FutureChurch’s Women Erased Series offers online presentations that uncover the many ways women’s leadership, witness, and ministries have been erased from our Church’s Scriptures and Lectionary, historical record and memory, and communities.
These sessions, featuring leading scholars of Biblical studies, Church History, Ecclesiology, Canon Law, and Sacraments, as well as faith leaders will not only name and explore the history, but also put forth resources for correcting the record and telling the true story of women’s central role in shaping and spreading Christianity from its beginnings to today.
Please join us as we learn from one another and prepare ourselves for taking action to build a Church where the gifts and ministries of women and all Catholics are valued and restored.
Women Erased: The History of Women Religious and Resistance – Part I & Part II
with Professor Margaret S. Thompson
April 5, 2022 at 8:00pm EST
April 26, 2022 at 8:00pm EST
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Most Catholics know the importance of religious sisters in their communities and in their lives. Older Catholics, especially, were often taught by religious women while younger Catholics may know religious women because of their ministry and leadership in their parishes and their work in the community. Still, many Catholics are limited in their understanding of the scope and magnitude of the pioneering efforts of Catholic women religious in the United States. The stereotype of the obedient Catholic nun who unquestioningly submits to clerical male authority still lurks in the Catholic imagination.
Professor Margaret Susan Thompson is an expert in the history of Catholic women religious in the United States. Her decades long research spans the origins of women’s religious life, the often-treacherous foundings of the first North American communities, the lives of pioneer nuns, ethnic and assimilation issues, tensions with clergy, Vatican II and its impacts, current circumstances, and much more. In this two-part presentation she will show us how the history of the Catholic Church in the United States was indelibly shaped by the contributions of sisters – by their work in the parochial school system, their founding and administration of hundreds of hospitals, and untold numbers of charitable organizations. These ministries have transformed the lives of millions of Catholics and the social and humanitarian character of the nation itself. Sisters also have long been advocates for social justice, and unlike most priests, have always provided services not only for Catholics but for the entire population.
As laypeople, like most Catholics, sisters have experienced the impact of “engendered power” applied to them by generations of priests and prelates. This presentation will reveal the perhaps surprising history of their resistance and suggest ways we can all learn from their experience as we work collaboratively to build a future church that is more egalitarian and supportive for all believers.
Biography:
Margaret S. Thompson is Associate Professor of History and Political Science at Syracuse University Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. She is also the Senior Research Associate at the Campbell Public Affairs Institute.
Prof. Thompson was trained as a political historian, with a focus on the nineteenth-century United States and, particularly, the Congress. Her first book, The “Spider Web”: Congress and Lobbying in the Age of Grant (Cornell University Press), reflects both her scholarly and hands-on experience, the latter as American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow. Recently, Professor Thompson’s work has focused on the history of American Catholic nuns. She has written and lectured extensively on the subject, and has an 18-lecture audio series available through NowYouKnowMedia.com. Her research is from an explicitly feminist perspective, emphasizing the agency and social significance of sisters to American religious and secular history. As a result of this research, she has had the privilege of speaking internationally as well as across the U.S., and has served as a consultant to numerous documentarians and religious communities. Her forthcoming book, The Yoke of Grace: American Nuns and Social Change, 1809-1917, is under contract with Oxford University Press.
Women Erased: Mary Magdalene Revisited
With Elizabeth Schrader and Prof. Joan Taylor
April 28, 2022 at 8:00pm EST
Doctoral candidate Elizabeth Schrader and Prof. Joan Taylor will share some of the most important findings from their research on Mary Magdalene.
