We Intend to Move Together

Abstract

The story of women's participation in the ecumenical movement can indeed be described as a pilgrimage of justice and peace, as well as a story of mission. From the earliest days of ecumenism – whether in its formal, institutional structures or in the lively work and witness of local communities around the globe – questions about women's role in the churches have been intertwined with questions about the social, economic, and cultural forces that affect women's lives. With changing emphasis shaped by particular time and context, the consistent thread in the journey has been a will to respond to the call to participate in God's mission in the world in ways that contribute to wholeness and fullness of life for all God's people and to the flourishing of creation. While not always named or recognized as such, gender justice has been at the heart of this journey. Consistently, women have been seeking ecumenical space in which the diverse experiences of women, their voices and visions, and the conditions of injustice and oppression that have been the lot of many women around the world can be lifted up and addressed. And in that space, women have claimed their own agency of resistance and transformation. The story of women's work and witness in the World Council of Churches (WCC) is only one facet of this journey. Each church family and world communion could tell its own story and each local context has had times of ecumenical witness and action – often connected with global programs, but also representative of particular local needs and issues. Nevertheless, the WCC has played a key role since its inception in linking ecumenical women in local contexts with international networks and global currents. A review of WCC programmes and structures committed to the journey of gender justice reveals both the rich heritage of ecumenical women's work and the challenges and gaps that continue. In the 1940s, when the WCC was still in the process of formation, Twila Cavert, a Young Women Christian Association (YWCA) leader from the US, together with other women, gained the support of WCC leaders for a pre-assembly women's meeting and a survey of woman leaders worldwide about their vision for the work of women in the whole church.1 The questionnaire netted detailed replies from women in 58 countries, and prompted the Reformed Church of France to request that the question of women's role be placed on the agenda of the first assembly in Amsterdam in 1948. There, the study report on “The Life and Work of Women in the Church” was received and its recommendation for a permanent commission to undertake ecumenical inquiry into issues related to women's ministry was accepted. Susannah Herzel writes of the significance of these first steps for the participation of women in churches around the world: “So the infiltration had begun. Member churches of the ecumenical movement had agents of change in their midst, and the troubling questions would be increasingly difficult to ignore.”2 The material generated by the study was developed into a book by Kathleen Bliss, published in 1952 as The Service and Status of Women in the Churches.3 Interpreting the reports through the framework of women's various types of service – voluntary, full-time and professional, ordained, and participation in church governance – Bliss examined the contributions and limitations of each area of endeavour. She asked whether the churches were making the best use of women's gifts, or helping women to participate as Christians in the changes taking place in society as a whole. Writing during a period of flux in women's public and private roles, Bliss urged churches to recognize the implications of changing family and employment patterns. She asserted that “what is needed is … an imaginative act of understanding … [of the] … revolutionary change in the place of women in society.”4 These reports from around the world provided evidence that responses to women's ministries ranged from indifference to active opposition. For Bliss, such attitudes represented a “debasement of theology” and a diminishment in the wholeness of the church and its service to the community.5 And let no one think that this is a mere matter of organizational adjustment, which can be put right by a little more imagination on the part of the masculine members of the Church. There is no doubt that more imagination is required, but the real question is whether the Churches have really faced up to the basic tenets of their own faith concerning the relationships of men and women in the fellowships of the Church of Christ.6 In 1955, Madeleine Barot, first director of the newly renamed Department on the Cooperation of Men and Women in Church and Society (hereafter, the Department), asserted that theological contributions to the question of women's place had so far been inadequate, and affirmed a theology of the relationship between men and women that would reflect a kingdom vision as a standard for Christian community.7 Concern for women's life, witness, and work in church and society, linked with commitment to the cooperation of women and men, has marked the WCC's approach to women and justice. At the Evanston assembly in 1954, the Department's mandate was defined as international and regional consultations; national study commissions; encouragement of theological study; cooperation with ecumenical and secular movements such as the Student Christian Movement, YWCA, and the UN; and resource publication. Consultations in the 1950s and 1960s dealt with such diverse topics as partnership; ministry and ordination; women's work; and marriage, family planning, divorce, and celibacy in the context of changing sexual ethics. Herzel notes the pioneering significance of these explorations of human sexuality, which engaged women and men in discussions previously prohibited. She also highlights alliances such as that made with the International Labour Organization (ILO) around “the dilemma of the