Month: January 2011

by Letha Dawson Scanzoni

(Copyright 2011 by Letha Dawson Scanzoni)

Before I continue with the backstory of All We’re Meant to Be, I am reproducing below what Nancy  Hardesty and I wrote in our respective essays for the preface in the first edition (Word Books, 1974).  Both essays not only sum up in more concise form the story told in my Part One post, but a close look at the prefaces reveals at least four things that are of interest as we look back on it so many years later:

Looking for answers. It is clear that Nancy and I were in process. We were approaching the topic not as experts on how equality could be achieved between males and females, but as seekers. As we did our research, discussed, and wrote about what we were learning, we were often seeking and finding answers to our own questions and then sharing them with our readers.

Our questioning of social norms and expectations. Even though we were questioning and challenging societal expectations for women and men during the time we were writing, we were to a considerable extent caught up in some of those expectations ourselves.  Nowhere is that clearer than in the last lines of the closing paragraph of my preface (for which I’ve been criticized) which show my acquiescence to the social norm that both husbands and wives in heterosexual marriages took for granted, namely, that it was the wife who bore the responsibility for household tasks and childcare — no matter how much her life was otherwise filled with career responsibilities, educational pursuits, writing a book, or anything else.  According to society’s rules, her other pursuits were only permissible if she demonstrated that she first fulfilled those other tasks and fitted the other parts of her life around them in a way that was not expected of husbands.  I worked very hard to follow that dictum. This was the expectation not only  in religious circles but everywhere else as well.  (I’ve written about that on 72-27, the cross-generational Christian feminist blog that I write with Kimberly George. You can read my descriptions of life and gender-role expectations in the 1950s and 1960s here and here.)

The language issue. Although Nancy and I tried to avoid using male pronouns generically to apply to both males and females as was still common practice in the United States, a few slipped through in various places. (An example: “Why should a person’s sex organs be any more relevant to his holding power than his skin color, his ethnic origin, or his religious affiliation?” [p. 85, in All We’re Meant to Be, first edition].)  We even justified it on the basis of grammatical convention. Society was only beginning to question that convention and awaken to the importance of inclusive language, and we were still rubbing our sleepy eyes and not yet fully awake to the symbolic significance of the issue ourselves.

We also, in this first edition and in our own thinking and speaking for the most part, continued to follow the customary use of male pronouns for God, as can be seen in both of our prefaces below.  But at the same time, we broke with tradition in even bringing the matter up at a time when few Christians were addressing the issue at all.  In our chapter on understanding and interpreting the Bible, we emphasized that “God is neither masculine or feminine” but is Spirit, and we showed the many ways female imagery was used for God throughout Scripture. Still we did not follow this awareness to its logical conclusion and instead followed what was considered proper grammar at the time!  We wrote, that the terminology we used for God was “not intended to indicate sexuality but generic personhood. . . . Usually in referring to members of a group or a person whose sex is unknown, we use the masculine. It is generic, whereas the feminine is used in reference only to individuals known to be female. God is neither or both. He contains all personhood: we are all made in his image, male and female” (p. 21).

When the book was published in the late summer of 1974, the publisher sent us on a limited publicity book tour, with some of the media appearances featuring both of us together in some cities and some arranged for each of us separately.  Nancy and I recall having had some disagreements over how much to say about the God language issue and how far to push it, knowing how controversial that issue was (and still is) among many Christians. Our book was already stirring up controversy in its basic premise that called for full equality for women and men in all areas of life.

By the time the first paperback edition was published a year later, we added a study guide (the only change in that edition), in which we asked, “What does it mean to say that all language about God is metaphorical?”   We went on to discuss the issue more fully in that study guide section, including writing about inclusive language in hymns, liturgies, and Bible translations, and recommended a number of books and inclusive language guidelines.  This 1975 edition was the only edition of the book that contained a study guide.

After the book went out of print at Word Books, Abingdon Press reissued it in 1986 in a revised edition. In that edition, we not only made sure that the text was inclusive (both in references to people and in the avoidance of male terminology for God) but  also included a special section specifically devoted to what we titled “The Language Issue.”

