Sonja Miller: a faith-based perspective on reproductive rights

Sonja Miller, faith director for the Texas Freedom Network, talks reproductive rights, public education, and finding common ground beyond left vs. right.

Listen here, read the transcript below, or click here for the full video version.

George Mason:
Welcome to Good God, conversations that matter about faith and public life. I am your host, George Mason, and I'm pleased to be joined for this conversation that we are calling good politics, as part of that series of our podcast Sonja Miller, Sonja is the outreach and faith director for the Texas Freedom Network in the state of Texas. And we're so delighted to welcome you Sonja and look forward to our conversation.

Sonja Miller:
Thank you, George. It's wonderful to be here today. I am very impressed with your podcast and it's an honor to be a guest with you today.

George Mason:
Thank you. We've been working during this legislative session actually together on issues of common concern, Faith Commons, and many other faith based organizations in Texas in this sort of coalition that we've thrown together, that we've called the Better Texas Interfaith Coalition. And you've brought a number of important issues to us that we'll maybe tease out a little bit later, but I'd like people to know, first of all, about Texas Freedom Network, how it got started, what its priorities are, how you work, that sort of thing, and, and your particular role in it. So could you give us a little background?

Sonja Miller:
Perfect. I'd love to, I love talking about the Texas Freedom Network. The Texas Freedom Network was founded by Cecile Rogers in 1995. And the founding story is one that I find fascinating. Cecile had finished working on her mom's gubernatorial race and-

George Mason:
[crosstalk 00:01:41] Richards, by the way.

Sonja Miller:
[crosstalk 00:01:43] Richard. And found herself one day at a state board of education meeting. In that meeting, the state board of education was discussing what would be new textbooks for health education in the state of Texas. I'm going to remind folks that this is 1994, we're talking about. The debate that they were having amongst themselves was whether or not a picture of a woman carrying a briefcase could be in the health textbooks as an image of women in 1994, I'll say it again. They did not want that image for K through 12 students, or nine through 12 students in Texas.

Sonja Miller:
Cecile was sitting there with a friend listening to this and had a napkin. And it's one of those stories where she writes on the napkin, "This is so much worse than I imagined," and passes it to her friend. And left that meeting and went to her living room and gathered her a cadre of progressive Texans that she knew and founded the Texas Freedom Network with its main goal, to be the watchdog of the religious right in Texas to speak out and gather folks to speak against that kind of religious narrative that was taking over in politics at all levels in the state in '94. And so that's where that's kind of our birth story.

George Mason:
Right. But you know, at the same time, you are a faith-based organization yourself in some ways, and you especially are working in the faith sector. It's not that Texas Freedom Network is altogether a faith-based network. But so, when we talk about countering the religious right, and it's narrative that leads to public policy, there is a counter narrative of people of faith of a more progressive nature. So it's not just about religion, is it?

Sonja Miller:
No. Well, let's start with,

George Mason:
Right.

Sonja Miller:
And that issue of countering the religious right led TFN to, made three buckets of advocacy: public education, which is obvious because that's where it was founded. religious freedom and civil liberties are the three kind of big buckets of work that TFN was founded on.

Sonja Miller:
And then a lot of work was done '95 to 2013 in those areas. But in 2013, we had a time in our state politics around abortion that brought thousands, you may recall thousands of people to the Capitol, to oppose HB two, an omnibus abortion bill, that would have limited access from over 40 clinics down to cutting it in half and possibly more.

Sonja Miller:
And that is the time in which Wendy Davis had her infamous filibuster for 13 hours on the floor.

George Mason:
Right.

Sonja Miller:
TFN was instrumental in bringing a number of people of faith and particularly clergy to the Capitol during that legislative session to testify, to write Op-Eids, to speak out, to participate in rallies. Following that legislative session, which HB two eventually passed, a group of clergy and lay leaders came to Texas Freedom Network with the request that TFN help them create a way in which they could be engaged in changing the culture around abortion in particular, in the state of Texas, realizing that what's going on in our culture really affects what happens in policy and in politics. And in the state, we only have that session every other year for six months. We're just about to the end of that right now. And this group of clergy and lay leaders wanted to be engaged in work year round, because realizing that if we don't do the work all the time, we won't be able to affect change when it comes to particular bills that people are opposing or supporting either side. So just Texas Faith Voices for Justice was founded in 2014. And that's the part of TFN that is now our faith organizing arm.

