Transforming power by the holy spirit

Subsection 3.3

Signs of hope
Risk-taking in the midst of change
Transformation in theological education
Justice for women in church and society
New models of partnership
Conclusion

The Samaritan woman (Jn 4.7-30) was a "three-time loser": foreign, fallen, and female. Yet she was transformed by Jesus into an evangelist to her own people. How did this transformation from loser to partner in mission take place? The story talks about living water, but it does not focus on the woman's domestic task of drawing water. Instead it focuses on the living encounter between Jesus and the woman and her people where the transformation was happening. Today this encounter continues as the power of God's love transforms us into evangelists to our own people with the good news that, in God's sight, no one is a loser!

The regional consultations organized by PACT witness to a transformation that has already begun. In many reports and case studies we heard of people who were willing to take the risk of changing the ways women and men participate in the life of the church. New models of partnership are emerging, and transformation is happening in church, society and educational institutions.¹

Signs of hope

It is clear that women and men have always participated together in churches of the Reformed tradition.² In recent history, however, women have taken great strides as leaders in the churches, both ordained and lay. This is particularly easy for us to see as the 23rd general council will be convened by our first woman president, Jane Dempsey Douglass. Her tireless ministry in representing WARC in churches on every continent, combined with her service as Moderator of PACT, has set a high standard of leadership for women and men alike.

This sign of hope has not been missed by those she has visited. For instance, one time she went with a delegation of an African woman and two African men to visit a large congregation in west Africa. Just as the pastor was about to pronounce the benediction, a woman in the congregation rose, seeking recognition to speak. She expressed her appreciation that the delegation had come. "We did not know," she said, "that this sister could be president of her church, or that our other sister could be president of WARC. But now that we know it, we want it to happen here among us, too!"

Women and men in their local and national churches have struggled to respond to the crucial question of the ordination of women as deacons, elders and pastors. Although we are still not all of one mind on this matter, the WARC reports show that the percentage of member churches in the Alliance who ordain both women and men has risen from about 50 per cent in 1985, when statistics were first compiled, to 66 per cent in 1992, when they were updated.

Risk-taking in the midst of change

Changes in our churches and in our lives are risky because they touch the heart of our religious and cultural traditions. At the PACT consultation in Africa, a male pastor struggled hard with the difficult question of women's ordination but finally promised to go back and persuade his church to permit it. Such risk-taking is not easy when culture and faith carry with them many patriarchal traditions that justify the domination of women by men on the ground of their supposed inferiority. Current studies of the creation stories have helped us, however, to see that both women and men are created in the image of God, and that both have sinned in their failure to fulfil God's intention for the full humanity of women together with men.

"We used to say that men were just as oppressed by patriarchy as were women. I'd rather say that the image of God is perverted when man and woman are rendered less human than they ought to be, and their societies in turn become defensive, rigid, weak, self-destructive".³

Saindi Chiphangwi writes realistically about the risks that people face as they struggle to break the chains of unjust relationships between women and men. He gives an example of a church in southern Africa with 500,000 communicant members in several countries where "women form more than sixty per cent of the total membership but there was not a single woman on the executive committee". Fear of change and its possible risks to power, status, and custom means "that positive developments tend to be exceptions rather than the rule".⁴

In each place we need to find ways to support one another in risk-taking so that we can help one another discern the leading of the Holy Spirit in church and society. In a number of churches, commissions for the cooperation of women and men have been created. In her witness to discernment in the Evangelical Church of the Czech Brethren, Jana Opocenska reminds us:

"More than forty years in which the ordination of women has been practised is a confirmation of how important it is to give freedom to the Holy Spirit whose gifts are not limited to one single group or one gender".⁵

Transformation in theological education

As seminaries and theological colleges in each region begin to organize associations of theological education, and to develop their own regional contextual theologies, the understanding of theological education itself is being transformed. It is theological because it seeks to understand and live out ways of participating in God's mission of mending the creation and breaking the chains of injustice. It is therefore transformational. It seeks to transform the lives of teachers and learners, and its agenda is the transformation of the communities of faith and struggle in whose ministries they share.

Women are being admitted to study theology and to become partners with men in the ministry of the churches. Even where women are not yet ordained, the schools have opened theological education to them; and in some places women have been teaching in theological schools and doing theological research even though the churches are unwilling to ordain them.

