Archive: Wisdom’s Feast or Gospel’s Famine?

The brewing storm over Sophia Worship

By Randy Petersen

For Eric Umile it started with the Sunday paper. The Philadelphia Inquirer had a front-page story February 19, 1989, on feminist religion. “Women,” the paper said, “were creating new rituals to fill a religious void.”

The article went on to describe a communion-like service involving milk and fruit along with bread and wine. As lay leader of Emmanuel United Methodist Church in the Roxborough section of Philadelphia, Umile could pass it off as just another modem heresy—until he turned the page. There, pictured with these worshipers, was his own pastor, Susan Cady. In fact, the group was meeting in her home.

Umile would never have guessed his pastor was involved in such a thing.

He felt shocked and betrayed. For Susan Cady it started seven years earlier. As a young minister at Calvary United Methodist Church in west Philadelphia, she was struggling with the church’s overemphasis on maleness. She was a student of the Bible embracing its teachings, but she was beginning to feel somewhat distanced from it.

One day she was celebrating communion—something she loved to do—and suddenly asked herself, “What am I doing? Celebrating the experience of some man? What does He have to do with me?” Later that week, she says, she was preparing a worship service when she had a vision of Sophia. Sophia was peering through the window of a door and calling to her, “What are you afraid of anyway? Do you think I care about your old theology? Do you think I care what name you name me? Do you think I care if people think I’m legitimate or not? Haven’t people always refused to listen to me? But that doesn’t make me any less real, and that doesn’t make you any less faithful.”

The vision continued with laughing, dancing, and singing.

For Hal Taussig it started in the mid-1970s. As pastor of Calvary United Methodist Church, he found that growing numbers of women in his congregation were dissatisfied with the predominance of male images of God. They felt that his message was a male one, not applicable to the female experience. He went “scurrying,” he says, for resources that would help these parishioners. From his biblical studies—he was working toward a doctorate at Cincinnati’s Union Graduate School—he knew of the character of Sophia. He began to study her more intently.

Sophia is the Greek word for wisdom. In the book of Proverbs and in several apocryphal writings, wisdom is personified as a female:

“Wisdom calls aloud in the street, she raises her voice in the public squares” (Prov.1:20, NIV).

This text and others like it present wisdom as a being—someone who was with God, working with God, and an expression of God’s identity—similar to the way the Word (logos) is presented in John 1. The question remains: Do these texts refer to wisdom (Sophia) as a being—an expression of God? Or do they merely mean the human quality of wisdom? To put it simply, should we capitalize wisdom in these passages? (The original texts do not capitalize anything.)

As Taussig and Cady investigated they found more and more references to Sophia in Scripture. It was exciting. Here was a divine image which was thoroughly feminine—and not just thrown in on the side. Sophia appeared to be woven through the Scriptures. Clearly Sophia would revolutionize the Church’s ways of thinking about God; this would pull disgruntled feminists back into the Church.

Taussig and Cady began to teach and preach about Sophia. They formed study groups to explore further. They experimented with new forms of worship. Eventually they teamed up with Catholic writer Marian Ronan, an old friend of Taussig, and wrote Sophia: The Future of Feminist Spirituality. It was published in 1986.

About this time Cady was appointed to Emmanuel United Methodist Church in Roxborough. Cady maintained her involvement with certain Sophia study groups but downplayed the worship of Sophia in her church services.

So it surprised Umile when he read of Cady’s involvement with the Sophia group. He did his homework, reading the Sophia book that Cady had co-authored. It seemed heretical to him: “It’s not Christianity. It ignores Jesus Christ. These people are making a goddess the focus of their religious worship.” Umile had several long talks with Cady and called for a meeting of the pastor parish relations committee to discuss his concerns. He also complained to the district superintendent.

What had begun as an attempt to deal honestly with differences in a spirit of love resulted in frustration for Umile. The committee would do nothing. Cady explained her views but did not retract them. In the meantime, Cady, Taussig, and Ronan had published Wisdom’s Feast, an expanded version of their earlier book. The theology seemed just as scandalous as ever, but this book included suggestions for liturgies, litanies, and sermons for Sophia worship services.

In protest Umile wrote to the bishop of the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference, Susan Morrison. He received a short reply. Morrison had not read the book, but she briefly affirmed Cady’s pastoral record. Umile also wrote to Jack M. Tuell, president of the Council of Bishops. Another short reply indicated that Tuell had no jurisdiction to deal with Eastern Pennsylvania problems.

