Thursday, April 1st, 2010
This lecture series was held in April-June of 2010.
Fayetteville, N.Y., 2010–Please join us as the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation proudly presents a series of events and discussions on spirituality and religion. In the 19th century, anti-slaver and woman’s rights advocates, freethinkers, and spiritualists were arm in arm against orthodoxy. Talks in the Spiritual Journey Series will explore aspects of Gage’s spiritual journey from Baptist to Freethinker, her commitment to a separation of church and state, and ways her work has influenced women who are opening doors in churches today.
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Tuesday, April 27, 7:00 p.m. - Zsuzsanna Emese Budapest will discuss women’s spirituality. Budapest is the world-renowned author of 10 books and a founder of the modern-day Women’s Spirituality Movement, which helped pave the way for the merging of feminism and spirituality. She has lectured and held workshops globally. Budapest was arrested in 1975 for reading Tarot cards to an undercover policewoman. Claiming her right to counsel women, Budapest lost the trial, but she ultimately won the cause, and the law against all forms of divination and psychics was struck down nine years later. She is the last person to be put on trial for witchcraft in America.
Monday, May 3, 7:00 p.m. - Melinda Grube, scholar and proud descendant of Upstate New York suffragists and abolitionists, will speak on Matilda Joslyn Gage’s Woman, Church and State, published in 1893. She will explore Gage’s context and legacy, and will discuss her own personal relationship to Gage’s pioneering work. Woman, Church and State was the first full-length feminist interpretation of 19th-century matriarchal theory and one of the germinal texts of American feminist spirituality and Neo-Paganism. Gage’s critical analysis of western religious tradition was revolutionary, but it did not develop in a vacuum. We cannot understand Gage apart from her specific social and religious contexts within the “Burned-Over District” traditions of reform and revivalism.
Dr. Grube’s research focus is the intersection of radical human rights activism and spirituality in the Burned-Over District of New York State. She received her Ph.D. with a concentration in Women’s Studies in Religion from the Union Institute and University and is an adjunct instructor of history at Cayuga Community College.
Wednesday, May 12, 7:00 p.m. - Tom Flynn, executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism, will present “Freethought and Its Sisters,” a discussion of one of the most controversial social reform movements of the 19th century. The presentation will conclude with the regional premiere of the video documentary D. M. Bennett: The Truth Seeker, co-produced by Tom Flynn.
This event will be held at Trinity Episcopal Church, 106 Chapel St., Fayetteville, N.Y.
Freethought—the critical examination and, often, rejection of religion—was one of the most controversial social reform movements of the 19th century. West-central New York State was a hotbed of social ferment including freethought, abolitionism, woman’s rights, religious innovation, and even spiritualism. Despite their differences, these movements were siblings in ways that were more obvious 130 years ago than they may seem today. Though best known for her woman’s rights activism, Matilda Joslyn Gage had conspicuous interests in both freethought and spiritualism. So did the New York City-based freethinker D. M. Bennett, who published the Truth Seeker, the most successful freethought paper of the period, and suffered high-profile prosecutions at the hands of decency crusader Anthony Comstock.
Tom Flynn is a secular humanist activist, videomaker, and armchair historian. He is editor of the Council for Secular Humanism’s flagship magazine, Free Inquiry. He designed the freethought museum at the birthplace of Robert Green Ingersoll (Dresden, N. Y.), and with the Gage Foundation’s execuive director Sally Roesch Wagner, co-conceived the Freethought Trail, a celebration of radical-reform historical sites in west-central New York State. His books include The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief (2007), a comprehensive reference work with a foreword by Richard Dawkins.
Wednesday, May 26, 7:00 p.m. The Rev. Betty Bone Schiess will give a talk titled “What Next? Continuing to Break Down Gender Barriers in Our Lives.” She will link her past struggles within the Episcopal Church with the challenges facing young women in all spheres of today’s society.
The event will be at Trinity Episcopal Church, 106 Chapel St., Fayetteville, N.Y. Karen DeCrow will introduce Schiess.
