RELIGION: A Greater Role for Women in Conflict Resolution

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Jun 14 2002 (IPS) - After a history of neglect and marginalisation, women who have made a mark in their respective faiths will be offered a platform in Geneva early October to demonstrate their strengths as religious and spiritual leaders.

The rallying call for this ground-breaking gathering in the Swiss city was made during a three-day meeting in the Thai capital which launched the World Council of Religious Leaders (WCRL). The assembly, which ended Friday, attracted over 100 of the world’s religious leaders.

“It has never been held before, such a meeting,” says Dena Merriam, vice-chairperson of the Millenium World Peace Summit (MWPS), referring to the October meeting. “There is a need for women to play a greater role.”

“We hope to attract women with leadership ability to demonstrate their strengths,” she adds. “Most women in religions have been marginalised, and this is an opportunity to strive for gender equity, for women voices to be heard.”

The Geneva meeting, to be held at the U.N. premises from Oct. 7-10, is aimed at creating a “women’s council to work with the religious leaders,” says Bawa Jain, secretary general of the MWPS, which was behind the launch of the religious council. “We are seeking new and different ways to engage women to come forward.”

Once established, the proposed Council of Women Religious Leaders will function in the same manner as the male-dominated WCRL — to serve as a resource to help take the United Nation’s political, humanitarian and social agenda forward.

And already, the WCRL has acknowledged that women will be able to offer a substantial contribution towards one of the key areas this religious body aspires to be known for – “an active role in reducing conflict” around the world.

“Spiritual women don’t bring anger to the table; they come with love and compassion,” asserts Merriam.

To support such work, the October assembly, called the “Global Peace Initiative of Women Religious and Spiritual Leader,” is expected to endorse the creation of a “Global Spiritual Fund.”

This fund will be used to support the “peace work of women religious and spiritual leaders,” states a backgrounder. “These women can help forge a new paradigm of leadership based on feminine principles and a more inclusive world vision.”

Also on the agenda when the women religious leaders meet is another challenging goal – to address the conservative traditions of the world’s faiths. The Geneva meeting will offer the participants an opportunity to “reinterpret or clarify the religious scriptures in today’s context”, adds the backgrounder.

Among the women due to take a lead role are Saleha Mahmood Abedin, Reverend Joan Brown Campbell and Blu Greenberg.

Abedin is a Saudi Arabian religious scholar working closely with the World Muslim League, Campbell, the first clergywoman to serve as spiritual leader and general secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States, and Greenberg, a co-founder of the U.S. -based Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance.

Also in the vanguard are Kamla Chowdry, an Indian advocate of Ghandian non-violence, Mae-Chee Sansanee Sihirasuta, director of the Bangkok-based Saithira Dhammasthan retreat centre and Sobonfu Some, a Burkina Faso spiritual teacher and champion of indigenous tribes in Central Africa.

The October assembly will continue a process initiated at the MWPS, which was held in August 2000 at the U.N.’s headquarters in New York. At this summit, attended by over 2000 religious leaders, the groundwork was laid to harness the strength of religions to work as interfaith partners with the United Nations.

Three broad themes were identified: conflict resolution, poverty alleviation and combating environmental degradation.

At the three-day meeting of the WCRL here, the religious leaders — from archbishops, rabbis, imams, swamis and monks to heads of indigenous belief systems — heard from a number of U.N. experts and others about some of the pressing issues at hand and ways religious leaders could initiate solutions.

Some of the religious leaders, such as Campbell, argued that heads of faith should not shy away from addressing the thorny issue of nuclear weapons. “As a religious leader in the United States, I call on my own nation to take a bold step for peace by eliminating our stockpile of all nuclear weapons.”

For his part, Swami Chidanand Saraswati Munji, a Hindu priest from India, spoke about his efforts to calm down the more radical Hindu leaders advocating violence in India. “I am in touch with the leaders; there are efforts going on to calm them down,” he revealed.

Jain told a press conference Friday that he was trying to establish a dialogue between Pakistan’s leading imams and India’s Hindu swamis to “resolve the current tension.”

For months, India and Pakistan have been on the brink of war following a bomb attack on Indian Parliament which the former blames on its neighbour.

Those who benefited from the Bangkok deliberations, however, were largely male religious representatives. For like the New York summit, the religious gathering held here only had a marginal female presence — around 20 percent of the participants in Bangkok were women spiritual leaders as opposed to about 15 percent in New York.

“The women who came to New York felt frustrated at the lack of women’s voices and women’s role in this effort,” says Merriam, who is also the convener of the Women’s meeting in Geneva.

“Over the last two years there has been a shift in attitudes to build a partnership,” she adds. “It was discussed here and the women asked for greater gender equity.”