ELCA NEWS SERVICE

July 11, 2008  

Chittister Tells Women of the ELCA to Boldly Challenge War, Peace Processes
08-111-FI/JB

     SALT LAKE CITY (ELCA) -- Women of faith have a special
calling to restore religion's principles of nonviolence, Sister
Joan Chittister, O.S.B., told more than 2,000 women July 11 in
the keynote of the Seventh Triennial Gathering of Women of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).  Her address on
women, religion and war challenged the audience to reclaim
religion from those who would misuse it "to justify a world at
war."
     The gathering theme, "Come to the Waters," focuses on the
celebration of Baptism through Bible study, speakers, workshops,
community service and worship.  The event is held through July 13
here at the Salt Palace Convention Center.
     Chittister co-chairs the Global Peace Initiative of Women,
New York.  She has written 35 books with such topics as peace,
justice, human rights, women, contemporary religious life and
spirituality.  She holds a doctorate from Pennsylvania State
University, University Park, Pa.
     "This presentation is designed to pursue the relationship
between women and war and to ask what role, if any, women have to
play in peacemaking in a world that calls itself religious but
functions as if it were not," Chittister said.
     United Nations research shows the percentage of civilians
killed during war has increased to the point where more than 90
percent of the casualties in Iraq have been civilians, Chittister
said.  "Most of those civilians on whom war falls most
mercilessly, most defenselessly, are women and children," she
said.
     "Women have a place to fill and a stake to claim and a role
to play in the world's pursuit of peace," Chittister said.  "It
is women who have borne the sons their fathers sent to war.  It
is women who have buried the men on whom their lives depended.
It is women who have been left alone, babies in their arms,
babies in their bellies to deal with the madness that comes from
the madness of war," she said.
     "It is women who are forced into sexual slavery and
exploitation for the sake of the warriors," Chittister said.  The
International Organization for Migration estimates more than
2 million women are "trapped in war zones and sold across borders
annually," she said.
     While war has a different and disproportionate effect on
women than on men, women are not involved in decision processes
leading to war or peace negotiations following war, Chittister
said.  "The issues of women and the children they're left to
support in the midst of war, as a result of war, are never
redressed by peace treaties, never considered by male mediators,
never factored into the costs of war, never considered in the
determination to go to war," she said.
     Religion is often considered a factor in going to war,
Chittister said.  "Religion itself is meant to be only a means to
sanctity not an end in itself," she said.  When religion is
viewed only as a human institution of rituals and denominations,
it is easily manipulated to serve the purposes of dictators, she
said.
     "Clearly it is time for women -- the other half of the human
race, the other face of God -- to save both their religions and
their nations.  Women, the life-bearers, must now give to the
world the spiritual life the world lacks," Chittister said.
     "It is time for women to take responsibility for making real
the religions they believe in.  It is time for women to be an
organized, international voice for peace, a religious critic of
national policies that threaten the life of the world," she said.
     "It is time for women to reach across the borders that men
will not breach to take the hands of the other -- not to bind
them but to bond them.  It is time for women's analyses of world
situations and women's solutions to conflict to be heard,"
Chittister said.
     "It is time for religious women to refuse to be either
victims or executioners not only to make safe the world but to
make real the religions we revere so that life before death can
come, as God wants, for us all," she said.
     "What does that have to do with you and me and the challenge
of the baptized to follow the nonviolent Jesus?" Chittister
asked.  "The answer is crucial now when we need to develop the
kind of religion that makes us love one another; when we need to
foil the dictators who use religion as a prop to keep themselves
in power; when we clearly need to release women -- the boldest
and most unmanageable of revolutionaries."

Panel Responds to Chittister's Address
     Three panelists responded to Chittister's presentation: the
Rev. Mark S. Hanson, ELCA presiding bishop; the Rev. Judith
VanOsdol-Hansen, ELCA pastor, former missionary and co-president
of the World Council of Religions for Peace and moderator for the
Women of Faith Network in Latin America and the Caribbean; and
Shannon Ligon, board member, ELCA Southeastern Pennsylvania
synodical women's organization.
     "How does one respond to a prophetess who has spoken words
of truth in the midst of our culture of massive deception?  We
respond with gratitude," Hanson told the audience. "I also
believe that what is called for are acts of public repentance,
confession and prayers of lament.  I believe we need you, the
women of this church, to lead us in public acts of lament."
     Historic "just war" principles are no longer "tenable,"
Hanson argued.  He urged people of faith to develop "principles
for just peace and lasting reconciliation."
     Hanson has asked ELCA congregations to discuss and debate
how to bring lasting peace to Iraq and Afghanistan, and he asked
audience members to raise their hands if their own congregations
had had such a discussion.  No one raised a hand.
     "We are citizens of a nation at war," Hanson said.  "We pray
for peace, and we pray for those who serve in the military, but
we are unwilling to engage one another, stir our churches for the
sake of peace."  He called on the women to ask their pastors for
congregational discussions about lasting peace.
     "Thank you for your courage for looking unblinkingly at the
ugliness and the obscenity -- the moral, ethical and spiritual
costs of war," Van Odsol-Hansen said to Chittister.  "Thank you
for looking and speaking so clearly that sexual violence is used
always, every day and increasingly so as a weapon of war."
     She urged the women to listen to Chittister's "clarion call"
to be part of the peacemaking process.  "Peace must be made.  It
doesn't fall out of heaven onto our heads.  We must construct
it," she said.
     "You are what I strive to be," Ligon said in response.  She
urged the women to support sisters who are in countries where
there is conflict.
     Ligon said she served several years in the U.S. military.
In response to a question about supporting people in the military
who believe the United States must maintain a military presence
in Iraq to liberate the people who live there, Ligon reminded the
audience that the United States has a volunteer army.  "Those
that are there are there because they want to be," she said,
adding they work hard to protect each other.
     "In the military, we wear those uniforms with love and
dignity and respect, and we wear them with honor.  We're proud of
those uniforms and what that uniform means," she said.
- - -
     Information about the Women of the ELCA Seventh Triennial
Gathering is at http://womenoftheELCA.org/tg08/ on the Web.
     Audio from Sister Joan Chittister's address to the Women of
the ELCA gathering is on the Web at:
http://media.ELCA.org/audionews/080711a.mp3
http://media.ELCA.org/audionews/080711b.mp3

For information contact:
John Brooks, Director (773) 380-2958 or [log in to unmask]
http://www.elca.org/news