Working 
for
Justice

by Kelly C. Martini

More than 150 years ago, a 15-year-old slave girl tried to help another slave run away. Her master discovered the plan and beat the young girl over the head with a two-pound weight until she was comatose.

The teenager recovered, suffered from blackouts for the rest of her life, and vowed to battle the injustice and inhumanity of slavery. Harriet Tubman escaped slavery, then went back 19 times to help others escape.

Alice Brooklee, her great niece, says in A Lost History, a 1984 documentary about historical Methodist women, that Ms. Tubman had incredible faith.

In the mid-1800s, another Methodist woman, Frances Willard launched a movement for justice. Ms. Willard, who was first a teacher, then a leader of the temperance movement, believed in empowering women to advocate for equal voting rights, child-labor laws, an end to prostitution, and equal education and pay for women. Ms. Willard, like Ms. Tubman, was led by her faith.

"We are shaping women not into what they are asked and forced to be, but what they want and ought to be," Ms. Willard said.

One contemporary said of her: "She started a whole generation of women asking questions and marching toward freedom."

The quest for liberty of these Methodist women was faith-based, extended beyond themselves and followed a divine mandate to do justice. Today, their faith and stories resonate with young women as they struggle for justice.

In the 1980s, Peggy Hutchinson, then a young United Methodist woman, followed in the liberation footsteps of her foremothers when she participated in the underground network that moved high_risk refugees from Guatemala through El Salvador and Mexico to sanctuary in the United States.

The sanctuary movement, which involved doctors, lawyers and others offering services, operated outside U.S. law that supported the governments of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, and believed anyone coming from these countries should not be granted asylum. With the faith of Harriet Tubman and Frances Willard, participants in this network believed God wanted them to welcome the stranger.

In the midst of welcoming strangers, Ms. Hutchinson realized these people were fleeing for their lives. She shared the story of one Salvadoran family.

The family’s flight to the United States began after the husband and father, who had spent his life working with the poor, disappeared. Fearful that searching for his body would endanger the family, his wife and children waited until they were notified that his dismembered body had been found __ the work of the military. The family of 10 then fled to the United States, with stories of terror. The mother had been raped by the army in front of her children. The family suffered illness during their quest to reach safety.

When Ms. Hutchinson asked the mother why she came to the United States, the mother answered, "This was our last hope, our last hope for safety."

Ms. Hutchinson then realized a higher law than U.S. law governed her actions.

"I was going to have to confront the principalities and powers of my own country and perhaps break a law of my own country to obey what I call a law of God, a law of justice, a law of peace," Ms. Hutchinson said. "The risk I was taking was nothing compared to the risk of these families if they were sent back to their countries."

Today Ms. Hutchinson continues a mission of social justice as the assistant general secretary for global networks and ecumenical relations of the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries.

Young women around the world today are working for social change because they believe in a higher law. Some are outspoken; some work quietly. All are changing systems.

Filipina Rachel Abad, now in her mid_20s, is among these women. She said her people have been struggling for a legitimate government for a long time.

In the Philippines in 1985, hundreds of thousands of religious leaders, ordinary citizens and children linked arms with revolutionary rebels and stood together against the government’s tanks, machine guns and troops. When the troops refused to wage war on their own people, it signaled an end to the Marcos Regime. The people had staged a Christian-based, non-violent, bloodless revolution.

The end of the Marcos Regime did not mean the end of political strife in the Philippines. More recent, Ms. Abad, as the president of the United Methodist Women-supported National Christian Youth Fellowship, mobilized youth to draft a statement calling for former Philippines President Joseph Estrada’s resignation.

"He lost the capacity to lead the country after his involvement in illegal gambling," she said. "Issues of corruption and immorality were too obvious."

Governance issues are what the rest of the world sees, but there are deeper issues, including oppression of indigenous peoples, displacement of people by industrial development and peasants living in slavery, she said.

Part of the youth movement since she was 12, Ms. Abad sees sharing these realities with other youth as part of her ministry.

"We try our best to share the reality of our situation through the preparation of Youth Week Celebration guides and Sunday-school and camp materials," she said. "We ask youth about their perspectives on the issues in their local communities, then we try to put them in the context of the nation and the world."

Ms. Abad has helped draft statements on major Philippine issues, like the Visiting Forces Agreement.

"In the experience of my country, military presence in a barangay (village) means prostitution, high risk of accidents, plus violence," Ms. Abad said. "The Visiting Forces Agreement agreement has never been advantageous to the Philippines people. It gives total protection to the U.S. soldiers, including but not limited to, immunity to our laws."

Ms. Abad has mobilized Philippine youth to distribute relief supplies to disaster victims and to advocate for the environment freedom of speech and students’ right to education. Underlying this work is her strong belief in a God of peace.

"Christian Youth Fellowship is the concrete expression of my faith," Ms. Abad said. "All things I do for the youth fellowship and for Philippine youth are based on my faith in the God of justice. Young women have all the skills and the capacity to do their share in building God’s kingdom. We are not alone. Young women of the world and God are with us all the way!"

Studying faith from a feminist perspective shapes the work of Cynthia Yuen, 29, executive secretary for the Christian Conference of Asia and former movement coordinator for the Student Christian Movement. Feminist theology gave Ms. Yuen a source of strength, shaped her identity and formed her ministry around women’s issues.

The Church poses challenges to youth and young adults, Ms. Yuen said.

"The inertia of church hierarchy is so difficult for young people because they are always seen as inferior," she said.

She suggests young people organize into support groups and do critical thinking around issues affecting women. Such conversations can inspire young people to act.

Jennifer Battiest, 26, of Oklahoma Indian Missionary Conference agrees with Ms. Yuen’s approach. She found inspiration to act when she was a teenager through support groups. Ms. Battiest became interested in the church’s national work as a teenager and member of the Women’s Division college-university task force.

She is now serving as a US-2 -- a young adult who serves a two-year mission assignment in the United States – in North Carolina Conference.

Her work links Native-American communities and touches children in Red Springs, N.C., where she tutors second graders in literacy at Robeson County Church and Community Center.

"I work with a seventh grader who is reading on a second-grade level," she said. "It’s scary to think he could probably get through school without reading. My greatest challenge is not to despair."

In an area where the illiteracy rate is high, where parents are not necessarily literate and where schools are underfunded, Ms. Battiest sees her work as social change.

"Working on literacy is working on changing the school system," Ms. Battiest said. "It’s a ministry because you have to do it for the love of it and for the love of helping people. You can’t do it without caring."

Ms. Battiest said she wasn’t fully prepared for the cultural adjustments of leaving her conference of indigenous peoples. When she found a Native-American population in North Carolina, she found a connection with her culture and a network.

"The first time I went to church and saw brown people, I almost cried," she said. "Just meeting people from the Native American Cooperative Ministry in North Carolina, and talking with them, gives me ideas to take back to my conference.

"I’m taking back experiences and sharing them with other youth so they know there’s a whole world out there –- not to encourage them to leave, but to encourage them not to stay totally in one place."

Ms. Battiest’s experience is one in which she’d like other youth to share. Her message to them is: "If there is an issue you want to work on, find places that need the help, and go for it."

Kelly C. Martini is executive secretary for communications for the Women’s Division.

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