employed family woman.”8 Also significant was the attention given to issues for women in Asia, Africa, and the South Pacific.9 Although the Department acknowledged a sense of marginalization in the overall structure of the WCC, work continued in this direction through the Uppsala assembly in 1968.10 During the 1970s a variety of factors converged to change the Department's approach and challenge the council in new ways. According to Herzel, when Brigalia Bam of South Africa joined the staff in 1967, she brought a new emphasis on solidarity and on the voices and witness of women from the South. At the same time, newly emerging feminist voices gave “articulation, analysis and authority” to the conviction that liberation of women was a primary goal. In 1974 the WCC sponsored a consultation in Berlin on “Sexism in the 1970s,” prior to the UN International Women's Year and the WCC's 5th Assembly, held in Nairobi in 1975. At this event, sexism was recognized as oppression, “a deficiency in human relations and an evil to be resisted and uprooted.”11 Mercy Oduyoye suggests that some churches greeted the consultation with relief because they saw the focus on women's economic and social development and human rights as non-threatening and “non-theological.”12 However, there were strong voices at the consultation that linked women's oppression with dehumanizing theologies and patriarchal church structures. Policy recommendations included concerted action to increase women's participation in the 1975 Nairobi assembly, and a call for an integrated study and action program on issues basic to women's lives.13 At the assembly in Nairobi there were significantly increased numbers of women delegates and a plenary devoted to “Women in a Changing World.” Women's absence from decision-making structures was named as an obstacle to church unity and churches were urged to engage in theological and biblical work drawing on the experiences and insights of women.14 In the years following the assembly, there were a series of consultations on women as church leaders and theologians. These consultations brought forth insights on women as agents of change; the integration of personal, political and theological reflection; and the foundations of a uniquely feminist theological discourse. Work with rural women and a women's consultation on human rights contributed to greater awareness of the intersections of gender, race, and class, and challenged European and North American women with “the history of ‘sister’ complicity in the subjection of fellow-sisters.”15 The sub-unit on women under the directorship of Brigalia Bam also mobilized the European Christian women to ensure solidarity with each other by forming an ecumenical network. The Ecumenical Forum of European Christian Women (EFECW) was formed in 1982. The worldwide study on the Community of Women and Men in the Church, which had been recommended in Berlin and Nairobi, took place from 1978 to 1981. As a joint project of the Faith and Order Commission and the Sub-unit on Women, it was envisioned as an ecclesiological study, aimed at “exploring from a biblical and theological perspective the origin and nature of our roles as women and men” in order to “come to new levels of appreciation, cooperation, and mutual respect in Christian life and thought.”16 Women and men were invited to form study groups to reflect on their experiences and visions of inclusive community. The WCC provided a study book that invited responses from life-experience to questions about personal life and culture, church teachings, and church structures. With adaptations and translations for many contexts, an estimated 65,000 copies were distributed to hundreds of groups. There were also regional and specialized consultations (on the ordination of women, theological anthropology, and the authority of scripture in relation to women), and a final international event in Sheffield, England, from which were forwarded recommendations to the WCC central committee.17 The community study was perceived as a process of locally based theological work in which “the authentic voices of women should be heard, posing their own questions and speaking out of their own experience, in their own language and thought-forms.”18 Constance Parvey, who worked as staff for the study, affirmed in her reflections after Sheffield that “a new kind of listening took place that touched many levels of our lives and from which no one could turn away.”19 Addressing the Sheffield consultation, WCC General Secretary Philip Potter described what he had read in the local and regional reports from the study as “incredible pain and agony” and “extraordinary love and patient endurance and perseverance.”20 Parvey also acknowledged that while the study's intention was to contribute to renewal of the whole church, it was encouraged and taken up largely by women.21 Parvey concluded that the study's outcome was a theology of church in which the community envisioned “learns to serve, share, and celebrate in solidarity with all,” a vision with profound implications for understandings of participation and authority.22 Thus, when the recommendations from Sheffield were presented to the central committee meeting in Dresden in 1981, there was heated debate around those which raised the question of women's ordination, and those which called for 50 percent representation of women in WCC leadership. The central committee finally affirmed that “the principle of women and men in partnership means equal participation,” and should be “a goal towards which we move.” Questions of identity, power, and authority in scripture and tradition, as well as of language and imagery, also figured prominently in the Sheffield recommendations.23 Although the study was primarily ecclesiological in focus, Anna Karin Hammar notes that issues of justice related to social, political, economic, and cultural change were “underlined again and again” in regional reports, renewing the need for an integrated approach that