On Being Church.

Tanner, Mary

Some Thoughts Inspired by the Ecumenical Community

For more than twenty-five years my dreams for the future of the church have been influenced by insights coming from the fellowship of churches that worships, reflects and acts together through being a part of the World Council of Churches. Both the "Community of Women and Men in the Church" study of the 1980s and the more recent Decade of Churches in Solidarity with Women have helped to shape my own understanding of what sort of church God might be calling us to be. The insights of the two studies have been different.

In part this is due to the different locations in which the programmes were developed. The Community study was located in the Faith and Order commission, the Decade in the programme on Justice, Peace and Creation. Not surprisingly the approaches and emphases were influenced by the context in which each was developed. The Community study Was more concerned with the re-formation and renewal which was called for in the internal life of the church if we were to be more truly a community of women and men. The emphasis of the Decade was more on the church as it carries out its vocation in, and for, a world tom apart by unimaginable violence. The insights of the two studies complement one another and have helped to shape my own understanding of what sort of church God might be calling us to be together.

Insights from the Community study

The "Community of Women and Men in the Church"(1) study was inspired by two biblical texts: Genesis 1:27 and Galations 3:27. In the light of these two biblical passages the programme began by encouraging a global exploration and conversation on women's experiences. It encouraged women, and women and men together, from around the world to explore their experience. No value judgment was placed upon one person's, or any group's, experience above another's. We discovered an underlying unity that existed due to women's common experience in many and the most varied situations of oppression and powerlessness in both the churches and the world. We listened to the longings expressed for release, for liberation, for a greater wholeness and holiness. We listened to women who felt their perspectives were never listened to, their imaginations imprisoned and who heard churches addressing them as second-class citizens, made in the image of men and not of God. We listened to women who felt God was calling them to a ministry of word and sacrament but who found that that call could not be tested, or even spoken about. We began to see how the liturgical, the ministerial, and the structured life of many churches reinforced this feeling of exclusion and marginalization. We were shocked by the number of women (and men) who only seemed to experience their church as oppressor, and their church's way of living as oppressive. We were challenged by Tissa Balasuriya to look beyond the boundaries of the churches and think of the women trapped in a web of oppression, the web of sexism, racism and classism.(2)

Some of us brought up in a narrow academic background of disembodied, deexperienced learning had to be taught by others to have confidence in speaking about our inner feelings, and our intimate lives of prayer and spirituality. But we did find the words, we helped each other explore, and the flood-gates were opened. Monica Furlong from Britain described what was happening as "a new source of energy suddenly discovered in the church like a spring of water bubbling up, turning to a large pool and gradually into a river, irrigating a dry countryside".(3) Rose Zoe Obianga, an African theologian, reflected "I am because I participate".(4)

We discovered a way of doing theology beginning from experience, and we learned to bring our experience into dialogue with scripture and the church's Tradition. Often our experience led us to see new and liberating things in scripture and Tradition. But equally there were times when scripture and Tradition posed questions to us about our experience. Those who were directing the study asked questions that would help us all, in our very different cultural and church contexts, to join in this ecumenical community of exploration. No one was told what to think. There were no right or wrong answers. After several years of exploration in the different parts of the world, the question began to be asked: "What are we learning, from this exploration of our experience of being women and men in different cultural and ecclesial contexts, about the sort of life God is calling us to live together?" "What sort of life together in the community of women and men in the Church would be a faithful response to God, and offer to the world a `whiff of its own possibility'?"

Gradually we began to recognize that this was a profoundly theological and ecclesiological study. There was one central question to which all others were related. This was not about the liberation of women, or getting women into positions of power and authority, or about the ordination of women, or about inclusive language, however sharp and pressing these questions were. The central question to which all the other issues were related is the theological question of our understanding of the nature and being of God.

