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I was born in 1919 in Basel/Switzerland where my
father was working in the house of the Basel
mission. I grew up in this compound, went to primary school there, then went
to the Gymnasium and matriculated in 1938. I encountered difficulties
in my youth. My father was German living in Switzerland
and my mother was Swiss, born in India. They had worked together
in Ghana,
which was where they met.
After my matriculation I had to look what to do. I
would have liked to become a nurse or a teacher and to go to the mission
field, but this was impossible. With my German nationality I could not take
any state examination in Switzerland.
My three brothers were already living in Germany. Two were theologians and
lived during the time of National Socialism as members of the Confessional Church. My father did not want me to
study, as his view was that women should marry. Then I asked a refugee from Germany:
do you know a seminary where women can study minor theology? She gave me an
address in Berlin,
the Burckhardthaus/center of the YWCA. I was accepted into the heart of the
confessional church, of which Niemöller was a
prominent advocate. There I was drawn into all the conflicts of the national
socialist situation in Germany.
Our teachers were pastors who did not accept the official German church set
up by the National Socialists and had been expelled by their own
congregations. Later, after the war, those pastors became bishops.
We were living Christianity in a very difficult
time. You had to decide which values were important for you. The questions
permeated Bible study, church history, even prayer, for those who were in the
concentration camps. We learnt to trust in god, and not only get an
education. It could mean that your life was in danger. The SS occasionally
infiltrated the group, as a spy. Some pastors were imprisoned. I was there
from 1939 to 1941. There were also some women pastors
teaching us.So I realized that this was not an impossibility. One of them was Anna Paulsen, one of the
first woman theologians in Germany.
She provided an example and gave me the assurance that I was not on the wrong
path.After the outbreak of the war I could not go
back to Switzerland,
though we were allowed to get a visa to see my family for Christmas in
1940. In 1941, after my examination, I managed go
back to Switzerland.
My mother was very sick (she died soon after the
war)., so I was looking after my mother and the
household. I studied Greek at home, in the hope I could study theology
later. My youngest brother, a pastor, was taken into the German army, though
he did not swear the
oath of allegiance to Hitler. He died
in Russia
in 1941. After this my father said: maybe you have to study theology in his
place.
I started theology in 1942 in Basel, which was very
well known at the time, since Karl Barth was there,
having been expelled from Germany because of his opposition to National
Socialism. Swiss colleagues did not realise this; their only concern was with
the situation in Switzerland,
that nothing
should happen there. I could not speak of my past in Berlin, as they would not understand. I
finished in 1946, as
the only woman in my year throughout the course. I had no
problems with my male colleagues, just that I could not speak about Berlin. This had an
impact on my life: to be a theologian with heart and personality, not only
with my head. I had known life or death situations and so was aware of the
essential things in life. In 1946 I finished my studies.
During my ordination training my
mother was very ill. and I could not go to another
city to take up a charge as I had to look after her. I cared for her and had
the responsibility for a household of six persons with a little help.beside my practical work in a congregation of Basel.
Father said, ‘I will never come under your
preaching’. But then he did come to hear me preach, the first time and every
time after that. He did not stand in my way any more.
During the war I had been the contact person for the
YWCA in Geneva and the centre in Berlin. After the
death of my mother, the director of the German YWCA,
wrote: Now you have time to help us. I could have worked in Basel in community work (not fully
accepted, as this was not possible for women). My president said: When you
are called you should go. So I was the only travelling secretary of the Burckhardhaus from 1948/49 till 1953 My job was to build
up a central house in the Western part of Germany,
for youth work in the three occupied sections of Germany. In 1947 I gained Swiss
nationality, so I could go from one section to the other with my Swiss visa
(valid for 4 months). I could visit and reanimate groups, youth secretaries
and bishops to ask them for help. In 1952/53 I worked in the refugee camps
for foreign refugees in Germany,
mainly from Eastern Europe. After a year I
had to go back because my father was dying. I did not what work I should do.
I was not allowed to be elected by a public vote in a congregation because I
was a woman, in 1953 when I came home (this was
changed in 1957). So I had no work. The very moment when I clearly said that
I was not going back to Germany,
I got a call from the Psychiatric clinic in Basel to be a pastor until they could find
a man. As I had had to face so many difficult situations in Germany, I came home exhausted. I
needed clarification, and I started to study psychology. C.G. Jung was very
little known in those days. I studied psychology in the C.G.Jung
institute. This included practical work in the University hospital. There I
took part in the doctors’ meetings at which they talked about their patients. I
could see how they did it, and knew that it what I had done during my six
years in Germany
was not so wrong. My attitude in working was that I had an understanding of
the situation of the people I worked with, an empathy,
through listening. This was rather new in theology of that time.
In 1953 I became president of the YWCA in Switzerland.
After only eighteen months I was called to a pastorate in a congregation
without my having sought the appointment. So I went. It was wonderful! They
wanted me to stay even though I could not yet be elected, until there was a
change of constitution in Basel.
I worked for this with other women theologians and with the Board of the
Church in Basel.
We women had to push it. We had to be celibate, said the churches. For the
next generation this was impossible. In 1957 the new constitution of the
Church, which allowed celibate women to be elected, was accepted by a vote of
the men. There was as yet no women’s suffrage in state elections. Women were
allowed to vote and be elected in the Church long before women’s suffrage in
the canton. It was only in 1971 that women got the right to vote throughout Switzerland.
In 1959 one of my male colleagues went to Bern, and my
congregation pushed for me to be elected. However, there was a woman
colleague who had been working as assistant for more than twenty years in
another congregation. Her congregation was very patriarchal. I said I do not
accept election if she is not elected as well. By 1960, a third congregation
had followed suit, so by October 1960 there were all together three
congregations in the Swiss Reformed Church in Basel that had elected women pastors for
the first time. After five years it was possible in each Reformed Church
except Bern and Zurich, which were state Churches and had
to wait until women’s suffrage came through in 1972. In the Basel Church
women had been allowed to vote since 1918. Those first women had held
meetings and supported each other, and therefore it was
easier to go forward in Basel.
