Emerging Women

By Melissa Hatfield

I saw a man die on Oprah yesterday. It wasn’t of embarrassment. It wasn’t a character in a movie.

It was a real man. A young man. A man who had a name I do not know. A man who had a family and dreams, I suppose. Maybe both of these had died long before.

I was watching her show because she was telling stories of women in the world. Women who have made a difference. Women whose lives had been changed. An African woman who dreamed great dreams and made them all come true. An Indian woman who had taken a loan and built a business that bought her freedom and respect. A Congolese woman who spoke with courage about being raped in a culture where you don’t speak of being raped.

Then, in the midst of footage from the DR of Congo, where they recorded the woman’s courageous telling of her rape, there it was. Maybe ten seconds in a montage of other footage.

Two rebels in fatigues holding a young man in ragged clothes at the edge of a bridge. One solider had his feet. The other his hands. As the man twisted and cried out with desperate pleas, they threw him over the side of the bridge.

This wasn’t a movie clip. There wasn’t a mattress or inflatable waiting at the bottom to break his fall.

And then to make sure they had ended his life, they slid their guns from their shoulders and fired repeatedly into the water below.

Ten seconds over. On to another scene.

But this scene replays over and over in my mind. I was and am physically sick.

I’m not oblivious to what is happening in the world. I’m removed but not oblivious. I read books by survivors of unspeakable atrocities. I follow news reports and organizations like Invisible Children and Falling Whistles that fight to end these wars in central Africa. I write my government leaders telling them it must be a priority to end these wars. I show movies that tell the stories of Night Commuters, Glue Boys, and young men like Sunday to my youth and challenge them to get involved. I’ve been to Kenya twice, will return two more times this year, and have talked with people who have scars from machetes or family members that only exist in memories and stories because their lives were stolen.

But this. This ten second clip cut through all those and went straight to the heart.

His horrific murder was captured on video and that intimate moment was shown to 7 million plus individuals in the world.

As a f—— passing clip.

Oh God, how could you possibly forgive us for sitting by while this is happening.

I saw a man die on Oprah yesterday. Today many, many more die in silence from our silence.

Please, please help me make some noise.

1. Learn about what is happening in the Congo.

2. Sign a petition to get President Obama’s attention that this must stop. Arrest Joseph Kony, end the war, and help restore the regions of conflict and rehabilitate the people that live there.

3. Call, email or write your members of Congress.

4. Share this with your friends and family members.

Melissa Hatfield is a Pastor of Youth and Missions in Missouri and a daughter, sister, aunt and friend. This post originally appeared at her blog Wonderings and Wanderings.

Liza Peiffer sent us the following about an important issue affecting women and families worldwide.

The United Nations has designated the first Monday each October as World Habitat Day.

This year on Oct. 5 in Washington, D.C. and around the world, please join Habitat for Humanity in support of this global observance as we come together and declare that the lack of decent, affordable housing is unacceptable.

According to the United Nations, more than 100 million people in the world today are homeless. Millions more face a severe housing problem living without adequate sanitation, with irregular or no electricity supply and without adequate security.

Worldwide, more than 2 million housing units per year are needed for the next 50 years to solve the present worldwide housing crisis. With our global population expanding, however, at the end of those 50 years, there would still be a need for another 1 billion houses. (UN-HABITAT: 2005)

Raising awareness and advocating for change are the first steps toward transforming systems that perpetuate the global plague of poverty housing. World Habitat Day serves as an important reminder that everyone must unite to ensure that everyone has a safe, decent place to call home.

The U.N. further states that both developed and developing countries, cities and towns are increasingly feeling the effects of climate change, resource depletion, food insecurity, population growth and economic instability.

Rapid rates of urbanization cause serious negative consequences – overcrowding, poverty, slums with many poorly equipped to meet the service demands of ever growing urban populations.

With over half of the world’s population currently living in urban areas the U.N. believes there is no doubt that the “urban agenda” will increasingly become a priority for governments, local authorities and their non-governmental partners everywhere.

On this day, we reaffirm that adequate shelter is a basic human right, and we focus on the housing conditions of cities and towns around the world. We also use this day to remind the world of its collective responsibility for the future of the human habitat.

On October 5, 2009, please join us in support of World Habitat Day, as we raise our voices and declare that the lack of decent, affordable housing is unacceptable.

What can you do for World Habitat Day 2009?

Educate yourself and your friends and family.

