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How To Be an Effective Advocate … Making our voices heard!

Offers advice on communicating clearly and forcefully with public officials, making visits to Capitol Hill and writing letters to the editor.

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Find other resources for advocates at the Presbyterian Washington Office Web site.

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Connect with other faith-based advocates at these upcoming events and happenings.

Save the date

April 13–15, 2008
Women’s Empowerment
The Women’s World Summit will take place April 13–15, 2008, in Washington, D.C., at the Washington National Cathedral and other venues. The Women’s World Summit will formally launch the Women’s Faith and Development Alliance (WFDA), a multi-year advocacy and communications campaign aimed at making investment in women and girls a key priority for government and donor spending.

Learn

The Advocacy Committee for Women’s Concerns invites you to, “… add to your faith, goodness; and to goodness, knowledge” ( 2 Peter 1:5).  Effective advocacy requires an accurate awareness of the facts involved and a firm grasp of the complex dynamics of an issue.  ACWC encourages us all to increase our understanding of women’s concerns and then work to have our faithful voices heard. You can begin with reading a book. Here's what we're reading now.

Proverbs of Ashes, Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us 
by Rita Nakashema Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker

I first heard Rita Brock speak at the PHEWA conference two years ago. At the close of her speech, I went to buy her book. I was not disappointed. Rita and her co-author Rebecca Parker both work and teach at Starr King School for the Ministry at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkley, California. In this book they look at the theories of atonement and critique how all three major theories (Anselmain, Abelardian and Christus Victor) tend to glorify human suffering and how particularly they are not helpful for women who have experienced abuse. With a blend of self-disclosure and serious theology they make a powerful claim for their being no place at the heart of Christianity for human sacrifice. They show quite clearly how the church’s emphasis on Christ’s obedience to God and sacrifice on the cross sanctions violence, exacerbates its effects, and hinders the process of recovery.

Their own self-disclosure is so powerful that I wrote in the front cover of my copy to read page 208 before reading all of chapter 5. The honesty with which they struggle with the realities of abuse, the clarity with which they frame the issues of theology and human relations are profound. No wonder so many comfortable in the patriarchal dominated past have trouble reading feminist theologians of the present. I am thankful they have broadened my perspective. What is their answer to the search for what saves us? I’ll give you a hint. It has to do with the gospel of presence and the restoration of community. Read this powerful book. You will not be disappointed.

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