You are currently browsing Alison's articles.
I originally wrote this post for Idealist in NYC, but thought Ecumenical Women readers might like it as well. Enjoy!
In a country where the larger part of our population is religious, and where our current president believes that social change should come about through religious organizations, Former NYU Professor James Carse’s message might be hard for some to swallow: religion, he argues, has very little to do with belief.
To Carse, religion is all about longevity rather than belief; it’s what unites people over millennia. Additionally, Carse dismisses attempts to find some underlying unity to all religions. This idea, I would say, is fairly unpopular among many religious people, either because they want to avoid being exclusionary or because they want to find a common thread in humanity’s search for meaning. As a current student at Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan, I find Carse’s arguments in this Salon.com article incredibly interesting and compelling.
But I bet a lot of folks would wonder: If we remove the idea of belief from the religion, would we lose our ethics as well? And with them, our propensity to act? Read the rest of this entry »
For some of our Ecumenical Women superstars, they’ll remember that the theme of CSW 51 was “The elimination of all forms of discrimination and violence against the girl child.” Well, when we came across this video at Britt Bravo’s blog Have Fun Do Good, we thought it would be a good time to revisit the topic of the girl child.
The video isn’t perfect: it is a project of the Girl Effect, and aside from being partially funded by the Nike Foundation — whose track record isn’t glowing — we wonder if it isn’t a little too simplistic (what? a cow is really the answer?). But in a world where pregnancy is the leading cause of death for girls aged 15 through 19, and where educated girls and women fosters the education of children… well, we’re willing to get on board.
Just some food for thought. What do you think?
Reverend Ann Tiemeyer, the NCC’s representative in Ecumenical Women, has been targeted for her outstanding service and passion this month at faithandfeminism.org. Giving us special insight into how her own faith guides her social activism, which women have been influential in her life, and what issues are important to her and why, Tiemeyer is eloquent and passionate in a way that makes Ecumenical Women proud:
IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Woman extraordinaire, experienced community organizer and Lutheran pastor, the Reverend Ann Tiemeyer is Program Director for Women’s Ministry at the National Council of Churches, USA.
Congratulations, Ann!
This morning, I attended ECOSOC’s special event, “Achieving the MDG’s and coping with the challenges of climage change.” It was of course interesting, as I usually find most things related to climate change, but what I found particularly moving were the comments spoken by the delegate from Belgium (who did not speak on behalf of Belgium, but for the committee for CSW). He outlined how climate change disproportionately and negatively affects women, and spoke about how women can acts as agents of change in the mitigation of global warming.
Of course, this year’s 52nd session of the CSW chose as it’s emerging issue “Gender perspectives on climate change“, where we learned that women’s lives are effected in large part due to their domestic responsibilities. As the moderator’s summary stresses,
In Africa, for example, women have primary responsibility for food security, household water supply, and the provision of energy for cooking and heating. Conditions such as drought, deforestation and erratic rainfall have a disproportionate negative affect on their ability to carry out these duties. As climate change causes African women to work harder to secure these basic resources, they have less time to secure an education or earn an income. Girls are more likely than boys to drop out of school to help their mothers gather fuel, wood and water.
The unequal effects that climate change already has, and will likely continue to have, along the lines of gender, are rarely mentioned. As we move towards mitigation and adaptation to climate change, we must do so with a lens that prioritizes women as the large majority of those greatly affected by climate change.
The 41st session of the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) will be taking place at the United Nations in New York City, commencing on the 30th of June. CEDAW, an international human rights treaty for women, was first adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1979. Since then, 185 nation states have become party to it, including Afghanistan, Chile, China, Iraq, and the Congo. Although the United States of America has not yet ratified the treaty, this has not prevented it from becoming one of the most highly ratified international human rights conventions.
During the upcoming 41st session, the CEDAW committee will review the reports submitted by Iceland, Finland, Lithuania, Nigeria, Slovakia, Tanzania, the United Kingdom, and Yemen. The Committee, upon considering the reports, will also present recommendations for each government and, under the statutes of the Optional Protocol to CEDAW, may further investigate into any countries whose reports they find inadequate due to contradictory or additional information.
The full text of the convention can be found at the International Women’s Rights Action Watch website, which also has good information about how NGOs can participate. Want a historical perspective? Consider ordering and reading “The Circle of Empowerment“, edited by Hanna Beate Schopp-Schilling.
To date, governments which have yet to ratify include Iran, Somalia, Sudan, and the United States of America.
The Women of the ELCA’s 7th Annual Triennial Gathering is set this year to be in Salt Lake City, Utah, from July 10-13. The theme, “Come to the Waters,” references the renewal and committment Christians experience in their baptism. With keynote speaker and author Sister Joan Chittister , upper-Manhattan Lutheran pastor Heidi Neumark speaking, and workshops on important social issues such as racism, activism, and politics, the gathering looks to be a faithful blend of personal spirituality and public action.
