Women and the church - an interview with Nambura Njoroge

You can read an interview with the brilliant and irrepressible Nyambura Njoroge
Here's an extract:
As the Project Coordinator for Ecumenical HIV and Aids Initiative in Africa
of the Geneva-based World Council of Churches, Nyambura offers "life-affirming words, words that speak healing and wholeness to all who are afflicted and condemned to death."
Gradually, the church is realising that HIV is more than a medical issue that cannot be ignored and that it is wrong to stigmatise those it afflicts.
Nyambura says theological reflection helps in Biblical care and counselling of those infected and affected.
"It helps us take action in a different way and be more creative. My journey of theological reflection has shaped me and helped me grow in life. It is now helping me deal with Aids positively and with hope," she says.
First woman ordained
It is a journey that began in earnest on September 5, 1982, when she became the first woman to be ordained by the Presbyterian Church of East Africa (PCEA). As a pioneer, she had to work hard to discover the many dedicated, but un-ordained women to mentor and also to be mentored by. She also quickly learnt that when you are a pioneer, others look out for mistakes. She recalls the sneers she received in Harare,
Zimbabwe, at the 1992 All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) Assembly, when
she used the case of Pia Njoki, the woman blinded by her husband in a fit of rage so she wouldn’t see other men. She was accused of washing dirty linen in public.
"We had all cried for Pia. When I wrote my doctoral dissertation, the
issue of domestic violence had come up. So what was the dirty linen that I was washing at the Assembly?" she asks.

Circles of names from the USA to remember women leaders who have been important to us

One of the press releases forwarded to me at work today was this. It's from the USA idea but I wonder whether we might be able to do some similar on the UK and European level and maybe even worldwide. It's a way of supporting women's ministries in different denominations.
Anyway it's also a great idea to try and think about what the names are you would like to celebrate. Here's the release - follw the circle of names links to find out where the picture comes from too. (It's by Mary Button – Honorary Artist for “Wise Women Circle”)

NCC sponsored 'Circles of Names' campaign will support denominational women's ministries New York, November 25, 2009 -- Mindful of the historic contributions of women leaders in its member communions and concerned about recent cutbacks in gender justice and women's ministries, the National Council of Churches is taking steps to nurture the work.
During the National Council of Churches/Church World Service
General Assembly Claire Randall Luncheon in Minneapolis earlier this month, the Rev. Ann Tiemeyer, NCC Women’s Ministries Program Director, announced the launch of the "Circles of Names" Campaign to enable donors to support ongoing and future work by honoring women who have made a difference in the church and in individual lives.
"In light of recent cuts to denominational budgets and staff in the areas of women’s ministries and gender justice work," Tiemeyer said, "now more than ever we need to make visible the broad support for this work in our communions."
To encourage and assist the leadership circles in advancing the "Circles of Names" campaign, Honorary Chair of the Wise Women's Leadership Circle," Anne Hale Johnson provided a substantial challenge gift to the campaign.
"Her generosity has assisted in rapidly moving us toward our
goal of $100,000 and 1,000 names in just 51 days," Tiemeyer said. "Over the years Anne Hale Johnson, a member of the Presbyterian Church (USA,) has provided encouragement and support to many women leaders both in the church and in wider
society."
The "Circles of Names" campaign asks participants to submit the name of a woman who is or has been influential in their faith life, and to contribute $100 in that woman's honor.
"We have designed the campaign in such a way as to make it possible for most people to participate," explained the Rev. Deborah DeWinter, Director of Donor Relations for the National Council of Churches. Ten people can all agree on one woman to name and each donate $10. While pledges and names are due by December 31, 2009, donors have until December 31, 2010 to submit their payments. The names will be displayed on the Circles of Names Web site, www.circlesofnames.org.
"The exciting thing about this campaign is that it is a women's ministry that supports woman's ministries," said DeWinter "Its very structure is symbolic of the management style of women of faith throughout history -- circles of interconnectedness that have enabled
women to approach challenges and tasks together."
"Our foremothers in faith met in sewing circles, Bible study circles, mission circles, hospitality circles," DeWinter added. "We are confident that women of faith will understand this to be a Kairos moment for the future of Women’s Ministries and gender justice work, and see this "Circles of Names" campaign to a successful conclusion."
"There are probably 100,000 women who should be listed as part of the Circles of Names to honor their past, our work today and into the future-and just about as many creative ways to nsure more than the requested 1,000 are listed," said Jerri C. Rodewald, Co-Chair, Presbyterian Church (USA)
Advocacy Committee for Women’s Concerns and a member of the Wise Women Circle.

In these difficult financial times, not every donor will be able to
contribute $100, but women's ministry has always been about partnership, Rodewald said. "In our 'Safe Circle,' a group of women that gathers within the Presbytery of Riverside, each member has donated 20 dollars and we have been able to name two women for the .Circles of Names," she said. "Since, we’re now over $200, we’re re-circulating the request with the hope that with just a few more dollars, we’ll be able to name a third person."
The campaign, which will run until Dec. 31, 2009, aims to raise $100,000 to build a foundation of support for Women’s ministries through these $100 donations. A Steering Circle,
Staff Circle, and "Wise Women" circle have already committed to naming women and urging their friends and family to do the same.
A circle of 10 high-profile men, the "Joseph Circle," is also taking the lead in finding the names of the women who are and have been important in our faith lives. Full lists of these circles can be found online at www.circlesofnames.org/leadership. Donations can be given before the end of the year 2009, or pledged to be given in 2010. They can also be made in quarterly donations throughout 2010. Speaking on behalf of the Joseph Circle, the Rev. Dr. Michael Kinnamon, NCC General Secretary, said "gender justice is at the heart of the Council, it is central to the mission and ministry of the General Secretary's office, and it is integral among my personal commitments as well. The body of Christ cannot be whole without the full participation of all its members, at every level of leadership to which women and men of all ages have been called."
"The Circles of Names Campaign is an
opportunity to again make these circles of support visible to all of us - the
whole body of Christ - to see," said Tiemeyer.
"For all of us regardless of
gender it is critical to remember and to name leaders in the ecumenical movement, in our member communions, in our faith communities and organizations, and in our personal faith lives. The woman who ministered to Jesus - who broke
open the jar and poured the ointment before his death - she is remembered. Yet oddly we do not know her name. Jesus says she will be 'remembered wherever the good news is proclaimed.' The good news for all of us - regardless of gender - is that God's love is for us all and God’s love promises us all new life each
day."

Posted by Jane

Drum beats, bell ringing, musical notes, bead-threading - act for climate justice

Here are some Advent ideas ... more to come soon but what about your Advent ideas, what is everyone up to?

