The circle of concerned African women theologians: its contribution to ecumenical formation

Ecumenical Review, The, Jan, 2005 by Isabel Apawo Phiri

While the Circle is aware of the differences between women's and gender issues, the curriculum has highlighted the experiences of women more than the relationship of women and men because women's experiences in Africa have been ignored for a very long time, and therefore this has contributed to the imbalance between the two genders.

Quality of the Circle theological literature

The engendering process gave the Circle an opportunity to start a process of taking stock of what we have written in the past 15 years. A call was made to start with internal stock-taking by reading each other's work critically. We identified a need for a workshop where we can evaluate our work and find the way forward. When the Circle says that publishing is a requirement to individual membership in the Circle, it is understood that writing for publication presupposes that one has skills to do research, to reflect theologically on the information and to write, which is not true for everyone. It has therefore become a necessity that before requiring publication the Circle should vigorously promote the theological education of African women. Besides that, it was felt that even the Circle women with theological education need regular workshops to develop academic skills to write professionally. Such workshops would cover the following topics: ethical issues of research; methodology; publishing; editing and co-publishing. The internal stock-taking was coupled with an invitation to objective external review of our work.

The way forward: Research gaps

The original plan of the development of an engendered curriculum for theological education in Africa was to use as many of the Circle's publications as possible. The whole process has revealed where the gaps are in the Circle writings. The advantage of identifying these gaps in our research is that it helps us to direct future research to areas of need. The identified gaps are too many to be included in this paper, but they will appear in the Circle's handbook that will be published soon.

Conclusion

This paper has shown that the Circle's contribution to ecumenical formation in Africa is through the production of theological literature and in particular the development of an engendered theological curriculum. In the spirit of the Circle's commitment to doing theology in community, the process of designing and writing the curriculum has been done in community. Therefore the work reflects the spirit of ecumenical and religious plurality that is also a trademark of the Circle.

Beverley Haddad has reminded the Circle that engendering the theological curriculum is a process that can be successful only if two other elements are taken into account. The first one is the importance of building the institutional capacity for engendering theology. This includes the institutions' making a deliberate attempt to develop gender-sensitive policies that promote gender equity among staff, and student enrolment; inclusion of language and sexual harassment policies. In doing these things, the theological institutions will be creating an atmosphere that promotes taking seriously issues of gender. Secondly, instead of leaving the process of engendering the curriculum to female lecturers, team teaching should be encouraged so that the students see all staff members as being committed to the process of engendering the curriculum. Haddad has also mentioned the need for the engendering of theology to be a collaborative work with poor and marginalized women. (15) As such, academic teaching and research should be accountable to the community that they serve.