Umile wrote a letter to the United Methodist Reporter, which was printed in the October 6, 1989 “Here I Stand” column. The letter charged that this Sophia theology—recently presented in Wisdom’s Feast—was heresy. “Should [we] sit passively by, while self-seeking, special-interest groups infiltrate our churches and play fast and loose with the religious beliefs and symbols we hold sacred?” he asked.

Three weeks later a reply was printed from Sandra Forrester Dufresne, chairperson of the Board of Ordained Ministry of the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference. (It was also signed by nine other members of the conference.) This letter affirmed the exploratory spirit of Wisdom’s Feast and the previous book. “The authors … probe the scriptures and the Judeo-Christian tradition to enhance our understanding of God’s presence, will, and work for these times. We affirm that the church’s faithfulness to the Gospel is not undermined but enhanced by their efforts and others’ efforts to describe God’s presence.” Dufresne acknowledged different opinions of the book and welcomed ongoing discussion.

The reply did not sit well with Umile. He fired off a letter to Dufresne charging that Wisdom’s Feast was not a “search for theological clarity” but “an attempt to provide the feminist movement with an energizing symbol. … It confuses more than it clarifies.”

Frustrated by what he saw as an unresponsive hierarchy, Umile sent a letter to the lay leaders of the conference. Pulling quotes from Wisdom’s Feast, he presented his case: “The book clearly says that Sophia is separate and distinct from God and not simply a part of God or an aspect of God.” He accused the authors of “erasing the name of Jesus” from Gospel texts and replacing it with “Sophia.” He invited lay leaders to gather signatures on a petition, calling Bishop Morrison to state the official position of the conference on this book.

In the midst of this controversy the Umiles withdrew from Emmanuel Church. Cady met with them to dissuade them, to no avail. As Umile put it later, “It was very difficult for me to sit in church on Sunday and to be led in worship by the Rev. Susan Cady. True, she did not overtly preach her goddess-centered theology to the congregation of Emmanuel UM Church. … However, the Rev. Cady did preach her beliefs to the congregation in a subtle, somewhat veiled manner. … I had read Wisdom’s Feast and was fully aware of where she was coming from.” (The Umiles have recently joined another United Methodist church in the area.)

While several others also left Emmanuel Church, the majority of the church continues to support Cady. The pastor parish committee wrote to Bishop Morrison, giving high praise to Cady’s ministry. “She’s an excellent pastor,” Olive Boone, head of the committee, told us. “She has never preached anything but the Gospel to us.”

Taussig is currently teaching part time at Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania and Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. He will begin a part-time ministry at Chestnut Hill United Methodist Church this fall.

Bob Grow, Umile’s associate, has submitted a resolution to the Eastern Pennsylvania Annual Conference, calling on Bishop Morrison to make a statement on the book (see update on this page). Morrison says, “It is not for me to rule on. It’s for the Board of Ordained Ministry to evaluate.” As of this writing she has not yet read the books but was relying on the opinions of several others who had. She plans to read the books this summer. “My understanding of the books is that they’re speculative, not doctrinaire. No one is saying that this is the way it is,” Morrison said.

Unraveling The Controversy

The controversy has developed amid numerous misunderstandings. Some might see Umile as a right-wing zealot who is intentionally twisting Wisdom’s Feasts statements to make the book seem worse than it really is, yet this does not seem to be the case. One might assume that Umile is strongly anti-feminist, yet he is presenting this as far more than a feminist issue—it is an issue of doctrinal orthodoxy. How far can United Methodists let pluralism go? Umile’s grievances go beyond knee-jerk conservatism; he is deeply concerned about the future of the denomination. “Ultimately I’d like to see the clergy of our conference remain faithful to the doctrines of our church and not veer off into these liberal directions where anything goes theologically, ” he says.

Yet Umile paints Cady and Taussig as arch feminists who are trying to force their questionable new theology on unsuspecting church folks. This is also a misunderstanding.

Cady and Taussig say their involvement with Sophia arises from their own personal devotional lives and from their desire to minister effectively to others. They have exercised some sensitivity and restraint in dealing with their churches on this matter. After all, it did take a newspaper article to make Umile aware of Cady’s Sophia theology. “I am primarily interested in giving others the good news that there are ways to approach God that allow us a broader expanse of our own experience,” says Cady. “It’s more than scholarship to me,” says Taussig. “It’s very important for me devotionally.”