EW encourages the Women of the ELCA to go even further, and take up a strong interest in women’s rights on an international scale. While we applaud the good things the organization is already doing, we hope to see more of an investment in international activism around women’s and human rights. Are there any EW members out there heading to “Come to the Waters”? Take your knowledge and passion with you as you head to Salt Lake City!
In light of International Women’s Day–which falls on a weekend this year, Saturday March 8–Ecumenical Women coalition members have been issueing articles and resources about women. The United Methodist Board of Church and Society wrote an article on Women’s History Month in their eNewsletter, Faith in Action. Episcopal Life Online released an article about financing for gender equity, the theme of this year’s CSW, while the ELCA Advocacy department made recommendations on how best to observe International Women’s Day. Finally, the NCC’s program for women’s ministries also wrote an article honoring women’s history month, adding helpful resources and links at the bottom of the page.
Apart from the ecumenical scene, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said today in the UN programme commemorating International Women’s Day, “I am deeply convinced that, in women, the world has at its dosposal the most significant and yet larglely untapped potential for development and peace… Women are still severly hampered by discrimination, lack of resources and economic opportunities, by limited access to decision-making and by gender-based violence.” He called on everyone in the international community to increase investments in women and girls.
Ecumenical Women wishes you a fruitful and informative International Women’s Day!
“Theology must have an expression of desire, attraction, eros. This dimension will be combined with poetry and contemplation and also be prophetic and sapiental–a theology of play and free creation, capable of evoking God’s mystery and human justice.”
Ecumenical Women, offering delegates a space for reflection and theological dialogue on the topics gender equality and justice for women, organized three “Red Tents” throughout this year’s CSW. EW women applied energy to Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza’s “In Memory of Her,” spoke about the theological ramifications of women’s art from the global South, and practiced yoga that was centered around women’s prayers.
Ecumenical Women’s coalition member, the World Council of Churches (WCC), has recently been featured in an article by The Economist, a prominent news, politics, and business periodical run out of England on a weekly basis. Published on February 21, 2008, the article expresses some of the difficulties and many of the successes that the WCC (and the ecumenical community) has historically experienced in manuevering the ecumenical and Christian communities. Read more here.
Ecumenical Women, together with the Al-Hakim Foundation and Religions for Peace, announces a multi-cultural, multi-religious panel, entitled “A Dialogue Between Cultures: ‘Iraq for All‘” on Monday, March 3, 1:00 - 3:30 pm in the Tillman Chapel of the Church Center for the United Nations. The topics of conversation are: the role of NGO’s in re-building civil society, women as builders, and practicing the Millenium Development Goals.
Panelists:
- Ms. Layla Al-Khafaji, Member of the Iraqi Parliament, Al-Hakim Foundation, IRAQ
- Dr. Michele Fedoroff, Deputy Chief of NGO Section, DESA
- Rev. Kyoichi Sugino, Assistant General Secretary, World Conference of Religions for Peace
- Dr.Bayan Al-Araji, Al-Hakim Foundation, UK
- Dr.Jafar Jawad, Al-Hakim Foundation, US
- Michel Ngoymulunda, Lutheran World Federation, Youth leader in Lutheran Communion in Central and Eastern Africa, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Moderator: Dr. Mohammed Mohammed Ali, IRAQ
Come and join us for some stimulating conversation!
About a month ago, I was writing the litany for Ecumenical Women’s opening worship for the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). In the first draft of the refrain, I wrote, “Shower the earth with your justice, O God, and invest life into the bodies of your people.” Bringing it to Kathleen Stone, the chaplain at the Church Center for the United Nations, I, a white, privileged, upper-middle class (by American standards), North American woman, expressed my timidity about using the word “justice” so liberally in the refrain. “What is justice, anyway?” I thought to myself, “and how do I feel about a God who openly distributes justice upon God’s enemies? What does it mean for God to have enemies?”
As I expressed these perusings to Kath, she paused before commenting. When she spoke, it was reminiscent of what my Exegesis professor at Union Theological Seminary would later say about Ezekiel 37:1-14. For those people who have witnessed the ravaging of their homes, who have experienced the debilitating scourge of poverty upon their bodies and communities, and whose flesh has been torn and wounded—indeed, for those who have seen the “dry bones” of Ezekiel—the word “justice” is never too strong a word to use. In these situations, when humanity is hampered by our inability to distribute justice, it is God who must distribute justice. The women who would be reciting my litany have seen these dry bones, and they have come to the CSW to right the injustices of this valley. With these women in mind, Kath and I changed the refrain to “Thunder the earth with your justice, O God, and invest life into the bodies of your people.”
