Follow-up to LGBTQ-RAN and WATER’s Program with Charlotte Bunch

in Conversation with Mary E. Hunt

February 19, 2025

WATER thanks Charlotte Bunch for her decades of activism and for this wonderful conversation. WATER thanks LGBTQ-RAN for collaborating on the conversation with Charlotte Bunch and Mary E. Hunt.

The video can be found at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jpvWLwxvsSGYegP8jU1ZuFczmMynFiZO/view?usp=sharing

Following are notes to be used in conjunction with the video. They are not a verbatim transcript, but a way to highlight some of the issues discussed.

 Mary E. Hunt’s Introduction:

Charlotte Bunch, I hope you feel fully at home at WATER and LGBTQ-RAN because we are in some respects an extension of your life and work. You wisely and with great integrity severed ties with Christian churches. As you put it in 1972, “I have no interest in a God or a religion that thinks I am deformed, a sin or inferior.” Neither do we at WATER. While most of your work in the last fifty years has been well beyond religious circles, you were influenced by and continue to influence religious traditions. Let me explain by way of introduction.

Charlotte was born into a Methodist family in 1944. Hers was once the Methodist Family of the Year in New Mexico. She aspired to be a missionary having met and read about women who traveled the world and engaged in good work at a time when women’s opportunities to do so were limited.

Charlotte’s college years at Duke University in the 1960s were full of formative experiences, through campus ministry, the YWCA, and the Methodist Student Movement, places where anti-racism/civil rights and nascent feminist work were emerging. She participated in and led various ecumenical student conferences in the US. Eventually, through the World Student Christian Federation, she did the same in places like Lebanon and Ethiopia, learning at a young age the rigors of interracial, international work.

By the late 1960s, Charlotte was deeply engaged in anti-Vietnam War protests and the women’s movements. She became part of the Furies, a radical lesbian collective in DC. Although short-lived, the Furies (whose house on DC’s Capitol Hill is now a National Historic Landmark) were a remarkably creative and productive group. Women’s music and literature, politics, publishing, and activism sprang from that group. Charlotte was a pioneer woman staff member at the Institute for Policy Studies in DC where she started Quest: A Feminist Quarterly. By that time she was all of thirty.

Then came fifty years of New York-based national and global feminist leadership. Charlotte worked with many NGOs including some that focused on violence against women. In 1979, she founded the Center for Women’s Global Leadership at Rutgers University which she led for 20 years. Their focus on women’s rights as human rights with lesbian rights prominent in the mix spawned countless projects such as 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence Campaign in 1991, now carried on in scores of countries.

Charlotte’s early ‘missionary’ vocation was realized in myriad secular settings, most prominently in the United Nations, on boards, and in projects all aimed at improving the status of women throughout the world. She never strayed from her values even if the very institutions that initially instilled them had to be left behind because of their recalcitrance.

Charlotte’s books and essays are necessarily the subject of another seminar. But her volume Passionate Politics: Feminist Theory in Action is a must-read for understanding the movements from 1968 to 1986. Charlotte was in the lead.

I will turn to Charlotte now to explore and explain the trajectory of her activism that was rooted in some of the aspirational language and commitments of Christianity, but has had a much deeper echo in a multi-religious and non-religious world. I think history will attest to the fact that any group that demeans and limits the rights of members, as large swaths of Christianity have done to women and queer people, cannot carry the freight of global justice. The many awards and accolades you have received make clear that your approach was highly successful.

Charlotte Bunch’s Remarks:

  1. Charlotte spoke of her early life, the influence of her parents, and her college studies in History at Duke University as being formative. She keeps careful records, affirming that those who make history need to record it. Her childhood wish to be a missionary was rooted in the limited options for women at the time and her desire for adventures. She spent the 1970’s in Washington DC, but left on the heels of the election of Ronald Reagan. She chose NYC as a place to understand global feminism, to learn from women around the world how to organize in tough times. Her personal archives are at the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University and the archives of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership at Rutgers University.

2. Her understanding of religion/spirituality is that we are more than just the moment we are in, but part of something more. After decades away from organized religion, she joined Middle Collegiate Church in New York City with a dear friend. They sought a common place where there is a public political presence of the affirmation of LGBTQ and other intersectional issues, especially anti-racism, summed up in the mottos “Love Period” and “Fierce Love.”

  1. Charlotte and Mary E. Hunt knew many of the same women in progressive Protestant leadership in the 1970-80’s. Charlotte described a time when she and other students went to Alabama to do support work for civil rights activists. Peggy Billings of the Methodist Church staff informed a Holiday Inn that refused to house the mixed racial group that she would report the action to church officials to be sure that Methodists never stayed in Holiday Inns again. The hotel staff relented. It is not clear if Peggy could have made her words stick, but it was a lesson to Charlotte about the power, real or perceived, of religious groups used in the service of justice.
  1. Charlotte comments on the few positive things religions have contributed to LGBTQ self and community understanding. Prime among them is the importance of the body, bodily integrity, and sanctity of the body. These are sometimes used against women and queer people. But there are strong religious arguments against bodily violence against women, abuse of LGBTQ people, and so forth based in the godliness of each person.
  1. Lesbianism is a key piece of feminism. Without the right to control sexuality, women can’t control our lives. Women Living Under Muslim Law rejected certain interpretations of their religion, stating: “Violence is not our Culture.”
  1. Friends around the world express sympathy for those of us in the US as we endure Trump. But we now see shades of the same politics in other countries. Ways to cope with the current situation include:

