c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Pamela K. Brubaker teaches Christian ethics at California Lutheran University. She is one of the writers in the RNS series “Voices of Women in Religion.”)

UNDATED _ Water slowly trickled into a large clay jar on the altar _ water representing the tears of women. Women who had been marginalized, silenced, beaten, raped _ by family, church, state.

More than 1,000 women and some 30 men had come to Harare, Zimbabwe, for the “Decade Festival: Visions Beyond 1998.” This event, Nov. 26-30, 1998, marked the end of the Ecumenical Decade of the Churches in Solidarity with Women, declared by the World Council of Churches (WCC) in 1988.

On this, the second day of the festival, we prepared for the Hearing on Violence Against Women, with the ritual pouring of tears.

This hearing would be the first time women testified at a global ecumenical gathering of the violence they experienced within the church. Churches have resisted speaking about violence against women.

A staff person for a study on the community of women and men in the church,produced in the 1980s, described a socialized conspiracy of silence of churches on issues of sexuality, including family violence and sexual assault. Violence against women had only been added to the focus points of the Decade at a 1992 meeting of women from regional ecumenical organizations, who identified it as an issue requiring the churches’ urgent attention.

The first witness was an indigenous woman from Latin America who spoke of the physical and psychological violence her people have suffered since the conquest of their lands when missionaries accompanied the soldiers. A Canadian woman told of being sexually abused by her father, a clergyman, who also practiced ritual beating as a form of exorcism in a charismatic prayer group he formed. A woman from the Pacific Islands described years of brutal domestic violence and the church’s failure to support her when she decided to leave her husband, or to recognize her divorce as ethical.

Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, a Cuban theologian living in the United States, spoke of the churches’ marginalization and silencing of women’s theologies, which take stories like these as the source of their reflection. She affirmed that “women’s theologies simply reclaim that, as women, we are made in the image of God.” And a New Zealand clergy woman testified to her abuse by supposedly liberal church decision-making structures, which rendered her silent and invisible because of her work for gender equity and justice. As each woman completed her testimony, festival participants softly responded with “your story is my story, your story is our story.”

A part of the work of the Decade Festival was finalizing a document to be forwarded to the World Council of Churches Eighth Assembly, which met Dec. 3-14.

Participants at the festival spent several hours discussing the draft document, in table groups and as a body. The document, adopted by consensus, took the form of a Letter to the Assembly.

It declared, among other things, that violence against women is a sin and implored the churches to announce that to the world. It recommended a number of initiatives for repentance, conversion and renewal of the church, its leadership, its theologies, traditions and practices. The letter also denounced other forms of violence, such as poverty, racism and war, and supported demands for the cancellation of debts of the world’s poorest nations.

Participants in the Decade Festival could not agree on issues such as abortion, divorce, and human sexuality “in all its diversity,” _ a reference of homosexuality _ but did “condemn the violence perpetrated due to differences” on this matter.

Those of us at the festival reflected the deep differences in our societies on these issues, yet we pledged, even though the discussions on these topics were painful, to “continue the conversation in order that justice may prevail,” with the wisdom and guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Through hearing each other speak, and making sure each one who wanted to did speak, we were able to find some common ground. Agreeing to condemn violence perpetrated because of these differences, as we did, may not seem like much.

But I think what we did matters. It is crucial that we speak out against violence perpetrated by differences on theological and ethical issues if justice is to prevail. And we ask every person of goodwill to join our condemnation of this violence.

DEA END BRUBAKER