That section began with this sentence, “The major reason that we chose to revise this book rather than simply reissue it was because of our naïveté concerning the language issue in the first edition.”  We wrote:

“Many people think that the language issue is trivial; we did at one time. But the passion which the issue generates belies that conclusion. . . .Indeed, since our thoughts and our theology are expressed in language, changing our language affects every bit of our thinking to the core. Changing our theological language to include  the female is a most radical proposal since all ‘official’ theology to this point has not been‘objective’ as men would like to have us believe, but masculine in authorship, content, and premise. The female has been excluded not just by grammatical conventions but by the authors’ intentions. And most of us have gotten the message, at least subconsciously.” (pp. 32-33)

A year after that red-cover edition of All We’re Meant to Be came off the press, Nancy’s own very helpful book on the topic, Inclusive Language in the Church was published (John Knox, 1987), which complements our book nicely.  And more recently (2010) she wrote “Why Inclusive Language Is Important” for the Christian Feminism Basics section of the EEWC-Christian Feminism Today website.

After the 1986 edition of All We’re Meant to Be went out of print, we extensively revised and updated it for a new edition published by Eerdmans in 1992. We continued to make sure that the language was  inclusive throughout and that the language issue was discussed.  The 1992 edition was the last edition of All We’re Meant to Be that has been published; and although it, too, is now out of print, copies of it and the earlier editions are available through various sources online.

Friendship. The fourth and final observation you may notice in reading the 1974 prefaces below is the emphasis on friendship.  By the time Nancy and I wrote our respective prefaces for that first edition, we each realized that coauthoring this book had been more than an intellectual journey through biblical, theological, historical, sociological, psychological, and anthropological sources as we researched gender roles and relationships. We found that along with the practical applications of what we had found, our coauthorship had also provided us with an unexpected gift — the gift of a deep, rich, long-lasting friendship (over more than four decades at this writing and through many changes in our lives). And it provided a sense of Christian feminist sisterhood that expanded in ever widening circles with the formation of the Evangelical Women’s Caucus that same year that our book was published.  Nancy and I talked about writing a book on friendship as our next book project, but unfortunately we never did.

Here now are our two prefaces, published in that first edition of All We’re Meant to Be: A Biblical Approach to Women’s Liberation:

Letha Dawson Scanzoni’s preface to the 1974 edition of All We’re Meant to Be

Several years ago, after observing reactions of fellow Christians to some of my views on woman’s role in the home, church, and society, it occurred to me that all too little creative Christian thought had been given the subject.  The phrase “women’s liberation” was not yet in use, but stirrings indicating a new surge of feminism were apparent.  Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique was on the bestseller list, and articles on “trapped housewives” were beginning to appear in the popular press. Yet, for the most part, it seemed that Christians were sitting on the sidelines saying nothing about the “woman question”—except to voice dismay at the way things were going and to warn of dire consequences for society if women were to forget that their place is in the home.

The idea of writing a book on the subject began to grow in my mind, and I wrote a few articles on woman’s role in Christian perspective for Eternity magazine.  Reader reaction varied, but I was especially encouraged by the interest shown by an assistant editor, Nancy Hardesty.  We corresponded only briefly and infrequently; but from the clippings she sometimes sent for my files, I perceived that we had similar viewpoints. The thought of inviting her to join me as coauthor of a book about women flashed through my mind. But I dismissed it, thinking she was too busy with her editorial responsibilities even to consider it. I laid the project aside to accept other writing assignments.

In 1969, a visit from an unmarried missionary friend rekindled my interest in the projected book.  She freely confided her heartaches, struggles, and questionings and urged me to write on the woman issue and especially to include some help for single women.  Again I thought of Nancy. She had once recommended a book dealing with this topic, and I knew she must have thought a great deal about singleness on the personal level.

However, I debated about writing her. For one thing, I hesitated to invite someone I didn’t even know to join me in such a major project. Also there was the matter of timing. In spite of my writing activities, something of the “restless housewife problem” was creeping up in my own life. I felt this might be the time to return to school to complete my interrupted college education and wondered about the wisdom of getting involved in writing another book. On the other hand, perhaps the book would be just the outlet I needed.

I asked the small group of Christian friends who met weekly in our home for prayer and sharing to pray with me for God’s guidance. I then planned to write to Nancy Hardesty and ask if she would like to join me in writing such a book. At the same time, I would investigate the possibilities of applying college credits from years before to a degree in religion at Indiana University. Whichever of the two paths opened up I would accept as God’s leading.  I never expected both to be his answer—but that is what happened.

God’s timing was perfect. Unknown to me, Nancy had just moved to the Chicago area, only a five-hour drive from my home, making it possible for us to meet soon after I wrote her and to have many delightful visits together since.  I expected to find in her a writing partner, and I did. But more than that, I found a friend. And sister. During my year of completing my university studies, she stood by me with constant encouragement and faithful prayers. She also tried to help me work through the many practical problems of combining family responsibilities with the time and energy demands of a writing career, just as I’ve tried to help her work through the challenges of living as a single woman in a couple-oriented society. Both of us have come to understand the “woman issue” in a broader and deeper sense than ever before, in relation to both married and unmarried women, because we have learned to understand, love, and appreciate each other.

