Women’s Conference held at Montreat Conference Center
By Paula R. Kincaid, The Layman Online, August 20, 1999
MONTREAT – The 1999 Women’s Conference, “Embracing our Experience: A New Song for a New Day” was held Aug. 9-13 at Montreat Conference Center in North Carolina.
Sponsored jointly by Montreat and the Women’s Ministry Program Area of the Presbyterian Church (USA), the conference had 255 participants, well above the recent average of 150.
Inclusive language became a conference theme when Lillian McCulloch Taylor, director of the conference planning team, asked (during opening worship) that “no male pronouns be used for God.”
“God is a spirit. God is not a man. We are all created in God’s image,” she said.
A free copy of Psalms Anew: In Inclusive Language compiled by Nancy Schreck and Maureen Leach, was presented to each conference participant.
Several litanies used in worship focused on wisdom; for example, the Litany for Delighting in Wisdom’s Simple Gifts. The adaptation from Proverbs 8 began, “Before all time, Wisdom, Master Worker, Delight of God was at play. She played and planned, And Creation came forth. … When the foundations of the earth were laid, Wisdom, was there beside The Creator.”
Isabel Rogers,
former PCUSA moderator and retired professor of applied theology at Union PSCESpirit led change
“The church of Christ, in every age beset by change, but Spirit led, must claim and test its heritage and keep on rising from the dead,” said Isabel Rogers, former PCUSA moderator and retired professor of applied theology at Union PSCE, at the opening plenary.
“Never has change been so radical or has it come so swiftly,” she said.
“We’re having to face a new kind of reality,” she said. The church used to be able to count on the institutions of society – the public schools, the families, the laws of our states – to help us make Christians of people. “We know good and well we are in a secular society now. We in the church have been pushed out to the periphery. We’re on our own and nobody is going to help us.”
Rogers said this means the church must make radical changes in the way it carries out its mission. “What this means is that we can no longer focus our mission on the inner life of the church where the clergy are the center stage,” said Rogers. “The mission is going to be out there where the people are, where the laity are, and they are going to be the missionaries.”
A resurgence of legalism
Rogers said the pace of change can be overwhelming. “Plenty of folks want to retreat. They panic. They want to retreat to the past and find there some sort of unchanging things we can hang on to, maybe some strict and never changing moral laws that we can apply to our day just as they applied them in the early church. Or maybe some never changing words and phrases we can use to describe God, just as they did in the time of the Reformation.
“It’s the notion that God is unchanging, so we have to retreat from this world of change if we are to find God. The reassuring reality is that we in the church are called to serve a God who’s not afraid of change, never been afraid of change. The whole Bible witnesses to a God constantly at work bringing new things into being all over the place and never being afraid of them,” she said.
Rogers also spoke of her travels in the Presbyterian Church. “I think I am seeing a resurgence in legalism among Presbyterians all around – wanting to define very, very precisely the boundaries within which we are to operate in our church life; which actions are in accordance with God’s law and which ones are not. And we’re not sure you’re Christian if you don’t think like us and act like us -– legalism. What wording we are to use as we talk about God. What images are proper to use as we point people to God. And if you don’t say it as we do, then we have some doubts about your Christian faith.”
Perception, participation, proclamation
On Tuesday evening, Mary Jane Patterson, former director of the PCUSA’s Washington Office was the speaker. She spoke on three P’s, perception, participation and proclamation. She focused first on perception, using the example of Moses and Pharaoh. Moses viewed the exodus as the liberation of God’s people, she said, but Pharaoh saw it as massive civil disobedience. “Both acted on their perceptions.”
While Bible study is fundamental in perceiving what God is doing, Patterson said Christians must also study society and “the cry of the underprivileged children in our society.”
“After we see what God is doing we must all participate,” said Patterson.
“We in America are in bondage to our culture and we call that bondage freedom,” she said. “We record the climate around us rather than change it,” adding that “we will never be liberated until we change it.”
Patterson said “We have to pick a side,” whether to pursue and protect our privileges or whether to align ourselves with the oppressed and underprivileged. “We cannot choose to withdraw. Our single choice is to collaborate with the powers that be or change.”
After participation comes proclamation. “We must tell the people,” she said. “We must point to God as the source of our concern about the nation.”
Women must “take the lead” to lift up the moral content of the political decisions that must be made, she said.
