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A UMNS Report
By Linda Bloom*

3:00 P.M. ET Oct. 10, 2011 | NEW YORK (UMNS)

Harriett Jane Olson (left), top staff executive for United Methodist Women, was among those who greeted Nobel Peace Prize co-winner Leymah Gbowee (right) as she prepared to enter the chapel at the Interchurch Center in New York. A UMNS photo by Mary Jacobs, United Methodist Reporter.
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When Leymah Gbowee was living a hard life as a refugee in Ghana, she used to comfort her small children at night with a beloved gospel song.

She said she was reminded of that song Oct. 7 when, as a newly minted Nobel Peace Prize winner, she entered the chapel of the Interchurch Center in New York. As Gbowee sang, “This little light of mine, I’m going to make it shine,” she was joined by a chorus of some 200 admirers.

“For the last, almost 16 years, I’ve done nothing great but to let my light shine,” she told the crowd about the accomplishments that now have drawn global attention. “The journey has been tough, the road has been rough, but it’s been rewarding.”

Gbowee, a 39-year-old Liberian peace activist, Lutheran and mother of six, will share equally in the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a United Methodist who has served as Liberia’s president since 2006, and Tawakul Karman, a Muslim activist for women’s rights and peace and democracy in Yemen.

“It is the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s hope that the prize to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakul Karman will help to bring an end to the suppression of women that still occurs in many countries, and to realize the great potential for democracy and peace that women can represent,” the announcement stated.

Book-party-turned-celebration

The Interchurch Center event originally was scheduled as a book party, hosted by the National Council of Churches, for Gbowee’s memoir, “Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changes a Nation at War.”

Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee speaks during an Oct. 7 event at the Interchurch Center in New York. A UMNS photo by Felipe Castillo, GBGM.
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The Rev. Ann Tiemeyer, the council’s program director for women’s ministries, was delighted the gathering had become an opportunity to showcase a decision by the Nobel committee that “recognizes women’s role in peace as critically important.”

Tiemeyer added Gbowee’s name to the council’s Circles of Names campaign, honoring women of faith who have been sources of inspiration and acted as mentors for others.

Harriett Jane Olson, top executive for the Women’s Division, United Methodist Board of Global Ministries, brought her board of directors to what had turned into a celebration and press event.

Olson, who heads the policymaking body of United Methodist Women, found a “sense of pride and hope” in the way the three women put their faith and organizing power to work in efforts to secure a peaceful future for their countries.

“United Methodist Women have been both inspired and challenged by the story of the peace movement in Liberia that Leymah led, which resulted in President Johnson Sirleaf’s election,” she added.

Women’s Division directors had a discussion the following evening with Abigail Disney, executive producer for “Women, War & Peace,” a five-part series on PBS, and producer of “Pray the Devil Back to Hell,” a documentary in which Leymah Gbowee is a central figure.

Interfaith influence

Sharing the prize with a Muslim called “the mother of Yemen’s revolution” seems fitting, since Gbowee showed Christian and Muslim women how to break down the stereotypes they had of each other and find common goals to work for peace in their country.

After years of civil war, she called these women of faith in Liberia to peace-building in 2003. The women’s movement eventually led to the ouster of then-President Charles Taylor and the election of Johnson Sirleaf, with whom Gbowee said she has a “mother-daughter relationship.” The elder woman is the first female to be elected a head of state in modern Africa.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia, addresses the 2008 United Methodist General Conference in Fort Worth, Texas. A UMNS file photo by Mike DuBose.
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“I can go to the president and speak the truth,” Gbowee explained, noting that she continues to present her ideas and opinions to Johnson Sirleaf. “We have a professional work relationship, and I have a lot of respect for this woman.”

On Oct. 9, when she returned to Africa, the two women publicly embraced each other in the Liberian field where Gbowee began her peace movement. Johnson Sirleaf is a candidate for re-election on Oct. 11.

In New York, Gbowee displayed a robust sense of humor but also had some critical words for her U.S. audience, advising her listeners to tend to peace and justice issues in their own backyard.

She reminded the audience that the women who won the peace prize “didn’t set out to conquer the world — they set out to transform their societies first.”

Since the 2006 elections, peace has become a reality in Liberia. “If you visit Liberia in 2003 and you go to Liberia today, you’ll see the difference,” she said. “That fear that we lived with is slowly going away.”

She believes the path to nonviolent change must be connected to belief in a higher power and firmly links her faith with her accomplishments.

“I could not have walked this walk all by myself,” she declared.

* Bloom is a United Methodist News Service multimedia reporter based in New York. Follow her at http://twitter.com/umcscribe.

News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or newsdesk@umcom.org.