* Read Habitat’s World Habitat Day handbook to learn more about the importance of secure tenure and neighborhood revitalization.
* Take a virtual tour of the Capotillo informal settlement in the Dominican Republic.
* Read statistics and research about poverty housing in the U.S. and around the world.
* Link to our World Habitat Day 2009 resources page on your social media pages, personal Web site or blog.

Advocate for decent housing for all.

* Submit a photo of yourself holding a sign that says “It all starts at home” and submit it to Habitat’s photo petition on Flickr.com.
* Send a message to your members of Congress on World Habitat Day.
* Tell your friends and family to take action too!

Join a World Habitat Day event in your community.
Visit World Habitat Day events.

Donate to support Habitat’s efforts.
Donate online today.

My church recently hosted a screening of the documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell. I knew little about the film before attending the event, but what I encountered was a powerful story of women making a difference in their world. As the film description reads,

Pray the Devil Back to Hell chronicles the remarkable story of the courageous Liberian women who came together to end a bloody civil war and bring peace to their shattered country. Thousands of women — ordinary mothers, grandmothers, aunts and daughters, both Christian and Muslim — came together to pray for peace and then staged a silent protest outside of the Presidential Palace. Armed only with white T-shirts and the courage of their convictions, they demanded a resolution to the country’s civil war. Their actions were a critical element in bringing about a agreement during the stalled peace talks. A story of sacrifice, unity and transcendence, Pray the Devil Back to Hell honors the strength and perseverance of the women of Liberia. Inspiring, uplifting, and most of all motivating, it is a compelling testimony of how grassroots activism can alter the history of nations.

Theirs was a courageous and hope-filled story that gives testimony to the fact that grassroots activism does affect change, but it was also much more complex than that. It is also a story of terror, greed, and oppression. Liberia’s Civil War tore apart the nation. The President, Charles Taylor, in his greed for money and power, ruled through his roaming military bands with no regard for human rights. The opposing warlords cared little for saving the country, and made use of the same injustices to secure power and wealth for themselves. The women were tired of seeing their husbands and sons caught up in (and dying in) the pissing contest for power, of watching their children starve, of having to flee their homes, and of witnessing the rape and murder of family members. But instead of simply despairing, they decided to take a stand for peace. Taking their cue from Esther in the Bible, they wore simple clothes and began protests for peace hoping to gain the attention of the President and the warlords. They held signs, sang songs, and persuaded their priests and imans to join their cause. They withheld sex from their husbands to get them to listen to reason. And when the eventual peace talks stalled and became a joke, they staged a sit-in trapping dignitaries in the conference hall until a decision was reached. And even when the chance of democratic elections was won, they campaigned still – guiding the disarmament process, getting women out to vote, and electing for Liberia the first woman President of any African nation. Courage, passion, and intensity can barely begin to describe the commitment these women had to peace. As they got into the cause and started to see that peace might actually be realized, they were emboldened and forgot to fear. As one women put it, “we forgot we could be raped.”

The power of women to change their world was profoundly demonstrated in this film. I loved how these women were presented as always being for peace rather than against the atrocities. This perspective kept them on the path to achieving their goals. It also help them help rehabilitate the child soldiers after the war ended. The images of young boys with limbs blown off playing schoolyard games is heartbreaking – and it was even harder knowing that those women were helping their former rapists and torturers. I’ve heard similar stories of women in Nigeria and Kenya peacefully banding together to stand up to injustices. It takes vision, commitment, and more hope in a better world than there is fear of what repercussions may ensue.  But it also takes a commitment to mercy and love.

Beyond being emotionally moved by this film, I was struck by the need for a couple of things in response to the film. First is the need for stories like this to be told. All of this was unfolding in Liberia during 2003-2005 and I never heard a thing about it on the news. Granted here in the USA, we were busy at the time bombing the crap out of Iraq and to even say the word “peace” much less talk about a movement of all of a nation’s women for peace was considered highly “unpatriotic.” But the world needs to know about the injustices as well as these stories of hope. Knowing that ordinary mothers and grandmothers can completely alter the path of a nation, is inspiring to say the least.

The second thing I was struck by was the need to educate children on conceptions of masculinity and femininity that affirm love and not hatred. When men are taught that they must be strong and powerful to be a good man, it is not hard to end up where the men and boys of Liberia did. Killing, raping, and pillaging in order to gain wealth and power shouldn’t be the definition of a man. Churches though are supporting these lies in encouraging the “fighter Jesus” images and hierarchical concepts that place men above women. The women of Liberia finally stood up and took charge, challenging those inane conceptions of masculinity. Others of us, especially in the church, can learn from them the importance of promoting respect, reconciliation, and love as opposed to strength, power, and dominance as core values.