The authors maintain that they are merely exploring—and leaders such as Dufresne are upholding their freedom to do so. “The authors have no pretensions that this is doctrine,” says Dufresne. “It’s theological exploration, scholarly inquiry.”

And yet this latest book, Wisdom’s Feast, a paperback, includes practical steps for bringing Sophia theology into church practice. This seems to remove it from the level of academic discussion and puts it on the level of church instruction. The intention may be nondogmatic exploration, but the effect is doctrinal.

Umile says he is not trying to stifle academic inquiry; he is not some backwoods book burner. He merely wants reassurance that his church is not scuttling the basics of his faith. “I encourage theological inquiry and discussion,” he says. “But I feel there are limitations that should be recognized, and when we cross those lines, we should realize we are outside acceptable Christian doctrine. I feel they have crossed those lines.”

It is unfortunate that Cady has borne the brunt of most of this controversy. She is actually the most conservative of the three authors. Although her name is listed first on the book, she is not the primary author; the three shared equally in its writing. “Some feel that we are trying to usurp God as Father, God in the male Jesus, that we are trying to wipe those out,” says Cady. ‘I’m not interested in that. God as Father has been important to me. God in Jesus has been crucial in my life—absolutely—and will continue to be, so that sense that we are taking them out and replacing them with something else is not the case. What we are saying is, ‘Hey, look what’s here. Look what’s always been here. Look how Jesus understood this. Look at how the Hebrews pictured God. Look at how we can appropriate these images for ourselves and grow with them.”‘

Umile depicts the denomination’s officials as unresponsive. They did reply to Umile, but in a very brief manner.

Officials complain that Umile is not going through the proper channels. “People have a right to be concerned about what’s written,” says Morrison. “We’re a diverse church, but I have been somewhat concerned by the process they’ve used.”

Another church leader says, “There is a grievance procedure. There is a way to air differences. They have not followed that. They have written letters and stirred up controversy in churches among those who have not even read the book.”

But what are the proper channels, and how is this done? Are people aware of these procedures, and what should they do if these procedures don’t work? Imagine a disgruntled shopper who returns to a department store and goes from clerk to clerk complaining that the lawn mower he bought there doesn’t work. Naturally the clerks brush him off— “Sorry to hear about your problem, but I have other customers to care for.” Someone needs to direct the complainer to the customer service office. If not, he’ll park himself at the entrance and announce his problem wildly to all the shoppers there. That’s sort of what’s happening here. Umile is raising a serious issue. It should be considered honestly and seriously.

A Deeper Look at Sophia Theology

Sophia theology is not new. Cady, Ronan, and Taussig did not make it up. There is a body of ancient writing—Wisdom Literature—they are using as source material. Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are part of this collection, as are several books of the Apocrypha and other writings. In the last two decades much scholarly attention has focused on this “wisdom” tradition. So the splash of these books by Cady and others is not in the newness of their thoughts but in the newness of the presentation. These books synthesize Sophia scholarship and offer it to the common person. Suddenly it’s not just speculation at some seminary; it’s something you can try in a church Bible study. That’s exciting to some, threatening to others.

The problem with the book is that it lends itself to misunderstanding. For instance, the crucial question is, “Who is Sophia?” Are we talking about another name for God, a name that reflects God’s “feminine side”? Or is she a separate goddess?

Very early the book states, “Sophia is a female, goddess-like figure appearing clearly in the Scriptures of the Hebrew tradition” (page 10). Later it adds, “In the biblical mentality there exists a whole range of intermediary figures who are not quite God, but who are definitely not human. Sophia is one example of such a figure.”

As Taussig explains it, “The tentativeness of our book has to do with the unclearness of the biblical texts.” Cady speaks much more clearly to the oneness of God. She’s not interested in presenting Sophia as some sort of separate goddess or sub-god. With regard to Proverbs 8, she says, “There are a couple different aspects of God playing together in that passage, but it’s all one God.”

Yet this murky issue essentially presents us with a choice between monotheism and polytheism. If Sophia is a separate deity, then Sophia worship is idolatry and a radical divergence from traditional Christianity. But if Sophia is another name for the one true God, then it might be possible to celebrate Sophia within traditional orthodoxy.

Author Gretchen Gaebelein Hull notes some potential problems with feminist theology in general: “There are overarching dangers because they [radical feminist theologians] do not have a high view of Scripture, and they basically do not have a high Christology. I have a problem with those who set up this counter divinity. In trying to deal with these things and reclaim what indeed often has been ignored and lost, the way they do that often opens them up to a pantheon.”