In the following years I asked the Church, why the idea of women in
leadership was so strange.I was encouraged to study
the question with many groups in the whole Church and I noticed that this was
not only a theological but also a psychological and social question. I
realized that I had to write a book and to study our position thoroughly. I
carried out the studies between 1966-1969 and the book Für
die Freiheit frei – Der Weg der
Frau in Kirche und Gesellschaft
(Free for Freedom – The Way of a Woman in Church and Society, Zürich: TVZ 1972) was published in
1972.
I was seventeen years in this congregation,
including 2 years as a stop gap in Cameroon
training pastors for the Presbyterian church of Cameroon. There the same
questions arose: how can the Basel
church send a woman? The Cameroon
men did not accept me: Paul says women have to be silent in Church, they said
(I Cor. 14.24), and wanted to know what I thought
about it. After three weeks I encountered no more problems, through
discussion and argument. After me they accepted a Cameroon
woman who was trained in Paris,
and now they have women studying theology and working in their churches.
After two years I went back to Switzerland, to my congregation.
It was not so easy for women then. Now there are plenty of women.
In 1974, I got a full time job in the Basel Mission
House where I had been a member of the executive committee since 1961. I was
secretary for women’s work in three continents: Asia, Latin America and Africa. I trained candidates for mission, and had the
task of changing the institute for missionaries, which had been empty for
some years. Since 1950, missionaries had had to study at
Universities in order to help in the teaching of indigenous poeple in the Theological Colleges, which were
established as the churches were growing and became independent. My task was to
develop a centre for encounter between people of third and first worlds. This
was only among protestant churches. It was exciting but not easy.
Our director was linked to the WCC as an executive member. The WCC was
in financial difficulties. He said, if you need our
help I can give you my people. Therefore I was immediately asked to help in
preparing women for the meeting in Nairobi.
This was the first time that women could speak in a WCC conference. I was not
in Nairobi
because our director had already been elected. At that
time Brigalia Bam, a refugee from South Africa, held the post of
secretary for the cooperation of men and women in the WCC.
After Nairobi Brigalia Bam
asked me whether I could moderate the consultation of European women to be
held in 1978 in Brussels.
Following Vatican II Catholic women (Catherina Halkes among them) had invited Madeleine Barot and other women from the WCC,
from all parts of Europe
to the Women's ecumenical liaison group (WELG).
They had meetings together during and after the Vaticanum. WELG was disbanded by Rome in 1972. The argument was that women
could join in Lay groups and that they did not need a special network.
Catherina Halkes pushed within the
WCC that they should take the initiative to form a network for women from all
confessions. The women’s desk was already there, but there were no catholic
women yet. She also pushed for a gathering of European women. At the Consultation
in Brussels in 1978, we elected women from all over Europe: from German
speaking and Benelux countries, Central and Eastern,
Northern and Southern Europe and Great Britain, plus one catholic
woman, Jacky Stuyt. The aim was to find out how to
form a movement for women in Europe. Jacky
went to Rome.
Rome said
that a women’s council would be impossible and dangerous. So Rome proposed to call it
a Forum. We made a thorough exploration of how to bring
about such a co-operative women’s organisation.
It took us some four years to draw up a constitution
according to Swiss law, under which I was elected convenor. We held a
pre-conference in 1981, and in 1982 we proposed the founding of the
Ecumenical Forum of European Christian Women (EFECW). By 1986 I was already
drawing my pension, so I wanted to give up the responsibility. Instead, they
made me an honorary president which meant that I should
help in the continuation of the work as long as I was able!
Looking back, where are we now?
We started by getting to know each other. We shared
the idea of being interconfessional, which was not
easy. Europe had been torn into pieces by all the wounds of the war and by the Iron Curtain. At first
we worked in the geographical regions, but the crucial moment for the
Forum came in 1990 in York,
following the opening of the former Soviet borders. The Eastern women felt
that they were not taken seriously. They wanted to have a president from each
confession, and this was agreed at the York
assembly.
The next assembly was in Hungary, which was difficult for
the Russian women as nobody wanted to speak Russian. This problem has now
been resolved by making English the official language of the Forum. The
animosity against Russian has decreased. There has been good co-operation in
recent years.
There have been differences in religious situations, with
secularisation in the West and revival
in the East. I hope we in the West can learn from the East, and that our
faith can help in difficult political situations. Maybe we have to
re-evaluate our faith, to regain a lively faith, not only rational, but
lived. We need to win our younger generation back. On the other side, what
can East learn from West? The West has knowledge and empowerment. There is a
difference in timing. The women’s movement in the West started several
decades ago. A Russian woman asked me once, ‘How do you understand your
freedom?’ For her, freedom is limited to a small world. She wanted to show
her people what it could be, what Christian freedom could be, an inner
freedom, depending on God and not on people. We have had to fight for outer
freedom, but if you are not grounded it is difficult. To become grounded is a
gift. You may find it when you seek it, by entering more deeply into your own
religion, through meditation. I have never had the opportunity to live only for my faith as nuns do
in monasteries, though I have sometimes thought about making that choice. But
finally I have always been involved in the world, being politically active,
intermingling church and society matters. Realising that the power in our
faith is empowerment in a spiritual sense.
Ruth gave this interview during a CC meeting in
March 2008 in Chisinau/Moldova to Martina Heinrichs.
Translation by Janet Wotton.
Also published in FIER, Dutch feminist-theologean journal, summer 2008.
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