Schiess helped lead the movement that ultimately led to the ordination of women within the Episcopal Church. In 1974, she was one of 11 female Episcopal deacons to be ordained priests in a renegade act. Her ensuing struggle was instrumental in opening the door for women and girls to serve within the Church at all levels.
The author of Why Me, Lord? One Woman’s Ordination to the Priesthood, with Commentary and Complaint (2003), Schiess was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1994 and is the recipient of the 2001 Spirit of Gage Award for Religious Liberty.
Karen DeCrow is a nationally known author, activist, and attorney who specializes in gender and age discrimination. DeCrow describes her ultimate goal as “a world in which the gender of a baby will have little to no relevance in future pursuits and pleasures—personal, political, economic, social and professional.” DeCrow was president of the Syracuse chapter of the National Organization for Women, and national president of NOW from 1974 to 1977. A resident of Jamesville, she is a 2004 inductee into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
Tuesday, June 1, 7:00 p.m. - Mary Ramerman, first woman Catholic Priest and cofounder of Spiritus Christi congregation in Rochester, joined by the Rev. James Callan, will reflect on the writing of Matilda Joslyn Gage as she tells her own story in “Refusing to Participate in One’s Own Oppression.” What happens when one refuses to participate in an oppressive system? How did Matilda Joslyn Gage do it? How do women do it today? What’s the cost of going against the status quo?
The talk will be at Trinity Episcopal Church, 106 Chapel St., Fayetteville, N.Y.
Ramerman was ordained a Catholic woman priest in 2001. Three thousand people attended her ordination against the threat of ex-communication by the Roman Catholic diocese. She is the pastor of Spiritus Christi Church in Rochester, N.Y. Spiritus Christi is known for its outreaches to the poor, including a prison ministry, mental health center, recovery house, and projects in Haiti and Mexico.
Callan is the associate pastor of Spiritus Christi Church. A Catholic priest for 35 years, he has been a constant advocate for the poor. In 1998, he was suspended from the priesthood for including women in the liturgy, celebrating gay and lesbian unions, and welcoming everyone to communion, including non-Catholics and non-Christians. He is the author of four books including his latest book, Pioneer Priest, the Story of Mary Ramerman and Spiritus Christi Church.
Thursday, June 17, 7:00 p.m. - Deborah Hughes, executive director of the Susan B. Anthony House in Rochester, N.Y., will present “There Are Snakes in Those Muddy Waters.” Join us for an historical perspective and contemporary analysis of the muddy waters between church and state.
The talk will be at Trinity Episcopal Church, 106 Chapel St., Fayetteville, N.Y.
When should the Church meddle in the State’s business and when should the State meddle in the Church’s business? The revolutionary founders of our republic understood that there could be no true democracy without clear separation between Church and State. Nothing stands in the way of freedom more than when the institutions of government and religion align their powers. In colonial days, this was a life and death matter. Today, cultural pressure and rhetoric have muddied the understanding of this essential tenet of democracy. Matilda Joslyn Gage would be the first to wake us up to the hidden dangers, and Hughes shares that passion.
Hughes became executive director of the Anthony House in August 2007, bringing more than 20 years of wide-ranging nonprofit experience in managing people and financial resources, training and motivating volunteers, and fundraising . Although she majored in religious studies and history in college, her journey to museum leadership was a bit unusual. An ordained minister, Hughes has served on the pastoral staff of three churches in Michigan and New York. She has also served on the executive staff of the pension board of the American Baptist Churches, USA, in New York, N.Y., administering health, death, disability and retirement benefits for employees of churches and related social service organizations. After spending most of her life away from her hometown, she was delighted to return to Rochester in 2001.
TICKETS
$10 for each talk, $3 for students. Contact the Gage Foundation office by phone at (315) 637-9511 or email at foundation@matildajoslyngage.org for tickets and info. Or purchase tickets through the Gift Shop on this website.
