31st Triennial Meeting
Diocesan Press Service. November 2, 1964 [XXVI-4]
As the 61st General Convention convened, the 31st Triennial Meeting of the Women of the Church was concurrently in session.
During the Triennial Meeting, which is conducted as an educational, inspirational, and legislative experience for women of the Church, a number of speakers were heard.
The Rev. Massey H. Shepherd, professor of liturgics, Church Divinity School of the Pacific, Berkeley, Calif., was first to address the women.
Dr. Shepherd based his speech on the fact that the Words of Jesus are the Words of the living, eternal God, and the word of God is also the Deed of God.
He emphasized that ecclesiastics prefer people to reach God through "proper" channels, but Jesus lacked "proper credentials." As a result they refused to believe their own eyes because a miracle of healing did not fit into their scheme of traditional teaching and practice. Jesus did not confine his mission of help to work through organized charities, and properly certified agencies, he noted.
Dr. Shepherd said there's evidence for the first time in centuries a sincere repentance for the disunity of Christians, and an eager search for the ways and means of breaking down barriers of institutional inertia and the prejudices born of outworn theological systems.
The western nations "need not become nervous" about the seeming flirtation with the communist countries on the part of newly emerging nations, the Rev. Dr. Daisuke Kitagawa stated during the second presentation to the Triennial Meeting.
Dr. Kitagawa, executive secretary of the Division of Domestic Mission of the Executive Council, said that nationalism among new nations needs to be understood for what it is -- the genuine struggle of people to assert their identities and maintain their cultural integrity.
He concluded his address with the thought that urbanism is the ever-present way of life in our society throughout the world. It is in this secular and urbanized world that Christians are called "to be witnesses in our daily life...not within the walls of our local congregations, but out in the work-a-day world. "
Second half of the second presentation was delivered by Dr. Charles V. Willie, associate professor of sociology and anthropology at Syracuse University.
The sociologist and researcher chided, "The poverty revolution is upon us and is crying for intelligent direction. The wealthy must help the poor in directing the poverty revolution as whites helped nonwhites in prosecuting the civil rights revolution."
..."Segregation is a dilemma of our present situation, which is alienating and interfering with the successful resolution of the contemporary urban revolution," Dr. Willie pointed out.
In the third presentation Mrs. Harold J. Kelleran delivered a strong statement urging the full participation of women in the policy-making and legislative affairs of the Church.
"When governments... whether of state or church, have one sex making their rules and laws, one may wonder about their appropriation of the doctrine of equality in the first case, creation in the second," Mrs. Kelleran challenged.
The Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology at Virginia Theological Seminary emphasized that "Woman's claim to her equality under God is based on no social program of women's rights. It is rooted in the doctrine of Creation."
In wrapping up what had occurred during the Triennial Meeting, Mrs. Theodore O. Wedel divided her remarks into five categories of "major thrusts of all discussions."
First - Our response as individuals. Mrs. Wedel said, "As several groups expressed it, 'We need help in knowing who we are and what we ought to be doing.' As Church women we are looking to the Church for some of this help."
She also mentioned, "There were many very perceptive comments upon the fact that 'being' is the first essential of the Christian life, and that 'doing' grows out of this... Person to person contact, our own personal responsibility for witness to the faith was a recurrent theme....I sensed a new concern for looking realistically at ourselves as women, and as individual Christians; a willingness to admit that we all fall short of what we could and should be and do; a wholesome desire to change.... I felt too little emphasis in the reports on our personal, individual responsibilities as children of God."
Second - Our response as members of ECW. She said, "The winds of change are certainly blowing through the Church today, if you are in any sense typical. Over and over again you said, 'Let's go back home and look at our organization for Church women. Let's question all our traditional ways of doing things."
Third - Our response in the man-woman relationship. "What has happened here, " Mrs. Wedel commented, "... makes it clear that the Episcopal Church had better come to grips with this problem.
"The long range strategy must go back to the parish and diocese. We need to get into real communication with men at those levels. With the help of the men who are concerned.., let us work for the right of women to serve on vestries and in diocesan conventions where these rights are still withheld," she continued.
Fourth - Our response in the ecumenical movement. "If we have any intention of taking the Church's mission in and to the world seriously, it cannot be an 'Episcopal' mission. The world is not organized on denominational lines!" Mrs. Wedel emphasized.
Fifth - Our response through MRI. Mrs. Wedel urged, "...we must see to it that MRI is taken seriously and something done at once about it in every diocese and parish. And it must not be done by the women....we must stress that we must begin to live in mutual responsibility and interdependency, not just add some activities."