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Jimmy Carter and the Elders
Two years ago last weekend in Johannesburg, South Africa, twelve senior statespersons met to form a group called, yes, the Elders. Their founding date, July 18, 2007, may not go down in history as a turning-point, but--who knows?--it may well at least represent a contribution to a turned world. Funded for three years by Richard Branson, the British billionaire, and Peter Gabriel, the rock star of whose existence, we presume, few of the elders would ever have heard, the Elders travel light bureaucratically; if there are hierarchies, their presence is overlooked. They would keep it simple.
The Elders had escaped the notice of this lower-case 'e' elder, until I read a column in The Guardian written by President Jimmy Carter, which was also forwarded and blogged-about by Jim Wall, my old boss at The Christian Century. In his blog, Wall mentioned some of the twelve--may their tribe increase to a score and a score of scores!--including leaders named Kofi Annan, Mary Robinson, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela (89-years-old on founding day), Jimmy Carter, and Nobelist Aung San Suu Kyi, for whom a meeting-chair was left empty but reserved while she is in prison in Myanmar. The group intends not to crowd existing organizations but to supplement the work of those with whom this varied but distinguished body can identify. Readers can track them down at the Elders' site, where the oldersters can state their case. I want to hurry to the Carter column.
Young Elders look ahead to tackle enduring problems in the time given them, so they chose one of the oldest human social and personal problems: cruelty to, discrimination against, and abuse of the larger part of the human race, women. Read President Carter and others who take on the cause and exercise your license to yawn, if you pride yourself on being in the advance guard. Many of the battles, incidents, and causes on which he reports and editorializes will read like "old stuff" to veterans of the women's movements of the past half century. Reading it thus may help them shrug off or move on from barely addressed and hardly initiated issues in most parts of the globe.
The work of advancing and realizing women's rights is far from completed. Carter uses as a personal example his having to leave the Southern Baptist Convention after its messengers voted to stress female submission to males, beginning with wives to husbands and lay persons to ordained clergy. We know that he knows, as does Billy Graham (whom he cites favorably as a biblical exegete on this subject), that many of the Baptist women who were to be biblically put in their place found and find ways anyhow to be fulfilled and freed. The problem, say the Elders, is that cruelty, discrimination, and abuse come packaged among garlands of carefully chosen excerpts from the Qur'an, the New Testament, the Torah, and other holy books. Religion justifies the cruelties.
Even to think that Elders or Young'uns can easily and effectively take on the powers to which they point might lead one to paint them as naïve. All of the Elders, however, have seen too much injustice and just enough reformation to resist giving up and failing to provide whatever leadership they can. If they only had to battle on secular lines, it would be one story. Having to take on the snippers-of-holy-books is another. The Elders have much to learn--and to teach. While they pursue this cause we picture them not settling for the rocking chair or the souvenir books, but finding other themes. Oh, let me add: belated Happy Birthday, Dr. Mandela.
References:
Read Jimmy Carter in The Guardian.
By
Martin Marty
|
July 21, 2009; 12:39 PM ET
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Posted by: CalSailor | July 26, 2009 12:25 AM
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Bravo, Dr. Marty.
May you be the next inductee into the group of Elders.
Posted by: kjohnson3 | July 22, 2009 4:54 PM
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Is that it David Waters,
Is that it Sally Quinn
Is that It John Meacham et al:
Let me , i [WE] us Post APOCALYPTIC Faith Philosophy , so that Ye can build it Up & then Sell a Novel Nugget here & there????
Why does WAPO have to resort to Jealousy & Theft of Intellectual Property [ESSAYS] posted Here?????
Why , after Deletion & sometimes non deletion moments that Coinsidentilly there appears Some thing , within the NEWSCORP family , one or two of our m,y, i, Themes.
Can't Ye folk be Original???? Why Purge/Delete & Steal only to Plagerize!
S
H
Ai
M NewsCorp!
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Ai
M Newscorp!
E
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Ai
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E Newscorp!
S
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Ai
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E Newscorp!
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Ai
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E Newscorp!
WE [i] Will severley Punish Ye or atleast Embarras Ye all before FOX 5 & the World!
Posted by: SECULARGURU | July 21, 2009 6:36 PM
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Dear Dr Marty:
I am so grateful for the study undertaken by the American Lutheran Church (ALC) and the Lutheran Church in America (LCA) [now both have joined as the ELCA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America] in the late 1960s on the subject of the opening of the ordained ministry to women.
What the study essentially said is: Looking at New Testament texts on the subject of women and leadership in the church, there is no unanimity.
1. In the gospels, Jesus had both male and female followers, some very close to him, and he freely interacted with women in ways far beyond what normal males of his background felt comfortable in doing.
2. In 2 Timothy is the famous injunction, much favored by the Southern Baptist Convention, that says women may not have authority or leadership over women. [Note: 2 Tim, as part of the pastorals, is often held to be secondary, and not originally Pauline]. The text is one of a long list of directions.
3. In Galatians, the white heat of Paul's argument on the freedom of the gospel includes, not only Jew and Gentile, but male and female. In the church, something new is happening.
4. In I Cor, women when they pray and prophesy are to cover their heads. The admonition indicates that they ARE doing so publically. Corinthians also has the "women keep silent in the church" text.
5. Acts recounts the fulfillment of the prophet Joel, when he says that in these latter days young women shall prophesy, and the Spirit will be poured out on men and women.
6. In Romans, Paul lists some of his coworkers, including women, and one, Junia[s] (that many scholars now believe was a woman) Paul also calls an apostle with him.
7. Women were the founders and hosts of some of the major house churches in early
Christianity.
The study on ministry concluded: Given the ambiguity of the NT witness, The church cannot simply pit texts against each other. And so the question becomes: What does the gospel require in the present generation? And the answer was: If ordaining women is in God's time, then their ministries will prosper in the same way as men's ministries will: According to their gifts and according to the Spirit. And this decision of the study was echoed in both the ALC and the LCA assemblies, and my ministry, and that of other women, was approved. I was ordained in 1975, and next year will celebrate 35 years as an ordained pastor of the church.
And so, for the last 35 years, women and men have been called into ministry in the ELCA, and they have had their successes and failures. Many congregations have been led by women pastors, to the point where this is no longer remarkable. And there is no discernable difference. And so, I think the conclusion is that this decision has been supported by the faith of the church.
Pr Chris