The ecumenical reality
Joan Brown Campbell, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, spoke on ecumenism during Wednesday evening’s plenary.
She spoke of being the general secretary of “the nation’s oldest and largest ecumenical body in the day when the ecumenical agenda fails to command the time, energy, imagination, and resources particularly of the mainline churches.”
Campbell said the NCC has gained five new member churches since she has been general secretary. “And I’m very grateful for these new churches, because the new churches are extremely excited to be a part of the National Council of Churches. And we keep hoping that it affects the ones that have been there since the beginning.”
She said that after spending almost 40 years in the ecumenical movement, “This is where the future lies. It is in the ecumenical reality. The song of tomorrow will be born of our diversity. The melody line for Christian unity may be set by the big seven … The harmony will be a gift from the African American churches, the Korean Presbyterian Church, the Orthodox churches …And religious pluralism will be the largest orchestra in which Christian unity will play first violin.”
Campbell continued, “When people talk about the demise of the mainline churches, I always say to them why do you present that always as a negative, maybe it’s for positive reasons. Maybe the ecumenical movement has caught hold.”
Barbara E. Dua,
associate director of the Women’s Ministry Program AreaThe miracle of sharing
Barbara E. Dua, associate director of the Women’s Ministry Program Area, began her sermon on the final night of the conference by reading some negative messages given to women, and compared them to the wisdom she learned in her grandmother’s kitchen. “My grandmother sent each of us a message, ‘You are special,'” said Dua.
“You may have wondered what all of this has to do with tonight’s text. I have come to the conclusion that Jesus might have visited my grandmother quite often,” she said.
Dua read from Mark 8:1-10 and 14-21.
“Jesus spent a lot of time eating or talking about food. Mark’s gospel is filled with meals and discussions with religious authorities about meals and about breads and yeast … In fact Marks tells the story of the feeding of the multitudes twice.”
At this point in the story, said Dua, Jesus and the disciples are pretty worn out and more people were gathering. Out in the middle of nowhere the people were hungry.
Dua said Jesus knew that the disciples were worn out. “The disciples do not think they have anything to give, much less bread. But Jesus pushes them and asks how many loaves do you have. The miracle here was sharing of course. When everyone belongs there is enough.”
“Some here tonight may not think that they have any bread to give. Many of us were taught that our ideas were not okay. Many have been taught that women should keep their thoughts to themselves. They are too emotional to be taken seriously,” said Dua. “Sisters, we women, like the disciples must find a way to share our bread, for there are many who are hungry for the wisdom of women.”
Embrace of experience
“Some will say they don’t believe our story – the ideas and experiences shared here. Some will say the voices heard here are the voices of culture, voices of secularity. I want to know how do you have a story separate from the culture? Jesus’ stories were right from the context of Palestinian culture,” said Dua. “It is time to embrace our experience, to tell our stories and name them as sacred.”
She continued, “Our stories are evangelical. Our stories are good news and they are radical. Yes, radical, meaning rooted to the very heart of things. Radical meaning deep within us, the very essence of who God meant for us to be. Let women be the ones to claim what radical means.”
Negative portrayal
Another segment of the story is just a few verses away, said Dua. Jesus and the disciples are on the boat and the disciples realize they have no bread. Jesus is alarmed with their lack of understanding, and warns them to beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.
“Sisters, beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod,” she said. “Beware of those who would keep us in Egypt.”
“Jesus said watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod. That is exclusive bread, only for a select few, only for some who sit on certain boards, have access to the power system and who do not question tradition.”
“There is something else about yeast. It is not easy to control. It insists on certain conditions before it will rise,” said Dua. “Women of the church need to be this kind of yeast, insistent, irritating maybe, even demanding certain conditions, and changing, rising and expanding, growing full of life and energy.”
When Jesus said beware of the yeast of the Pharisees, it was not a great day for the power structure, said Dua. “Some will even try to portray this conference negatively. Some will want to make us feel like we don’t really belong in this Presbyterian Church. But the yeast has been rising this week, sisters. We need to learn to share this bread before the Church of Jesus Christ faints.”
She ended her sermon by saying, “Sisters, the biblical story invites us to share Jesus’ bread. For Jesus is the bread of life. Come, may I open the back door and will you come into this table where you belong?”