Special thanks are due to my husband John who encouraged us all the way. We are grateful for his willingness to serve as a sounding board for our ideas and for the many research suggestions he gave us. (It helps to be married to a sociology professor who is also doing research and writing in the area of women’s roles!) And we want to thank him for those times when, during Nancy’s visits, he somehow managed to put up with two “liberated women” whose long talkathons sometimes lasted until two or three in the morning and whose engrossment in putting together the book sometimes seemed to take precedence over putting together his dinner! But he bore up well, as did sons Steve and Dave. Our thanks to all three.

–Letha Scanzoni  (then living in Bloomington, Indiana)

Nancy A. Hardesty’s Preface to the 1974 edition of All We’re Meant to Be

The year 1969 marked a turning point in my life. Bitter about the way my life was going and homesick for the Midwest, I agreed to take a teaching position at Trinity College in Deerfield, Illinois. This involved two things I had vowed never to do: teach, and work for another Christian organization.

During my first frustrating month I received a letter from a woman I had never met and knew only by name from her writing, Letha Scanzoni. She asked if I were interested in joining her as coauthor of a book on women. She warned me that the project was a lonely and controversial one, but suggested that we seemed to have the same views and so might stimulate each other’s thinking. In my reply I warned her that I was no longer a professional writer but an “old maid schoolteacher” and had no answers to the problems of singleness. But I accepted the offer to share the search for some answers to the whole “woman question.”

As Robert Frost says in his poem “The Road Not Taken,” “that has made all the difference.” In the past few years I have been traveling an entirely different road, one which God set me on despite my own logical calculations to the contrary. I have found that I enjoy teaching immensely—enough to motivate me to go back to graduate school for the necessary Ph.D. My writing career has blossomed in several directions. And my relationship with Letha, nurtured by sometimes almost daily letters and frequent visits, has radically changed many areas of my life.

We have written a book together.  It could have been merely an intellectual and business collaboration. Instead it has been a union of two souls. I came to her a bitter, lonely, insecure, frustrated, and troubled person. And I found in Letha someone who was interested not only in my intellectual ideas, but also in the wounds of my heart. I found acceptance, empathy, and love. It revolutionized my life. She has shown me God’s love until I can now truly believe that he loves me. She has understood and supported me until now i can accept myself and step out into new pathways. She has probed and challenged my thinking as I have probed and challenged hers. Together we have struggled with all aspects of what it means to be a woman, married or single, in today’s society.

You have in your hands our answers. We hope that our thoughts will stretch your mind, inspire your spirit, and deepen the love in your heart for all your sisters.

–Nancy Hardesty  (then living in Chicago, Illinois)

Neither Nancy nor I can find a copy of the glossy photo that was used on the back inside jacket flap of the first edition of All We’re Meant to Be. But my son Steve, then a teenager, snapped this photo along Chicago’s lake shore on the afternoon that he took  the photo that was actually used; so this will give you some idea of how we looked on the jacket photo.

Letha (left) and Nancy (right), spring 1974.

Coming Next

In my next post in this series on the story behind All We’re Meant to Be,  I’ll continue where we left off in the previous post (January 7, 2011), with more of our correspondence and a description of the actual process of coauthoring the book together.

Introduction:  The book, All We’re Meant to Be by Letha Dawson Scanzoni and Nancy A. Hardesty, published by Word Books in 1974, is considered to have been a major factor in launching the biblical feminist movement in the 1970s.

During Christianity Today magazine’s 50th anniversary of publication (2006), the magazine’s staff listed All We’re Meant to Be in 23rd place among the top 50 books their staff considered to be the “landmark titles that changed the way we think, talk, witness, worship, and live.”  They wrote:

“Scanzoni and Hardesty outlined what would later blossom into evangelical feminism. For better or for worse, no evangelical marriage or institution has been able to ignore the ideas in this book.”

This post and the next several posts here on my Letha’s Calling blog will tell the story of how the book came to be written.  It was written during a time when few Christians, particularly those in evangelical circles, dared to raise questions about the traditional roles of women in home, church, and society.  The matter was considered settled, and to challenge the male-female hierarchy as being divinely ordained was considered extremely controversial if not heretical.