To see the ability of women to change the world, to see the hope to be found in peace, and to know that even the most horrible of hells can be redeemed through peace and love, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, is a must see film. This is the sort of film that should be encouraging our churches to similar action and the sort of story that I want my children to learn as they grow older.  Our schools should be teaching our children less of the stories of who killed the most people to win wars, and more of those that saved their country by ending war without violence. If we want to raise peacemakers that respect the dignity of women, choose love over hate, compassion over greed, and life over death these women are the heroes they need to be presented with from a young age. So go see this film – spread the word, tell the story of hope, and take a stand for peace. To find a screening of this film near where you live click here

By Cindy Wallace

A few weeks ago I gathered on the beach with other women to take a moment at the summer solstice and praise God for the spring and the summer, for creation, for the rhythm of our lives as women, to praise God for the beauty and beg mercy for the pain.

The image I couldn’t get out of my head was of a young migrant worker holding a baby, trying to get the child to nurse. But the baby won’t eat. The baby is sick after spending months in the womb while its mother worked in fields sprayed with devastating pesticides and lived in shacks at the edges of these fields. (Cherrie Moraga’s play Heroes and Saints is a powerful statement about this reality, as does Ana Castillo’s novel So Far From God.) I couldn’t stop thinking of this young woman, and many more like her, and the spotless produce I buy for the price of their infants’ wellbeing and even lives. I thought of the aching loveliness of life, and the aching agony of it, and babies’ cancer-wracked bodies that someone in an office somewhere refers to by phrases like “spatial racism” or the “geography of racism.”

I thought about the sticky jeweled purple of the plum pie I had baked the day before, its tart-sweet nutmegginess and flaky crust. I had stood making pie dough in my 90-degree kitchen, grating frozen butter to mix in with the flour. I relished the melt of the yellow butter, the feel of the words “sweet cream” in my mouth. I used the back of my hand to brush hair off my forehead in a move I’m sure millions of women have done throughout time, leaving that iconic slight trace of flour on my face. I thought of the plum pie cooling on the table, and then cut and tumbled into white porcelain bowls, and its tang next to the smoky smooth of a dark cup of coffee. I thought of how simply thankful I was for this pie, the process of making it, the slow joy of eating it bite by bite.

And at the same time I thought of the laborers who pick the plums, and their babies, and their wages, and their sunburned skins. I thought of floods and droughts, famines, food surpluses left to rot because of that idol-god “the market.” I tried to pray aloud, and I choked on my own words, and I felt the anger of helplessness, an anger I have been feeling a lot recently as I read books recounting histories of injustice and raise my eyes to look at the world around me.

When will we have the beauty without the pain? Especially, when will we have the beauty without someone else’s pain?

And I thought of the cross.

The beauty will always be based on Someone Else’s pain.

But not the pain of the migrant worker, or the sweatshop laborer, or the sex slave: because one day, the Messiah will make it right. Jesus Christ will redeem what he has promised to redeem. He will make us whole, and the whole earth that groans because of what we have done to it, and the whole population weeping because of what we have done to them — we all together will be made whole.

What are we doing now in the name of that promise? How are we, as the continuing presence of God on this earth, Christ’s body, pursuing wholeness for our sisters and our brothers? Tonight, I stood in the wholeness of a circle of women praising God for the beauty and begging mercy for the pain.

I don’t understand this economy of justice and grace. But here are a few words from Psalm 10: may they convict us even as they give us hope.

Psalm 10.1-2, 10-18 (NIV)

Why, O LORD, do you stand far off?
Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?
In his arrogance the wicked man hunts down the weak,
who are caught in the schemes he devises.
His victims are crushed, they collapse;
they fall under his strength.
He says to himself, “God has forgotten;
he covers his face and never sees.”
Arise, LORD! Lift up your hand, O God.
Do not forget the helpless.
Why does the wicked man revile God?
Why does he say to himself,
“He won’t call me to account”?
But you, O God, do see trouble and grief;
you consider it to take it in hand.
The victim commits himself to you;
you are the helper of the fatherless.
Break the arm of the wicked and evil man;
call him to account for his wickedness
that would not be found out.
The LORD is King for ever and ever;
the nations will perish from his land.
You hear, O LORD, the desire of the afflicted;
you encourage them, and you listen to their cry,
defending the fatherless and the oppressed,
in order that man, who is of the earth, may terrify no more.

Cindy Wallace is a graduate student, a recovering fundamentalist, and a church-planting plotter with her red-goateed seminarian husband. She blogs at http://lafleurepuisee.blogspot.com/.

via Brian McLaren

What will it take to change the world?