The abstract from the Journal of Biblical Literature website offers insight into their presentation:
While it is common today to refer to Jesus’s disciple Μαρία[μ] ἡ Μαγδαληνή as Mary “of Magdala,” with Magdala identified as a Galilean city named Tarichaea, what do our earliest Christian sources actually indicate about the meaning of this woman’s name? Examination of the Gospel of Luke, Origen, Eusebius, Macarius Magnes, and Jerome, as well as evidence in hagiography, pilgrimage, and diverse literature, reveals multiple ways that the epithet ἡ Μαγδαληνή can be understood. While Mary sometimes was believed to come from a place called “Magdala” or “Magdalene,” the assumption was that it was a small and obscure village, its location unspecified or unknown. Given the widespread understanding that Mary Magdalene was the sister of Martha, it could even be equated with Bethany. However, Jerome thought that the epithet was a reward for Mary’s faith and actions, not something indicative of provenance: Mary “of the Tower.” No early Christian author identifies a city (Tarichaea) called “Magdala” by the Sea of Galilee, even when they knew the area well. A pilgrim site on ancient ruins, established as “Magdala” by the mid-sixth century, was visited by Christians at least into the fourteenth century, and thus the name is remembered today. In view of the earlier evidence of Origen and Jerome, however, the term ἡ Μαγδαληνή may be based on an underlying Aramaic word meaning “the magnified one” or “tower-ess,” and is therefore best left untranslated.
Biographical information
Elizabeth Schrader
Oregon-raised and now based in Durham, NC, Elizabeth “Libbie” Schrader is a doctoral candidate in Early Christianity at Duke University. Her studies focus on Mary Magdalene, the Gospel of John, textual criticism, and feminist theology. Schrader has recently transitioned to religious scholarship after a long career as a singer/songwriter. Her research is already receiving critical acclaim as she advances new theories about the origins of Mary Magdalene.
Prof. Joan Taylor
After a BA degree at Auckland University, New Zealand, Joan completed post-graduate studies at the University of Otago and then went to the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem (Kenyon Institute) as Annual Scholar in 1986. She undertook a PhD at New College, Edinburgh University, and was appointed in 1992 to a position of lecturer (subsequently senior lecturer) at the University of Waikato, New Zealand, in the departments of both Religious Studies and History. In 1995 she won an Irene Levi-Sala Award in Israel’s archaeology, for the book version of her PhD thesis, Christians and the Holy Places (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993, rev. 2003). In 1996-7 she was Visiting Lecturer and Research Associate in Women’s Studies in Religion at Harvard Divinity School, a position she held in association with a Fulbright Award. She has also been Honorary Research Fellow in the Departments of History and Jewish Studies at University College London. She has taught at King’s College London since 2009.
Joan’s approach is multi-disciplinary; she works in literature, language, history and archaeology. She has written numerous books and articles in her fields of interest.
- The New Testament and other early Christian texts within their wider social, historical and cultural contexts, with a special interest in archaeological evidence.
- The historical figures of Jesus of Nazareth, John the Baptist, Judas Iscariot, Paul, Pontius Pilate, Mary Magdalene, and other New Testament persons, both in terms of the ancient evidence and how they have been constructed over time, including in modern literature and film.
- Second Temple Judaism, particularly the Jewish legal schools (Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, ‘Zealots’) and popular religious movements.
- The Dead Sea Scrolls and the archaeology of Qumran.
- Alexandrian Judaism, Philo of Alexandria, and the ‘Therapeutae’
- Women and gender within early Judaism and Christianity, especially regarding women in leadership roles.
- Jewish-Christianity and early Christian constructions of history and orthodoxy.
- Comparative Graeco-Roman religion and philosophy: literary, epigraphical and archaeological evidence.
- The archaeology and history of Christian holy places and travel to Palestine over the centuries, with special interest in the sites of Golgotha, Gethsemane, Eleona, Nazareth, Capernaum and Bethlehem, as well as historical geography.
- Reception exegesis: using creative artefacts to reflect on texts and history
Please join us for this exciting presentation!
All About Eve: Beyond the Myths about Women in Ancient Israel
with Professor Carol Meyers
May 5, May 12, May 19 at 8:00pm EST
Session one: May 5 at 8:00pm EST
All about Eve: The Latest Word on the First Lady (without Powerpoint)
Eve has a bad rap in Jewish and Christian tradition: seductress, first sinner, cause of male domination––the list goes on. But does she deserve it? This presentation will take advantage of the fact that we have just marked the 100th anniversary of the historic 19th Amendment to review some of the ways the suffragettes tried to deal with the problem of Eve in the Eden narrative. Then it will show how biblical scholarship of the 21st century rescues Eve from notoriety and even elevates her above Adam!
