My letter concerning the upcoming Dutch book Spirituele Oecumene (Spiritual Ecumenism)

Dear Editors of the book Spirituele Oecumene:

As a contributor to the book Spirituele Oecumene, which will be released in September, I would like to address the following:

It delighted me to be a contributor to this book, from a Pentecostal perspective sharing my ideas and support for interdenominational dialogue, among more than 38,000 Christian denominations in the world today! I belong to the group of Pentecostals that believes in bridge-building and dialogue, and I hope to continue to play this role. Thus, I decided to contribute to this book.

To my friends and colleagues, I am known as a person who believes in the equality of genders within both society and the church. I have often called myself a feminist theologian, and have been active in the field of equal gender rights. However, because my attention went towards Pentecostal dialogue with other denominations, I failed to notice that majority of the authors are male (except few), despite the fact that we have amazing female theologians both in the Netherlands and around the globe. Unfortunately, I overlooked this aspect of our book. I believe I am being not true to myself and my ideals if I do not address this fact by remaining silence. My silence will be unjust and disrespectful to millions of women, including my female theologian friends and scholars. Therefore, I would like to humbly ask you to delay the publication process of this book and invite our female theologian sisters to join us in this dialogue of spiritual ecumenism. We cannot be fully spiritual if we neglect the other half of our humanity, the women. I am not sure if what I am asking here will be possible, but I do hope you will at least consider it and invite them to join us for a republication. Nevertheless, if it is not too late, I would like to withdraw my contribution from this list.

Lastly, I use this opportunity to offer my sincere apologies to my sister-theologians, scholars, ministers, lay leaders, and all the female members of the body of Christ for my personal negligence.

Sincerely Yours,

Samuel Lee