World's women lift their voices in prayer

By Episcopal Life staff, October 09, 2009 [Episcopal Life] Compiling a book with more than 300 contributors who live in dramatically different conditions and speak many different languages can be daunting. But the Episcopal Church women's ministry and a small group of editors took on that challenge and produced an impressive book of prayers by women committed to changing the world.

"It is offered as precious gift to those who believe unquestioningly in the rightness and in the power of prayer to bring about healing and wholeness, especially for those who suffer needlessly, innocently and, too often, so terribly unjustly," said Jenny Te Paa, a New Zealand Anglican theologian and one of the book's four editors. "In this sense it is a very necessary book for all time."

Lifting Women's Voices: Prayers to Change the World (Morehouse, 416 pp, $25) is a collection of prayers from women organized according to themes of the U.N. Millennium Development Goals. It makes direct connections between women's personal lives and global concerns of women everywhere. The book was conceived by the Rev. Margaret Rose, then director of Episcopal women's ministry, and Nancy Fitzgerald, a former editor at Church Publishing, who took note of the fact that Women's Uncommon Prayers, a book written by Episcopal women, was one of Morehouse's best sellers and suggested a second edition.

Rose said they decided to broaden the book's focus and seek global submissions. But formidable challenges lay ahead.

"What we were asking for was prayers that would help to change the world. This is not a familiar concept for many," she said.

"And the Internet is not a place where people pray," she added. "We had to invite and invite and invite," in efforts to attract contributors via the Internet.

Gathering the prayers was "a huge endeavor," said the Rev. Jeanne Person, director of the Center for Spirituality at General Theological Seminary in New York and one of the book's editors. "Some places in the world didn't have access to the Internet. In South America, language became a difficulty as well as getting a translation that honored the writer's voice.

"There is a difference between relative poverty and extreme poverty," Person said, contrasting one prayer from an American who couldn't pay her electric bill with a prayer by someone else who had no clean water or electricity throughout her life.

The prayers greatly enriched her own life, she said. "I've loved the chance to pray the prayers. And we've also had rare occasions where the author has read her own prayer to others. The experience of that has been overwhelming."

Few women are in significant places of leadership and authority throughout the Anglican Communion, Te Paa said.

"This means our leadership voices are not heard often enough, if at all, at the top tables of ecclesial decisionmaking and power-brokering, our prophetic voices are thus stymied from reaching and transforming the public square, and our sacramental voices are certainly not yet heard often enough in liturgical leadership," she said in an introduction to the book.

Lifting Women's Voices can be ordered from Episcopal Books and Resources, online at http://www.episcopalbookstore.org, or by calling 800-903-5544.

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