Church’s women can bring back ‘social holiness,’ leader says
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Jan Love |
Oct. 20, 2004By Linda Bloom* STAMFORD,
Conn. (UMNS) - For John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, practicing
his religion meant addressing society’s social needs as well. But
that concept of "social holiness" is in danger of being lost in today’s
United Methodist Church, according to Jan Love, who now leads United
Methodist Women and its administrative arm, the Women’s Division in the
denomination’s Board of Global Ministries. "The
dominant trends in Christianity here and abroad often promote a form of
privatized religion that denies the Wesleyan insistence on the unity of
personal and social holiness," she told division directors during their
Oct. 15-18 annual meeting. "To
get God right, many Christians claim, is to strive primarily for
personal piety, not social change. Our U.S. heritage accentuates
individualism, one of our great strengths, but increasingly this drive
for ever more autonomous individuals comes at the expense of our
communities and creation." Love,
who took office Aug. 1, believes that United Methodist Women and the
Women’s Division "are perfectly positioned to reinvigorate the United
Methodist Church’s commitment to social holiness" because of their
devotion to both God and mission. She
also wants women to promote healing and wholeness, both outside and
within the church. She noted that while the conflicts and differences
found normally in life can be productive, they also can be destructive.
To avoid destructive conflict in the church, "we must engage our
conflicts to make them productive," she said. "I
believe we should give thanks to God for the different manifestations
of our rich diversity," she said. "I think God calls us to unity in a
church where all of us are welcome but none of us is entirely
comfortable." Love
acknowledged that the Women’s Division itself has been the subject of
conflict and attack by conservative renewal groups. After listening
closely to the nearly 1 million-member UMW organization and sorting
facts from fiction, she added, "we should listen carefully to the faith
perspectives of those with whom we may disagree and ask the same in
return." In
keeping with the priority, since 1996, of recruiting young women into
the organization, Love called for a deeper emphasis on intergenerational
partnerships and organizational flexibility. The need, she said, is "to
find ever more creative means of holding on to our venerable tradition
at the same time that we change sufficiently to be in genuine
partnership across the generations." The
division’s new president, Kyung Za Yim of East Northport, N.Y., noted
in her address to directors that the average age of that body has
decreased because of the addition of several younger members. Those
members represent not only the commitment of United Methodist Women to
include young women but also the desire "to learn from the younger
generation," she said. Yim,
who is the division’s first Asian president and first deaconess in that
position, was introduced to the organization through its training for
Korean-American women. She served as a division director for the
previous four years and pointed out that "I am a different person today
from who I was before I became a member of United Methodist Women." Like
other members, she’s learned that her participation in the group "is
not only about my own personal growth but also for the growth and
empowerment of thousands of lives we touch each day through our
mission." One
example of that empowerment came in a report from two young women - Kim
Hallowell, 17, of Hayward, Calif., and Emily Oliver, 16, of Newtown,
Conn. - who attended the Children’s World Congress on Child Labor last
May in Florence, Italy. The
Women’s Division sponsored Hallowell’s participation in the U.S.
delegation to the congress. "When we went, we knew the facts and
figures, but what touched us most were the faces," she told directors. It
is the personal stories of the child laborers that help youth activists
interest others in the issue of child labor, according to Oliver. Both
young women have established clubs at their schools to call attention to
that exploitation of children. *Bloom is a United Methodist News Service news writer. News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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