Listen to the drumbeat of creation, weave a rainbow, act now for climate justice make the world leaders hear!
The seven days of creations were the inspiration for the liturgy we've just posted online. 350 drumbeats, 50 for each of the seven days of creation. After each day is read out from Genesis so also one of the great Advent Antiphones is read. Colleagues from different regions of the world have written cries and hopes of and for climate justice.

Here are cries and hopes from the Pacific:

Atua! Your Pacific people call out to you, even as the waters continue to rise...
hear our prayer, we who trust in your love!
Atua! Your Pacific people call out to you, even as our land disappears before our eyes...
hear our prayer, we who hope in your love!
Atua! Our strength! Our life! Our love!

Meanwhile the Danish Council of Churches have put together a great liturgy for bellringing including a powerful hymn by Torsten Borbye Nielsen called bells of the world and an English translation by Edward Broadbridge. They've also got a specially commissioned piece of music with 350 notes in it. A stimulus to creativity - will you be ringing bells, threading beads, beating drums, singing hymns - to get the world to hear the case for climate justice?

Here's the two final verses of the hymn:

For though we know
we should rise higher,
we are consumed by our desire;
hear how our earth, ravaged, consumed,
calls for our care, or we are doomed.
May we free Earth from its pain;
give us hope that once again
Your will be done.

In hope and faith
we shall not cease
striving to make a world at peace,
for all that lives, from pole to pole,
from east to west, from soul to soul.
Lord, our God, whose mighty Word
then and now and shall be heard,
renew our Earth!

Posted by Jane - cross post from the Stranzblog

Holy Rood House - Space for learning, reflecting and flourishing

This a picture of Holy Rood House
It describes itself as the place to turn to for a
"holistic approche to therapeutic care where hospitality is genuine, safe space is real, community is open."
The Executive director is Revd Elizabeth Baxter and it houses the Centre for Health and Pastoral Care and now also the Centre for the study of Theology and Health which is directed by Revd Dr Jan Berry.
Here's part of the programme

Thursdays at Thorpe:

Day courses for counsellors and pastoral carers, health professionals, and those involved in church, community or voluntary groups.

Aspects of Caring 10.00 – 3.30 (lunch & refreshments included)

14^th January: Caring for the carers: Looking after yourself

11^th February: Faces of caring; distinctions and overlaps in counselling, pastoral care and spiritual care

11^th March : (tbc) Working with survivors of domestic violence

Research seminars

Day consultations offering a chance to discuss recent or current research, and share work in progress Overnight accommodation at Holy Rood House may be available on request.

March 25^th Revd Carla Grosch-Miller on theological education and issues of abuse plus forum for sharing issues and good practice. (face2face research seminar )

May 13^th Revd Dr Janet Lees on faith communities and parenting plus forum on research methodology

Weekend courses and retreats

6^th - 8^th February

Ritual Making: Constructing contemporary rites of passage

Rev Dr Jan Berry

19th-21th February

‘Lenten-Longings’ Creative Retreat

with Jan Younger, Elaine Wisdom,

Rev Elizabeth Baxter and community members

12th-14th March

‘Journeying: A Labyrinth Workshop for Women’: a women’s spirituality weekend to mark International Women’s week.

Rev Dr Jan Berry and Rev Elizabeth Baxter

March 31- April 6th

Easter Retreat

‘The Way of the Cross’:Re-creating Stations of the Cross for our contemporary world

Rev Dr Jan Berry, Rev Elizabeth Baxter and the Community Team

April 23^rd – 25^th

Honouring the sacred in women’s bodies: using art and photography to explore our own spirituality of embodiment

Rev Dr Jan Berry and Dr. Althea de Carteret.

14th-16th May

Men’s Spirituality Weekend

Rev Prof Stephen Wright and Rev Stanley Baxter

Summer Schools

18th-20th May

Creative Retreat for women in ministry

Rev Dr Jan Berry and Rev Elizabeth Baxter

18^th -20^th June

Summer Solstice Creative Retreat

19th-23th July

Summer School ‘Spirituality and Mental Health’

For details (including costs) and booking forms for these events, or to be added to our mailing list for future information, please contact the Centre for the study of Theology and Health or see our website www.holyroodhouse.org.uk

Holy Rood House and Thorpe House are about five minutes walk away from the centre of Thirsk where National Express coaches call daily. The railway station is just a mile away. Visitors can be met from both coaches and trains by arrangement.

Thirsk swimming pool and fitness centre are within easy walking distance. Shops in the town centre are about ten minutes walk away and there are attractive field and riverside walks directly opposite the house

The Centre for the study of Theology and Health is part of the ministry of Holy Rood House, Centre for Health and Pastoral Care,

and is based at Thorpe House, next to Holy Rood House

10, Sowerby Road, Thirsk, North Yorkshire, YO7 1HX

International women blogs - for daily bread and greater campaigning solidarity

So here this is another post to encourage people to read and leave comments on other blogs.
Today three more blogs - this time with an international flavour.
This week the WCC is holding its UN advocacy week in New York alot of my colleagues from Geneva will be there. However to get a fuller picture of some of the international work involving campaigning by NGOs and others at the UN I've been reading the Ecumenical Women at the United Nations blog for quite a while. There are some fascinating posts there - you can find posts from Cambodia, Kenya and Middle East among other places: comparing the role of women disciples of Jesus and female followers of Martin Luther King; about female condoms, child brides, shopping and fashion justice, the rich poor divide and much more besides. A few months ago the blog adverstised for new writers and as a result posting is much more regular and more diverse than in the past. It's a useful window onto international campaigns but with personal insights from the authors.
One of the new writers there is Paola Salwan, Programme Assistant for Africa, the Middle East and Europe at the World YWCA and co-founder of the blog Café Thawra, The blog is in French and English and offers insights into Middle East issues - a special dossier on the Lebanese communist party, where the left is in Middle East politics, as well as promotion of social entrepreneurship.
The Women's desk at the Lutheran World Federation is preparing for next year's LWF assembly with a blog on Give us Today our Daily Bread. As the women in ministries network prepares to meet on the theme of food for the soul perhaps someone would like to write something for their blog. As the issue of food security moves up the world agenda how do women, who grow, harvest and prepare much of the food eaten in the world, think about food justice and spirituality. I'll admit that as a woman who has spent most of her life eating far too much the "stuffed and starved" agenda is one I find particularly challenging. What does the promise of the heavenly banquet mean to those of us who live in permanent food plenty? Lots of issues around food will develop on the blog as preparations for the assembly in July next year advance, so why not drop by from time to time and join the discussions?

