About EEWC

Our Mission

We support, educate, and celebrate Christian feminists from many traditions.

Our Purpose

• to encourage and advocate the use of women's gifts in all forms of Christian vocation.
• to provide educational opportunities for Christian feminists to grow in their belief and understanding.
• to promote networking and mutual encouragement within the Christian community.

Our Statement of Faith

We believe God is the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer of all.

We believe God created all people in the divine image for relationship with God and one another.

We further believe our relationship with God was shattered by sin with a consequent disruption of all other relationships.

We believe God in love has made possible a new beginning through the incarnation in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who was and is truly divine and truly human.

We believe the Bible is the Word of God, inspired by the Holy Spirit, and is a central guide and authority for Christian faith and life.

We believe the church is a community of people who have been divinely called to do God's will, exercising their gifts responsibly in church, home, and society, and looking forward to God's new creation.

We Are Christian Feminists

• EEWC affirms that the Bible supports the equality of the sexes.
• We believe that our society and churches have irresponsibly encouraged men to domination and women to passivity.
• We proclaim God's redemptive word on mutuality and active discipleship.
• We value inclusive images and language for God.
• We advocate ordination of women and full expression of women's leadership and spiritual gifts.

We Are Inclusive

• EEWC is evangelical because our formation was rooted in the belief that the Gospel is good news for all persons.
• EEWC is ecumenical because we recognize that faith is expressed through a rich diversity of traditions and forms of spirituality.
• We offer a community of safety for all who have experienced abuse, marginalization, or exclusion by Christian churches.
• We have discovered that the expansiveness of God calls us to be an inclusive community.

We Welcome You

EEWC welcomes members of any gender, race, ethnicity, color, creed, marital status, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, age, political party, parental status, economic class, or disability. Our biennial conferences sustain our spiritual connectedness and foster our learning about critical Christian feminist issues. Our quarterly newsletter, Christian Feminism Today Magazine, provides Christian feminist news, articles, book reviews, and inspiration. EEWC members network with and support each other through local chapters, regional events, and the Internet.

Our Council (2009)

2009 Officers

Representatives in addition to officers above

Serving EEWC as Independent Contractors and Volunteer

How Did EEWC Originate?

In 1973, a group of socially concerned Christians, later known as Evangelicals for Social Action (ESA), met in Chicago and drafted the Chicago Declaration as the basis for their organization. Among the participants were a few women who were concerned about the inferior status of women in Church and society and who called upon the group to consider issues related to sexism from a Christian perspective.

At ESA's second consultation in 1974 the women's caucus was one of six task forces formed by participants to study such concerns as racism, sexism, peace, and simpler lifestyles. Thus our group was born as the Evangelical Women's Caucus. EWC presented proposals to Evangelicals for Social Action on a variety of topics including endorsement of the Equal Rights Amendment, support for inclusive language in Bible translation and Christian publications, affirmation of the ordination of women, and criticism of discriminatory hiring policies in Christian institutions.

The first national EWC conference, held in 1975 in Washington, D.C., addressed "Women in Transition: A Biblical Approach to Feminism." The conference attracted more than 360 women from 36 of the 50 United States and from Canada. Since that time, we have held international conferences in Pasadena, California; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Saratoga Springs, New York; Seattle, Washington; Wellesley, Massachusetts; Fresno, California; Chicago, Illinois; San Francisco, California; Norfolk, Virginia; Indianapolis, Indiana; Claremont, California; Charlotte, North Carolina; and, most recently, Indianapolis, Indiana, June 27-29, 2008, where we also held a conference in 2002.

In 1990, in order to reflect the increasingly inclusive nature and the many traditions of our membership, we officially changed our name to Evangelical & Ecumenical Women's Caucus.

In 1994, we celebrated our twentieth anniversary at our biennial international conference in Chicago, Illinois. Our twenty-fifth anniversary was also celebrated at North Park University in Chicago, Illinois, on July 27-30, 2000. The theme was "Your Daughters Shall Prophesy and You Shall Be My Witnesses." In June, 2004, we held our thirtieth anniversary conference at Scripps College in Claremont, California on the theme, “Where Wisdom Calls: Crossroads and Open Gates.”

We call ourselves Evangelical (from the Greek word euangelion, "good news") because we believe that the Gospel is good news for all people. We call ourselves Ecumenical because we recognize that the Christian faith is expressed through a rich diversity of traditions. We are committed to the full inclusion of women with men in the home, the Church, and the world. We call ourselves Caucus to reflect our origin as one of the various caucuses of Evangelicals for Social Action.

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