wfn.org | Churches Urged to Repent of 'Sin' of Violence Against Women

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8-December-1998 
 
    Churches Urged to Repent of 'Sin' of Violence Against Women 
 
    by Stephen Brown 
    Ecumenical News International 
 
Harare, Zimbabwe--Member churches of the World Council of Churches (WCC) 
have been challenged to repent for violence against women and to declare 
such violence to be a sin. 
 
    A plenary session at the WCC's eighth assembly, which is meeting in 
Zimbabwe's capital, Harare, was told today 7 December by Bertrice Wood, a 
minister of the United Church of Christ in the United States, that the "one 
experience which women have in common with each other, regardless of their 
status in the church or society, is the experience of violence, in our 
homes, our societies and even our churches". 
 
    The plenary session was considering the results of the Ecumenical 
Decade of Churches in Solidarity with Women, which was launched by the WCC 
in 1988 to promote solidarity by churches with women. Wood co-moderated the 
Decade Festival, which was held in Harare immediately before the eighth 
assembly and marked the conclusion of the Ecumenical Decade. More than 1100 
women took part in the festival. 
 
    "Women know that violence against them, in whatever form, is a sin and 
call on the churches to take the bold step of stating so, just as the 
churches have ecumenically  denounced other social sins as being contrary 
to the very essence of the church, the body of Christ," Wood said. 
 
    A letter drawn up at the Decade Festival and submitted to the eighth 
assembly refers to violence against women, and also to women's "secret 
pain" of  "isolation, economic injustice, barriers to participation, 
racism, religious fundamentalism, ethnic genocide, sexual harassment, 
HIV/Aids and violence against women and children". 
 
    However the letter also listed a series of sensitive issues that "have 
implications for participation and which are difficult to address in the 
church community" - the ordination of women, abortion, divorce, divorce and 
"human sexuality in all of its diversity" - an oblique reference to 
homosexuality. 
 
    During today's plenary debate about the decade, Vsevolod Chaplin, from 
the Russian Orthodox Church, said that while he welcomed concern about the 
position of women in society - particularly given the economic conditions 
in eastern Europe, and the Commonwealth of Independent States, including 
Russia - "radical feminism is alien to Christianity". 
 
    Chaplin, who is an official in the Moscow Patriarchate's  Department of 
External Church Relations, criticised the ordination of women and 
"especially inclusive language which I personally regard as blasphemy". The 
ordination of women, he said, was one of the reasons why it was probable 
that "eucharistic unity is a dream which will never come true". 
 
    However, the Ecumenical Decade received the support of Orthodox 
Metropolitan Ambrosius of Oulu, Finland, who in a presentation to the 
assembly described the work of the decade "not as a threat, but as a 
positive method of action inside our churches". 
 
    "We gradually discovered that the decade was not a feminist movement - 
though such a movement probably has a role to play - but something that 
concerns the whole church, her self-understanding and ecclesial nature." 
 
    Asked at a press conference today about Chaplin's criticisms, Wood said 
that "too often women have become the point of contention in ecumenical 
discussions around church unity." She  added: "You can't have unity if you 
don't have the participation of more than 50 percent of your church 
members. 
 
    "When justice for women is held hostage to church unity, it is not 
church unity. It is not church unity when anybody is held hostage." Asked 
what it meant to declare violence against women to be a sin, Wood said that 
the ecumenical movement had declared racism to be a sin, since it was "in 
direct violation of God's intentions. So it is with sexism." 
 
    A group of more than 40 Roman Catholic women from 22 countries who 
participated in the Decade Festival have called on the Roman Catholic 
Church to "truly own the agenda of the [Ecumenical] Decade and to continue 
with its unfinished work", to encourage "the setting of local, national and 
international goals" and "to commit the necessary financial and other 
support to this project". In a statement distributed at the WCC's assembly 
in Harare, the group said that they "witnessed how the churches belonging 
to the WCC have been enriched by the evident emergence of the gifts of 
women during the Ecumenical Decade of Churches in Solidarity with Women". 

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