Some years ago, Najla Abou Sawan Kassab (the only woman licensed to preach in the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon) found that she could not be enrolled in the theological programme at the Near East School of Theology (NEST) in Beirut, Lebanon. When she applied to take graduate courses in theology she was told, "What for? Women study Christian education." Instead, she went to Princeton Theological Seminary in the USA. When she returned the Synod appointed her as Director of Christian Education in its national staff. Just recently the church allowed a woman to be enrolled in the theology programme of NEST for the first time; and the current President of NEST is a woman! "Chains are gradually broken, and women are more and more coming to take their theological responsibility in the church more seriously."⁶

Women are struggling to gain advanced degrees and to become teachers and administrators. We celebrate the women in the Reformed tradition who are presently serving as presidents or principals in many theological institutions.

• Rev Dr Cynthia Campbell, McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago, IL, USA
• Ms Alba Arrieta de Illidge, Seminario Teológico Presbiteriano y Reformado de la Gran Colombia, Barranquilla, Colombia
• Dr Mary Mikhael, Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon
• Rev Dr Sarah Mitchell, United Theological College, North Parramatta NSW, Australia
• Rev Ofelia Ortega, Theological Seminary, Matanzas, Cuba (as of 1997)
• Dr Elsa Tamez, Seminario Biblico Latinoamericano, San José, Costa Rica
• Ms Barbara Wheeler, Auburn Theological Seminary, New York, NY, USA
• Rev Dr Barbara Brown Zikmund, Hartford Seminary, Hartford, CT, USA

The presence of women as scholars and teachers has greatly enriched the resources for theological reflection on the lives of women and men on every continent. Associations of theologically-trained women have been formed, and many publications are available for study in the churches.

In December 1994, an ecumenical and international group of women theologians was convened in Costa Rica by the women's commission of the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians. It has published its papers, entitled, Women Resisting Violence: Spirituality for Life. In August 1996 the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians celebrated its second meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, with the publication of a book of essays called Groaning in Faith: African Women in the Household of God. In Europe the European Society of Women for Theological Research has published a yearbook collection of essays for the last four years.

The presence of women as theological educators can be transforming in many ways. Elsa Tamez is a well-known liberation theologian and writer. As president of the Latin American Biblical Theological Seminary in San José, Costa Rica, she has launched a grassroots fund-raising effort called the "One Million Women Campaign" to fund the building of a new campus for the seminary on the edge of the city, near to the university. This is a new form of people's fund-raising for a people's seminary, which seeks to raise one dollar each from one million women around the world, with the new school dedicated in honour of those million women. By selling its land in the centre of the city, the seminary will be able to become self-supporting and continue its exciting programme of theological education in Costa Rica and in Latin America. By building with grassroots ecumenical funds, it will be able to express concretely and symbolically the commitment to do theology "from the bottom".

Justice for women in church and society

In September 1995, women gathered in Beijing, China, for the fourth UN Conference on Women. At the NGO Forum, Reformed and other churchwomen joined women's organizations from around the world in a common Platform for Action that addressed areas of critical concern - such as poverty, domestic and political violence, illiteracy, disease, and job discrimination - that affect women and children disproportionately. They returned home to continue work in the many organizations struggling for justice in church and society.

Often women have found that secular organizations are more open to them and to efforts for transformation than the churches are. This is difficult to understand when we reflect on Isaiah 58 and what it says about justice in all areas of our life. The yoke of injustice needs to be broken wherever it exists, but especially in the life of the church that is called to be a sign of Christ's koinonia. God's justice, right relationships among people and before God, is the beginning of partnership! Respect for difference and new approaches to dialogue and cooperation require new church structures as well as social, political, and economic structures that work to empower and include those who have been voiceless and marginalized in decision-making.

Women like Ruth Kao of Taiwan, Prakai Nontawasee of Thailand, and others on every continent are carrying out a prophetic ministry of justice. They form local commissions and international networks around urgent questions such as violence against women and children, sex tourism, trafficking of women, circumcision of girls, HIV/Aids, and child prostitution. They conscientize their church communities and societies, energizing individuals and groups to perceive social, economic, and religious oppression and to act to eliminate them.

The first step is to be aware and to name every injustice aloud. How many people in our congregations and civil communities are aware of the fact that child prostitution destroys the lives of millions of children between seven and fourteen years in many countries of the south? The consciousness-raising work of women on this and other issues is an important part of God's mission to break the yoke of injustice in the world today.

