Women with 2020 Vision - by Jeanne Stevenson-Moessner (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

Women haven't always had the right to vote. From such diverse voices as John Stuart Mill and Cokie Roberts, the absolute right of both women and men to vote has been affirmed. And yet, resistance to women's suffrage even by women themselves has a long and painful history. In this exciting volume, thirteen theologians and religious leaders in America look back at the historic victory in 1920 when women in the United States won the right to vote. They then assess the current situation and speak into the future.

Women with 2020 Vision: American Theologians on the Voice, Vote, and Vision of Women commemorates the 100th anniversary of women in the United States obtaining the right to vote, a story that must be told and retold and reflected upon in light of the current sociopolitical-theological realities.

Review Quotes

Women with 2020 Vision celebrates memories of courageous and faithful achievement 100 years ago even while shining light on the shadow side of the movement--embedded racism, blind eyes to indigenous struggle, distortion of Christian witness. They point our gaze toward the work needed now to overcome similarly rooted evils: trafficking, voter suppression, hunger, and family separation. And they show us a way forward, sparking in us hope that the journey, though long, does indeed bend toward justice. --Rev. Dr. Sharon Watkins, former President, National Council of Churches

Stevenson-Moessner's Women with 2020 Vision commemorates the centennial of women's suffrage with a clarion call to honor the legacy of our foremothers by continuing to advance human dignity, gender justice, and racial equity today for the sake of a more enfranchised future for all. By helping us to see the history of the suffrage movement more clearly, she emboldens us to envision a future in which the full exercise of our rights is dependent on our responsibility to work for the extension of those same rights to others. We come to view suffrage--then and now--as sacred work. --Kathryn Mary Lohre, Assistant to the Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and Executive for Ecumenical and Inter-Religious Relations & Theological Discernment

The multiple voices in this volume speak eloquently and accessibly to the intersectionality of sexism and racism as it relates to women's right to vote. The counterforces of the church, politics, government, and class reveal the barriers against the passage of the 20th amendment, but not without some shining moments of pure inspiration. Familiar stories of women working to overcome racism and sexism are told with some new insights as well as some new revelations of how women imagined that they could be free and equal! --Bishop Sally Dyck, Resident Bishop of Northern Illinois Annual Conference, The United Methodist Church