And finally here's a challenge (is there anybody reading these posts?) try to use the comments section here to link to a favourite website, blog or book.
Written by Jane

Blogs about life and ministry, about studies and vocations

After a rather long silence here I thought it might be good to highlight other blogs that might be of interest to women in ministries. This is also a way of encouraging you to try and get a bit more involved in the blog - what are the blogs and sites you enjoy, do you have a book you've recently read? Then why not tell others about it using this blog.
I realise that not everyone is an internet and communications addict like me but it's important to try and use this space a bit more - especially in the run up to the meeting in Windermere in January.
Anyway here's an intro to a couple of blogs I enjoy - this blog has a permanent link to all of them.

Sunday's Coming is a blog where Ruth Whitehead "thinks about preaching". She posts most of her sermons and when she has time she also shows her workings and reflections as she works towards Sunday each week. I've just been reading through her struggle with coughs and colds, multiple carol services, funerals and all the rest through Advent last year. What I like about this blog is that it's not flashy or gimmicky - very pared down and Reformed in many ways - here's a woman simply getting on with ministry in an ecumenical setting. It really allows for insights into the weekly struggle with the biblical text and the church context. It's down to earth, the sermons are good and it's a great example of using the blog to add a bit of extra value and after-life to the work of writing sermons many of us are involved in. Also if you are having a bit of a sermon crisis Ruth often posts her sermons early so you can go there for late Saturday night inspiration too!

Rachel Marszalek blogs at Re vis.e Re form. Rachel is training for the Anglican ministry at St John's in Nottingham. Since starting her training she blogs nearly daily about the lectures and courses she attends and her own thoughts, prayer life and spirituality. Before that she wrote about her vocation and work with children and young people as a volunteer in her local parish - amongst many other things. She writes a great deal about the Bible which has got her into the top 50 biblioblogs. I blog quite regularly but Rachel really blogs an enormous amount - even with essay crises and all the rest, it's very impressive. I like reading Rachel because the way she speaks about her faith, her experience of God are so very different from mine. She is a charismatic but not a conservative evangelical. She's also committed to the role of women in the Anglican church and follows the synod discussions about women bishops with refreshing thoughtfulness and commitment. Reading her I am often reminded about how intent the Church of England is to try to hold the diversity of the church together and how hard it is for people within it to sometimes find the way to their convictions as a result. Rachel's blog is a useful reality check for me, showing me how much the churches have changed in the 20 years since I left the UK. I love her fresh approach and enthusiasm - a great antidote to my cynicism. Hope you will also enjoy reading it.

And finally for now a plug for Kate Grey's Breadbreaker blog which I imagine will be a bit quiet now that she is on maternity leave. The blog mainly highlights a few of the events and some of the work in St Mark's Wythenshawe. I particularly enjoy the photos and the links to the messy church events. Lots of great ideas so why not visit and and perhaps get inspired to start your own blog - even if you only post once a month it can be a great resource for community and church work.
posted by Jane.

Food for the Soul in January!

Where is it? The Windermere Centre
When is it? 11-14 January 2010
How much is it? £200 (£165 to Windermere; £35 to Pamela Ward, our treasurer, on arrival)
What's happening when?
Monday
4.00pm Arrivals & making your mark
6.00pm Bar
6.30pm Gathering Meal
including Bread and Wine and Cairn building
7.30pm Welcoming: Remembered meals, personal special meals and biblical meals
9.00pm Sweets, Treats and Feeding 1000s
Bring some of your favourite sweet and savoury snack foods to share as we worship
Tuesday
8.30am Breakfast
leading into Breakfast on the beach
9.30am Intro to the day
10.30am Morning Coffee Break
11.00am How am I fed? Stories and creating
1.00pm Lunch including Bread and Wine
2.00pm Free Afternoon
4.30pm Afternoon Tea
5.00pm Bread for the Journey - hands on bread making
6.00pm Bar
6.30pm Evening meal including Bread and Wine
8.00pm Bread for the Journey
leading into Evening Worship
Wednesday
8.30am Breakfast
leading into African worship
9.30am Intro to the day
10.30am Morning Coffee Break
11.00am Soul Food: Film and creating
1.00pm Lunch including Bread and Wine
2.00pm Free Afternoon - go and find more food!
4.30pm Afternoon Tea
5.00pm Spiritual Nurturing: Awareness walk / labyrinth
6.00pm Bar
6.30pm Evening meal
including Bread and Wine
7.30pm The journey ahead for WIM
8.30pm African Delights! Making & sharing
9.15pm African Worship
Thursday
8.30am Breakfast
9.30am Intro to the day
10.30am Morning Coffee Break
11.00am Journeying on: Closing Ceremony
12.30pm Agape Lunch
including Bread and Wine, Milk and Honey
What to bring?
• Memories of special meals
• Favourite sweet and savoury snack food to share as part of Monday evening worship
• Family graces or sung graces to share at meal times
• Percussion instruments for African worship
• Bible
See you there, I hope!

Jan Berry Book launch 30 November at Luther King House

So here's an invitation to the book launch for Jan Berry's new book Ritual Making Women.
The launch takes place at Luther King House, Manchester on November 30 at 18.30.
I'm sad not to be able to be there but hope some of you can make it.

Celebrating women church leaders

Following my delight at the election of Margot Kässmann as chair of the EKD Council in Germany I tried over on my own blog to put together a list of national church leaders. I got some help from the comments section.
Here's the list so far ... perhaps we can add to it, but perhaps we also want to start thinking about what leadership may mean for women in the church - does it mean having to play the game of the structures in the same way as always. Reflecting about what womanly ways of leadership are and could be might be a good thread to develop here at some point.
But for now this is to note and celebrate teh women church leaders we do have. There are fortunately already quite a number women at regional levels of leadership around the world - bishops, moderators, regional presidents etc. - but very, very few at national levels of leadership. It is just starting to break through now and this does represent a huge change.
Here's my ammended list, do correct and add to it.

1) I was very proud when my own church, the United Reformed Church was the first in the UK to appoint a woman as head of the denomination. Roberta Rominger comes originally from the USA and she's been doing a really great and challenging job since she took over in 2008.

2) Sharon Watkins is the General Minister and President, and thus the leader of her denomination, the Disciples in the USA. She preached the sermon at the national prayer service following Barack Obama's inauguration.

3) Katharine Jefferts Schori has been presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in the USA
since 2006 and has been involved in difficult church political issues.

4) Margot Kässmann was elected yesterday as the chairperson of the EKD Council in Germany.

5) Jana Jeruma-Grinberga was appointed as the presiding bishop of the Lutheran Church in great Britain.

6) Rosemarie Wenner is the main representative of the United Methodist Church in Germany. She is also the president of the Association of Protestant Free Churches (Vereinigung Evangelischer Freikirchen). I think, we can count her as a national church leader.

7) Judy Redman left a comment on my blog saying "I was very pleased when my denomination (the Uniting Church in Australia) elected a woman as its seventh national leader in 1994. Dr Jill Tabart was/is not only female but a layperson and she did an excellent job. However, we are now up to number 12, and Jill has been both the only woman and the only lay person. Of course, in our noticeably multicultural church, there has never been a non-Anglo president, so gender is not the only qualification."