George Mason:
So Sonja, as you try to build a coalition of faith leaders that have a vision of a more just Texas that tends to be a counter to the religious right, I think one of the questions for many sort of unsuspecting people in the pew you might say is, does it always have to be left or right? Is it just a matter of, okay, the religious right organized themselves, and they have a vision of the world that they're trying to put into public policy and we have to organize. And you have to be doctrinaire on the left in other words, if you're going to counter them. And so it's really an either/or. We got a binary choice. It's either going to be the progressive left wins or the religious right wins.

George Mason:
How do you talk to people about getting involved that way when maybe their own appetite for this is not as starved to win so to speak because they're not oriented. I think people have of mainline tradition, whether in Jewish, Christian or other religious, they're not oriented toward battle you might say. They tend to want to be nice, right? To play nice. So what do you say to people about that?

Sonja Miller:
So, George, I absolutely love this question, because I think it's what brought me into this work, because I am that person that you are referring. I would never have imagined myself working for a political advocacy organization. That was furthest from my mind.

Sonja Miller:
I'll just step back a little bit in time to say I ended up in Austin after a career in public education. And then also working as a contract person in the abortion world. I ended up in seminary at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. I started on my 50th birthday. So it's definitely a mid-life career change for me. And as part of my need to complete my degree, I had to find a supervised practice in ministry. And because my own story, I just said, I had a life in public education.

Sonja Miller:
So, that public education is very important to me. I was both a teacher and a school administrator. I have worked in the abortion world, and my sister-in-law is an abortion provider. So abortion and access to choice and reproductive healthcare is very important to me. And after a long marriage, I had a divorce and I'm now married to my wife. So LGBTQ equality is very personal to me. I had several people tell me I needed to get to know the Texas Freedom Network, because those are core issues for the Texas Freedom Network and that my own life completely intersected with the mission and vision of Texas Freedom Network.

Sonja Miller:
So I got to this position by going to Texas Freedom Network and saying, "How can I volunteer?" And they said, "How about we hire you?" And so I have done my supervised practice in ministry at the Texas Freedom Network. But I'm going to say, the first thing that comes to my mind when I listen to you is that the personal is political and the political is personal. Right? And I can just share my own story to say, "This is my lived experience." And my lived experience is in the political world, right?

Sonja Miller:
So those two things to those of us who sit in the pew and say, "I don't want to be left, or right." I fully understand that. And I think the mission and what Just Texas is doing with our Reproductive Freedom Congregation Designation really speaks to that because I, and I'll talk a little bit more about the Designation in a minute, but we created a designation where we are asking congregations to create and hold space for really difficult conversations. Because I think in our political scene, when you say you can be the left or the right, and in our culture, we're creating these silos where we talk at each other instead of with each other.

George Mason:
Right.

Sonja Miller:
And I think as communities of faith, we have a very special calling into that to say, "We're going to create and hold space where we can talk with each other. Where we can hear each other's stories. Where we can see how my life and your life, although we may stand on different sides of the aisle, my life and your life do intersect."

Sonja Miller:
And, we at Just Texas really do believe that when we stop and hold that space and spend time sharing each other's stories that our stories will ultimately drive the culture. The culture drives the politics. And on the bottom line, our faith affects all of it.

George Mason:
Right? So, there's an old saying in business, I think mainly business that says culture eats strategy for breakfast, right? So you can sit in two or three day strategy meetings for your organization and say, "Here's our vision for what we want to do." And then you bring it back into the organization that has functioned in a certain other way over time. And the culture just eats it up. It just sabotages it at every point. So I think what you're saying is this is not just about all of a sudden getting enough people to Austin to win a vote per se, but changing the way we relate to one another, all year long in such a way that we might imagine the full humanity of the people on the other side and try to figure out how to live together.

Sonja Miller:
Yes, yes. How do we create the world in which as individuals we all want? As a community, then we create that world where everyone can flourish. I always think of that meme that goes around social media. It's not pie, right?

