New President of United Theological College of the West Indies

Revd Dr Marjorie Lewis has been appointed to the post of President of the United Theological College of the West Indies. A talented and inspirational individual, she will be the first woman in the role which commences on 1st August 2010. Dr Lewis has previously worked in the Caribbean and in the UK. Amongst her previous posts she was the first multicultural multiracial officer for the United Reformed Church from 1997-2000. Read more at

http://www.urc.org.uk/news/2010/january/United_Reformed_missionary_to_head_Caribbean_college

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

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."

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.

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.

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!

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

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.