The First Letters

In the concluding section of my April 14, 2010 post here, where I told the back story of my 1968 Eternity magazine article on equal-partner marriage, I quoted from a May 13, 1968 letter I received from an assistant editor at the magazine, fairly new on the job at the time.  (In my blog post telling about the editorial staff’s concerns over the “Elevate Marriage to Partnership” article, the assistant editor’s letter to me appears near the end under the heading, “I Thought That Would Be the End of it.”).

I could immediately see that this assistant editor and I were on the same wavelength with regard to male-female equality. I concluded the April 14, 2010 post with this paragraph:

“And most importantly, I had apparently found a sister Christian feminist!  The road ahead looked a bit less lonely.  I hoped someday to meet this assistant editor, Nancy Hardesty, not yet dreaming that one day our names would be linked together as coauthors of a book called All We’re Meant to Be: A Biblical Approach to Women’s Liberation . . . .”

Nancy and others on the Eternity staff knew from correspondence and the articles I had written during the 1960s that I was planning to write a book challenging traditional gender constructs as they affected women and men in the home, the church, and society in general. Several Eternity editors, including Nancy Hardesty, would occasionally send a brief note with book titles or articles they thought might be useful in my research on the various topics they knew I was writing about.

By the time the 1968 Eternity article on equal-partner marriage had been published, I  had already written two books (published by Revell), and a third book was in press, written at the request of Zondervan Publishing House after editors there saw an article John and I had coauthored for Eternity magazine on Christians and sexuality. I was also writing articles for other Christian periodicals and curriculum materials for a Sunday school publisher, accepting some speaking engagements, teaching Sunday school at our local church, and working with a college discussion group meeting in our home.  I was at the same time busy with everyday household tasks and child care and was also thinking about completing my education, which (as was true of many women in the 1950s) had been interrupted by marriage and children.

So although the“women’s liberation” book was not forgotten. it was temporarily put aside and only being worked on sporadically.  But all the while, an idea was gestating in my mind.  In October of 1969 the idea travelled from my mind to typewriter and letterhead.  I decided to write to Nancy Hardesty at Eternity Magazine.

The Invitation

My letter is dated October 7, 1969.

Dear Nancy:

An idea has been kicking around in my mind for some time.  I’ve prayed and thought about it a great deal and have decided the time has come to ask you what you think of it—so I’ll come right to the point.  Would you be willing to consider the possibility of joining me as co-author of the book on women (i.e., woman’s “place” in the home, society, and church)?

I know you’re very busy and perhaps would find it impossible to give time to such a project.  Or perhaps you’d simply not be interested.  Yet, I decided I couldn’t lose anything by asking!

The reasons which prompted me to ask you are these:

1. Your obvious interest in the subject.  I’ve really appreciated your sending the various articles for my research file. These, along with comments in letters you’ve written, lead me to believe you and I have similar views on the subject.

2. I feel the book could be much more helpful to readers if it could include the viewpoint of a single woman as well as that of one who’s married.  (I’m assuming you’re still single.) What made me think of this angle was a conversation I had not long ago with a missionary friend—a single woman in her mid-thirties—who has been puzzling over this matter of expressing sexuality as a single person. I shared with her the letter you wrote last year in which you recommended the book by the Ryans, Love and Sexuality, which deals with this matter.  Since then, I’ve read the book and can see why you were so impressed. It covers areas of life that are seldom thought through or discussed by Christians, and it shows that there is a way for an unmarried Christian to live as a whole, total, free human being, and that one doesn’t need to be pressed into either the “repression” mold of much traditional religious teaching or, on the other hand, the Helen Gurley Brown “Cosmopolitan” pattern for the single girl.

3. I feel we might be able to complement one another by bringing both a psychological and a sociological approach to the subject matter, yet both within a Biblical framework. I may be wrong about this, but I have the feeling you may see things a bit more from the psychology angle, whereas I tend to look at the woman situation (and other things) more from the standpoint of sociology (this has come about by some sort of “osmosis” I think from living with John [a sociology professor at Indiana University in Bloomington]).

4. The “loneliness” of the project.  This reason might sound strange, but what I mean is that I feel a need to toss around ideas with another Christian woman of similar outlook who has done a great deal of thinking along these lines—as you have.  For some reason, this issue seems extremely volatile in the minds of many Christians. Emotions are quickly aroused when it’s mentioned. The men and women who have the strongest opinions and seem most eager to express them are those which have rigid traditional ideas which really restrict women—and they’re quick to cite Scripture to back them up.  One occasionally meets women who are questioning these ideas and are willing to discuss the subject seriously.  But seldom have they really thought through some answers or read much on the matter.  Many women in Christian circles would be afraid to voice their disagreements with traditional views, and many others seem perfectly content with things as they are. This is changing, however, among younger evangelicals—particularly on college campuses; and I feel the projected book could be of real help to many of these (both men and women).