Women and leadership

Yesterday I put as a status update on my facebook page "Had some interesting conversations about the leadership of women at work today. A long way to go..."
It generated more conversations on the same subject today ... not entirely surprising given recent events.

From 27-29 October the Evangelical Church in Germany will meet in Ulm to elect a new chairperson of the EKD Council, Bishop Wolfgang Huber is retiring. Some people seem to expect that Bishop Margot Kässmann will be elected as his successor. Personally I very much hope this is the case but I wonder whether it will really happen. A life time in politics has told me electorates are not always to be trusted.

For me being a woman in ministry it is important not only to encourage women to discover and fulfil their leadership potential at all levels, we also need to be able to point to women who can serve as role models for us. I think knowing that there is a diversity of leadership at the upper levels of churches and organisations, helps us to work for that same diversity of shared leadership at the grassroots and intermediate levels.

There are some interesting posts here and here on the CPAS women in leadership blog.

Working for change on the area of women and leadership is a long hard slog. I give thanks for the pioneering work of women in our own traditions and am very proud to share that 1917 date of the first ordination of a woman to the word and sacrament. However, the Daughters of Dissent project showed us just how painful and sometimes long the wait for recognition of women's ministry at all levels of the church has been. What I realise now is that, just like democracy, so also with the recognition of the gifts of all God's people, this needs to be worked at at all levels and at all times. Ah yes, and sometimes we get tired.

Listen again to Janet Wootton on Payer for the Day

Not sure how many of you are up early enough in the morning to listen to Prayer for the Day but Janet Wootton is doing the Radio 4 early morning slot this week and you can listen again here.
Living in France means I get to hear it an hour later into my day. Anyway Janet's reflections are well worth a listen and reflect on powerful bits of non-conformist women's history too. Good stuff.

Blogging and preaching

Ruth Whitehead has been blogging on her Sunday's coming! blog for over a year. It's a really great example of using blogging as a public way of reflecting on the process of reading the lectionary and preaching week by week. Maybe as part of the weekly round of preparing for worship you can also enter into conversation with Ruth through the comments section on her blog.
How do you go about the task of preaching each week if that's part of your ministry? Does it help to talk with others about the text? Is going for a walk, a drive or just sitting down at the desk the best way you can get the sermon to start in your mind?

A summer update - women in ministry on my mind

Jane writing.
I've just come back from the assembly of the Conference of European Churches in Lyon. I met with amazing people there and wrestled with ridiculous photocopying problems - I think it would be best to say I was in recovery. I've also been learning how to twitter. Not sure I like it as much as blogging but it's a useful communications tool and it can be fun!

For more than 4 years CEC has not had anyone appointed to the women's desk and women's issues were not exactly to the fore at the assembly. I suppose it was at least heartening to hear the general secretary of CEC, Colin Williams, facing the issue of gender squarely when asked in a panel discussion to say what some of the failures as well as the successes have been in recent years. Carla Maurer who works in CEC's Strasbourg office has also been very involved in the process of gender mapping at the assembly which may pèroduce some interesting results.

Meanwhile I had a brief moment to read about Margot Kässmann's fairly forthright recent words on churches' clichéd attitudes to women in leadership roles. Does anyone ever ask whether it's appropriate for a man with four children to take up a leadership position? I am really hoping that Kässmann will be elected to be chair of the EKD Council later on this year. It's great to have women in local ministry but I feel it's also important for us to have figureheads, people we can look up to. Slowly, slowly this also changes the image people have of the church.
My prayers this summer will be with women taking up that role in our churches - Kirsty and Roberta and Rowena and also women bishops, moderators, presidents and lay leaders. Male or female this is not an easy time to be leading the church, it's a time of enormous change.
And I thought I would link our blog to the CPAS Women in Leadership blog. There are some interesting posts there from an Anglican perspective, including Do Christians believe in equality? and some background on a pioneering deaconess.
There's also an interesting article here from the recent inter-religious meeting in Kazakhstan

Whatever the third Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions held in Kazakhstan might have achieved, it did prove that when it comes to religious leadership, women are yet to break through the glass ceiling.
A list circulated by the organisers featured the names of 184 participants - and only 13 of them were women ...
There were seven women representing Christianity - four as members of the World Council of Churches, two from Germany’s Lutheran church and one from the Anglican Jewish Commission of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Ecumenical Women's blog looking for women bloggers to contribute to their campaigning blog

Don't know if anyone is tempted to give this a go but it's worth sharing with your wider networks and it should be an encouragement to you all to start a blog or re-start your blogs:

Ecumenical Women (EW) is an international coalition of church denominations and organizations which have status with the Economic & Social Council (ECOSOC) at the United Nations. We train and empower faith-based advocates for gender equality at the annual Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) held every February-March.

Ecumenical Women at the United Nations is seeking a Blogging Specialist to update and maintain its blog and website, http://www.ecumenicalwomen.org/. Qualified applicants will be familiar with blogging and other social network tools, or demonstrate serious willingness to learn. Applicants should be committed to women’s rights and gender equality, be comfortable writing about Christianity and other faiths. Experience with advocacy, ecumenical organizing and the United Nations is preferred but not required.

The EW Blogging Specialist will be responsible for posting 4-6 blog posts per month, which s/he may either write or recruit others to write and edit. Posts should be within the interests and advocacy goals of EW’s member organizations. The Blogging Specialist must be a clear and creative writer, an independent worker, and capable of working remotely.

Essays on Mariam, the Magdalen and the Mother

Hat tip to Deirdre Good who has edited this book of essays, and whose blog "on not being a sausage" is one of my favourites.
Find out more about the book here.

Good's edited book is both a challenge and a delight. The challenge is watching ten competent scholars working carefully with a multitude of languages and religious traditions to bring a fresh assessment of the woman named Mary Magdalen. The complexity of the endeavor is captured in the book's stated intention, Rather than revisiting her singularity, Mariam, the Magdalen and the
Mother argues that the Miriamic roots of her composite identity and prophetic vision are prominent in all religious traditions of the first five centuries of the common era. The delight of the book is discovering the relationship of the names Miriam, Mary, and Maria, and the relationship of the women bearing these names. The scope of the book widens with essays dealing with Mary in Gnostic gospels, Islam, and Manichaeism. This work has copious footnotes, an impressive array of works cited, and a useful index. It would be a difficult task for the general reader, but advancing students, scholars, and professionals will find it
revealing and rewarding.