In a way we are dealing here with the danger of graven images. In the Ten Commandments God forbade such presentations of divinity, not because God did not like to be worshiped but because He knew the images would take on identities of their own, resulting in false worship. Hull adds, “I don’t want to deny the valid scriptural images for God: ‘Christ is made wisdom for us,’ and so forth. But if we take every one of those images and turn that into an expression of divinity, that then somehow suddenly itself becomes divinity; then we have this pantheon going.”

A second crucial question for this (or any other) theology is, “Who is Jesus?” Wisdom’s Feast clearly identifies Jesus with Sophia, but this throws us back to our first problem: If Sophia is a separate goddess, then Jesus is either a separate God, a half-God, or a human messenger.

In an article in the Reformed Journal (December 1988), Rebecca Pentz, formerly of Scripps College, makes a helpful distinction between Sophia Christology and Sophialogy. Sophia Christology, she says, works within the traditional faith, identifying Sophia as the second person of the Trinity, one who became incarnate in Jesus. (You may still have problems with this view, but at least it does not have to shape the orthodox view of the Trinity.) Sophialogy, on the other hand, presents Sophia as a separate goddess and Jesus as her prophet. This fits nicely with many world religions, but it flies in the face of orthodox Christianity.

Both Sophialogy and Sophia-Christology are happening among scholars these days. From her comments to us, Cady is clearly following Sophia-Christology—she is attempting to work within the original doctrine of the Trinity. But the book is fuzzy in this regard.

Wisdom’s Feast offers several texts from the Gospels, replacing Jesus’ name with Sophia’s. For instance, Sophia walks on the water toward her disciples. This is shocking to see, but Cady maintains that this is only experimental. “That is a spiritual exercise,” she says. “It’s not doctrine. It’s a way of using our religious imaginations in order to grow.”

Cady even suggests that this creative exercise has had some evangelistic effects. “There were women that I worked with who were very alienated from the Christian tradition. They were addressed by these stories and became excited because, for the first time, it spoke to them. It was a spiritual exercise, but it ended up being a bit of evangelism.”

As an experiment this may help certain women identify more with Jesus, but there is great danger here too. The implication of such an experiment is that Jesus can be replaced. The physical, historical Jesus seems unimportant. It’s the spiritual lesson that needs to come through, it seems. Who cares if we change the character? Other exercises in the book follow the “passion” of Sophia, tracing suffering and “resurrection” in the experience of women. Cady asserts that this is meant to be used alongside a study of Jesus’ passion. “For me it’s a matter of wanting to expand our images and our access to the divine, rather than putting one set in and taking another set out.” But the danger is that the physical death and Resurrection of Christ gives way to the spiritual idea of death and resurrection. Suddenly our faith has no historical grounding.

The Underlying Issues

Why do we need Sophia? What’s wrong with worshiping God in the traditional fashion? Father, Son and Holy Spirit have ruled well for centuries—why tinker with them?

Many Methodists may be asking these questions, but we must recognize that the impetus for Sophia theology arises from a deep sense of need. “There has been within the church a tradition of lack of emphasis on women’s experience and a lack of emphasis on legitimate access to images of God which are feminine,” says Cady. “Most theology and doctrine have been formulated on the basis of men’s experience. I think there’s room within our doctrine for new ways of expressing what’s always been there.”

Gretchen Hull adds, “Feminist theology doesn’t come out of a vacuum. It’s responding to something. It’s responding to theological violence. If you repress people too long, eventually they’re going to fight back. Yes, these radical feminists may do theological violence to the Trinity, but there has been other theological violence that we slide over. If we say, to bolster a traditional position, that the Trinity is a male pantheon, then we’re doing violence too.”

One must be cautious here. It is not all right to play fast and loose with theological truth. One error does not justify another. At the same time as we seek to evaluate feminist theology, we must measure our own theological assumptions with the same yardstick.

Feminist Christians have a valid concern. With the predominance of male images of God, we can begin to assume that God is male, that women are somehow secondary, further away from God’s image. Feminists maintain that this does not fit with the general sense of Scripture; thus, they may conduct a legitimate search for feminine images of the God who is beyond gender.

On the other hand, it is assumed that the opponents of Wisdom’s Feast are anti-feminist—that they don’t care about the spiritual needs of women. This may be true of some, but many are deeply concerned about another issue: How far does pluralism go?

