• In the U.S. in 2012, all women’s full-time wages were barely 81 percent of men’s full-time wages; Latina women earned just more than 50 percent of white men’s wages. • Two-thirds of the global population who can’t read are women. • Women and children comprise about 80 percent of all humans traffi cked. • About 35 percent of women worldwide will experi- ence some form of sexual assault, rape or abuse in their lifetimes. Many women and men of good will want these
problems to stop. But these problems have underlying belief systems. What do you think? What is the kairos moment to
which God’s grace through Jesus Christ calls us? Over the next month, you might want to notice
social and religious messages in words, images, sym- bols, laws, policies or actions. Listen to religious rheto- ric in social media, in Christian doctrine, teaching and practice, and in the pews. Pay attention to social media, television, movies and radio. What do you see and hear? What are the implicit and explicit messages about what it means to be a man or a woman? To be human? What do you think about it? Tending to the pain caused by inadequate thought-
systems about what it means to be human—whether through the sexual biology, skin color, age, ability or
appearance of our bodies—is a very Lutheran thing to do because it is neighbor love. Tending to the pain in the body will take the best of the Lutheran tradition. We are sure to fi nd salve for the pain in Scripture and in the riches of Lutheran theology. What do you think? Where
do doctrines of creation, sin and justifi cation, a theology of the cross, law and gospel, and Martin Luther’s understanding of humanity’s relationship with God and neighbor begin to draw the ELCA into God’s kairos? How might that kairos be about and for all of us— because of God’s love and mercy? Ida and Ida, I
think, would be glad to hear.
Author bio: Streufert is ELCA director, justice for women. Heather Dean and Molly Kestner also contributed to this article.
ELCA ARCHIVES
In May 1883 members of the Woman’s Home and Foreign Missionary Society of the General Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (an ELCA ancestor) attended their third biennial convention in Springfi eld, Ohio. The society was founded in 1879 after the church said it didn’t have funding to send two young women (one of whom was Kate Boggs Shaffer, the fi rst missionary to Zenana, India) as missionaries.
February 2014 19
MICHAEL D. WATSON
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