A pilgrimage to honour women

On Saturday June 6th the annual ecumenical pilgrimage will set out from Erfurt in Germany on a short 18km walk. Each year this ecumenical pilgrimage has a focus, this year it is two strong women from the Middle Ages Elisabeth of Thuringia and St Walburga.
This small local pilgrimage in Germany started me thinking, what sort of pilgrimage would you put together to honour women in the place you live and work? Maybe this is even a way of taking the Daughters of Dissent project a bit further - who preached in your town, was there a famous Abbess maybe or a woman saint, a suffragette?
So who would you want to honour on your great women pilgrimage? I shall go away and think about five names myself - use the comments section to give yours. And it can of course be a sort of fantasy pilgrimage - ie one that would be too far to actually walk.

Greetings by the way from Rome - maybe that's where all this thinking about saints has come from!

WOZA - women of Zimbabwe Arise

I am continually amazed by the women and men of Zimbabwe, their tenacity in daring to stand up for their dignity as human beings. So I'm reposting here something just recieved from WOZA - Women of Zimbabwe Arise and from Kubatana. They are not church NGOs just people risking their lives for the good of their country. Many are still in prison.

You can find out more news from Zimbabwe on the WSCF's campaigning Zimbabwe blog.

You can also read this powerful post about what happened to one activist for truth and justice.

If Zimbabwe is ever in a state to truly rebuild then the women and men there will need our support.

ZIMBABWE’S CONSTITUTION MAKING PROCESS – A WOZA PERSPECTIVE

Women
of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) has consulted with members over the last few weeks on
the constitutional reform process initiated by Article 6 of the Global Political
Agreement (GPA)1 and recognise the opportunity to play a role in making this
process result in a truly democratic Zimbabwe. WOZA has already been involved in
joint civic society discussions on these developments and will continue to take
part in a coordinated response. We are prepared to participate fully in the
process but do so under protest as we feel there are serious shortcomings in the
procedures articulated in the GPA.
- Ordinary Zimbabweans were not consulted
and did not input into the 15 September 2008 Global Political Agreement. It may
therefore prove inadequate as a tool of creating a truly people-driven
constitution.
- Constitutional Amendment 19 went further in providing
wide-ranging direction and oversight role to the Parliament of Zimbabwe, which
makes the constitutional process subject to political party control.
-
Whilst we acknowledge that the people voted for Members of Parliament and
Senators and recognise that they can be expected to represent the views of the
people in their constituency, constitution making should be an inclusive
process. It is a given that the whole nation needs to take ownership of their
right to determine how they are governed. At the very least, elected
representatives need to conduct public meetings to hear the views of the people
in their constituencies in open and direct discussion rather than making
unilateral decisions on our behalf.
- Most importantly however, we feel that
there is no real operating climate for full enjoyment by citizens of all their
freedoms of expression and assembly. There continues to be flagrant disregard
for the rule of law, politically motivated and indiscriminate arrests and
detentions and a climate of fear remains. Citizens need a tangible sign that
they will be able to meet and debate without harassment before a truly
meaningful process can be embarked upon.

Emotion in worship do you control or let go?

This morning worship in the ecumenical centre in Geneva was a bit of a last minute feast. Weeks ago I asked colleagues from the countries we are praying for as part of the ecumenical prayer cycle to lead or read, but many were travelling and not available. Then last week I was on holiday and the person who had been going to coordinate also took leave. Everything was prepared but it was my job to hijack people at the beginning and get them to lead and read different parts of the service. (Thanks goodness we have a very motivated choir who turn up early!) I would not normally recommend this organising-worship-by-the-seat-of-your-pants approach to the liturgy - even if the service was prepared and printed.
However, this morning two quite extraordinary things happened as a result. One was my colleague Rogate Mshana telling us Kagina's story which I've written up on my blog - he didn't know he was going to say anything - nor that he had anything to say - until I asked him to speak two minutes before the service began. (Janet, Rogate is a brilliant person for remembered Bible, we've used the method several times here and he's just a natural.)
The other preaching of the gospel came when a young colleague from the Pacific read the gospel, standing in for another person I had asked last minute. Our colleague read in a beautiful strong voice as the congregation stood to listen to the gospel. We could hear the emotion surging through her and see the tears begin on her face. She breathed deeply, her voiced wavered only a bit, the emotion remained yet she finished the reading and the congregation responded with an even louder singing of the alleluia. That emotion-filled reading of the gospel was its preaching. Tomorrow will be the fourth anniversary of her brilliant, rugby-playing-theologian father's death.

Recently emotion also caught me unawares as I was leading worship, I heard my voice cracking but I continued. I have never broken down in tears while leading worship, although I have often wept in church when I didn't have that role. The Reformed tradition is quite buttoned up when it comes to emotion and I'm not fond of what I think is orchestrated or false emotion either in preaching or in worship. But I wonder what is happening as we overcome or harness grief, joy and other emotions in worship - do actors also sometimes get overcome by the emotion of the texts they are performing or is this a different dynamic - is worship more or less real than theatre? What is real?

At the end of this morning I reflected that it is a challenge to put together worship which only lasts 30 minutes, which others have to lead and which takes place at 8.30 on a Monday morning ... but sometimes despite everything it all comes together and becomes much more than you could ever have prepared for. I was very fortunate to have that experience this morning.

So what are your experiences of worship and emotion?

Jane

What are you reading at the moment?

Women will be forever strangers unless their words and their voices revise the social and symbolic rules of language, transforming the law or ordered hierarchy in language, in subjectivity and in politics into a grace of rich plenitude for human flourishing.

Rebecca Chopp, The Power to Speak, feminism, language, God.

Readers of my blog will know that I am reading Grace Jantzen's Becoming Divine at the moment. The above quote is one of two she uses to begin her chapter on trustworthy community. The first quote come from Julian of Norwich. The thing I am beginning to really appreciate abotu Jantzen's writing is how she weaves together insights from mysticism with radical theology. Her push in this book and her subsequent writing is to encourage a philosophy of religion that concentrates much more on our natality than on our mortality.
What I am finding particularly moving reading this is that a woman who is now dead is calling me to live as a natal and not as a mortal. It's difficult for me to put in words how inspiring, comforting and encouraging I find this. A real call to live life in a different way from beyond the grave.
Reading what Grace has written has made me realise how powerful a symbol each one of we women in ministries is. Remember everytime you do what it is you are called to do you are in some way giving birth to a new future.
Anyway what are all of you reading - as you can perhaps tell I have almost run out of crime fiction which is why I've had to turn to philosophy of religion instead!
Jane

Hospitality, food and learning

I really enjoy reading Deirdre Good's splendid blog On not being a sausage and one post last week just read mmmm... if you clicked on the link you went here. Here's a taster of what you find:

“With any decent form of teaching,” says Good, a professor of New Testament at the General Theological Seminary, “you’ve got to show a form of hospitality.”
Cooking dinner for your class (and holding class in your house) may sound extreme, but Good was simply putting two and two together: she enjoys cooking, and many of her evening students would be coming from out of town needing dinner.
In that first class, one student looked down at his plate and quietly said to Good, “this is the best first seminar I’ve ever had.”

