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Waterloo, Ont.
Mennonite women’s conference looks at history of women’s service in the church


“Women’s deeds have not been found worthy of remembrance, from AD 35 to about this evening,” said Mary Malone, one of the speakers at the fifth Women Doing Theology conference held at Conrad Grebel College in Waterloo, Ont.

The retired religious studies professor at the University of Waterloo reviewed the recorded history of women’s service in the church. In fact, it was a very short review, for there isn’t any.

Carol Glyn-Williams (left) of Waterloo, Ont., and Gudrun Mathies of Ephrata, Pa., knot one of four comforters completed during the conference.

Malone said the Christian church has viewed women as designed by God for servitude, noticeable only if they refused to serve in their prescribed roles. Their works were not holy works, not ministry and would not bring women closer to God; their service was a form of penitence for being female, Malone told 160 Mennonite and Mennonite Brethren conference participants at the May 4-5 conference.

It took women led by the Spirit and willing to step outside the accepted boundaries for them to choose their own forms of service and answer God’s call for their lives. Drawing from her book, Women and Christianity: The First Thousand Years, Malone related a number of stories of women who found ways to follow God’s leading – whether through mysticism or martyrdom (See box following story).

“Undoing the works of women has had its day,” Malone said in closing. “We need to learn a new approach to service, one rooted in love, choice, and mutuality.”

This desire to serve without servitude – to serve as daughters of God – lay at the heart of the conference theme, “Embracing Hope: Envisioning an Inclusive Theology of Service.”

Models of power relationships

In the second session, Lydia Neufeld Harder, professor at the Toronto Mennonite Theological Centre, sketched three models of power relationships in service:

“Service From Beneath”, in which one is forced to serve those higher on the social scale; “Service From Above”, where the server chooses to aid the “needy” from a place of privilege; and “Service Based on Equal Status”, in which service is freely shared between friends.

Jesus exemplified the third model, treating His disciples not as servants but as friends and teaching them that givers must also be receivers, Harder said. She explained how the two footwashings – Mary anointing Jesus’ feet and Jesus’ washing His disciples’ feet – turned the expected upside down. Mary recognizes the Master’s need to be comforted. “She serves from a place of equality and Jesus receives it as it is given,” Harder said. Then Jesus performs the role of servant, reversing traditional order that places teacher above disciple.

Following Christ’s example, we may serve not out of a sense of guilt and inadequacy, Harder said, but as an expression of hospitality and freedom.

Communities of Jubilee

The third speaker, Alix Lozano, director of the Mennonite seminary in Bogotá, Colombia, explored the meaning of service from the context of the violence in Colombia. Lozano encouraged others to join the witness of her church as “communities of Jubilee” – “a community where crying with those who cry is a distinctive regular practice . . . Biblical Jubilee is based in solidarity, compassion, grace and mercy, in defence of all of creation.

“We thank God for calling us to serve – to recuperate the land, to liberate the oppressed, to support those in mourning, to have the bread we need each day, to proclaim the day of the Lord,” she said. “To serve God is to serve the poor of the Third World.”

Keynote addresses were accompanied by powerful personal stories of serving and being served, of experiencing inclusion and exclusion. Storytellers were Eunice Valenzuela of The Dwelling Place (Mennonite Brethren) in Kitchener, Ont.; Marion Wiens of Windsor (Ont.) Mennonite Fellowship; Mary Stewart of Waterloo North Mennonite Church; and Jenn Thiessen of Danforth Mennonite Church in Toronto.

Order switched

While most theological conferences are structured around academic papers written in advance, in this case, the three theologians will write articles after the event, to be published in the Fall 2001 issue of the Conrad Grebel Review. They will draw from the reflections shared and recorded by participants in small group discussions.

Switching the order was an intentional choice conference planners explained. “Women do theology through their service; our works tell about whom we believe God to be and about our relationship to God,” said Arli Klassen. “By having the papers come out of women’s experiences, the whole group is doing theology together. We wanted both academics and non-academics to be present, people of a wide age range, and they came.”

Planner Gloria Kropf Nafziger introduced another unusual aspect of the conference. “Sewing is one of the pieces of service women have given the church for a long time,” she told participants, noting that many of us like to keep our hands busy while we think. She invited women to knot comforters during and between presentations.

The event concluded with a concert by singer-songwriter Cate Friesen and the auction of a quilted wall hanging. Proceeds will help women from the Southern Hemisphere attend the next Mennonite World Conference assembly in Zimbabwe in 2003.

Women Doing Theology conferences have been held every other year since 1992. The next one is scheduled for 2003 in Akron, Pa.

 – adapted from a report by Cathleen Hockman-Wert, for Meetinghouse

Early Christian martyr died with dignity

Perpetua, one of the earliest women martyrs, was condemned to die for her faith in the public arena at Carthage. As related in Mary Malone’s book, Women and Christianity: The First Thousand Years, this young woman’s father commanded her to renounce Christ. “Father,” she tells him, “Do you see this vessel lying here?” “I see it,” he says. “Can it be called by any other name than what it is?” He answers, “No.” “So also I cannot call myself anything else than what I am, a Christian,” she says. “Perpetua has achieved a new identity,” Malone writes. “She is no longer his daughter. He has no power over her. She cannot and will not obey him. She has moved to a new place, beyond his and the governor’s control. She is a Christian. What an extraordinary statement of power by a 22-year-old woman! . . . She does not, in any sense, consider herself to be a victim. She died with total dignity and . . . confounded the total power of the Roman Empire.”

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Last modified July 9, 2001.

© 2001 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
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