would recognize that “structures of injustice and discrimination are theological issues.”24 The report of the Sheffield working group on “Justice and Freedom in New Community” recognized racism, sexism, classism, and “all other forms of domination, rejection and marginalization” as “a demonic symphony of oppression.”25 The conference recommended attending to women's legal, civil, and human rights in WCC programmes, and study and action in relation to the arms race and prostitution tourism. Sexuality, violence, and marriage and partnership were other areas recommended for study. These recommendations were accepted at Dresden, and the central committee committed itself to further consideration of the relationship of classism, racism, and sexism.26 The 1983 WCC assembly in Vancouver was notable for the strength of women's voices from many regions and situations, pointing toward a theology of life grounded in the experiences of human communities. The assembly's Programme Guidelines Committee declared that women's concerns and perspectives should “become integral to the work of all WCC Units and Sub-units.” They called for continued monitoring of churches' responses to the community study and discussion of women's participation in the life of the church. In addition, the committee recommended “a systematic and contextual study of the social, religious, cultural, economic, and political causes and consequences of sexism” including “an examination of women and work, women in poverty, violence against women, sex tourism, and women as initiators and participants in social change.”27 This direction was interpreted by the Sub-Unit on Women in Church and Society through programme emphases on participation; on justice, peace, and the integrity of creation; and on women doing theology and sharing spirituality.28 The pattern of networking, consultation, and resource production continued. In addition to workshops in many different regions, there was an interfaith project on human sexuality and human relations; a project on young women doing theology; and a global consultation, through the Programme to Combat Racism, on women under racism and casteism. The Sub-Unit also had significant involvement in Forum 85, the non-governmental organizations conference held in conjunction with the United Nations World Conference closing the UN Decade for Women (1976–1985).29 When the central committee meeting in 1985 received the report of those who had participated in the closing events of the UN Decade, it responded with a recommendation urging churches “to eliminate teachings and practices which discriminate against women as a Christian response to the forward looking strategies” from the Nairobi conference.30 The Sub-unit on Women also undertook a survey to evaluate the responsiveness of the churches to the concerns of the UN Decade. The Sub-unit reported in 1987 that their survey of 178 women from 74 countries and 105 churches indicated little engagement with the UN Decade, and concluded that rather than offering leadership in matters of justice for women, the churches were often lagging behind. Though the churches had made commitments to hear the voices of the excluded, it was clear that, with a few exceptions, in most of the world's churches the voices of women continued to be muted and their experiences and gifts ignored. Empowering women to challenge oppressive structures in the global community, their country, and their church. Affirming – through shared leadership and decision-making, theology and spirituality – the decisive contributions of women in churches and communities. Giving visibility to women's perspectives and actions in the work and struggle for justice, peace and the integrity of creation. Enabling the churches to free themselves from racism, sexism and classism; from teachings and practices that discriminate against women. Encouraging the churches to take actions in solidarity with women.32 Conscious of both the progress and the disappointments of the past, affirming that women are “an integral part of the body of Christ and of the human community, and no … an ‘interest group,’ ”33 the WCC invited the member churches, and any others who might choose to participate, into a decade of actions of solidarity and justice – actions that would recognize that the position of women is a theological issue, a question of how to live out our faith in the God of creation. During the Ecumenical Decade of Churches in Solidarity with women, we as a church will rise up and identify the obstacles to women's full and active participation in church and society. We will work to remove the obstacles. We will affirm women's perspectives and contributions. We will pluck up and break down, build and plant. We will participate with God in transforming the world. We will say to each other, We will roll the stone away.34 In the ensuing months, events to launch the Decade were held all over the world, in local, national, and regional ecumenical fora. In many cases these included commitments of support voiced by church leaders. In the “facilitating and enabling” role identified for the council, an international monitoring group was created and a variety of resources were prepared.35 A newsletter, Decade Link, was established to report on Decade activities in various regions and on events in the churches and world that reflected Decade aims. While most work of the Decade took place in local contexts, the WCC also provided opportunities for the perspectives, experiences, and struggles of women to be addressed in regional or global discussions. Several moments in this global networking stand out as making visible at a global level some of the dynamics and challenges that Decade participants in local contexts would also encounter. At the 7th Assembly of the WCC, held in Canberra, Australia, in 1991, Korean theologian Chung Hyun Kyung lifted up ancient cries for justice and peace, including Asian women's and Aboriginal spiritualties, in an evocative plenary address