wfn.org | Women

[Sheila MESA <smm@wcc-coe.org>]

World Council of Churches
Press Release
For Immediate Use
13 September 1997

CENTRAL COMMITTEE     No.   5

CHURCHES URGED TO FIGHT VICTIMISATION OF WOMEN

Women s pain and unrealised potential were presented before the World
Council of Churches  (WCC) Central Committee Saturday (14 September)
in a progress report on the Ecumenical Decade of Churches in Solidarity
with Women, which ends next  year.  The 156 strong committee, meeting
in Geneva, was given snapshots from the decade s latest project, "Living
Letters".  This was a programme of visits by small teams to practically all
the 330 member churches of the WCC, to highlight women s experiences
 and potential for a full role within the church and world.

The Committee was told that by October 1996, 75 "Living Letters" teams,
totalling 200 women and men, had also visited 68 national councils of
churches and 650 women s groups.  When the teams  experiences were
brought together, the Committee heard, "the overriding theme is the cry
for justice for women in both church and society, and the central issues
over and again are the reality of violence against women and the need
for economic justice".  Churches were challenged to help to change
attitudes towards women as the especial victims of violence, racism and
poverty, and to afford them equal opportunity in theological education
and ordained ministry.  

But one of the WCC s six presidents warned against assuming that
empowering women  meant making them experts in the dominant ethos
of meetings, official positions,  committees and administration.  "Their
power," said Mrs Priyanka Mendis of Sri Lanka, "is their resilience, their
ability to survive against all odds."  In the biblical vision of  paradise, the
lion shall eat straw like the ox, "so it s the powerful that take on the
characteristics of the powerless".  Mrs Mendis added: "It is not that
women should take part in decision making as it happens presently,
rather it is decision making that should change, and begin happening
where ordinary women, and ordinary men, live and work."

The focus on women s issues came in a session that frequently echoed
with the sound of drums and the voice of the Kenyan poet Bantu
Mwaura, as he roamed the conference hall in multi coloured robes
between the speeches, moving Committee members with songs and
stories to laughter, rhythmic clapping and silent absorption.

His presence illustrated the session s other main theme, "Theology of
Life".  The Committee was urged to link belief with experience, and
intellect with emotion.  An example had been a WCC event near Nairobi,
held in the form of a "sokoni", the Swahili word for marketplace. More
than 300 people met for a week in round huts with thatched roofs and no
walls, to consider topics presented in informal talks, conversation and
colourful artefacts. 

The Rev. Dr Margot Kaessmann of Germany told the Central Committee
that through the sokoni, "the global agenda was discussed among the
local people".  It was also a powerful symbol of what the church might
be: a community of lovers of life.  "The minister sitting next to the street
child, the refugee woman from Africa next to the professor of theology
from the US, all sitting in an open circle, no hierarchy possible and
anybody can join."  She contrasted this with the reality of our times:
"People talk everywhere in talk shows about the most intimate issues  
but they do not talk  with  one another."

This symbol brought together the two themes of solidarity with women
and theology of life, said Dr Kaessmann, in which there was the vision
of: "the church as a safe space where women are encouraged to speak
instead of being silenced.  They speak with women and men about
childbirth and menstruation, about the loss of a child and abortion, about
the joy of breast feeding and about rape   that is, about the facts of
giving, nurturing and losing life".  Concern for the realities of life needed
to be "at the centre of the encounter of God s people."

**********
The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of churches, now 330, in
more than 100 countries in all continents from virtually all Christian
traditions.  The Roman Catholic Church is not a member church but
works cooperatively with the WCC.  The highest governing body is the
Assembly, which meets approximately every seven years.  The WCC
was formally inaugurated in 1948 in Amsterdam, Netherlands.  Its staff is
headed by general secretary Konrad Raiser from the Evangelical Church
in Germany.

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