This made me think about how hospitality and eating together, feeling at home with one another, sharing a table are important parts of building community. But I can see too how eating together helps the learning process. With all of the catechism classes I've been involved in the best ones always involve regularly having a meal together. Our current KT class has a picnic together but a different person each time brings a cake to share, it's great communion.
So I started wondering about how hospitable our churches are and the place of food in our congregations and work places. what is the place of food, hospitality and table fellowship in your ministry?

In Japan's Christian century 'women were religious leaders'

What follows is a copy of ENI's story from yesterday about the role of women as religious leaders in Japan. It gave me many interreligious insights I didn't previously have and was a bit of an Eastern echo of our own Daughters of Dissent project.
You can find details of the book itself here. If copying the article mention must be made of ENI.

First though here is a bit from the book's blurb
The book is divided into four sections devoted to an in-depth study of different types of apostolates: nuns (women who took up monastic vocations), witches (the women leaders of the Shinto-Buddhist tradition who resisted Jesuit teachings), catechists (women who engaged in ministries of persuasion and conversion), and sisters (women devoted to missions of mercy). Analyzing primary sources including Jesuit histories, letters and reports, especially Luís Fróis' História de Japão, hagiography and family chronicles, each section provides a broad understanding of how these women, in the context of misogynistic society and theology, utilized resources from their traditional religions to new Christian adaptations and specific religio-social issues, creating unique hybrids of Catholicism and Buddhism.
The inclusion of Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese texts, many available for the first time in English, and the dramatic conclusion that women were largely responsible for the trajectory of Christianity in early modern Japan, makes this book an essential reading for scholars of women's history, religious history, history of Christianity, and Asian history.

By Hisashi Yukimoto
Tokyo, 24 April (ENI) - Women played a key role as religious leaders in the middle ages in Japan, a recently published book shows.
"I wanted to introduce forgotten voices of women, especially those of religious leaders," the Rev. Haruko Nawata Ward, the author of "Women Religious Leaders in Japan's Christian Century, from 1549 to 1650", told Ecumenical News International.
She said ,"I also wanted to pursue the question of the inculturation of European Christianity in non-European contexts during the Reformation period."
The author, a church historian at Columbia Theological Seminary in Georgia, in the United States, noted, "The Christian Century in Japan gave me a suitable frame in which I can pursue both of these tasks."
Nawata Ward told ENI she used the term "Christian Century" in the book "because it captures the brief moment of Japanese history in which Christianity flourished between the time of its introduction by [Saint] Francis Xavier and its disappearance under its total ban by the Tokugawa government."
Ashgate, the publisher, explains that the book "outlines how women provided crucial leadership in the spread, nurture, and maintenance of the faith through various apostolic ministries".
The publisher notes on its Web site, "The author's research on the religious backgrounds of women from different schools of late medieval Japanese Shinto-Buddhism sheds light on individual women's choices to embrace or reject the Reformed Catholicism of the Jesuits, and explores the continuity and discontinuity of their religious expressions."
Nawata Ward, an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church (USA), said, "I hope that the stories of creative and resilient women leaders from the past may give hope and courage to today's women leaders in carving out their own voices.
"Networking with these women predecessors from the past in their imaginations might empower today's women leaders in their resistance against familial, social, religious, and political misogyny."
"Also, Christian women leaders might carefully find some enriching resources in Japan's Buddhist and Shinto cultural traditions while being critical in assessing what it means to be Christian leaders in a predominantly non-Christian environment," she added.
In writing the book, she became aware that there had been many women leaders who were part of earlier mission movements who created their own ministries.
Nawata Ward added, "I would like to have a network of scholars, researchers and leaders from the ecumenical Church who might be interested in resurrecting these women leaders' stories from Goa, Macao, Manila, China, Vietnam, Brazil, Ethiopia, England, Canada, and perhaps in other places that I have not even imagined during the early modern period and beyond."
:: Ashgate Web site:http://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&pageSubject=1115&title_id=10039&edition_id=11248
:: Nawata Ward's profile: ctsnet.edu/Files/Directories/Faculty/Resumes/Ward_Haruko_08.pdf
ENI featured articles are taken from the full ENI Daily News Service. Subscribe online to the Daily News Service and receive around 1000 full-text articles a year. Unless otherwise stated, ENI featured articles may be re-printed, re-posted, re-produced or placed on Web sites if ENI is noted as the source and there is a link to the ENI Web site www.eni.ch

The Sophia Network

Maggi Dawn has posted this on her blog:

My friend Jen Baker launched the Sophia Network a while back - a forum and website aimed principally at women in Youth work, but with all kinds of stuff that's interesting and useful for personal and community faith building.

Sophia's new website has now gone live, and looks rather fab. Go check it out.

So now a question to you folks out there - is there anyone there?

Thoughts for low Sunday

Orthodox friends celebrate Easter today, the Western calendar sometimes calls today "low Sunday". Apparently the Sunday after Easter is also called St Thomas day or even Thomas Sunday in the Eastern Church.
I was wondering how everyone is surviving.
It is an enormous roller-coaster moving from the story of the incarnation to the story of the passion and resurrection in three to four short months. Reading, preaching on, living through the passion and resurrection narratives is hard physical, psychological and emotional work.
So perhaps today is time to let go a bit, plan your next holiday and trust to the grace of the ressurection to break through and lift us into the next phase of our individual, communal and Godly narrative.
What is your Easter story this year?

Happy Easter. Christ is risen indeed!

Good Friday Five from RevGalPals

I don't know whether anyone else looks in on RevGalPals but I have just taken part in their regular Friday Five for the first time - it's a way of giveing people something to blog about on the same day and them link them together.
You can read my attempt here.
But why not try the questions yourself or maybe call by on RevGalPals next Friday for another Friday Five.
Here are today's questions:
1. How will you pray and worship today?

2. Share a powerful memory or memories of Good Friday past.

3. How have you grown and experienced God's love during this past Lent?

4. In whom do you see the face of the suffering Christ most clearly?

5. Where do you find hope for resurrection?

Bonus: Share a song, poem, or prayer that makes the paschal mystery come alive for you.

It remains for me to wish all who read women in ministries a blessed Easter weekend. Hope you're not burning the midnight oil too much writing all those sermons folks!