We asked ourselves: Is God really Father? Is the male language of Father and Son, are the masculine attributes of power and lordship, or is the pattern of pyramidical hierarchy in the Trinity, any longer useable? We explored the language of Father and Son and asked: What is it that the unique relation between the unique Father, and the unique Son, safeguards and preserves that might not, in another time and place, be safeguarded by the relation of a unique mother to a unique daughter? Some of us were fearful of where we were being taken. We searched the Bible and Tradition, not to replace the traditional `language, but rather to recover the feminine images for God, in order to find a balance and wholeness. We looked at Deuteronomy and Isaiah, at Jesus' treatment of women, at Clement of Alexandria, Julian of Norwich and John of the Cross, as well as at contemporary feminist writings. We tried to understand Jurgen Moltmann's plea to us to "zero content" the distorted notions of Father and Son and re-content them with the relation of utter mutuality, interdependence and conformity of mind and will that we see between Jesus and the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane. We grasped at the emerging emphasis in theology on the personal and relational life of the Trinity, on the receiving and giving, giving and receiving life of God, on that mutual attentiveness of the persons to each other.

We held before us, at almost every meeting, the Rublev icon of the Trinity. The social Trinity was seen to correspond most directly to the most fundamental questionings of women about God, born out of their experience of personal relations. We came to see that if what we were discovering was the truth about God, then all churches must watch their language in the presence of this inclusive God. The language, symbols and imagery we use to speak about God have to be rich enough and evocative enough to help us encounter a God who is neither male nor female, neither masculine nor feminine but who encompasses and transcends all we have come to understand as male and female, masculine and feminine.

We recognized the need to find new and inclusive ways of talking about the community of those created and redeemed in the image of this inclusive God. Language shapes a community's self-understanding, its identity. And we called for liturgical reform, not as a means of exchanging one "bag of tools" for another but of attempting a painful exchange of identity -- a change to inclusive community. We needed it because the wholeness and holiness of the Christian community depends on it -- and because, in the end, our vision of God was at stake.

Our perception about God led naturally to challenges about our understanding of ourselves, our identity as men and women created in the image of God, about what equality means, and how that might be lived out more faithfully in new relationships and patterns of living in different cultural contexts. The distinction given in creation between male and female raises profound questions of what it means that we are not simply human, but human as male or female. We explored questions about the relation between being and function, between biology and identity. We asked whether, and how, the distinctive functions of women and men should determine their roles in the family, in society, and in the church -- whether gender is constitutive of identity, and whether difference of gender determines differences in status and role.

The ecclesiological challenges included challenges to the structures of the churches, to how power and authority were exercised and by whom. And with the question of power and exclusive, all-male leadership came questions about the ordination of women to a ministry of word and sacrament. For some, the fundamental question was a theological one: "Christian priesthood is called to be fully human, if God is to be known as fully God."

The vision of God, the understanding of men and women in God's image, the inclusive life of the church, its liturgy, its structures, and its ministry -- all this was one vast interlocking agenda. We were in search of the wholeness and holiness that flow from our understanding of God's own mysterious trinitarian life. The Community study called for a radical transformation if the church was to be a more credible sign of wholeness, and holiness, in and for the world.

The Community study did help us see new possibilities in the biblical truths from Genesis 1:27 and Galatians 3:28 -- that God created men and women "in God's image", and that in Christ "there is neither male nor female". We did begin to see the implications of this for the unity and mission of the church. And what we had begun to see in the ecumenical community of exploration did make a difference to some churches whose lives were renewed by the insights and reflections of the ecumenical community. But it was only a beginning.

Churches in solidarity with women

The Decade of the Churches in Solidarity with Women -- which turned out to be the Decade of Women in Solidarity with Women -- was also inspired by a biblical image or story, by the story of the women coming to the tomb on the first Easter morning and their question, "Who will roll away the stone?"(5) The earlier study was, in the main, concerned with renewal in the life of the church as a community of women and men. The Decade was, in the main, concerned with the grave impact of the global economy on women; with racism and xenophobia; with the dreadful violence against women in the world and, shockingly, in the churches also. The Decade also identified the continuing barriers that prevented women from participating fully in the life of the churches. The Decade uncovered the scope of violence against women in every country, age group, sect and society, in the home and the work-place, on the streets.(6) Besides domestic violence, sexual harassment, rape and sex tourism, violence takes subtler forms in the psychological and emotional demeaning of women. Its extent is seldom acknowledged, its victims are often afraid to speak out, and are silenced or discredited if they do. The Decade understood, that like violence, economic oppression is constituted and multiplied by the intermingling of factors of gender, race, sexual orientation, age, ability, ethnicity and religion. Every indicator of women's poverty and inequality is intensified for aboriginal, immigrants and disabled women.

