Church Women United staff leaders are discharged
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, December 19, 2000
In a major but unexplained shakeup, Church Women United has discharged five women who held top staff positions.
The person in charge this week at the New York office of the ecumenical organization was Roberto Velasquez, the business manager, who said, “I can’t divulge any kind of information.” He did acknowledge that “there have been some changes.” He would not provide the names of those who had been discharged.
One employee who is not a spokesperson for Church Women United did confirm that five women in leadership were discharged simultaneously. Asking not to be quoted by name, she said, “A lot of things have to be worked out.”
Repeated calls on Monday and Tuesday to the Rev. Jerrye Champion of Phoenix, an AME minister and president of Church Women United, were unsuccessful. Velasquez said The Layman’s request for Champion to return a call had been relayed to her.
Carol Hylkema of Dearborn, Mich., who until recently was the delegate of the Presbyterian Church (USA) to Church Women United, said she did not know there had been major staff changes. The PCUSA is one of the mainline denominations that financially supports Church Women United.
Rosalyn Baston of North Yarmouth, Maine, an executive council member, told The Layman that she had received a letter outlining the reasons for the terminations but that she preferred Champion or someone else reveal the contents of the letter.
The movement that eventually became Church Women United began in December 1941, a few days after Pearl Harbor, essentially as a summons for women to pray. It was originally named the United Council of Church Women. In 1950, the council joined with 11 other interdenominational agencies to form the National Council of Churches. In 1996, the organization separated from the NCC and became autonomous as Church Women United.
The offices of Church Women United are on the fifth floor of what’s known as the “God Box” on Riverside Drive in uptown New York City. The National Council of Churches occupies the first floor of the building.
Church Women United is best known for three annual worship services, World Day of Prayer, May Fellowship Day and World Community Day. Offerings at the services, held throughout the nation, help underwrite some of the national organization’s costs. The PCUSA and several other denominations make annual contributions.
Church Women United has not escaped controversy. The materials produced by Church Women United for World Community Day in November 1997 were strongly criticized by some evangelicals.
The Rev. Susan Cyre, executive director of Presbyterians for Faith, Family and Ministry, said the material for the service “mocked Christ and Christian faith and focused on earth-centered worship of ‘Motherroot’ and ultimately self-worship.”
In a scholarly paper published in Threshold, Donna F.G. Hailson, a theology professor, said the Church Women United material offers “prayer to the ‘Universal Mother,’ calls for the abandonment of fall/redemption theology because it is said to be linked with ‘shame, fear and guilt,’ lauds as ‘prophetic voices’ and ‘sacred storytellers’ those who praise the rebellion of Eve in the Garden of Eden, encourages goddess worship and syncretism, suggests that Christian missions are an imposition, and dismisses the Biblical concept of an omnipotent God as a ‘phallocratic’ fantasy.”