Nobel Peace Prize winner shines her light

Meanwhile, a story written by Linda Bloom in NEW YORK said that when Ms Gbowee was living a hard life as a refugee in Ghana, she used to comfort her small children at night with a beloved gospel song.

Ms Gbowee said she was reminded of that song on Oct 7 when, as a newly-named Nobel Peace Prize winner, she entered the chapel of the Interchurch Center in New York. As she sang, “This little light of mine, I’m going to make it shine,” she was joined by a chorus of some 200 admirers.

“For the last, almost 16 years, I’ve done nothing great but to let my light shine,” she told the crowd about the accomplishments that now have drawn global attention.

“The journey has been tough, the road has been rough, but it’s been rewarding,” added the 39-year-old Liberian peace activist, who is a Lutheran and mother of six.

An announcement from the Nobel Committee said: “It is the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s hope that the prize to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman will help to bring an end to the suppression of women that still occurs in many countries, and to realise the great potential for democracy and peace that women can represent.”

The Interchurch Center event originally was scheduled as a book party, hosted by the National Council of Churches, for Ms Gbowee’s memoir, Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changes a Nation at War.

Inter-faith influence

Sharing the prize with Ms Karman, a Muslim called “the mother of Yemen’s revolution”, seems fitting, since Ms Gbowee showed Christian and Muslim women how to break down the stereotypes they had of each other and find common goals to work for peace in their country.

After years of civil war, she called these women of faith in Liberia to peace-building in 2003. The women’s movement eventually led to the ouster of then-President Charles Taylor and the election of Ms Johnson Sirleaf, with whom Ms Gbowee said she has a “mother-daughter relationship”.

In New York, Ms Gbowee displayed a robust sense of humour but also had some strong words for her US audience, advising her listeners to tend to peace and justice issues in their own backyard.

She reminded the audience that the women who won the peace prize “didn’t set out to conquer the world – they set out to transform their societies first”.

She believes the path to non-violent change must be connected to belief in a higher power and firmly links her faith with her accomplishments.

“I could not have walked this walk all by myself,” she declared. – United Methodist News Service.

Kathy L. Gilbert is a multimedia reporter for the young adult content team at United Methodist Communications and Linda Bloom is a United Methodist News Service multimedia reporter based in New York.