Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Sexism in the church?? Message-ID: Date: 14 Apr 91 03:07:35 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia Lines: 55 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article , cctr114@csc.canterbury.ac.nz *quoted* q> Just last night I was speaking to a good clergy friend. Once again, she q> has had to deal with someone (clergy of a different denomination) q> questioning her call. q> Her first question. "Could he refuse his calling?" When he replied q> that he couldn't, she asked him how he could ask her to refuse hers. q> After that, she made him the invitation she has made to others who have q> questioned her calling. "Come, and hear me preach. And then we'll q> discuss whether or not my calling is genuine." She's never been taken q> up on this invitation. and *replied* > While I am in full agreement with women in the ministry I would like to say > that being able to preach a first class sermon is no indication of calling > to the ministry. ... I do not think that there is really any objective > test which we could apply to see if a person's calling is real or imagined. Just two points I'd like to add. 1) Someone who _doesn't_ have a strong psychological _sense_ of calling may nevertheless be called. One of the books I cherish (but not to the extent of being able to remember the author's name, sorry) was written by a woman who became an ordained Anglican minister, not because she felt a strong call, but because she was uncertain about religious matters. If the book is any guide, her ministry is effective indeed. But she never _felt_ that she was "irresistably called". 2) A couple of weeks ago I read a book on the Ku Klux Klan. (Apparently "Ku Klux" comes from "kuklos -- a circle", and it was founded in an area of Scottish/Irish settlement.) I found to my amazement that in the early part of this century the KKK was supported by a lot of "Christian" clergymen. This included Methodists and Lutherans. Do you suppose that any of those clergymen doubted their call? Do you suppose that any of them would have said "yes, I could refuse my calling?" Do you suppose that the KKK wanted them because they were incompetent preachers, or because they were competent preachers? I wouldn't rely on the strength of anyone's belief in their call as evidence that their call was from God, whether man, woman, or angel. Friends of mine who've heard him tell me that the most spell-binding preacher they've ever heard is a certain man who denies the virgin birth, the resurrection, and the divinity, even the _calling_ of Jesus, a man who, preaching in Christian churches, affirms less about Jesus than the Muslims do. So "hear me preach" is not entirely reliable either. (Then of course there's the story of the 19th century minister whose wife was so impressed by his sermons that she said "James, why don't you put your sermons in a book?" to which he answers "because that's where I got them".) -- It is indeed manifest that dead men are formed from living ones; but it does not follow from that, that living men are formed from dead ones. -- Tertullian, on reincarnation.