The challenges of the Decade were different from those of the Community study, but they were complementary, all part of a single agenda which helps us to understand what sort of church God is calling us to be in and for the world. What are some features of this church which God is calling us to be?

First, the church is called to be a church in solidarity, in solidarity with the poor, the marginalized, victims of violence. And because women, and women and children, are most often the most powerless in the face of economic injustice, the ravages of war, ethnic genocide, and racism and sexism, the church has a special responsibility of attentive solidarity with the women of the world. It is not enough for women to be in solidarity with women. The whole church is called to a ministry of solidarity with a bias towards women and children. The decade called for the church to be what some called a "moral community", actively opposing all forms of violence against humanity and against the environment. Being a "moral community" is not about standing apart from the world, offering tokens of support, but rather about being mixed up with the brokenness of the world, alongside and in suffering solidarity with it. Delores Williams, an African American theologian, suggested that "along with the original distinguishing `marks of apostolicity', catholicity and holiness, we add `oppression' to all forms of violence against humanity, nature and environment."(7) The force of this is powerful, Indeed, the very call to holiness entails the call to moral community. But that implication is, as Williams makes clear, very often obscured by a narrow understanding of the mark of holiness. The Decade grasped, at a deep level, the fact that belong a moral community is an integral aspect of the classical mark of the holiness of the church.

Secondly, the Decade saw that, given how many women are treated with violence, sexual harassment, psychological abuse and abuse of power, the church, within its own life and in the lives of the churches, is called to an attentive solidarity with women. It is not enough for women to be in solidarity with women; the cry that began the Decade -- for the churches to be in solidarity with women -- was not an empty cry. Through the visits to the churches, those "living letters", the cry of women weeping was heard, women weeping because of the oppression they experience -- in the churches as well as in the world outside. The Decade had very particular things to say about the way power and authority are experienced by women in the churches. It looked for another way of exercising power and authority. This was not simply a matter of a fairer numerical representation of women in the governing bodies of the churches, though that is important. It is about the sort of change that the theologian Letty Russell talks about, the change from a paradigm of domination to a paradigm of doxology.(8) The experience of women in solidarity with women has been of sitting around a table, of leadership in the round, of something inclusive and open, welcoming and hospitable, where responsibility is shared, and where women have been prepared to take risks, and even to get things wrong. As one woman put it: women want to build a new church, stripping it of its hierarchical and crippling institutionalism so that it becomes a movement of concerned and involved men and women, engaged in a ministry of healing and reconciliation.

The insights of the Community study and the Decade complement each other. The primary focus of the first was on the internal life of the church; the primary focus of the second was on the church as it faces, and lives out, its calling in and for the world, particularly in attentive solidarity with women. The two belong together. As a result of the Community study and the Decade of the Churches in Solidarity with Women, the ecumenical community in many places around the world has been helped to envision something of the church God calls us to be, and it has helped churches in some places to take steps, albeit small steps, to realize that vision. It is important to acknowledge this, for these are the stepping stones for the future, the foundation on which we can now build.

Being church in the future

Without the imagination or poetic skills of an Ezekiel, or of the author of the book of Revelation, or a Mother Julian, it is hard to capture in words a vision for the future of "being church". It was no accident that women in England chose to sum up the inspiration of the Decade by commissioning an icon of St Hilda of Whitby. The icon depicts Hilda, in a time of chaos, establishing ordered life for women; in a polarized heirarchical society establishing a community where no one was rich or poor; and in a time of awful barbarity and violence presiding, in love, over a community where the keynote was peace and charity. The icon of Hilda is a window on to a life of wholeness, where all are valued and violence no longer holds sway. Nor was it surprising that many in the Community study found a vision of wholeness and holiness most profoundly expressed in the Rublev icon of the Trinity with its portrayal of equality, mutual attentiveness, gentleness, and giving and receiving love. Whatever I envision about being church in the future, I know must include and bring together both the insights of both the Community study and the Decade. What are some of these insights?

