wfn.org | Festival at WCC Harare meeting supports women in church

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@wfn.org>]

The Episcopal Church
http://www.dfms.org/contents.html
Daphne Mack <dmack@dfms.org>
98-2276

	(ENS)  With song, dance, theater and thoughtful reflection, 
more than 1,000 women and 30 men from around the world who had 
gathered in Harare, Zimbabwe, for the World Council of Churches' 
four-day Ecumenical Festival explored the many ways they could 
continue work for justice for women, both in the church and in the 
world.	
The huge gathering marked the end in 1998 of the Ecumenical 
Decade of Churches in Solidarity with Women. What many women found 
during those 10 years was solidarity among themselves, but 
continuing frustration with churches that have been slow to 
acknowledge their full participation. But after working for 10 
years to discover their common ground, most agreed that they 
must-and will-push harder for change.
"We can no longer just call for solidarity," Dr. Musimbi 
Kanyoro, general secretary of the World Young Women's Christian 
Association, told the group at the opening of the festival on 
November 27, "but rather we need to be part of a redefining and 
redesigning process for all the changes we hoped for during this 
Decade..We will not accept our gifts being minimized: we will lift  
up all the gifts of the people of God."
	By the end of the festival, on November 30, the gathering 
had produced a letter to the WCC's Eighth Assembly, scheduled to 
begin meeting the next day, calling on the WCC's 332 member 
churches to declare that violence against women is a sin, commit 
resources to "restore (women) to their rightful place in God's 
household," and denounce economic injustice and racism.
	The festival was filled with symbols-such as a jar that 
held water from different countries representing the tears of 
women-and with ceremony, including drumming, dancing, and 
celebrations of the many positive stories of women worldwide.

A continent of hope
	Dr. Mercy Oduyoye of Ghana, a former deputy general 
secretary of the WCC, was acknowledged for her work in theology. 
Noting that Africa is "a continent of hope," she declared, "God 
makes a way where there is no way."
	She described the first African Theological Conference in 
1980, which led to a community of theological study for women. 
"We have declared ourselves theologians," said Oduyoye. "We 
refuse to be told there are no theologians in Africa because there 
are no (male) theologians." She is currrently establishing an 
ecumenical institute in Ghana.
	Esther Inayat, volunteer president of the recently formed 
Women's Synodical of the Church of Pakistan, reported that 
participants in her group had convinced the church's synod to have 
women delegates, with full voting rights, from every diocese of 
the church. The synodical also now has its own office, with a 
full-time coordinator and two assistants.
	But even as people cheered the increasing participation of 
women in church governance, there still was concern that churches 
in general lacked full commitment to recognizing the needs of 
women. The Rev. Dr. Konrad Raeiser, general secretary of the WCC, 
later committed himself to pressing for the changes that need to 
be made.
	In other parts of the festival, participants decried 
violence against women. Sharing stories and many tears, they 
joined in a "hearing" on violence that eventually revealed 
frustration with male-dominated church structures that they said 
have long refused to take women's experience seriously.
	After several tales of physical abuse suffered by women 
around the world, a New Zealand clergywoman told of another kind 
of abuse-that of her bishop who had upheld her forced resignation 
from a church job, labeling as a "personal threat" her request 
for an evaluation of the situation.
	"To those who look at me the metaphorical bruises do not 
show," she said. "Yet from the inside the `bruises' have become 
disabling. The face of the institution is still smiling 
benevolently, the words from its painted mouth are still sweet."
	While incorporating calls for action that would deal with 
some of these injustices cited by women, the document eventually 
approved also called on churches and ecumenical groups to demand 
cancellation of debts owed by the poorest nations, work for 
changes in laws that now exclude women from property and other 
rights, work to ensure equal pay for men and women, break the 
links between exploitation of the earth and economic growth, and 
challenge the links between militarism, the arms trade and global 
economic institutions.

--This story was compiled from reports on the Festival by Ann 
Delorey, a Roman Catholic who is legislative director of the 
Washington, D.C., office of Church Women United, and Margaret 
Koehler, a Southern Baptist who serves as ecumenical action chair 
for CWU in Georgia. Both were CWU delegates to the Festival.