Session two: May 12 at 8:00pm EST
Work and Worth: Women’s Household Activities in Ancient Israel (with PowerPoint)
Women in the biblical period were just “wives and mothers.” Right? Not at all. Rather, they had important economic and social roles. Using archaeological materials as well as biblical texts, this presentation examines AND evaluates women’s contributions to everyday life. This approach shows that women had a greater role in Israelite culture than might otherwise have been imagined.
Session three: May 19 at 8:00pm EST
Archaeology and the Hidden Religious Culture of Israelite Women (with PowerPoint)
Who were the most important religious figures in ancient Israel? Most people would say that the priests were. But they would be wrong. The major arena of religious life for most people in the biblical period was the household, and the major figures in household religious activities were women. This lecture takes you into the Israelite household, largely invisible in the Bible, and presents an array of archaeological materials and fascinating ethnographic data to reveal women’s household religious activities.
Biography: CAROL MEYERS is the Mary Grace Wilson Professor Emerita of Religious Studies at Duke University. She received the A.B. with honors from Wellesley College and the M.A. and Ph.D. in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University. Meyers has published more than 450 articles, reports, reference-book entries, and reviews; and she has authored, co-authored, or edited twenty-two books. Her 2013 book, Rediscovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context, is a landmark study of women in ancient Israelite society. Meyers has worked on numerous digs since she was an undergraduate and has co-directed several archaeological projects in Israel. She has been a frequent consultant for media productions relating to archaeology and the Bible, including A&E’s Mysteries of the Bible series, DreamWorks’s “Prince of Egypt,” NOVA’s “The Bible’s Buried Secrets,” and several National Geographic documentaries. She has served as President of the Society of Biblical Literature and is currently a trustee of the American Society of Overseas Research, the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation, and the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem.
Archaeology’s Surprising Testimony to the Paradigm-Shifting Witness of Early Christian Women
Sister Christine Schenk, CSJ
May 10, 2022 at 8:00pm EST
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In her critically acclaimed book Crispina and Her Sisters, author Christine Schenk, C.S.J. explores the archaeological and literary evidence for women’s leadership in early Christianity. Schenk’s original research into visual imagery found on burial artifacts demonstrates that women were far more influential in the ancient world than has been commonly recognized. Yet their paradigm-shifting witness has been all but erased from Christian memory. Join us for a fascinating visual journey and consider what it may mean for women and men today.
Biography
Christine Schenk, CSJ has worked as a nurse midwife to low-income families, a community organizer, an award-winning writer-researcher, and the founding director of an international church reform organization, FutureChurch. Her first book Crispina and Her Sisters: Women and Authority in Early Christianity (Fortress Press, 2017) received a first place in history from the Catholic Press Association and her most recent work, To Speak the Truth in Love: A Biography of Sr. Theresa Kane RSM (OrbisBooks 2019) received first place awards from The Association of Catholic Publishers and the Catholic Press Association. She writes a regular column for the National Catholic Reporter and is one of three nuns featured in the award-winning documentary Radical Grace.
Please join us for this informative event!
Female Clerics in the Early Church
Professor Shaily Patel
May 24, 2022 at 8:00pm EST
Join Professor Patel as we explore her research showing that in the early church, women served clerical roles as ordained ministers called deacons and presbyters, both subordinate to the higher-ranking bishops. By the second century CE, deacons functioned as liturgical assistants in the giving of the Eucharist and at baptisms, and could also be used to carry official letters and visit those in prison. The early Christian author Tertullian attests to women presbyters as well, clerics who directly taught, healed, offered the Eucharist, and gave baptisms. The image of solely men populating the clerical orders that stretch back to the time of Jesus and his disciples is an oft-repeated origin story, but one that should be questioned.
Amid the ongoing argument over women as clerics and historical precedent, new mosaics from the site of Ashdod in Israel have added to the evidence for female deacons in antiquity. The mosaic inscriptions reiterate that while most have viewed Francis’s appointments of women as a progressive and novel move, there is broad historical precedent for female clerics that goes later into the period of Late Antiquity than most realize. The mounting evidence from Ashdod and other sites across the Mediterranean together demonstrate that the origins of the early Christian church included women, even if not every church agreed upon their ordination.
