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.