First, the church in each and every place must become a community which is inclusive and not exclusive, where male and masculine is no longer valued above female and feminine. All must hear the church teaching that men and women are equally created in God's image, equally assumed and redeemed in Christ, and equally recipients of the indwelling, sanctifying Spirit of God. There is no room for teaching, whether explicit or implicit, that perpetuates false notions of male domination and female subordination. There can be no room for structures that exclude women. Every person must hear and know themselves to be valued in, and for, who they are, and for the particular gift which God has given to them to use in the service of all. The church must lift up the hitherto-silent parts of the scriptures and the Tradition, and re-express the faith of the church in language, symbols and imagery which speak to women as well as to men. The worship life of the community must help all to encounter "in the depths" a God who is neither male nor female, neither masculine nor feminine, but who embraces and transcends all that we know as male and female, masculine and feminine. We must be a community of women and men who together dare to risk exploring a God who can never be trapped in our limited language or imagery.

Secondly, the church in each and every place must become the community which lives deeply from God's gifts of scripture and the church's Tradition, interpreted now in the light of the experience of women as well as of men, and expressed afresh in ways that speak to women as well as to men. The Community study and the Decade drew women into the circle of interpretation, and as a result there are a growing number of feminist theologies and rich resources for women's spirituality. But there are still millions of Christian women all over the world who have not begun to find a voice, who don't know how to put their intuitions, their deep longings and unfulfilled selves, into words. There are millions who have not been given confidence to think that their women's experience is of any value in understanding the scriptures, or engaging with the Tradition, or that their expertise is of any use in guiding the church. There are millions of women who have not begun to formulate the questions that would take them, and all of us, towards a deeper understanding and realization of what the church of the future is called to be and to do.

Churches everywhere, in their catechetical teaching and their theological education, need intentionally to encourage women to bring their experience into the community of exploration, interpretation and proclamation of the faith of the church.

Thirdly, the church in each and every place must seek to be a community of women and men which lives from the power of God's gifts of sacramental grace. Those gifts must be celebrated, and administered, in ways that build up the church as a community of women and men. The very words and actions of the celebration, and the administration, must proclaim and symbolize that the community is a community of women and men. In that way the community will be empowered through the grace of sacrament to become what it is. And participation in the eucharist must lead to the community's active involvement in challenging all forms of violence and all kinds of injustice -- not least of all those things that diminish and oppress the lives of women. This requires that the church be passionately aware of situations of injustice and violence, particularly as these affect the lives of women, and be ready to speak out prophetically and to act boldly to alleviate injustice.

Fourthly, the church in each and every place must be a community of men and women who know that they need all other Christian communities across the world, that their lives are interdependent. Of course, belonging to a worldwide Christian family requires some sort of structure of interconnectedness. The community of women and men walking together on the way (syn hodos) needs people to meet together, to share perspectives and to speak a Christian message on behalf of all, not least wherever issues of peace and justice involve us all. Different resources, material and spiritual, are there to be shared. The community requires structures of belonging that value the personal and the relational, the individual and the community, and that can hold the local, regional and world levels interdependent and mutually accountable. These are qualities which are hospitable to women's way of working. The insights of women on participation, inclusive oversight, power sharing, and what it means to be around a round table for consensus building, all need to be embodied in renewed structures of belonging and authority.

The worldwide sense of interconnectedness and interdependence must, at the same time, be balanced with structures and signs of continuity with the church of apostolic times: those signs and symbols of the church's continuity must become more inclusive. Holy women -- as well as holy men -- are personal signs of faithful continuity with the teaching and mission of the apostolic community. Women saints and mar, tyrs deserve a more equal place in the liturgical life of the community. The visible signs of the church's continuity must be more inclusive.

