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Editorial:
"There's Nothing New About Change"
Anna Rankin
Comment:
Embracing the Stranger
Denise Wright
From
the Director: Change and Decay – so what's new?
David W Porter
Alwyn
Thomson
Ethel White
A
Changing Church
Chris Easton
Women,
the Church and Change
Lesley Carroll
Interview
with Noel Fallows: Multi-cultural Church Life
Anna Rankin
Urban
Grit
Ken Groves
Higher
Throne
Keith
Getty & Kristyn Lennox
2003
Conference: Reconciliation – Illusion or Elusive?
What's
Jesus got to do with Forgiveness?
Stuart Noble
Review:
Lost in Translation
Gareth Higgins
Review:
The Church Beyond the Congregation by James Thwaites
Claire Martin
Review:
A Time for Mission by Samuel Escobar
Ben
Walker
Review:
Against the Stream by David W Smith
Cheryl
Reid
Review:
Evangelicalism and National Identity in Ulster, 1921-1998 by Patrick
Mitchel
David Hewitt
Review:
I was a teenage Catholic by Malachi O'Doherty
Fran
Porter
WOMEN, THE CHURCH AND CHANGE
REFLECTING ON CHANGES in Western European and North American society, Francis Fukuyama identifies the coming of the information age in the 1990s as the when change, abroad since the 1960s, was intensified to crystallise into, 'The Great Disruption'1. The evidence of this disruption is seen in deindustrialization, a move away from manufacturing to service industry and the replacement of physical labour with mental.
The disruption, in Fukuyama's view, has been accompanied by a deterioration of what has for long been the accepted social order. The deterioration is evidenced in inner-city crime, the breakdown of the traditional family unit, and a decline of trust in institutions. From my perspective, as a minister in an inner-city congregation, no church in the inner-city can exist effectively without facing up to these changes in social order. Society is ordering itself in diverse and disconnected ways and the church, as an institution, is confronted by the world's lack of trust in it. I am aware that the mistrust creeps under the church doors in the lives and experiences of disrupted people, some of whom come to the church to gather in to a safe haven of shared memories of better days. They, rightly, need comfort and security but are confused by the church's struggle to live the gospel in a rapidly changing world. Any mistrust that may have crept in with them is affirmed. Not even the church is as it used to be.
While Fukuyama's analysis is open to critique, his identification of the causes of social change, broadly under the banners of demography, economy and culture, provide useful points of departure for discussion of the church, change and the role of women. It is no mistake that he dedicates a whole chapter to the special role of women. Fukuyama is clear that women should not be blamed for the changes, nor asked to retreat from them. But he is also clear that the changing role of women has had a significant impact on the way in which society is ordered. Among the changes impacting the role of women, Fukuyama points to birth control, abortion, the cost of raising children, the cultural acceptance of singleness, chosen childlessness and the freedom to work.
The challenges of being the church and living the gospel in the urban setting expose the effects on church life of the changing role of women in society. Normally, reflection on issues to do with women and the church focus on matters of ordination, leadership, scriptural mandates, the place of women in the family, etc. Such discussions are extremely important, illuminating, invigorating, despite sometimes being divisive, and they are a crucial part of the internal dialogue of the church. But at the same time there is a gospel to proclaim in a world from which the church is slipping away, sometimes in grand contentment and blissful unawareness. I do not, therefore, want to make this a reflection on these well-discussed issues but rather to share with you how changes in the social order, particularly in the role of women, impacts on congregational life in the urban setting.
Much of congregational life has been supported by the many social events of its calendar. These events, spiritually sustaining and community building, have ranged from harvest suppers to outings and gatherings of all kinds. To meet the needs of such congregational activities, groups were formed who were responsible for hospitality and these groups have traditionally been staffed by women. In more recent years these groups have included men and given them the opportunity to share some of their hidden skills. But in small urban congregations, the women who traditionally looked after the social side of life want to lay down their responsibilities. After all, many of them have been doing this kind of work for a lifetime and they are tired and looking to the next generation to take on the responsibilities.
Going to the next generation, however, I am greeted with – 'but I never bake'; 'I can't take it on'; 'I wouldn't know where to start'; 'I don't have the contacts in the congregation'; 'I don't want to get caught on another committee'. These younger women are, in large part, holding down demanding jobs outside the home and caring for their families. They are engrossed in the whirl of school runs, taking their kids here and there, studying, training and working, all at the same time. They do not want to, nor indeed do they feel able to, take on the hospitality role. Even if leadership and ordained ministry were not a possibility for women in the church, the world has changed to the extent that the traditional hospitality role no longer provides them the opportunity to exercise gifts.
But things have changed for women in the possibilities open to them within the church. Some denominations permit the ordination of women, and make teaching roles and leadership roles of different kinds open to them. In all traditions, women participate in worship in one way or another. However, opportunities that are available structurally to women are equally difficult for them to respond to. So much more would be possible from women; so much more talent could be put to good use, if alternative structures were put in place to enable women to be involved. These structures would have to be flexible to enable more people, particularly women, to exercise their gifts while at the same time exercising gifts in family building and careers of all kinds.
In the same way, younger men tend to resist taking on extra burdens at times in their lives when the demands are quite simply overwhelming. They too need flexible structures. Without input into congregational life from women and younger men, the opportunity for community building, information sharing, support offering and general human kindness and relationship building begins to disappear.
In a changing world, Fukuyama is not without hope. 'Our only reason for hope is the very powerful innate human capacities for reconstituting social order'2
As the community of God's people, our hope is in the Lord who calls and equips us to live and proclaim the gospel. Proclaiming the word in season and out of season will involve the community of God's people in finding new ways to create and live community and creating structures that facilitate the using of people's gifts in the best way possible. For the sake of women, men, the church and the gospel, the moment of change has to be grasped as a new and challenging opportunity.
Notes:
1 Francis Fukuyama, The Great Disruption: Human nature and the reconstruction
of social order (London, Profile Books, 1999).
2 Ibid., p282.
LESLEY CARROLL is minister of Fortwilliam Park Presbyterian Church in Belfast.
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