and LGBTQ rights with the Bible: All We're Meant to Be and Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? In all her work Scanzoni applies the liberating message of Jesus to women and to people who have been marginalized by church and society because of sexual orientation. Building Bridges combines an exploration of the life and work of Letha Dawson Scanzoni with stories of people she continues to empower through her writing and the Evangelical & Ecumenical Women's Caucus - Christian Feminism Today, an organization she cofounded. This book illustrates her growing influence as she continues her prophetic collaboration with new generations. In addition, it provides resources for churches as they build bridges for their ministries of liberation, justice, and peace.

Part 1

Birthing Christian Feminism

Letha Dawson Scanzoni is a founding mother of Christian feminism. In this part of Building Bridges we explore how Letha changed American evangelicalism, giving birth to a movement through her groundbreaking books, advocacy, and organizing. These chapters also examine Jesus’s liberating message to women and ways that message extends to all marginalized groups, including to those of various sexual identities.

1

Changing Evangelicalism

In 2015 Letha wrote about her longtime correspondence with missionary Elisabeth Elliot, who worked with her husband in eastern Ecuador and who stayed even after her husband was killed.1 Elisabeth later returned to the United States where she was lauded for her courage, for her missionary zeal, and for showing women that although they could not embrace leadership opportunities in their churches, they could follow in her steps and work as a missionary overseas. Even though Elisabeth and Letha’s career paths took very different shapes in terms of gender assumptions, they share in the sad reality that while their presence within evangelicalism is undeniable as people who influenced scores of the faithful, they rarely are recognized for doing so.2

Of course this paradox is not unique to Letha or Elisabeth. As Ann Braude illustrates in her groundbreaking essay, “Women’s History Is American Religious History,” women, while being central to the life of the church, have seldom been included in historians’ accounts because scholars have not seen women’s participation as important, focusing instead on the power of the pulpit.3 In sharing parts of Letha’s story here, we contribute to a fuller recognition of women in the church.

The contours of Letha’s life in some ways mirror the rise of evangelicalism in America, and in other ways diverge. As a movement, evangelicalism is built upon a foundation of experiential faith—having a personal relationship with Christ—and seeing the Bible as the way to inform one’s life. Letha’s faith, too, is steeped in a steady friendship with Christ, bolstered by a lifelong study of the Bible. Where evangelicalism and Letha diverge is over belief systems as litmus tests for belonging. Evangelicals use certain beliefs as boundaries for determining who is in and who is out. In contrast, Letha believes that persons and relationships are more important than ideas and doctrine. This divergence of beliefs versus persons has resulted in evangelical leaders rejecting Letha as one of their own while Letha continues to identify not only as evangelical but also as ecumenical.

Letha’s early identification within evangelicalism correlates to evangelicalism’s rise to prominence within American culture, sparked by the social upheaval of the 1960s. Evangelicalism in America began, however, with the series of religious awakenings in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Broadly speaking, evangelicals subscribe to the authority of the Bible, salvation through the person and work of Christ, the priority of evangelization, and the importance of a transformed life.4 Early in the twentieth century, the movement experienced a setback with the Scopes Trial, which caused its leaders to retreat from public view due to the derision they experienced during the trial. Even though they had won, negative publicity drove them underground. It was then that they mobilized to create a subculture that served as astute training ground for their reemergence some thirty years later.

Mid-twentieth-century evangelicalism has often been referred to as neoevangelicalism because of its cooperating tenor, a tone distinguishing it from American fundamentalism on the one hand and mainline or progressive Christian tradition on the other because it hoped to strike a balance between them. Robert Ellwood suggests evangelicalism in the 1950s featured several characteristics: it was friendly to science and intellectual investigation, rational in its apologetics, tolerant of nonessential doctrine, willing to examine itself, and responsible for social engagement.5 At the same time, evangelicalism’s need to draw lines of demarcation, and a corresponding necessity to attack a person or idea—an antichrist—resulted in a separatist spirit that abates and returns based upon the current cultural milieu.

In its 1950s expression, the burgeoning movement drew heavily from all kinds of people desiring an experientially based relationship with Christ and wanting to put that faith into action. Letha, like many other women and men of that era, was readily welcomed into this fold where her personal contributions to a reemerging community on the cusp of bigger and better things could be utilized.

In later years, however, as will become evident in Letha’s writings and contributions, the boundaries that evangelicalism requires eventually work to exclude those whose faith was birthed within the movement. This is true even among those whose understandings and experiences of God are still largely experiential and, indeed, evangelical in the historical sense of the movement.6

Letha’s own expulsion from the evangelical fold is an example of how crossing ideological boundaries is not tolerated by the group even as she continues to self-identify as an evangelical and works within this framework. In 1973 she wrote Sex Is a Parent Affair: Help for Parents in Teaching Their Children about Sex, and James Dobson, an academic psychologist at the time, heartily endorsed it, even writing its foreword. Asserting it provided a “biblical basis for morality and decency without making sex dirty and distasteful,” Dobson commended Letha for writing a “timely book” that spoke to Christian families in a helpful and sensitive way.7 While at the time, Dobson did not yet hold the influence he later came to possess, he was a figure of substantial import within evangelicalism, and his endorsement confirmed Letha’s position within the burgeoning movement.

Ten years later, however, Letha had crossed the ideological line and was subsequently pushed to the margins as someone who was no longer considered an insider. In those ten years, she had written other books, including All We’re Meant to Be and Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? According to Letha, the withdrawal of Dobson’s endorsement for a new edition of Sex Is a Parent Affair was not a result of anything she specifically wrote in that book, but rather was due to her published views on gender equality and positive views of LGBTQ issues, positions at odds with the evangelical majority. Upon hearing of plans for a revised and updated version of Sex Is a Parent Affair, Dobson contacted its publisher, Bantam Books, to ensure his name would not be associated with Letha in its 1982 release.8

Despite her outsider status today, Letha is evangelical, holding firmly to her experiential faith and working diligently for social justice precisely because of—not in spite of—her decision to follow Jesus. Her dedication to Bible study and prayer—also hallmarks of an evangelical—is immediately evident to any who know her: Friday evenings are spent with two friends committed to Bible study over the phone; and prayer, too, is a normal part of her busy schedule.

Those quick to negatively assess her evangelical muster might claim Letha no longer attends church on Sunday, opting instead to participate in her local movie theater community, viewing a film and engaging in a talk-back session. But such accusations fail to examine the deeper spiritual life of a faithful Christian. Those who take the time to listen will find that Letha is fully steeped in her faith, a person who dedicates not just Sundays but every day to following Christ.

Women in American Evangelicalism

The foundation of American evangelicalism lies in an earlier era of revivalism, the 1720s, in what has been called the First Great Awakening, and extends through the 1860s, including the Second Great Awakening. This era of revivalism and its democratizing impulse heralded people for making public declarations of their conversions. Public meetings often included personal testimonies: individuals spoke about how faith in Christ had changed their lives; because of their decision to follow Christ, they were transformed.

Revivalism, including the early camp meetings that dotted the plains and prairies, as an American phenomenon fostered spiritual experiences and encouraged people to testify about them. No doubt, women benefitted from the loosening reins of religious authority. As they bore unrestric...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Introduction
• Part 1: Birthing Christian Feminism
• Part 2: Expanding the Vision
• Part 3: Continuing the Justice Work: Selected Essays by Letha Dawson Scanzoni
• Bibliography