Jane

Sisters of Sinai

Sisters of Sinai by Janet Soskice
Published in Hardback by Chatto & Windus £17.99
Hattip to Maggi Dawn for writing the following on her blog (check out the special offer below)

In 1892, two intrepid sisters made one of the most important religious finds of the century. Hidden amongst the scrolls in the monastery library on Mount Sinai, they spotted what looked like a palimpsest: one text written over another. Both sisters had a great love of learning languages but it was Agnes who was able to recognise the underlying document for what it was – a manuscript that remains to this day one of the earliest known copies of the Bible written in ancient Syriac. In this enthralling book, Janet Soskice uses the story of the Smith twins to take the reader on a truly nineteenth-century journey. In part a physical journey – we trace the footsteps of the admirable Agnes and Margaret as they voyage to Egypt, Sinai and beyond, clutching their Murray’s guidebook and enduring camels and unscrupulous dragomans - it is also a tale of the excitement and mystery of the Gospel origins at a time when Christianity was under attack in Europe, and of two women who overcame insuperable odds to become world-class scholars with a place in history.

To get 25% off plus free P&P* visit www.rbooks.co.uk and enter the promotional code SINAI. *UK only, Offer available until 30th April 2009

"In Sisters of Sinai Janet Soskice has achieved the impossible - she has brought biblical scholarship to life. A gripping story of two spirited women determined to pursue the truth whatever the cost, with camels to boot. Wonderful." Sara Wheeler

"An extraordinary and compelling book, combining vivid travel adventures, wonderful characters and absorbing stories of the mind and heart” John Cornwell

Women in Biblioblogs

What follows is from Suzanne's Bookshelf one of the Bible bloggers I try to read regularly. Suzanne does some extraordinary in depth work on egalitarian issues in the Bible but also on women Bible translators and researchers. Suzanne is a really engaged and committed writer who blogs on these issues in her spare time.

I'd like to share a few biblioblogs which post on women of the Bible. Claude Mariottini often has excellent posts on women of the Hebrew Bible. I think you would enjoy this one on Deborah and Queen Hatshepsut's Perfume.
James Getz of Ketuvim has a post on Women Nazirites. Dave Warnock mentions that Angela Shier-Jones thinks we need more women engaging in theology.
Her.meneutics is a new blog for women at Christianity Today. HT Evangelical Village. Cynthia Nielsen completes a four part series on Paul and Slavery.

Meanwhile some of you may also be interested in J K Gayle's blogs. He writes quite extensively about feminism, philosophy the Bible and life. Here's a taster:
This is a post of two long but important observations of Carolyn Custis James and Tod Linafelt, respectively, about the literary play in the Bible. By "play," I mean both interpretive "wiggle room" and hermeneutic "playfulness." It's the kind of "reading" against which Aristotle taught. It's the kind of perspective that feminists tend to find useful in overcoming profound misogyny and gynophobia in texts that would perpetuate sexist or racist inequalities.

Some interesting links and articles about inclusive language

The following quotes come from Lucy Winkett's Speak to us of Liturgy but you can also find links to some other interesting articles on inclusive language by going to Thinking Anglican's blog and following the links.

If we address God as our father, yes, we are following Jesus' example - but this Jesus also told a beautiful story about God searching for us and rejoicing when we are found - a woman sweeping a house looking for a lost coin. Who is that searching woman if not God?

God is a woman who searches for us and she finds us, she calls her friends and is utterly delighted.

Language that is truly inclusive will draw us out, will build unity, and will find ways of reaching the first of those truths; we have so much in common as human beings in the world. The process of inclusion and exclusion takes place in the second of those truths - we are like some other people, our gender, our ethnicity, our sexuality, our physical or mental impairments and so on. It is in this area that the debate is most live. And the way we react depends heavily on the third of those truths - our own experience of fathering will determine how we react to the concept of a Father God for example. And even if our experience has been similar - say for example, a bad experience, for one it will be redemptive to learn that God fathers us, for another it will render the name so painful it is not possible to say. Liturgy takes place metaphorically and actually in the Holy of Holies - the place outside time and space but our language is intimately connected to the experience of life orientated towards God in Jesus Christ.

Go on dream, dream, dream ...

Shutter Sisters Dream Assignment: Picture Hope from LittlePurpleCow Productions on Vimeo.

My apologies for this the first part is mainly a repost from my own blog but the second bit is for WIM. Hat tip to Maggi Dawn for pointing to this project by Shutter Sisters called Picutre Hope. I really like the idea of getting photographers to pitch for their dream assignment and then giving them money to help finance it and make dream a reality. I am also moved by the collaborative inspiration behind the Shutter Sisters project. You can check out their Dream Assignment here and if you like it you can vote for them before April 3rd and help make their dream a reality.

But then I got thinking about this - do you have a dream assignment for your ministry, a crazy brilliant, creative idea that you would like to make a pitch for. Unfortunately I don't have 50,000 dollars to help one us realise our dreams, but it strikes me that one of the great things about pitching for a prize like this is that it helps us even begin to formulate our dreams, our creativity what it is we really want to try and do. Of course we won't manage to fulfill or realise all of our dreams, but dreaming is an important activity, it relaxes the brain, helps us process good and bad stuff from our lives and also nudges us in very new directions.
So on this Passion Sunday why not try to formulate your dream - make your pitch in the comments section - who knows maybe some of your dreams will become reality just because we start to talk about them?

A new woman bishop elected in Germany

In Wittenberg yesterday the synod of the Evangelical Church in Central Germany elected Ilse Junkermann from Stuttgart as Bishop of the new church, which has come into being from a union between two German Landeskirchen - the Thuringia Lutheran Church and the Church of the Church Province of Saxony. The bishops of the two churches both stood down to allow the new church to have a clearly new leadership.
I'm really glad that they have elected a woman. The Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Oberlausitz Church is also due to elect its new bishop this year. There's a woman on the list there too though she's not a front runner it would seem. The first generation of women bishops in Germany are beginning to retire - Bärbel von Wartenburg-Potter last year and Maria Jepsen in the next couple of years. Junkermann's election means she will be one of three female bishops in Germany, Margot Kässmann and Maria Jepsen being the other two.

Reading the Bible with Tamar

There are lots of interesting posts at the moment on the Ecumenical Women's blog. The UN's commission on the status of women is still meeting in New York and those involved in the ecumenical women network are writing some interesting things over a great range of subjects.
Alison Killeen has written an interesting piece about third wave feminism and how we read the Bible called Bringing Tamar along with me.
Here are some extracts from Alison's talk:

I am a third-wave feminist. And sometimes, I have no idea what that means.

At the Ecumenical Women Orientation two weeks ago, we worked with feminist theologian Caryn Riswold to elaborate on what it is to be a third-wave feminist in today’s world. Three generations reflected on whether the distinction of “third-wave” is even helpful. They worried about where the next generation will take us. And, they expressed concern over whether feminism itself is dead
...
We never hear what happens to Tamar after this story. The horror of discovering this rape in the Bible is eclipsed only by the realization that even the author cares not what happened to Tamar after all was said and done. Her life, her name, the “rape of Tamar” – these all serve in the text only as a function to explain why later her brother Absalom, who told her to stay silent, kills her brother Amnon, who raped her. In the story, Tamar is property to be protected or violated. She is a figure whose violation represents not her own personal grief but her family’s public shame; a woman whose grief is but a footnote in the long opus to political power that we find recorded in the Bible.

