Water: Necessary along the Way - philosophy and practices of WATER, Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual

Ecumenical Review, The, Jan, 2001 by Mary E. Hunt

Summer 2000

If it takes a village to raise a child, surely it takes a lot of help along the way to be church. The Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual, popularly known as WATER, is a non-profit organization in Silver Spring, Maryland, USA, providing a variety of much-needed supports for feminists who wish to be religious against the great odds posed by patriarchy.

Located in a city neighbourhood above a beauty parlour and cafeteria, WATER is a modest but welcoming place. On a typical afternoon, computers are buzzing, and three staff members, a volunteer, an intern and a job trainee from a programme for persons with disabilities, are all busy with different tasks. Phones ring; people drop by to borrow books. A child wakes from a nap (one staff member brings her little ones to work). Then comes "tea time", a pause we learned from our Australian friends and found to be a good chance to look back, around and ahead at our efforts to bring feminist faith to the service of social change.

WATER originated in 1983 when Diann L. Neu and I realized, in the words of feminist activist and poet Audre Lorde, that "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house". We intuited that women in our Washington, DC, area, and indeed many around the world, needed physical places and ideological spaces in which to envision and actualize ways of being religious, unfettered by the constraints of kyriarchy: otherwise the extraordinary production of women scholars, the fine ministry and keen organizing that are feminist contributions to the religious scene, would be truncated, and another generation would have to reinvent the many resources that our generation, and our ancestors, had spent so much time and energy creating.

We were two such women, US Catholic feminists with theological training, whose views were progressive, ecumenical and international, far too rich for the blood of many Catholic institutions, and far too exciting to be put under a bushel basket. We teamed with a dozen local women -- scholars, ministers and activists from a variety of backgrounds -- to organize a small educational centre that we hoped would have a ripple effect.

Today, women (and some men) from Christian, Jewish, Goddess, Buddhist and other religious backgrounds form an Alliance that respects and encourages the beliefs and practices of all who bring their religious commitments to the common task of justice. The name "WATER" fits -- it is at once a rich religious image, and the perfect narrative description of our group. Virtually every major religious tradition employs water in its symbol system. And our efforts do cleanse, nurture and transform.

The Alliance is a growing network of people -- men as well as women -- who seek to make religiously informed social change, and who wish to collaborate with others in the process. Funding for WATER comes from individual donors, the occasional grant, and income generated from programmes and projects. That is to say, WATER faces the hard job of supporting itself without subsidies from either church or state. But the "up side" of the equation is that WATER is not dependent on, nor coopted by, having to toe a doctrinal line. Our work stands (or falls) on its own, dependent only on those who need and want it.

We realized that even as changes were being worked out, slowly and denomination by denomination, women needed a range of services and opportunities which would allow them to nurture their own faith and spirituality in the meantime. And it has been a "mean time" for many as we attempt to transform churches, long used to male leadership and hierarchical ways of operating, into "discipleships of equals". Without such sustenance, we knew that women would burn out spiritually and run out of intellectual resources to ground real change.

Ordained women and other professionals in ministry reported that they needed a place where they could be sure that new ideas would flourish. Even those who cannot always attend programmes say that "just knowing you are there" helps prevent them from being completely coopted into structures that do not reflect their own values.

WATER is not a church, though some people speak of it as their faith community. More concretely, it is a centre where people who wish to be church, as well as those who are not Christian but are simply searching for a spirituality that is consonant with their beliefs, can find some of the tools and human resources necessary to survive -- and thrive -- in the process. We offer educational programmes, counselling, liturgies and a range of collaborative ways of working with colleagues around the world.

Educational offerings include classes, workshops and lectures. Our recent series, "Supper with an Author", was both informative and convivial. A dozen or so women gathered around a simple but attentively set table to share soup, bread and conversation with local writers. Womanist theologian Kelly Brown Douglas led a lively session on her book, Sexuality and the Black Church. Psychotherapist and animal rights proponent Mary Lou Randour explored her new volume, Animal Grace: Entering a Spiritual Relationship with Our Fellow Creatures. Biblical scholar Sharon H. Ringe, author of Wisdom's Friends: Community and Christology in the Fourth Gospel, reflected on friendship and community. Pastoral theologian Carroll Saussy shared The Art of Growing Old: A Guide to Faithful Aging. The range of perspectives and topics assured that a variety of needs would be met. New ideas received a rigorous airing. Moreover, attention to healthy food and the time to enjoy it together set a hospitable tone. These are typical WATER events in their combination of intellectual, spiritual and communal dimensions, all oriented towards justice seeking.