wfn.org | Ruth Duck, LaVerne McCain Gill receive UCC Brown Awards

[powellb@ucc.org]

United Church of Christ
General Synod Newsroom
Saturday, July 12, 2003
newsroom@ucc.org
http://www.ucc.org

By Pamela June Webb

The Rev. Ruth C. Duck and the Rev. LaVerne McCain Gill received the 2003
Antoinette Brown Awards presented Saturday during the Women in Ministry
Luncheon at General Synod 24. The awards, presented every two years,
recognize the contributions of outstanding women in ministry.

Duck, known widely for her creative use of hymnody, is professor of worship
at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Chicago. Gill, a justice
advocate, author, journalist and public commentator, is the first woman and
the first African American to serve as pastor of the historic Webster
United Church of Christ in Dexter, Mich.

The Rev. John H. Thomas, UCC General Minister and President, offered words
of appreciation to the honorees. "Rev. LaVerne McCain Gill, your deep
Christian faith and desire to seek freedom and justice for all people
affirms your full participation as a woman in ministry," he said, and "Rev.
Ruth C. Duck, you have imagined in new ways for us the nature and poetry of
prayer, reminding us of the responsibility of the church to make faith new
to each generation." Thomas also reaffirmed the UCC's longstanding
commitment to women in ministry.

Davida Foy Crabtree, Connecticut Conference Minister, was the luncheon's
featured speaker. "We are in a time when women's progress is under serious
demise and attack. I've gone through my own mourning stage and I'm getting
back in touch with my rage. If I did not, Antoinette, would call me back."

Ordained in 1853 as a minister in the Congregational Church (one of the
UCC's predecessor bodies), Antoinette Brown was the first woman in the
United States to be ordained into the Christian ministry.

Crabtree said she lacked women clergy role models when she was discerning
her call to ministry. "I had never encountered an ordained woman, and in
the face of so much opposition to my call, I began to look for them," she
said.

Crabtree said the stories of Brown's trail blazing ministry encouraged her,
because Brown sought to speak the truth in the midst of profound
opposition. Crabtree said, "Antoinette's words speak to us today, 'There
were angry men confronting me and I caught the flashing of defiant eyes,
but above me and within me, there was a Spirit stronger than them all.'
Such words remind us that we too must be prepared to endure, to stand up
and speak out against injustice. We must sit on a brier patch that keeps us
standing and moving."

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