Ending the War Against Women

On June 3, 1990, the church celebrated Pentecost. Sojourners sponsored Peace Pentecost 1990—"Breaking the Silence: A Call to End Violence Against Women." Worship services, vigils, and processions were held throughout the country.

In Washington, DC, we began our service at Luther Place Memorial Church. We followed with a procession to McPherson Square Park. Along the way we stopped four times: at Bethany Women's Shelter, where we focused on domestic violence; at The Washington Post building, where we made a note of the media's silence about incest; at an alley where a homeless woman had been raped; and at a video store which—like most video stores—carries a large selection of pornography. At each stop, we listened to statistics, then offered a litany and a refrain of the song, "O God, Give Us Power."

We concluded our service at the park, where we were moved and empowered by testimonies from survivors of the war against women. A bell was rung every three-and-a-half minutes throughout our service, a powerful reminder that every three-and-a-half minutes a woman is a target of rape or attempted rape in the United States. Below is the reflection offered by Joyce Hollyday at Luther Place Memorial Church.
—The Editors

When the day of Pentecost had come, the apostles were all together in one place" (Acts 2:1). So begins the Pentecost passage. In the verses preceding this one, the apostles are named: Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Thaddeus and Bartholomew, Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot, and Matthias, whom the others had chosen to replace their fallen brother, Judas. These men have personalities—we know during the ordeal they have just gone through who was courageous, who doubted, who denied.

And after the list of their names, the scripture tells us they were together "with the women" and Mary the mother of Jesus. These other women have no names. Like most of the women in the record of our faith, these remain marginal, unknown, present but unaccounted for.

There are a few exceptions, of course, and we cling to these with pride and hope: Vashti, who refused to dance and be exploited by the king and his men; Esther, who saved her people; Deborah, who was a judge over Israel; Priscilla, who helped to establish the early church. But what we mostly have in the Bible is a disturbing record of women as property, as pawns in men's schemes.

They are viewed as less than human, and they are targets of numerous acts of exploitation and violence. We know that Hagar was "handed over" to Abraham; that Bathsheba was taken by King David; that Tamar was raped by her brother Amnon; that Lot offered his two virgin daughters to men bent on violence to save two male visitors in his home from being raped; that an unnamed concubine in Bethlehem was gang-raped and tortured until she died.

We were objects of violence then; and we remain so today—in epidemic proportions.

In the 1980s in this city, Charlotte Fedders stated publicly that she had been battered over the course of several years by her husband. She had a lot to lose. She traveled in social circles of wealth and power; her husband, John Fedders, was a high-ranking federal government official with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It took courage to tell the truth and break the facade. Charlotte Fedders knew that every effort would be made to discredit and undermine her.

In 1990, a 17-year-old young woman, still publicly anonymous, alleged that four members of our city's professional hockey team raped and sodomized her. She must have known before she broke her silence that she was taking on local heroes, and an entire professional sports franchise that considers violence on the ice just part of the interest of the game. She was young. She was unnamed. She worked in a nightclub. She had no power to put up against those who are aiming to attack and discredit her other than her own raw courage.

Two women. Two lives traumatized. They show that the violence cuts across all lines. And they show us the reality of the painful choices that women must make.

It is no coincidence that the paradigm throughout the Bible of powerlessness and vulnerability is "widows and orphans, " or "the widows and the fatherless." Though in many ways things are substantially different in our society today, women and children are still the most economically vulnerable people among us. In ever-increasing numbers, they are joining the ranks of the homeless and the poor.

For many women, the choice to leave an abusing husband means a choice of vulnerability on another level. It means simply living with a different fear. It means trying to make it in a society that glorifies violence on many levels and still in many places rejects the humanity of women.

It takes extraordinary courage to leave an abusive situation, or blow the whistle on rape or incest, or take on the multi-billion-dollar pornography industry, the propaganda arm of the war against women. So, as a result, many women suffer in silence.

In the 1970s, the women of Sojourners Community met together for what became the first of many gatherings. We began simply by talking about our experience. Two of us had been raped; one had been the target of a rape attempt; one was facing the painful memories of incest; several of us had been harassed by employers or college professors; and all of us were being regularly harassed on the streets of this city. Not one of us was untouched by the epidemic of violence against women.

What emerged that evening was our common vulnerability. And here, today, we look at our vulnerability as well. But today is also about common power. It's about filling in some of the gaps in our history.

Today we remember that it was the women who stayed by the cross while the men remained in hiding. It was the women who were the first witnesses to the resurrection. These women—Mary Magdelene and Joanna and Mary and Salome—considered property by their society's laws, their testimony inadmissible in court—these women took the message from the tomb to the others. It was they who kept the lonely but powerful vigil.

Today we keep a different vigil. Today we are witnesses to Pentecost—to the Spirit in our midst.

We are gathered here in one room, like the followers of Jesus, women and men. The Spirit came to them as a rush of wind, as tongues of fire. The disciples spoke in many languages, but everyone understood. And Peter quoted the prophet Joel: "God declares, I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy" (Acts 2:17).

The followers of Jesus were a fearful lot, trying to recover from the murder of their leader. They knew the truth of the miraculous resurrection, but they were not yet bold enough to preach it in the streets. But on this day the Spirit empowered them to come out of hiding; and today she empowers us to come out of silence.

We speak many languages, in a sense, as women and men with a variety of stories and experiences. But we want to speak a language today that is understood by all.

Nathalie Provost is a survivor of the December 1989 massacre of women at the University of Montreal, a target of a man who opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle and killed 14 of her friends. She offered this simple plea from her hospital bed: "You can make people understand men and women are equal, and we were made by God to live on the same planet, and we can have the same hope of life. We have the right."

Indeed, we have the right.

The war against women has gone on often in secret, surrounded by silence. We have not spoken loudly enough to end it. But today, we claim our right, as we speak with one voice. A voice of courage to break the silence. A voice of hope that healing will come. A voice of determination to end this war. Amen.