wfn.org | 1,100 Christian Women Celebrate Decade of Church Solidarity

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4-January1999 
98401 
 
    1,100 Christian Women Celebrate 
    Decade of Church Solidarity 
 
    by Stephen Brown 
    Ecumenical News International 
 
HARARE, Zimbabwe-A major international gathering of Christian women has 
opened in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, with a warning that 
discrimination against women threatens the unity of churches. 
 
    More than 1,100 women and 30 men from around the world are attending 
the gathering, called the "Decade Festival: Visions beyond 1998," which 
began on Nov. 27 and marks the conclusion of the Ecumenical Decade of 
Churches in Solidarity with Women, launched in 1988 by the World Council of 
Churches to encourage churches to look at their structures, their teachings 
and their practices, and to make a commitment to the full participation of 
women. 
 
    The gathering is particularly significant because it comes on the eve 
of the WCC's eighth assembly, opening in Harare on Dec. 3 and bringing 
together representatives of the WCC's 332 Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox 
churches. The Ecumenical Decade will be a focus during the assembly 
deliberations, and the Decade Festival is drawing up a series of challenges 
for action by the churches which will be presented to the assembly. 
 
    Speaking at the start of the festival, the coordinator of the 
Ecumenical Decade, Aruna Gnanadason, an Indian working at WCC headquarters 
in Geneva, warned of "real anxiety" among women "that now the [Ecumenical] 
Decade is over, the churches will heave a sigh of relief that 
this project is finally over, so that they can move on to other business." 
 
    "The challenge to this festival and from here to the [WCC] assembly and 
then to the churches is to ensure that the solidarity we seek is 
sustained," she told the gathering. 
 
    "We now have to emphasise that issues such as the economic exclusion of 
millions of women and the demands that somehow women have to keep 
themselves and their families alive, violence against women that tears the 
fabric of our families, our societies and even our churches, or 
racism and xenophobia that keeps even us as women divided -- are in fact 
ecclesiological challenges ... these are all concerns that threaten the 
unity of the churches -- the very being of the church," she said. 
 
    Gnanadason pointed out that "some issues relating to women's ministries 
or issues related to sexuality have been considered divisive and have even 
threatened to tear the ecumenical movement and churches apart." 
 
    There is a wide range of views among the WCC's member churches on 
matters such as the ordination of women, feminist theology, and human 
sexuality.  Many of the WCC's Protestant and Anglican churches ordain women 
as ministers, and in some cases as bishops.  However, some of 
the WCC's  member churches, including the Orthodox churches, are deeply 
concerned about liberal attitudes to human sexuality, the ordination of 
women and inclusive language in church liturgies. 
 
    "That women are once too often at the center of controversy is 
unfortunate -- I think I can speak for you all when I say that this is not 
what we as women want," Gnanadason said.  "And, additionally, it is 
regrettable that during this decade there have been some vicious attacks on 
women who have the courage to `step out' of traditionally acceptable 
boundaries so as to reimagine society, family, community, God and Jesus." 
 
    Asked later at a press conference to elaborate further on the attacks, 
Gnanadason said that she did not wish to name individuals, but that "in 
every corner of the world I meet women expressing their deep concern about 
violence suffered at the hands of the church." 
 
    She told journalists that "increasingly women are feeling that there 
are limits to [their] solidarity [with the church]." 
 
    Also speaking at the opening of the Decade Festival, the WCC's general 
secretary, Konrad Raiser, praised the Ecumenical Decade as an "innovative 
source" for ways of "mobilizing people in the ecumenical movement." 
 
    Although there had been "some disillusionment that it has not been 
possible to mobilize churches and their leaderships into the full 
solidarity with women," Raiser said, the Ecumenical Decade had "made the 
voice of all women audible in our churches." 
 
    The Ecumenical Decade and the Decade Festival were an "essential part 
of the search for a vision and profile of the ecumenical movement in the 
21st century," he said, adding that the commitment to solidarity with women 
was "central to our ecumenical vocation" and "as basic as the 
struggle against racism. 
 
    "The implications may be as decisive in the years ahead as with the 
struggle against racism in the 1970s," Raiser said. 

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