Sometimes people wonder why the UN made “Promoting gender equality and empowering women” one of their Millennium Development Goals, but to truly improve the lives of the poor and oppressed around the world, women need the power to affect change. All too often they are denied education, forced to marry and have babies young, and spend most of their day walking miles to gather water. Freedom, education, and the resources to get on their feet changes all that and raises them out of poverty. For most of us the conversation about empowering women resolves around women being respected as full people, for communities around the world it is a matter of life and death. Check out the girleffect.org site for more facts about how educating and empowering girls changes communities.

In light of the ongoing protests and election turmoil in Iran, I found this interview with an Iranian women’s rights activist to give a helpful voice to the real people involved there – “Iranian feminist dissident hopes protests will succeed and stay peaceful.”

To her this isn’t about overthrowing a regime, but a call for serious reform that focuses on human rights. People want to stop the abuse of women on the streets by government guards. Women want to live a normal life. For them, it is not just an election, but basic human dignity that is at stake here.

by Jessica Glaser

I’ve slowly begun to work my way through books written about the Emergent movement or reflecting theology, orthodoxy, and practices that many Emergent groups have come to embrace. Nearly all of them are written by men, which says something much larger than I’d like to discuss here. Nearly all of them gingerly step around the issues of abortion and “promiscuity” (whatever that means), seeing them as modern societal problems. I find this problematic, in that abortion and “promiscuity” are usually two words that are thrown about when seeking to impose restrictions on the lives and bodies of women (the other being “family values” in the unholy antifeminist trinity). I leave bigger discussions of these implications for future essays and debates, but when I hear these, I am forced to notice a deafening silence around much more pervasive issues affecting an enormous number of women in the United States and on the planet at large: sexual violence and violence against women.

Around 1 in 5 women in the United States has been raped or sexually assaulted. Only 37% of rapes are ever reported, according to the FBI, let alone prosecuted. Approximately three women are murdered each day. Nearly 5 million acts of domestic violence occur every year. These assaults and murders are usually performed by an intimate partner or someone the victims knows. Furthermore, somewhere around 50,000 women and children are trafficked into the United States every year.

On a global scale, approximately one in three women will be beaten or sexually assaulted during her lifetime.

I hope these statistics are enough to convince you that there is a major problem here. Numerous advocacy groups working since the beginning of the Second Wave Feminist movement have been able to help millions of survivors in their fight to be taken seriously and their struggle to find safety. Over 40 years, a societal shift has occurred (although not strongly enough) wherein it is no longer acceptable to hit or rape your wife, or any other woman, and that it is not the woman’s fault if such violence is perpetrated upon her. And yet, violence and rape of women are still happening on a massive scale.

Every election cycle, I hear numerous condemnations coming from Christian communities on the subjects of abortion, homosexuality, promiscuity, and even occasionally pornography (without the requisite acknowledgment of the work of feminists such as Andrea Dworkin or Catherine MacKinnon). But I never, ever hear condemnations of domestic violence or rape, which hurts families on a grander scale than most (if any) of the issues listed above.

I don’t understand this silence. Is it because American Christians think that people know that they’re automatically against this kind of violence, and thus don’t need to address it? Is it because there is still a society wide (not just Christian) implied pervasive need to blame the victims and survivors of such violence, and residual from the time when women were chattel, less than human according to legal status and protections? Is it because the Christian community at large still values women less than it does men because of the strong patriarchal history and context of the church and its orthodoxy? I’d argue that it’s probably the intersection of all three of these reasons, and others I haven’t mentioned or am not aware of. And based on the way Jesus treated women and his teachings, I’m sure that the fact that this violence goes unmentioned or ignored, or is tacitly sanctioned by the Christian community, is utterly unacceptable.

So let’s have it, churches, theologians, evangelicals, mainliners. Let’s hear what you’re going to do about the abuse of 50% of your members, who you may not see as equals, but who have been equals in God since the beginning, with society just now learning to catch up. This violence inscribed on our bodies, minds, and souls needs to stop, and you need to be part of the solution.

Statistics taken from http://www.feminist.com/antiviolence/facts.html and http://www.now.org/issues/violence/stats.html, which in turn have been taken from the United Nations, the CIA, the FBI, and the US Department of Justice, among others.

Jessica Glaser is a recent graduate of the University of Denver, a former activist with the V-Day Campaign, a mainline United Methodist, an Emergent Lutheran, and an unapologetic feminist.