Discovering the story of Tamar, a text that is out-of-lectionary and therefore out-of-mind, is an experience that can be tragic and which can feel incredibly problematic, especially for the thoughtful Christian feminist reading the Bible. Tamar’s story infuses the rest of the scriptures with a painful twist, a wrench in your gut reminding you that although the Apostle Paul spoke in Galatians about the equality of the Jew and the Greek, the slave and the free, the male and the female—when he mentions it in Corinthians, he conspicuously leaves the part about gender equality out.

Last week Fulata Moyo and Ezra Chitando showed us how one can use the story of Tamar another way. They, along with other colleagues in Southern Africa, use it to teach young people – especially young men – about domestic violence, rape, and the silencing of women in their own contexts. Asking questions about the role of power and gender in the story of Tamar, the young men to assess their own lives for whom has power and how it is utilized. Engaging people in conversation about the roles of Amnon, Tamar, and Absalom in this bible passage encourages them to identify people in their own lives who are Amnon, are Tamar, and are Absalom.

There's a link here to an article by Gerald West and Phumzile Zondi-Mabizela telling how a Bible story became a campaign. Taking Tamar with us may help us tell stories in a way that helps to transform the world and work against domestic violence.

Women's World Day of Prayer

Greetings to all women - especially those from Papua New Guinea. I have enjoyed the Women's World Day of Prayer service twice today and would like to thank all those involved in preparing and leading it.

I always enjoy these services - partly because you can hear the voices of those who have prepared them coming over so clearly - partly because they are led by a large number of women, many of whom don't lead worship at any other time - despite having a great many of the appropriate gifts - I hope that they were listening to today's reading from Romans 12 - and partly because I could simply sit and receive.

Once again the final hymn was 'The day thou gavest'. There is something about the continuity round the world and across the generations that is reflected in this hymn that speaks especially of the connectedness of women responding almost to the eternalness & omnipresence of God. In fact you could say responding to the 'omni'ness of God. God's image is so much clearer in women in relationship than in woman.

Jacky

Why Jesus was a woman

Don't know if any of you read the Times religion blog by Ruth Gledhill but one of today's posts is quite fun. Remember to keep reading to the end - and that reminds me does anyone who read WiM do Twitter?

Sad news of the death of Madge Saunders

I am sure that Janet will want to add to this but I thought that I should already post this news she shared by email earlier today.

Dear Friends
I am writing to let you know that I have today received word from the United Church of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands that the Revd Madge Saunders died in her sleep last night. She was 96 years old having celebrated her birthday last week.
So why have I written to tell you this? Because I ask you to remember her.
She trained at St Colm's Edinburgh - that's the Scottish connection
She served at St James Sheffield from 1965-1975 - that's the Yorkshire connection - please may she be remembered at Synod on Saturday 7th March.
She was the only black woman to be ordained deaconness in the Presbyterian Church of England, and the first woman to be ordained to ministry of word and sacarment in the UCJCI - she was a Daughter of Dissent, a fantastic inspiration to three generations - that's the multicultural church connection.
But she was so much more than these few facts.
I met her in Kingston in 2002.
Please remember her and the current work of the UCJCI.
Much love
Janet

I should of course have checked, Janet has written about Madge here:

You may also be interested in the Women's history month that the National Council of Churches in the USA is organising. More on that here.

Some news of the Ecumenical Water Network

Today the Ecumenical Water Network's blog went online with its first of seven weekly meditations during Lent. This is all about getting Christians and churches to take action on issues of water and justice, to link with one another and be aware of what is going on in other parts of the world.

It so happens that the first meditation is written by me and is called drip, drip, drip. I really loved reading it in translation - my French and German are so much more elegant than if I had written myself - and as for my Spanish - well it exists which it wouldn't do otherwise!

Anyway you can get the meditations via an RSS feed and we really want people to leave comments and tell us about what they are doing to prepare for World Water Day. So please, read, comment and share. The ecumenical water network is one in a series of interesting projects the WCC is currently involved in on environmentla and economic issues.
So please support this initiative by reading and commenting or maybe by building the RSS feed into the sidebar of you blog.
Posted by Jane

Seven Weeks for Water - English

http://www.oikoumene.org/en/activities/ewn-home/resources-and-links/seven-weeks-for-water.html

Sept semaines pour l'eau

http://www.oikoumene.org/fr/activities/roe/ressources-et-liens/sept-semaines-pour-leau.html

Sieben Wochen im Zeichen des Wassers

http://www.oikoumene.org/de/activities/oekumenisches-wassernetzwerk-oewn/ressourcen-und-links/sieben-wochen-fuer-wasser.html

Siete Semanas para el Agua

http://www.oikoumene.org/es/activities/la-reda/recursos-y-enlaces/siete-semanas-para-el-agua.html

Faith at the UN, Gender in the Church: Ecumenical Women’s Guide to Advocacy

In preparation for International Women's Day on March 8th here's some news from a press release I've reiceved this week. I should also point to the Ecumenical Women at the UN blog which you can find here.

What are you doing for Women's Day - it's the 100th anniversary of the first women's day this year so there's grounds to celebrate but still much to achieve.

New York, February 24, 2009 -- In preparation for the March meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW-53) at the United Nations, Ecumenical Women, an international coalition of church and ecumenical organizations, has launched an advocacy guide: Faith at the UN, Gender in the Church: Ecumenical Women’s Guide to Advocacy.

The resource prepares delegates from faith-based non-governmental organizations for effective action at the annual United Nations meeting.

Including a brief history of advocacy by women of faith at the United Nations, the guide provides an overview on how to advocate for women’s rights at the UN, gender-equality action strategies for congregations, and theological reflections on gender equality written by women and men from around the world.

The 53rd session of the Commission on the Status of Women will take place March 2-13, 2009 at United Nations Headquarters in New York. More than two thousand women delegates come to New York from around the world to participate in the annual meeting.

This year approximately one in every ten women will be a member of Ecumenical Women.

Grounded in faith and a commitment to global justice, Faith at the UN, Gender in the Church combines traditional methods of advocacy at the United Nations with a message centered in the radical Christian concept of love for one’s neighbor.

Chair of Ecumenical Women and editor of the guide, Emily Davila, said, “We hope this book helps equip a movement of women and men who will transform their churches and societies to be places where all people have access to resources and opportunities to reach their greatest potential.”

WEBSITE: http://ecumenicalwomen.org