wfn.org | [ENS] Anglican women united globally in healing poverty's

["Matthew Davies" <mdavies@mail.epicom.org>]

Monday, February 28, 2005

Anglican women united globally in healing poverty's 'face-branding'

British theologian Jane Williams, wife of Archbishop of Canterbury,
offers
Lenten reflection in Los Angeles

By Pat McCaughan

ENS 022805-1

[ENS, Los Angeles] -- Anglican women are a unifying force worldwide
particularly as they continue to eradicate needless poverty and disease,
Jane Williams -- theologian and the wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury
--
said on a three-day visit to Southern California.

"We are God's beloved daughters and sons, and we must not be tempted to
let
anything destabilize that central fact of our being," Williams said
February
25 in Glendale, California, at the 110th Annual Meeting of the Episcopal
Church Women (ECW) in the Diocese of Los Angeles. (Full text posted
on-line
at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_59195_ENG_HTM.htm )

"Episcopal women have done great work, here in Los Angeles over the past
century, and elsewhere," Williams said. "You have discovered the joys
and
strengths of being women together. You have changed the face of poverty
and
low self-worth for very many people, in this country and elsewhere. You
should be justly proud of that record, and I know you will not stop now
...
a gathering like this makes me feel that we have the energy and the
commitment to do it, provided we do it together."

Welcomed to Los Angeles by diocesan ECW President Martha Estes and
Bishop J.
Jon Bruno, Williams was keynote speaker at the two-day conference, which
drew more than 200 women and men from various dioceses and provinces,
including national ECW President Harriet Neer.

In the planning for some two years, Williams' visit came the day that
the
world's Anglican Primates -- convened by her husband, Dr. Rowan
Williams,
spiritual leader of the world's 77 million Anglicans -- concluded their
week-long meeting in Northern Ireland.

Declining to comment directly on those deliberations or the recent
Windsor
Report, Williams did, in her address, ask: "At this critical time in our
church's life, is there anything that we as women can do to change
things,
as we discover who we are in the sight of God?"

She said she wrestled, while preparing her talk, to answer that question
honestly. "Everything I tried to say sounded stereotyped and false," she
continued. "It sounded like another kind of self-image that I was trying
to
impose upon women, rather than a way of looking to God for our reality.

"I do think," Williams said, "looking at all the magnificent women I
have
met from around the Anglican world, that women are still more focused on
building and maintaining relationships, rather than systems; that women
are
more interested in negotiating settlements than saving face, that women
can
still empathize with other women, simply because of our shared
womanhood.
But I have no idea if that is innate to our being, or just an accident
of
history."

International approach to life-and-death issues

A former professor of church doctrine and history at Trinity College,
Bristol, an Anglican seminary in the evangelical tradition, she noted
that
many of her women students are leaders in the Anglican Church in places
including Korea and the Congo.

"That is a pattern I see repeated everywhere I travel in the Anglican
world," she told the gathering. "Last year, I joined Anglican women from
all
over the world meeting to observe the United Nations' Commission on the
Status of Women. The issues of poverty, education, justice and safety
that
the U.N. is concerned about are all issues that these women could speak
about from their personal experience, and that they are involved in
doing
something about.

"Women running AIDS programs, women teaching and preaching, women in
government women holding families and communities together. The list is
endless. I am truly proud of what women are giving to the life of the
church."

March 8 is the annual observance of International Women's Day and will
be
marked by women's groups, including the U.N. Commission on the Status of
Women, meeting next week in New York, and with a March 6 international
forum
of Anglican women at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Commemorated
annually at the United Nations, March 8 is also designated as a national
holiday in many countries.

Yet, women are still hampered by such issues as poverty, sexism and
violence, Williams said.
"Women and their dependent children are still poorer, on average, than
men.
Women are still more likely to be left alone to bring up the children
that
they could not have produced without the help of men. Violence against
women
is terrifyingly high, and is a routine weapon in war. Despite the
growing
number of women's voices in public life, "women's issues" can still be
treated separately from the issues that are supposed to affect the whole
human race. Imagine a minister for men's issues, and you will see what I
mean," she told the gathering.

Poverty as 'face branding'

Noting that when Emperor Constantine became a Christian he outlawed the
face-branding of slaves and thieves because it marred the image of God
in
which they were made. Today, poverty is a modern-day equivalent to
face-branding, because it obscures God's image in others, she said.

"Our economic and social systems are designed to hide from us the fact
that
all over the world other human beings are dying, needlessly," Williams
told
the gathering. "Every day, women and children die of entirely
preventable
poverty. They die of disease and hunger when there are cures and food
enough
for all in the world. Of course, when something makes us notice the
plight
of the poor, we react with compassion and generosity. When we see their
faces on our TV and computer screens, we cannot conceal from ourselves
that
they are human beings as we are, and that their state could so easily
have
been ours."

Tragic natural disasters like the recent tsunami in South Asia
demonstrate
the connection between all people, as well as their ability to reach out
to
those in need, she added.

"The fantastic response of the American people and others to the victims
of
the tsunami shows that we do know that all people share a common
humanity,
and that if one is diminished, so are we all. Christians would call that
knowing that we are all made in the image of God. But the trouble is
that
for too much of the time, it is possible for us not to see the real
people,
the people just like us, who suffer day in and day out from an endemic
poverty that we in the rich West could prevent. Our way of life can only
be
sustained by keeping other people in poverty."

She compared today's poverty to apartheid, the repressive system of
racial
segregation that once existed in South Africa.

"I remember when we went to Southern Africa in the days of apartheid and
being really taken aback that the good Christian people -- white people
--
we stayed with often had no idea about the conditions in which their
black
maids and houseboys lived in the so-called townships," she said. "But
their
way of life depended on not knowing. If they had really seen conditions
in
the black townships, they would have had to change, or else admit that
they
were not, after all, good people.

"And that is how it is for us nowadays, rich Christians in a world of
poverty. This is the new slavery. We believe that we would fight for
justice, that we would always stand up for the rights of the minority,
the
oppressed, the persecuted. But our energy-hungry lives give the lie to
that."

Call to Lenten reflection, change

She challenged those at the conference to hear the small still voice of
God
during this Lenten season, revealing who we are and to embrace change.

She called on women to "use what is ours to give, now, and use it well.
Let
us take this opportunity, now, this Lent, to see ourselves as we are. We
are
utterly valuable, because we are God's children, and so we will go out
and
fight for the abolition of face-branding, wherever we come across it. We
will not allow our brothers and sisters to be branded by poverty, and
war
and hunger and death. We will shout with our longing to see their human
faces, made in the image of God, and allow them to see ours, too..

> that certainty, we can reach out to each other, and we can stand
against
darkness, and hinder it. I truly believe that as Anglican women, if we
will
believe what God has promised, we can stand as a great force of light
against the darkness of poverty and disease and needless death, and we
can
hinder it, well and truly."

--The Rev. Patricia McCaughan, senior correspondent for the Episcopal
News
Service, is associate rector of St. Mary's Church, Laguna Beach,
California,
and a former news editor with the Detroit News.

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