that ended with a call to be open to the Holy Spirit's “wild rhythm of life.”36 Reactions on the floor of the assembly ranged from awe to hostility, and resulted in a special plenary discussion. This forum demonstrated the deep fear of those who believe that expanding imagery and language beyond the bounds of orthodoxy profoundly threatens the integrity of the Christian tradition. For many women at the assembly, this address – and the response – was a vivid expression of the visions and struggles motivating the Decade. As Pauline Webb has affirmed, the Canberra assembly was for many women an experience “of pain as much as of joy, of despair as much as of hope.”37 Energized by Chung's address, women shared stories of both suffering and hope in a Decade plenary and in the community of “Women's Space.” They also raised suspicion of what lay ahead: a decade of “women in solidarity with women” that many insisted could do little to change the church. The assembly did adopt recommendations for more visible expression of Decade goals by the WCC and resolute action by the churches, yet it included fewer women in leadership. It rejected systems of domination and recognized the violence women experience, but failed to specify action on violence against women in its recommendations, even though incidents of harassment and sexual assault took place at the assembly.38 One outcome of global networking during the Decade was Sisters in the Struggle to Eliminate Racism and Sexism – SISTERS – a network established under the auspices of the Women Under Racism programme. The network linked black, indigenous, and ethnic minority women in an exchange of experiences, solidarity, and concrete action.39 Global linkages also encompassed international Anglican and Orthodox conferences, a variety of country-to-country exchange visits, and such other events as the Re-Imagining Conference in Minneapolis in 1993, and WCC participation in the UN World Conference of Women in Beijing in 1995. These global connections were uniquely highlighted when the “Living Letters” project was conceived as a process to evaluate the Decade at its mid-point in 1993. A meeting of regional representatives in Geneva identified the need to “give the Decade back to the churches” that had voted to implement it and suggested sending “living letters” in the manner of the apostle Paul.40 In an unprecedented action for the WCC, teams of visitors were sent to churches, councils, Decade committees, and community partners around the world with the goal of hearing the stories of churches' and people's involvement in the Decade, and discerning directions for the second half of the Decade. Teams visited “no fewer than 330 churches, 68 national councils of churches and approximately 650 women's groups and organizations.” Their reports were compiled in a document titled Living Letters that records the teams' discoveries of women's faithfulness and determination; their struggles against violence, poverty, and exclusion; and the signs of hope and frequent occasions of discouragement in the search for solidarity and transformative action from the churches. Acknowledging the need for continuing evaluation and the “ongoing, dynamic nature of Decade aims and goals,” the report concludes that the decision to launch the Decade “set in motion a … still unfolding … movement of reflection and action with transformative power.”41 The Decade closed with “Visions Beyond 1998,” an end-of-Decade festival held in Harare, Zimbabwe, prior to the 8th Assembly of the WCC. At the festival, delegates wrote a letter to the churches, calling them to move from solidarity to accountability. The letter laid out visions and commitments to carry forward.42 These included “a vision of a world of Economic Justice, where poverty cannot be tolerated or justified, where the peoples of the south and east will flourish with the peoples of the north and west, where a balance of power and wealth is restored, and where women and children no longer endure enforced and debilitating labour.” Festival participants also called for “the elimination of all violence in various forms (sexual, religious, structural, physical, spiritual, military), and the Culture of Violence, especially as they affect the life and dignity of women.”43 The letter was received and translated into assembly recommendations, including support for actions and policies relating to violence (incorporating the statement that “violence against women is a sin”), economic justice, racism, and “inclusion.” The letter urged continued monitoring, consultation, and reporting, recognizing an ongoing need for the WCC and its member churches “to involve themselves in deep conversation, conversion, prayer and action” in relation to Decade issues.44 In the years since the end of the Decade, women around the world have continued to journey together in the search for justice for women in church and society. Although the assessment that the Decade had largely been a Decade of women in solidarity with women was offered as a critique of the failure of the churches to transform structures and theologies that contribute to women's subordination, there was an increasing acknowledgment that women-to-women solidarity was empowering women with a new sense of their own authority “to be church,” to speak, and to act. This insight was underlined through “Being Church: Women's Voices and Visions,” a study process inviting reflections on metaphors and models; word, sacrament, and liturgy; community, diversity, and justice; and partnership and the exercise of power. A series of regional consultations was held from 2000 to 2005 and several volumes recording these reflections were published.45 The powerful witness of the Decade's call to break the silence around the experiences of violence pervading women's lives was carried into the WCC's subsequent “decade” – the Decade to Overcome Violence (DOV), 2001–2010. Strategies to maintain the issue of gender-based violence as a conscious dimension of