Conference for women featuring anti-atonement speaker is canceled
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, July 7, 2003
The Montreat Conference Center in Montreat, N.C., has canceled a denominational conference for women that was to have featured a Unitarian theologian who denies that Christ died for the sins of the world.
Katheryne L. Goodman of the Women’s Advocacy Office of the Presbyterian Church (USA) said the decision to cancel the conference, which was scheduled August 9-12, was made by the Montreat Conference Center.
She said she understood that the conference was canceled because of low registration. Nonetheless, Goodman said the scheduled keynote address by Rita Nakashima Brock, the Unitarian theologian, was not compatible with the purpose of the conference, but that she did not believe that was part of the reason for the cancellation.
Brock was one of the major speakers at the 10th Anniversary Re-Imagining Gathering in Minneapolis June 19-22. The Layman Online covered that conference and reported, “Brock’s views are unquestionably antithetical to what Presbyterians – and all Christians – believe: that Christ’s death on the cross was a necessary atonement for sin. Instead, Brock says patriarchial church leaders have used the atonement as theological justification for war, oppression, abuse of women and other acts of violence.
“We have a right to reject any theology that makes violence a way to save the world,” she told the re-imaginers in Minnesota.
Goodman said she read The Layman Online’s coverage of Brock’s remarks to the Re-Imagining Gathering after Montreat notified her that the conference had been canceled.
A public relations spokesman for the Montreat Conference Center said the sole reason for canceling the conference was registration – not Brock. If registration numbers had been sufficient, she said, Brock would have spoken because she was under contract to do so.
Jim Henderson, president of the conference center, was not available for comment.