ECW Triennial Challenged to Work for Justice by Bishop Harris and Other Speakers
Episcopal News Service. June 25, 1991 [91168]
David Skidmore
It is time for the women of the church to put away their needlepoint and begin serving as advocates for social justice, Bishop Barbara Harris of Massachusetts told more than 500 members of the Episcopal Church Women's (ECW) 40th Triennial meeting.
Harris, speaking at a Eucharist, was one of several who stirred the Triennial during its nine-day meeting that coincided with the 70th General Convention of the Episcopal Church.
Stating her intent was both to chastise and challenge them, Harris told the Triennial delegates, "It is time -- past time -- for women in the church to begin to do the kind of holistic analysis that will move us away from treating symptoms of problems to attacking the root causes." Harris commended the Triennial delegates on their theme, "Restoring God's Creation to Wholeness," and challenged them to grasp the revolutionary implications of the gospel.
The suffragan bishop of Massachusetts and the first woman bishop in the worldwide Anglican Communion, Harris told Triennial delegates that if they are going to be serious about being leaders, they must come to grips with "the truth of our time and the reality under which we live."
Despite an exponential growth in social problems -- the feminization of poverty, spouse and child abuse, increased drug dependency, teen pregnancy, hunger, and homelessness -- Harris said the response of church women has been complacency. "Faced with that, so many of us continue to deny reality and continue to needlepoint cushions, and redecorate the rectory, and to design or purchase the latest in new altar hats," Harris said. Her stinging indictment was answered with thunderous applause from the several thousand delegates.
This litany of problems can be cured, Harris said, only after we understand they are the result of discrimination "spawned by the twin evils that institutionalize and perpetuate these problems: greed and a lust for power." Christians must recognize the interrelationship of poverty and economics, she added.
The Book of Esther contains an apt lesson for women today, said Harris. "Most of us know the story of Esther, the beautiful queen, whose cousin and foster father Mordecai laid on her the responsibility to go to the king's presence on a whim, and in defiance of the law, and to advocate and to plead on behalf of the people." Jews at the time, explained Harris, were threatened with genocide by the king of Persia. Some people have a problem with the story, she said, because Esther was elevated from being a concubine to the position of queen. Others label her as "a powerless pawn in a restricted, oppressive society."
But those judgments are unfair, she said. "I think she was clever and courageous. She risked her life to save her people. She was able to exercise her influence. And she used what she had, to do what she had to do."
Esther's story, a classic example of the struggle for power and dominance, mirrors "some of the things going on in our church and society today," she noted. Church ministers -- whether they wear a clergy collar, staff a diocesan or parish office, or serve as educators, Episcopal Church Women presidents, or United Thank Offering (UTO) custodians -- should not make the mistake of seeing themselves as the "favorites in the king's palace" but as the servants in Caesar's household.
Harris's sermon echoed the opening address of outgoing ECW President Marjorie Burke. Burke challenged delegates "to set things right that separate us from the love go God and from each other." She reported that her travels to all nine provinces, 20 dioceses, and throughout the Anglican Communion has strengthened her own spiritual journey. "I've been in places where I've seen oppression and how people live their faith, and that's been an inspiration and a powerful effect on me," she said.
In an address to the Triennial, the Rev. Marie Fortune referred to the increased cases of sexual misconduct by clergy as "a crisis in our churches." Fortune, a minister in the United Church of Christ, reported the findings of a study in her denomination which indicated that clergy were more likely to abuse the pastoral relationship than professional counselors. "The pain of being betrayed by one representing God causes that person to feel betrayed by God and the church," she said.
Fortune referred to the problem of sexual misconduct by clergy as "de-evangelization. I wonder how many people we lose each year because we haven't dealt with this," she said.
In a separate presentation, the Rev. Peter Kreitler, a self-proclaimed "minister for the environment" from the Diocese of Los Angeles, called on members of the Triennial to turn their attention to another crisis facing the church -- the environment. "I am not an alarmist -- I am a realist," Kreitler said. "We're talking about a window of 20 to 40 years," he said, concerning the future of the ecosystem.
"I'd like to see all the bishops of this church attend an environmental workshop," Kreitler said. "A bishop pastors his diocese -- not just its people, but the land and other creatures as well." Kreitler led Triennial delegates in a special exercise to design "a 21st-century eco-sound church."
Near to the heart of the ECW Triennial meeting, the United Thank Offering (UTO) ingathering was the centerpiece for the closing Eucharist of the General Convention. A parade of women representing every diocese in the Episcopal Church deposited envelopes representing a contribution to the UTO.
The UTO, a ministry of the ECW, gathered more than $3 million since last July -- a sum amassed largely from nickels and dimes deposited in UTO's familiar blue coin boxes since last July. The offering will be dispersed by early fall to more than 132 projects that support the work of the church in the United States and abroad.
Delegates to the triennial concluded their meeting with the installation of new officers: Ginger Paul of Western Louisiana as the new president, Mary Leigh Armstrong of Virginia and Helen Young of California as vice presidents, Helen Young of Sybil Fickle of Georgia as treasurer, and Emily Wilson of Connecticut as secretary. Nancy Broadwell from the Diocese of East Carolina was installed as the chairperson of the UTO.