DOV included a 2001 consultation that agreed on ten principles for action: the Dundee Principles. The principles call for attention to Bible and theology, educational strategies, language, practices for safety and empowerment, affirmation of diversity, and “all issues that concern violence against women and its consequences for individuals, faith communities and societies.”46 Other initiatives included Streams of Grace, a report on continuing work in the churches on violence against women, and Cries of Anguish, Cries of Hope: 40 Days to End Violence against Women, a 2010 on-line Lenten series co-produced with the WSCF and World YWCA. At the 2011 International Ecumenical Peace Convocation in Jamaica, which closed the DOV, attention was called to the continuing need for intentional work to incorporate women's experiences and contributions as “empowered mentors and actors” in all aspects of the search for a “just peace.”47 Asserting once again that “violence against women and children must be named as sin,” the convocation's closing message also acknowledged “the intersection of multiple injustices and oppressions” and urged churches to “promote human rights, gender justice, climate justice, economic justice, unity and peace.”48 Economic justice, another strong thread in ecumenical women's pilgrimage, has continued to claim women's attention as the churches have joined in a number of initiatives aimed at analyzing and transforming the interlocking dynamics of the global market economy, increasing militarization and ecological destruction in a global system of power identified as “Empire.” A network of women economists and church women offered a feminist ethic and model of caring economy to the WCC's Alternative Globalization Addressing People and Earth (AGAPE) process, and women brought a strong gender analysis to regional consultations on Poverty, Wealth and Ecology.49 As this work was brought into focus in the statement on an “economy of life,” which informed the 2013 Busan assembly's call for a pilgrimage of justice and peace, there was both recognition of the contributions of feminist theologies and economics, and affirmation that “[t]ransformation must embrace those who suffer the most from systemic marginalization, such as people in poverty, women, Indigenous Peoples and persons living with disabilities. Nothing planned without them is for them.”50 These more recent examples of ecumenical women's engagement point to new directions and models that are rooted in the experiences and learnings of each phase of this journey. Increasingly, there is recognition of the intersectionality of gender justice work, not only in terms of the multiplicative and interstructured effect of marginalization and injustice in relation to various categories of identity, but also in the importance of integrating gender analysis into every aspect of the thematic program work of the church globally and locally. Recognizing that “women in solidarity with women” during the Decade was only ever a partial solidarity in which too many voices remained silent or excluded, the challenge for ecumenical women and churches is to demonstrate a more complex solidarity in which alliances across difference produce new communities and networks of faith and struggle. Thus, while the Porto Alegre (2006) and Busan (2013) assemblies have continued the tradition of pre-assembly women's meetings, and the new model of “ecumenical conversations” has included a focus on gender-justice work, there has been little specific plenary attention to the role and status of women. Rather, women's voices and visions have been interwoven into a variety of thematic presentations, representing a growing tendency to address issues of gender justice in the context of wider alliances and social movements. One of the insights of these decades of work on violence and poverty is that the liberal ideology of a split between public and private realms has often functioned in churches to silence critique and encourage denial of public accountability for the effects of our theologies and of responsibility for active political engagement – especially in addressing gender injustice. Overcoming this tendency calls Christians to participate in building civil society in the company of “unlikely coalitions of justice-seeking friends.”51 Letty Russell wrote of a “principle of connection” that is “worked out in terms of the way in which faith, feminism, church, and world come together.” Feminist ecclesiology, she stated, “asks how to make connections across dividing lines of religion, culture, race, class, gender, and sexual orientation so that church and world become connected as a circle of friends.”52 In this spirit, the creation of alliances of solidarity includes both public witness and an ecumenical praxis that places a priority on locally embodied, globally connected commitments to justice and social transformation. Ecumenical women moving together on a pilgrimage of justice and peace do so with attention to the specific and concrete issues of women's lives in church and society: exclusion, exploitation, poverty, and violence rooted in power structures of domination and submission, and experienced in particular ways in each context. At the same time, we name and celebrate women's prophetic witness in theologies that affirm diverse experiences of the holy – and recognize the holy in a wider range of human experience, calling for acceptance, respect, and transformation in light of those experiences. A pilgrimage that integrates commitment to gender justice into every dimension of ecumenical endeavour offers the promise of a more faithful ecumenical movement, in which engaging the gifts and challenges of difference becomes a vital aspect of our mission and the unity we seek. Gail Allan is Coordinator of Ecumenical, Interchurch and Interfaith Relations in the Church in Mission Unit of the United Church of Canada. She holds a doctorate in Ethics from Emmanuel College of the Toronto School of Theology.