Lastly, the church in each and every place, if it is to be credible as a community of women and men, must pick up that vast unfinished agenda of uncovering and confronting violence against women, and women and children. We are only just beginning to become conscious of how violence threatens the very foundations of life through the "colonizing of wombs", through bio-technology, and through other scientific means, controlling women's reproductive choices and capacities, and threatening the very foundations of life itself. The church in each and every place must become the community that uncovers and challenges all the violent forces that hold women, and women and men, captive. Exposing violence, standing for peace, peace with justice, caring for the harmony of creation -- all this is an indispensable part of being church. Being church requires that we continue to "roll away the stones" of prejudice, injustice and violence, particularly as this affects women all over the world.

I write this in Tantur, Jerusalem, on the way to Bethlehem, as news comes through of yet another bombing. Two women, who just happened to be passing on their way home to their ten children, have just died as innocent victims of a war not of their own choosing, of a situation of injustice not of their own making.

Any vision of the church as a community of women and men is hopelessly incomplete if it takes no account of the multifaith, pluralistic world of which the church is a part. The church is called to be a sign for the world of the world's own possibility for inclusive, participatory, non-violent, whole and holy life. But the church never has had, and never will have, a monopoly on the truth, nor has it always given convincing witness to the truth which it does have. Other faith communities and secular movements have things to tell the church. The community of women and men in the church of the future must be one which listens more attentively, engages in dialogue more humbly, and is not afraid to make common cause with others in confronting violence, not least violence against women.

There is a danger in envisioning being church in the future. Visions are vulnerable to the response, "it could never be so ... the brokenness goes too deep, the complexity of the issues is too great, the vested interests of those who want to keep the status quo are too strong". But visions are important. We must be able to give some account of the hope that is in us! Nevertheless, words on their own are not enough. Renewal has to happen. The Community study and the Decade did inspire some changes in some churches. But the vision was lost all too soon, the urgency for renewal was no longer understood, and other agendas took over.

The World Council of Churches itself is in a unique position, through its varied programmes and studies, to keep alive the exploration of what sort of community of women and men in the church God calls us to be. There is much that could be brought together creatively from the past work done in all parts of the Council; once done, this could provide a firm foundation on which to build. The Council also has possibilities to model, in its own life, inclusive and participatory ways of working and ways of reaching consensus. But, in the end, conversion has to happen in the churches themselves and action can only be taken by the churches themselves. The churches together, within the fellowship of the World Council of Churches, have the possibility to call one another to live more faithfully as communities of women and men proclaiming wholeness and holiness. The churches have the possibility to call one another to live together in unity as a community of women and men -- to be the church as God intends us to be.

NOTES

(1) See Constance F. Parvey, ed., The Community of Women and Men in the Church, Geneva, WCC Publications, 1983, and "Beyond Unity-in-Tension. Prague: the Issues and the Experience in Ecumenical Perspective," in Beyond Unity-in-Tension: Unity, Renewal and the Community of Women and Men, Thomas F. Best, ed., Faith and Order paper no. 138, Geneva, WCC Publications, 1988, pp. 1-33.

(2) Ibid., pp.43ff.

(3) The Church Times, Jan. 1980.

(4) Ibid., p.68.

(5) Living Letters: A Report of Visits to the Churches during the Ecumenical Decade of the Churches in Solidarity with Women, Geneva, WCC Publications, 1997.

(6) Aruna Gnanadason, No Longer a Secret: The Church and Violence against Women, Risk Book Series, Geneva, WCC Publications, 1997.

(7) Ibid., pp.78, 79.

(8) Letty M. Russell, The Household of Freedom: Authority in Feminist Theology, Philadelphia, Westminster, 1987.

Mary Tanner was general secretary of the Council for Christian Unity of the Church of England, in London, and is a former moderator of the Faith and Order commission. This article draws in part upon the article "Solidarity with Women: Challenges to the Churches", in One in Christ, vol. 2, 1999.