New models of partnership

Transformation is a conversion from old ways of thinking, speaking and acting to new ways of just relationship. All of us can come to see the contradictions between the gospel message of God's care for the least of us and our social and church systems of domination and subordination. But conversion is often painful and difficult, and we need brothers and sisters who can model new ways of partnership. When we see women as pastors, it helps us realize that this is possible. When we see men sharing in food preparation, we realize that this might be a way to welcome women into the discussion around the table. When we receive care from a woman doctor, we forget that we thought women did not need to be educated.

New models of partnership take courage. In Guatemala, a man came forward in the church to be ordained as an elder, accompanied by his wife. The pastor told his wife to sit down, but they both refused, saying that they were in ministry together and needed to be ordained as a couple. The pastor again told the woman to be seated, but when the two of them would not move, he went ahead and ordained the man with his partner standing at his side.

It also takes courage to recognize that we have been hypocrites in our advocacy of liberation for others, but not for the women in our own families. Timothy Njoya broke the practice of his own Revival Fellowship Movement in Kenya by arranging to marry a woman whom he chose for himself, but he was so nervous that people would think his wife was dominating him that he lost his temper with her on the wedding day. On leaving the church, she asked him if he had made arrangements for the car to bring her parents to the reception. He was insulted to be asked, and shouted at her, "Shut up!" Neither mentioned it again, but in the United States a few months later, when he was trying to give a theological lecture on liberation, he kept on being too ill to speak. Finally, he got up before the audience and confessed that he could not lecture on liberation because he had oppressed his wife! What a relief when he got home and was able to apologize to his wife so that they could begin again as partners!

Partnership requires that we begin to question the authority of patriarchal thinking and acting. Both women and men think and act in a patriarchal way when they consider that it is correct for one person to dominate another, and that certain people have a right to privilege just because they were born of a certain sex, race, or class. According to the New Testament, partnership or koinonia is a new relationship in Jesus Christ that sets us free for others. Christ sets us free to live as families where we respect and nurture one another as women, men and children. He sets us free to think and act in ways that are just to the weakest and most marginalized in our midst.

In the churches many new partnerships are created through the work of laywomen and laymen. In Base Christian Communities in Latin America and similar groups around the world, women and men share in worship, contextual Bible study, resistance to unjust political structures, and community action.⁷

In Aotearoa-New Zealand, the Conference of Churches has sought to reorganize itself into a "non-patriarchal community". It is now a partner organization to the Ecumenical Council of the Tangata Whenua, the Maori people of Aotearoa. It is also organized to include as many voices and groups as possible in its deliberations and decision-making, not just denominational representatives. Its particular goal is bicultural partnership, with leadership in this respect coming from the council of the Tangata Whenua.⁸

The Spirit is at work to bring about transformation in many different Christian communities of women and men. The Spirit is also at work in women's gatherings and communities where women join together for worship and service and continue in reflection and action for renewal of the church. It is our hope that the response of these and other communities of faith and struggle to the crises of our time will make it possible for churches to choose life, even where this means death to church and cultural customs that exclude and oppress others.

Conclusion

In the face of all the challenges to just relationships, we do not give up hope that we will one day see women and men as full partners in the church. The gospels tell us that people are transformed through living encounters with Christ. The Samaritan woman found her life transformed as she took up her ministry among her own people. The women at the tomb found their lives transformed as the chains of death were broken by Jesus' resurrection (Lk 24.1-12)! These stories give us courage to believe such transformation can happen in our own communities. Even when the signs of transformation and new life are lost in cries of alienation, pain, and suffering, the promise of new life in Christ beckons us forward. God calls us to "break every yoke" (Is 58.6), and God is with us in this process of transformation. We live and work in hope that the creation itself will be set free from bondage and that we will obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God (Rom 8.21)!

Questions

1. Sit with a group in your church to study the general council theme, "Break the chains of injustice" as it relates to the story of the Samaritan woman in John 4:7-30. How is ministry for women opening up in your area?
2. What is the difference between a prophetic call to break the bonds of unjust relationships and political action?
3. How do barriers in our lives originate?
4. What are some of the signs that partnership is happening in your churches, homes, or work?
5. How can the network of WARC member churches be useful in promoting partnership of women and men in the churches and theological institutions of your region?

Notes