Priding themselves on openness, many United Methodists point to the balance of the famed quadrilateral: Scripture, Reason, Tradition, and Experience. But that can become a kind of grab bag—what does it matter if your system is weak on Scripture and tradition as long as it is reasonable?

Taussig claims that Wisdom’s Feast is built squarely on all four corners of the quadrilateral, but what does this mean? He cites certain writers and thinkers within Christian tradition that have considered Sophia, yet much of the theologizing in Wisdom’s Feast seems to ignore the basic creeds on which Christianity and the United Methodist Church have been built.

Taussig claims that Wisdom’s Feast is based on scriptural study, and this is true. But many Christians would be unhappy with the kind of assumption that Taussig makes about Scripture in the process. He tells us that he is “much more liberal on the historical Jesus” than Cady is and adds, “I think that most of the New Testament is not a historical account.” Sadly, this attitude is all too common in modern theological scholarship. But it clearly violates both the letter and the spirit of Wesleyan tradition.

And the question remains, “How far will this all take us?” At Perkins School of Theology ‘s Women’s Week Celebration recently, a seminar was held by one who practices Dianic witchcraft. Was this a learning experience, or was this neopagan religion being presented as a legitimate option?

Here again, arguments between pro-feminists and anti-feminists can quickly obscure the crucial theological issues: Do we worship one God or many? Who is Jesus? What do Jesus’ death and resurrection mean? Surely these are central issues in the life of the church.

Billy Abraham, who teaches philosophy, theology, and evangelism at Perkins School of Theology, complains that most of the discussion about witchcraft at Perkins has been political rather than theological. “This is an issue that has to be addressed by the appropriate councils in the church. If you look at the United Methodist Church over the last generation, it has been a free-for-all. The church has no boundaries whatsoever.” He notes that the General Conference has attempted to make Scripture more prominent, but he adds, “The church itself has not worked through its own legislation properly. … There is really no mechanism for dealing with discipline. There is no real heart and will to move this way.”

Umile agrees: “I see the United Methodist Church as a breeding ground for this type of thing. The theological climate of the church must change. Up until now these types of ideas have flourished and continue to flourish. I feel this issue should be addressed and discussed.”

The authors of Wisdom’s Feast maintain that their book is academic speculation, not doctrine, and so far, Methodist leaders have defended the authors’ rights to speculate. However, as we have seen, this book is intended for instructional use in church groups; thus, it is legitimate to worry about the effect of such questionable theology on those who are learning it Methodist leaders may be understandably reluctant to pass judgment on the book as heretical since it does claim to be biblical, but just because a book claims to be biblical does not mean it is “rightly dividing the word of truth.” It would be helpful if these leaders would recognize the need for certain theological standards for the teachings in the local churches. Perhaps it would give us the groundings we need if they would take the opportunity to reaffirm the basics of the faith:

WE BELIEVE in one God—Whose identity transcends gender and includes both male and female characteristics.

WE BELIEVE that Jesus is God incarnate.

WE BELIEVE that we are brought into peace with God through Jesus’ death and Resurrection.

Randy Petersen is a freelance writer from Westville, New Jersey, and author of Giving It to The Giver, to be released by Tyndale House this fall.

 

Sophia Worship Update

The Lay Coalition for Doctrinal Integrity submitted a resolution to the Eastern Pennsylvania Annual Conference held at Annville, Pennsylvania June 8-10. The resolution stated that Wisdom’s Feast is “Incompatible with the doctrines of orthodox Christianity and with the beliefs and practices of the United Methodist Church.” It called for Bishop Susan Morrison to “state the official position of the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference concerning Wisdom’s Feast and Its authors … within the next three months.”

Bishop Morrison ruled the resolution out of order, saying that she could not speak for the annual conference.

A substitute motion was then made by the Rev. Charles Yrigoyen. This motion called for the conference to organize a task force to give the issues raised In Wisdom’s Feast further study.

This resolution was adopted.

The Lay Coalition for Doctrinal Integrity is a group begun by Eric Umile and consisting of himself and a few of his fellow parishioners. Its purpose is to educate the entire conference about the issue of Sophia worship as presented in the book Wisdom’s Feast. Prior to annual conference the coalition sent two mass mailings to all the lay leaders in the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference, informing them about Wisdom’s Feast. Umile writes, “Judging by the recent events at conference, we obviously achieved our purpose.”