United Women in Faith: Faith Talks

Janet Wolf is director of Children’s Defense Fund Alex Haley Farm and Nonviolent Organizing, in Clinton, TN; national organization working toward justice for children and the poor led by Marian Wright Edelman who worked as a young lawyer with Dr. King in MS and on the Poor People’s Campaign. She is also an ordained elder in the Tennessee Annual Conference.

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In Mark and Radical Discipleship, author Janet Wolf explores what it means to live a life of radical discipleship today using the Gospel of Mark as the foundation. Wolf explores the timeless issues of poverty, gender, justice, liberation, equality, and others using Mark as a guide. The stories of the women in Mark are a particular focus in this study and how, although often unnamed, they are prominent among Jesus’ followers and in Mark’s recounting of the gospel story.

Mark, the earliest of the synoptic Gospels, was written almost forty years after the crucifixion. A time when the early church was struggling, troubled, and traumatized. Many of those who had walked with Jesus were now imprisoned or dead. The Jewish-Roman War of 66–70 C.E. ended with a destroyed temple and a fractured and frightened community. And then, as now, Christians were asking, what does it mean to be a disciple of this Jesus, crucified and raised?

Wolf explores this question in five chapters that walk the reader through the Gospel of Mark, with each chapter exploring a different section of scripture. Throughout the text, Wolf tells of her own experiences as a pastor and community organizer, recognizing the power of these and other stories to heal, transform, liberate, and unshackle.

In Mark’s day and now, Christians are caught in a world of crisis and confusion, a time of uncertainty and fear. There’s a struggle going on and evil appears to be winning: injustice reigns, money and greed measure our living and our dying, divisions deepen and hope is sometimes hard to find. Then and now, part of the crisis is the church’s complicity, complacency, and silence in a world where so much has gone wrong.

And both then and now the gospel proclaims it is right here and now when the struggle is fierce and the clamor is loud; when our hearts are heavy, and our bodies weary; when we’re tempted to give up, to give in to the cynicism of our age. Here and now proclaims the gospel, in the fear and the uncertainty and the anxiety of living in our age, God comes singing to our souls, inviting us to be partners in the new creation, in God’s kingdom, kin-dom, realm, and rule. Caesar’s kingdom is already coming undone, the powers cannot stand, God’s kin-dom, realm, rule, breaks in to here, to now. “The kingdom of God has come near” (Mark 1:15).

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Faith Talks is hosted by Jennifer R Farmer, Spotlight PR.
Visit www.UnitedMethodistWomen.org to find out more.

Ellen Blue is the Mouzon Biggs Jr. Professor of the History of Christianity and United Methodist Studies at Phillips Seminary in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She is also the coordinator for the D.Min. degree in Transformational Leadership for Women. Blue is also an ordained elder in the Louisiana Annual Conference.

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United for Change by Ellen Blue is the first in a two-year study commemorating United Methodist Women’s 150th anniversary in 2019. It will provide a historical survey of United Methodist Women and its predecessor organizations and amplify the voices that shaped the work through an overarching story of United Methodist Women changing the fact of mission. This study is about women who established vibrant societies to support mission. First organized in the United States, those societies sent missionaries overseas and later engaged in mission at home. Each was a heroine who was willing to stand over and against what her culture—and sometimes even her church—expected of her. Learning about the early female leaders who created what would become today’s United Methodist Women can help us understand who they truly were beyond who we expected them to have been.

Every woman who “stepped out of her place” to participate in mission societies at the turn of the 20th century was part of a movement that brought women into the forefront of Christian ministry. Ever since the Roman Empire co-opted the faith in the fourth century and woman were pushed out of leadership roles, female leadership had almost always been subtle, behind the scenes, and accomplished through quietly influencing men who had power. Through the new mission societies, large numbers of women learned leadership skills and found the courage to use them. They were empowered in large part by knowing that many of their sisters near and far were also answering God’s call to be in mission.

The women who have chosen to devote themselves to United Methodist Women and its predecessors have contributed mightily to God’s work in the world. They have been responsible for positive change within the church itself, in their own communities, and all around the world. To know a little about the stories of even a few of them is to enrich our lives and our understanding of who we are as an organization. When women dared to change the world for the better, they discovered that they too were changed.

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Faith Talks is hosted by Jennifer R Farmer, Spotlight PR.
Visit www.UnitedMethodistWomen.org to find out more.