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/recovering-the-female-clerics-of-the-early-church/
Biography
Shaily Patel is assistant professor of early christianity in the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech. She earned her PhD from The University of North Carolina in 2017 and holds master’s degrees from Vanderbilt Divinity School and The University of Chicago. Her love for the ACC began as an undergraduate at Wake Forest University and remains firmly intact.
Dr. Patel’s research explores the various, often contradictory ways in which so-called magic was used to advance a number of theological ends in early Christian texts. Rather than seeing magic solely as a way to malign the rituals and traditions of those external to formative Christianity, she aims to show that magic could be used for a variety of things, from enforcing social cohesion among budding communities, to generating conversion, to correcting the views of other Christian writers. Ancient Mediterranean magic was both dynamic and complex, and Dr. Patel hopes to similarly complicate modern understandings of ancient Christians and their texts in her current book project entitled Peter the Magician: Discourses of Magic in Early Petrine Traditions.
Dr. Patel’s teaching is likewise dedicated to complicating easy assertions about the past, and about past Christians in particular. She teaches courses in New Testament, Christian apocryphal texts, orthodoxy and heresy, and demonology and exorcism. In each of her courses, she emphasizes the variety of early Christian groups and their respective beliefs. She locates early Christians within their cultural contexts, demonstrating how these multiple Christianities converge with or diverge from their Graeco-Roman origins.
Please join us for this remarkable event.
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“The Forbidden Call” Screening and Conversation
with AnaMichele Morejon and Diane Whelan
June 7, 2022 at 8:00pm EST
Join filmmaker, AnaMichele Morejon, and Roman Catholic Womenpriest, Diane Whelan, for this special screening of the short documentary, The Forbidden Call, with conversation to follow.
From the director’s note:
My journey with THE FORBIDDEN CALL began with curiosity. I was born and raised in the Catholic Church. Growing up in a generation increasingly disillusioned with organized religion, I have always had questions, and that continued into college. As a film and theology student at Loyola Marymount University, I was researching the topic of women’s ordination when stumbled upon the movement, Roman Catholic Women Priests (RCWP). I was shocked.
I am a woman who has never felt represented or understood in a Church led by a celibate, male priesthood. I found a ray of hope in RCWP, and I hope others do, too. RCWP ordains women to a renewed, more inclusive vision of priesthood. They minister to those often rejected by the institutional church, such as those who are divorced without an annulment and the LGBTQ+ community.
THE FORBIDDEN CALL confronts a Church that shuts down dialogue on women’s ordination to the priesthood. Women like Diane have so much to offer. I hope that the film encourages viewers to reflect on the unique gifts of every human being and what it means to truly love others. The film is a poignant reminder that change in the Catholic Church is long overdue, but Diane’s ministry is one step in the right direction.
AnaMichele Morejon is a filmmaker from South Florida who is fascinated by stories of people who challenge the norm. Her deep empathy for those alienated by mainstream society and love for character-driven narratives led her to study film at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. AnaMichele’s creative work explores themes at the intersection of identity, belief, and modern culture. Most recently, she directed the short, The Road to Sanctuary, which was released by Spirit Juice Studios, a multiple Emmy award-winning production company.
Please join us for this invigorating event.
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Past Sessions
Women Erased: The Erasing of Women’s Authority through Complementarianism with Beth Allison Barr, Ph.D., author of “The Making of Bibilical Womanhood.”
January 11, 2022
Women Erased: WomanPriest, Tradition and Transgression with Professor Jill Peterfeso
December 7, 2021
Women Erased: Women in the Midst of Pandemic with co-editor Dr. Nontando Hadebe and panelists who contributed to the new book, A Time Like No Other.
September 9, 2021
Women Erased: New Scholarship on the Efforts to Erase Mary Magdalene from John’s Gospel
with Elizabeth Schrader, MA, STM (currently a Ph.D. candidate in Early Christianity at Duke University)
August 26, 2021
Doctoral candidate Elizabeth Schrader and Prof. Joan Taylor will share important findings from their research on Mary Magdalene.