— Sharing word on public opposition/resistance in the US that is not carried in major media

— Exploring what current oppression means for women around the world, for example, the reimposition of the Global Gag Rule which threatens reproductive justice and queer rights

— Avoiding the temptation to say the US is the only problem; it may be that the US is the worst problem because it is so powerful, but there are many other bad actors around the world

— Positioning our solidarity between apology and arrogance

  1. What fuels our optimism?

a. Historical response—people have lived through worse times, slavery, wars, and more. One can say instead that this is the worst I’ve lived through. The key is what we can do to change it.

b. On a more personal level, it is important to be mindful of friends all over the world, many of whom are in situations more dangerous than our own, especially if we are white, cis women. The task is to be in solidarity and choose the practice of hope.

Conversation / Q+A

  1. A colleague who works with lesbian communities around the world told of the power of even small grants to help women’s groups. Charlotte commented in the drop off in funding from USAID, the Dutch and Swedish governments, and the need for us to support groups with our contributions.
  2. A Canadian participant summed up the mood there where people are shocked, frightened, and determined.
  3. A woman asked how to bring things like the Golden Rule and its equivalent from many religious traditions into new focus beyond patriarchal religious institutions.
  4. Another person asked how to overcome the lies that are now so common. Charlotte urged people to choose carefully how much and what news we imbibe. She suggested the spiritual practice of watching for and supporting positive things both globally and locally. She said hope is her practice.
  5. A question was offered about what we can learn from previous organizing, from the women’s meeting in Beijing, for example. Charlotte talked about the need to give money to groups like the Astrea Lesbian Foundation, the Global Fund for Women, Women’s Funding Networks, and the like, as well as to read their publications to know what’s happening. She highlighted the upcoming UN Commission on the Status of Women annual meeting to be held March 2025 in NYC. She observed that the real action will not be at the UN (where the US is pushing the two gender lie), but around New York City where NGO-led meetings and events will reaffirm the global women’s movement at a time when we need it very much.
  6. One of the final comments was on how hopeful it was to see Charlotte and Mary engaged in significant conversation after many decades of activism.

Highlights as flagged by WATER interns Wed Naji and Magdalena Müller. These reflect the important perspective of young colleagues working on similar issues:

  • Learn from women from all over the world that have already dealt with and overcome governmental oppression.
  • Find and create places of community.
  • Broaden your international perspectives. This allows you to develop your collaborative work.
  • Religion can and should support justice regardless of the connection to the institutional church.
  • Religion teaches integrity and how to foster community.
  • Change the institutions not yourself!
  • Religious institutions need to change at the pace of feminist and queer demands.
  • Having control of our sexuality means we have control over our lives; feminism needs to be intersectional!
  • Challenge the interpretation of your religion and your culture!
  • Be part of the opposition: raise awareness on what you can do and on the opposition that already exists.
  • Stay optimistic: 1. people have lived through and overcome worse.
    Have a vision for a better future, believe in it, and do all you can to fulfill that vision.
  • Encourage and support young people and groups to carry on the struggle.

————————————————————————————————————-

Selected Resources:

  1. Selected bibliography of Charlotte Bunch

Bunch, Charlotte. “Journeys that Opened Up the World,” in WOMEN, STUDENT CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT AND SOCIAL JUSTICE. Sara M. Evans (ed.) NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003.

Bunch, Charlotte and Hinojosa, Claudia. LESBIANS TRAVEL THE ROADS OF FEMINISM GLOBALLY (p. 1-17). NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000.

Bunch, Charlotte. CLASS & FEMINISM. Baltimore, MD: Diana Press, 1994.

Bunch, Charlotte and Reilly, Niamh. DEMANDING ACCOUNTABILITY: THE GLOBAL CAMPAIGN AND VIENNA TRIBUNAL FOR WOMEN’S HUMAN RIGHTS. New Brunswick, NY: The Center for Women’s Global Leadership, 1994.

https://cwgl.rutgers.edu/images/documents/publications/demand.ACCOUNTABILITY.pdf

Bunch, Charlotte. GENDER VIOLENCE AND WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN AFRICA. Highland Park, NJ: The Center for Women’s Global Leadership, 1994.

Bunch, Charlotte. GENDER VIOLENCE: A DEVELOPMENT AND HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUE. Highland Park, NJ: The Center for Women’s Global Leadership, 1991.

Bunch, Charlotte. PASSIONATE POLITICS: FEMINIST THEORY IN ACTION. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1987.

Bunch, Charlotte. BRINGING THE GLOBAL HOME: FEMINISM IN THE ‘80s. Denver, CO: Antelope Publications, 1985.

Bunch, Charlotte. GOING PUBLIC WITH OUR VISION. Denver, CO: Antelope Publications, 1983.

Bunch, Charlotte and Pollack, Sandra. LEARNING OUR WAY: ESSAYS IN FEMINIST EDUCATION. Trumansburg, NY: The Crossing Press, 1983.

Bunch, Charlotte. FEMINISM IN THE 80’s FACING DOWN THE RIGHT. Denver, CO: The Inkling Press, 1981.

  1. Link to Charlotte’s LGBTQ-RAN Profile: https://lgbtqreligiousarchives.org/profiles/charlotte-anne-bunch
  1. Guide to the film:
    https://tamigoldfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/PP_-Companion-Booklet.pdf