George Mason:
Say what that means. Cause I think that's an important thing. It's not pie.

Sonja Miller:
It's not pie, but that when we are creating a society where we can all flourish, there is enough. There is enough for all of us. It's not a pie where you slice it up and there's eight pieces, or you could make 16 or 24 depending on how you cut it, but it's a limited supply. Eventually the pie is gone. There is enough. And I think that leads us to, as communities of faith, stepping out of a story of scarcity and into a story of abundance.

George Mason:
All right. So let's maybe drive this home a little bit with a particular issue. You mentioned abortion earlier. We couldn't find probably a more culturally divisive issue for us politically and thought divisive. And that's true in Texas, which has just passed the Heartbeat Bill, so called, which governor Abbott has signed, which in its practical application effectively bans abortion under almost every circumstance because it says that the moment a heartbeat is discovered, then it criminalizes abortion by providers and by the person who's seeking it and allows in fact somebody from 10 counties over to turn you in and sue you for any participation in it. It's an extraordinary bill, isn't it?

Sonja Miller:
It is a draconian bill. Yes. I will say it is. It is a sweeping bill that as you said, is attempting to basically eradicate access to abortion in Texas. And yes, let's talk about how then do we, as people of faith respond to that? And so this is a perfect segue into talking about Just Texas Designation for Congregations as a Reproductive Freedom Congregation. And that designation times back to the belief that we can be doing something to change the long-term culture around abortion, because there is a narrative that is very prevalent that is the "faith narrative" about abortion that says abortion is murder, and in all circumstances you can't do that, and that the Bible says we can't do that.

Sonja Miller:
The truth is abortion is never mentioned in the Bible. The Bible doesn't speak to the issue of abortion. There are scripture passages that we can look at and extrapolate, but it never actually talks about abortion.

Sonja Miller:
So our Reproductive Freedom Congregation Designation is a way in which we are asking congregations to come together and create and hold the space within their own congregation to bring the stories of abortion and reproductive decision-making out of the shadows, because we don't talk about it. This is the thing we don't talk about. We don't talk about sex and we don't talk about politics, right? And those two things are at the heart of the abortion issue. And so we are asking congregations to create and hold that space to bring those stories out of the shadows, free shame, judgment, and stigma, so that we can listen to each other.

Sonja Miller:
George, one in three women, or one in four, depending on your age and when the statistics ... one in three or one in four women, younger women, one in four will have an abortion in their reproductive lives, which means in every congregation, the pews are filled with women who've had abortions or will have abortions. And that statistic cuts across every demographic, every faith tradition, every ... So it's just as a truth in our country. And those stories don't ever make it to the surface in our lives, in our congregations. Women hold those stories in secret.

Sonja Miller:
I was at a particular congregation in Dallas at the beginning of our launch for Reproductive Freedom Congregations. And I said those stories are held because of the shame, judgment and stigma in our culture around abortion. And there was a man who said, "There's no shame in abortion. There's shame in poverty."

Sonja Miller:
And I don't disagree with him. There is shame in poverty, but my response to him is, "We shame people. There isn't shame. We shame people in our culture who are poor, but if there were no shame around having an abortion, if we didn't tell that story and shame people, then the one in three women in this room," and there were over a hundred people in the room, "those women would be happy to tell their story, but not as single woman has said, 'oh, I'm raising my hand, and that's my story.'"

Sonja Miller:
And I was in an incredibly progressive, very active in reproductive rights, congregation.

Sonja Miller:
And so this issue of passing laws like SB8, they get legs because-

George Mason:
Silence.

Sonja Miller:
Yes, there's a culture of silence around this. And at Just Texas, we are asking congregations to join us in creating a movement, to eradicate the shame, judgment and stigma around our reproductive lives, because every single human has a reproductive story. And that's a story we don't tell. And as communities of faith, I think it's really important to realize that those decisions that we make as humans in our reproductive life are always intertwined, inexplicably intertwined with how we see ourselves in relationship to the Divine and to our faith community. So our faith story, our journey of faith, our story of faith is intertwined with our reproductive story. And so our Reproductive Freedom Congregation Movement is a way in which we are asking congregations to step into talking about this on a regular basis. And I think that is how we get to the person in the pew who is saying it's not right or left, but it isn't. It is, we all have those stories, and how do we create the space where we can share those stories and learn from each other, and also be able to live into our full selves?

