Spotlight On: The Reverend Madeleine Rebouché at the UN Conference on Women

When the Reverend Madeleine Rebouché represented the Episcopal bishop and Christ Church Cathedral at this year’s United Nations conference on women, she heard stories of suffering faced by women around the globe.

The gathering lasted two weeks, and discussions about gender-based inequality, poverty, hunger, oppression, and violence – as well as possible solutions – filled each day.

“It was like drinking from a firehose,” Rebouché says “It was heavy. There wasn’t a lot of celebration. You look at it all and, yes, women have come pretty far, but holy cow. So far to go.”

Rebouché’s trip to New York in March strengthened her faith in advocacy, and she’s eager to share what she learned at church, with Nashville leaders and elsewhere to aid the push for further progress for women.

“I hope it’s a seed that grows,” she says. “Clergy and ministers are community leaders, so it’s important we’re keeping these really painful issues right in our purview.”

The Commission on the Status of Women, or CSW, is one of the major annual events at UN headquarters, second in size only to the opening of the UN General Assembly. The priority theme this year was accelerating equality and empowerment of women and girls by “addressing poverty and strengthening institutions and financing with a gender perspective.”

Rebouché, who has been at Christ Church Cathedral since 2020, applied to serve as one of Episcopal Presiding Bishop Michael Curry's delegates to this year’s commission. 

“When I saw the priority theme, I thought, ‘Wow, that’s something I would really love to learn more about,’” she says. “A lot of my career leading up to being a priest was with women drowning in systems of oppression.”

A native of Shreveport, Louisiana, Rebouché lived and worked in a group home with incarcerated teenagers in Colorado, and was a chaplain at a women’s prison while attending Duke Divinity School.

Even with those credentials, Rebouché says she was surprised when she was chosen to be part of the 10-woman Episcopal delegation to the conference.

“I was so excited,” she says. “I couldn’t believe it.”

Lynnaia Main, the Episcopal Church representative to the United Nations, says Rebouché was a great choice in part because of her thoughtfulness, engagement and personality.

“She is a rock star, but also humble, which I very much appreciate,” Main says with a chuckle. “People looked to her for her leadership even when she wasn’t necessarily trying to present herself as a leader. 

“It was the charisma of her presence. She has a distinct prophetic voice that’s very loving. That is a true gift, because sometimes we have delegates who are truly angry, and rightly so. She offered safe space for others to vent their frustrations.”

The 68th CSW convened March 11, and the days were long. Governments, civil society organizations, experts and activists from across the world gathered to present findings, hold discussions and debate actions.

“From 9 to 5 you would just take in information, make connections, meet people, talk to people,” Rebouché says. 

At the end of each day, the Episcopal delegation held a debriefing.

“The 10 of us were working as one, the goal mostly being present,” she says. “Just showing up in your collar at the UN has a kind of impact. Some people would look at you sideways, like, ‘You don’t belong here,’ which is a fair critique. But mostly it was met with a lot of curiosity and care. 

“To say, ‘The church is here and we care about what happens here’ – there is impact in that.”

Topics that Rebouché found especially interesting included women under foreign occupation, ecofeminism and the climate crisis, and discrimination against women and girls in sports. 

“While there was a lot of heaviness, I still walked away with hope because we were there talking about it,” she says. “There were lots of solutions and ideas proposed.”

Rebouché stayed with friends for part of her time in New York, at an Airbnb and at a rectory in Times Square. St. Patrick’s Day fell on the middle weekend, which gave her a chance to attend the parade. 

“It was very cool,” Rebouché says. “So many bagpipes.”

There were also moments at CSW that Rebouché found uplifting. She met the Filipino ambassador to the UN and Queen Mother Dr. Delois Blakely, an American goodwill ambassador to Africa at the UN. Young attendees included an 11-year-old Ugandan who spoke about the future of girls in her country, and Rebouché was also inspired by the rest of the Episcopal delegation.

Her biggest takeaway from the trip was the power of advocacy. 

“It can be hard to remain hopeful because progress is so slow and tedious,” she says. “You can feel pretty powerless sometimes. 

“This experience awakened in me the reality that advocacy doesn’t require special training, or ask you to be an expert. I walked away feeling more empowered. I can keep showing up and bearing witness, which is very much a gospel principle.”

Rebouché is still formulating a plan for bearing witness in her church and city. Finding a pathway to do that can be a challenge, Main says. 

“It’s never obvious how the spirit is going to move in those circumstances and make those opportunities possible,” Main says. “Sometimes what happens with our delegates is they go home with plans and a lot of creative energy and passion, and they come back to a community where there are barriers, or there might be backlash. And that can be very jarring and disheartening.”

But Rebouché is eager to share what she learned about gender injustice, including statistics such as this: The CSW says tens of millions of women and girls could be lifted out of poverty with more emphasis on education and family planning, fair and equal wages, and expanded social benefits. Change is possible because 2.6 billion people will cast votes in 2024.

Rebouché’s advice is to vote with love and compassion in mind.

“Jesus was pretty clear about the things that matter – the widow, the orphan, the poor, the stranger, the person in prison, the sick,” she says.

“If we call ourselves followers of Christ, we have to vote with those people in mind, and a lot of love and compassion. And be patient and show the same compassion to people who think differently from you.”

By Steve Wine