Thus, it would be heartening to have someone with whom new questionings and ideas could be tossed around. I have John, of course, and his insights, interest, empathy, and encouragement are invaluable. But (obviously) the fact remains that he’s not a woman—for which I’m very glad, of course! (Incidentally, his latest research project is a study of how a woman’s concept of her role affects fertility; therefore, he is constantly bringing home the latest statistics, books, articles, etc. bearing on the woman question—which is of tremendous help to me in my research, too!)

I guess that about sums up the matter.  I’d really like to welcome you aboard the project if you feel it would be of interest to you.  If not, I’ll certainly understand.

Again, let me thank you for all the interest, suggestions, and encouragement you’ve provided thus far. I’ll be looking forward to hearing from you.

Cordially,

(signed) Letha

Letha Scanzoni

I have reproduced the letter exactly as I wrote it in 1969, resisting the temptation to edit it.  I placed it in an envelope addressed to Nancy Hardesty at Eternity magazine, licked a 6-cents stamp (no self-sealing stamps in those days), put the stamped envelope in a mailbox — and waited.

The Response

More than a week passed, but one day the eagerly anticipated letter arrived.  On October 14, 1969, Nancy had written:

Dear Letha:

But do you want to work with an “old maid school teacher”?  Since last you heard from me, I have taken a job here at Trinity College [now Trinity International University in Deerfield, Illinois].  I should really say two jobs: directing the News Bureau and teaching four writing courses. I can’t say I want it to be my life’s work but I rather disliked the East, wanted to move back to the Midwest and wanted to make a bundle of money.  So I’m here.

I’m over my head in work, having never taught before, but your idea interests me because maybe it would give me one thing to do that I liked. I’m sure I would enjoy bouncing ideas back and forth.

I do have a real hesitancy though about what I could contribute.  I have no real answers — perhaps I could find some.  I don’t know if I’m doing a very good job coping with the problem myself. Having just gone through a move, I get bitter about coming home at night and having no one’s shoulder to cry on, no one to sympathize about how hard it is; no one to help in all the decisions about buying cars, renting apartments, moving furniture; no one to shoulder any of these extras of living like shopping, servicing the car, doing the laundry.  Married men around here complain about how hard their move has been—but they had a wife at home to unpack, greet them with a kiss and a hot meal, to make sure there was clean underwear in the drawer every morning.  A single person has to carry both loads—and with very little help or understanding.

I don’t know whether I approach this psychologically or just introspectively, but I don’t do it sociologically, I don’t think. I am very interested in it theologically.

I try to be biblical, though I dislike putting it that way. I try to be Christian, as I interpret that, but sometimes it’s so hard.  Yesterday in my creative writing class one of the girls had a line in her poem, about how God’s love is sufficient when a love relationship with a guy has fallen apart. I challenged her on it: does she and the others really believe that.  Most of them began to say they were sure of it, one finally answered more truthfully, “I hope so.”  I still hope so, but on a day to day basis, I can’t say it is.

There’s also the myth—at least that’s what I hope it is although most people believe it is the “true” Christian position on human personhood—that one is most truly human in a marriage relationship. I’m sure that the girls in my classes have bought this entirely. But if you buy this and then don’t get married, you have a very difficult time justifying your own continued existence.

But there are so many things. Perhaps I’m just looking for a way to try to find some answers for myself. How helpful they would be for others, I’m not sure.

So if you still would like to work together, I would like to try it.  Perhaps since I’m now living closer it would be easier to work together.  My home address is. . .

Cordially yours,

(signed ) Nancy

And so we were on our way.  It was clear neither of us expected to provide easy answers.  We both had too many questions ourselves.  But we hoped that by searching for our own answers, we could help other women as well—women who no doubt had the same questions and needs for encouragement and support that we did.

In upcoming posts in this series, I’ll tell about my reply to Nancy’s letter and how the process of writing the book got underway and progressed, how it deepened our friendship, and how it introduced us to an expanding community of women and some supportive men who likewise yearned to combine their Christian faith and their feminism.

In the next post, I’ll reproduce the original two-part preface of the book as it was published in 1974. It summarizes much of the detailed account above, and it also tells what writing the book meant to us and how it affected us personally.

Letha (left) and Nancy (right) are shown here after attending church services during one of Nancy’s earliest visits to Letha’s home in Bloomington, Indiana, circa 1971.