George Mason:
You know, you mentioned the ability for those stories to be told moves us, changes us, allows us to consider other points of view that are being silenced right now. And, I'm taken by my partner, Rabbi Nancy Kasten whom you know in Faith Commons, she, as part of reformed Jewish tradition is an advocate for reproductive rights of women. And in Jewish tradition, life actually begins at birth, not at conception. And that's a deeply held religious view that is rarely shared in Christian churches today. And there are all sorts of reasons for that, but that's not where I was going with this.

George Mason:
What Nancy likes to say is, "Why should it be only women who are speaking and advocating for reproductive rights?" We have, of course, white people need to be allies along with people of color on the issue of racism. Straight people need to be allies along with LGBTQ persons on issues of sexual orientation and gender identity. And men need to be allies with women on matters of reproductive rights, but you don't see men organizing themselves or becoming deeply involved in this. This seems to be a woman's fight over and over again, isn't it?

Sonja Miller:
Yes. And you are so right. We need allies, but I think we also need to understand we're all reproductive beings. So men organizing around that, I mean, we're in this together in the full sense of the word, right? We're in this together. And, so yes, I think it is so important for men to embrace their own story of their reproductive life so that they can begin to understand. So you can begin to understand that it is not just a women's issue. It is a human issue.

George Mason:
You mean, men are responsible for reproduction? I thought that was really-

Sonja Miller:
Amazing, right?

George Mason:
... something women do, right? Yeah. I mean, I think that, that really is something that we, we need to keep raising. And that is that if you want to reduce unwanted pregnancies, men could be actually responsible about their sexuality and their sexual lives, too. This is not just about women who make choices that lead them to that. Those choices are being made by men as well.

Sonja Miller:
Yes, they are. And, choices and decisions, both of which I think are important here, and I see a distinction between those two words, but we as humans make those decisions and choices together. And, sometimes we talk about. Sometimes we engage in activity and sex without choice, and that's problematic as well.

Sonja Miller:
But, I think, yes, this is an issue that does affect all of us. And, and bills like, SB8, we can't separate out and say, "Okay, well, that's just women that affects." Women being able and having the ability to control their reproductive life and affects all of us in a deep way, because when women can make the decision about when to have children, it allows them to also make the decisions about how to be flourishing, how to make the most of themselves and do the most for the world. Right? And when we cut off that choice, we're hurting all of us.

George Mason:
Right. So in the few minutes we have remaining, one of the things we want to talk about in all of these conversations I'm having in the good politics time that we have here is how do people in the pew get involved? How do they become advocates in a way that operates in good faith, you might say? So good faith politics, there can be bad faith politics too, I would say. What would you say to people in the pew who are not used to being engaged in public life? What would you say about how to take first steps in becoming more engaged?

Sonja Miller:
Well, I would say everyone who listens to your podcast is taking a very good first step in how to become engaged. I think finding a place and an issue that is personal for you, and there are many. And finding an organization that lifts up that issue. And asking, "How can I be involved? What can I do?"

George Mason:
You might even get hired.

Sonja Miller:
You could even get hired. You could even get hired. And I say, you can take baby steps. There are small ways, there's some phone calls you could make there's meetings and talking. And I guess that's the most important thing, is for people to look at the six feet around them and say, "This is an important issue to me." And being willing to have those conversations with those who are the closest to you first. Those are the first steps in speaking out about what's important to you.

George Mason:
Terrific. Well, Sonja, thank you for the work that you do with Texas Freedom Network and with the faith community, for the journey of your own life, your faith life, your personal life, and the way it has interacted with your public advocacy, too. We're grateful for all that work. Look forward to being with you in the future.

Sonja Miller:
Thank you, George. It's been wonderful to be here with you today.

George Mason:
Take care.

Announcer:
Good God is created by Dr. George Mason, produced and directed by Jim White, social media coordination by Cameron Vickery. Good God, Conversations with George Mason is the podcast devoted to bringing you ideas about God and faith and the common good all material copyright 2021 by Faith Common.