By Stephen Brown
Harare, 11 December (ENI)--The World Council of Churches eighth assembly last night, 10 December, elected a new governing central committee, but only after being told that some member churches were not doing enough to have women elected to the committee.

Bishop Melvin Talbert, of the United Methodist Church (USA), moderator of the nominations committee, told the assembly that some churches had "found various reasons" to decline a request to include more women on the list of central committee nominees and "some [men nominated to the central committee] emphatically stated that no woman would replace them".

According to statistics prepared by the assembly's nomination committee, which drew up a "slate" of names for the 150-member committee, 39.4 per cent of the slate was comprised of women delegates. The slate was approved by the assembly. But this figure disguises significant inequalities between the regions, and between Orthodox and non-Orthodox churches, on the election of women to the committee.

Bishop Talbert said of the percentage on the final slate: "[This is] less than I personally and the committee would desire," but he said it would be difficult to increase to increase further the percentage of women on the central committee. A slate proposed earlier in the week to the assembly had only 33.3 per cent women.

The issue of women's participation in the WCC's central committee is particularly sensitive because the WCC has just concluded a 10-year programme - the "Ecumenical Decade of Churches in Solidarity with Women" - to increase women's participation in church structures.

Bishop Talbert told those churches which were willing to include more women in the central committee: "You represent a model of what can be done when we commit ourselves to doing what we say."

The assembly rejected several attempts to amend the slate from the floor, including a plea by Archbishop Aghan Baliozian, of the Armenian Apostolic Church, to replace a woman from his church, Silva Ghazelzan, by a male priest, and specialist in ecumenism, Mikael Ajapahyan. The assembly later also refused to consider a request from Ghazelzan, at the end of voting, that she withdraw to be replaced by Ajapahyan. Bishop Talbert warned the assembly of women being put under pressure by church leaders and feeling that they "must acquiesce to those in authority over them".

Earlier this week, Bishop Talbert told the assembly that his committee was not satisfied with the slate of nominees to the central committee, drawn up from nominees provided by the WCC's member churches. At that time, when the slate contained only 33.3 per cent women, Dr Marion Best, an outgoing member of the central committee, and a past moderator of the United Church of Canada, told the assembly: "I feel a very deep disappointment, fast raising to a high level of anger. When the Ecumenical Decade in Solidarity with Women was launched, I tried to support it ... and now the percentage of women on the committee is less than it was [at the seventh assembly] in Canberra. I don't know if I want to be part of [the WCC] if it doesn't change."

Among non-Orthodox churches the regional figures for women's representation are: Africa 41.7 per cent women, Asia 45.8 per cent, Caribbean 25 per cent, Europe 44 per cent, Latin America 50 per cent, North America 50 per cent, Pacific 60 per cent. The Middle East (which has only one non-Orthodox member of the central committee) is represented by a male. Among Orthodox churches the figures are 12.5 per cent women among Eastern Orthodox members of the central committee, and 20 per cent among Oriental Orthodox.

However, the slate also includes three Orthodox women as "interim" members of the central committee who are filling places which would normally go to the Georgian Orthodox Church (which has withdrawn from the WCC) and to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church (which has announced that it intends to withdraw from the WCC).

The total representation of the main church families on the central committee is: Orthodox 24.6 per cent; Reformed 22 per cent; Anglican 10 per cent; Methodist 10 per cent; Free, Pentecostal and African Instituted 6.7 per cent; United and Uniting 6.7 per cent; Baptist 4.7 per cent; Others 6.7 per cent.

 More than a quarter of churches which have sent representatives to the eighth assembly of the World Council of Churches in Harare have sent only men as delegates, despite a call by the WCC for churches to include at least 40 per cent women in their delegations.

According to statistics published by the WCC, 274 of its member churches have sent delegates to Zimbabwe's capital, Harare, for the assembly. But of these, 77 member churches - including eight Orthodox churches - have sent only men to represent them. However, 44 member churches have sent delegations comprised mainly of women, and 10 churches have sent delegations comprised exclusively of women.

At the start of its assembly on 3 December, the WCC had 332 member churches. Since then seven new member churches have been admitted, and one associate member church has become a full member, making a total of 339 member churches.

Altogether, 360 out of the 958 delegates present at the start of the assembly were women, almost 38 per cent. The WCC aimed to have a minimum of 40 per cent women delegates at the Harare assembly, and had asked its member churches to follow this figure in selecting their delegations.

The biggest delegation to the assembly is from the United Methodist Church (USA) which has 34 delegates, followed by the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), which has 33, and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, with 26 delegates; the Russian Orthodox Church, which can send 25 delegates, has sent only five. [971 words]

Photographs of the assembly are available from Photo Oikoumene

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WCC Assembly Web Site

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