While it is common today to refer to Jesus’s disciple Μαρία[μ] ἡ Μαγδαληνή as Mary “of Magdala,” with Magdala identified as a Galilean city named Tarichaea, what do our earliest Christian sources actually indicate about the meaning of this woman’s name? Examination of the Gospel of Luke, Origen, Eusebius, Macarius Magnes, and Jerome, as well as evidence in hagiography, pilgrimage, and diverse literature, reveals multiple ways that the epithet ἡ Μαγδαληνή can be understood. While Mary sometimes was believed to come from a place called “Magdala” or “Magdalene,” the assumption was that it was a small and obscure village, its location unspecified or unknown. Given the widespread understanding that Mary Magdalene was the sister of Martha, it could even be equated with Bethany. However, Jerome thought that the epithet was a reward for Mary’s faith and actions, not something indicative of provenance: Mary “of the Tower.” No early Christian author identifies a city (Tarichaea) called “Magdala” by the Sea of Galilee, even when they knew the area well. A pilgrim site on ancient ruins, established as “Magdala” by the mid-sixth century, was visited by Christians at least into the fourteenth century, and thus the name is remembered today. In view of the earlier evidence of Origen and Jerome, however, the term ἡ Μαγδαληνή may be based on an underlying Aramaic word meaning “the magnified one” or “tower-ess,” and is therefore best left untranslated.
Women Erased: Grappling with Patriarchal Constructs of Women in the Lectionary and Bible with Reverend Wil Gafney, Ph.D.
July 29, 2021
Woman Erased: The Critical Role of Latina Women in Leading the U.S. Catholic Church Today with Natalia Imperatori-Lee, Ph.D.
May 18, 2021
VIDEO
Women Erased: Women Religious Today with Sr. Sandra Schneiders, IHM, Ph.D.
April 20, 2021
VIDEO
Women Erased: Women in Catholic Media — Authority and Influence in Shaping the Stories We Read and Hear with NCR Executive Editor Heidi Schlump
March 23, 2021
VIDEO
Women Erased: The Women at Vatican II with Sr. Maureen Sullivan, OP, Ph.D.
February 17, 2021
VIDEO
Women Erased: Women as Icons of Christ with Phyllis Zagano, Ph.D.
January 28, 2021
VIDEO
Women Erased: Adam Has a Womb with Dr. Lizzie Berne DeGrear
November 17, 2020
VIDEO
Women Erased: #NunsToo – Media’s Role in Obscuring the Abuse of Women by Priests by Dr. Tara Tuttle
October 8, 2020
VIDEO
Women Erased: Talking Truth About the Sacraments with Susan Ross, Ph.D.
September 22, 2020
VIDEO
Women Erased: Restoring the Memory of Black Catholic Women with Sr. Anita Baird, DHM
August 28, 2020
VIDEO
Women Erased: In Search of the Majority with Carolyn Osiek, Ph.D
July 14, 2020
VIDEO
Women Erased: Reading the Bible Against the Grain with Carol Dempsey, OP, Ph.D.
June 18, 2020
VIDEO
Women Erased: From the Lectionary with Michael Peppard, Ph.D.
May 6, 2020
VIDEO
The 2023 Synod of Bishops in Rome may be one of the most important events in the life of the Church since Vatican II. Pope Francis has asked bishops and church leaders to gather the “sense of the faithful” on a wide variety of important issues. And he has made provisions for the many Catholics who are excluded and who may not be heard because their bishops are not engaging in the process in a meaningful way.
This is a very important and a prime opportunity to walk together and help shape the future of the church.
The first phase of this process began at the local level in October 2021 and will continue until August 2022. The input that is gathered in this first phase will be sent to the Synod of Bishops in Rome so that they can develop a working document for their international gathering of bishops in October 2023.
FutureChurch will join this effort. We will be holding discernment sessions, carefully gathering your faith-filled insights on the issues you care about most, and putting together a report with your input to send to Rome as they prepare the initial working document.
We will:
1. Hold our discernment sessions on Wednesdays during Lent/
2. Compile your ideas on a number of topic into one report during the time between Easter and Pentecost.
3. Send our report with your discernment to the Synod office in Rome, to the U.S. bishops and the USCCB, and to the Apostolic nuncio on Pentecost, as a contribution to the worldwide synod, and as a symbol of our active witness to the Spirit of Pentecost in our Church today. Please plan on joining us for these important discernment sessions. Your voice is critical as we shape the future church together
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