Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: mls@sfsup.att.com (Mike Siemon) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Sexism in the church?? Message-ID: Date: 28 Apr 91 22:37:29 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 128 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article , CONS.ELF@AIDA.CSD.UU.SE (Ake Eldberg) writes: > In Sweden, the secular government forced female ministers on > a church that did not want them. That was in 1957. The split > is still an open bleeding wound in the body of Christ, and > Hello from Ake Eldberg! I very much agree with Mr. (Pastor?) Eldberg that it is objectionable for the state to, in effect impose doctrine on the church. (There is a similar problem when the church attempts to enshrine its doctrines in secular law.) This whole area gets a bit murky, and I want to look at it some more (in another article; this one is already long.) But I must first raise an objection: > I believe that the most common error about callings is to > assume that they are more specific than they really are. > The Lord summons someone to serve him, but the calling does > not usually have a "high precision" as to the exact function I am not certain I agree to this. I have no personal experience of a "vocation" of the kind I hear seminarians talk about, so my comments are entirely second hand. But I have heard some of them (a minority) describe a strong resistance, a la Jonah, on their own part to what winds up as a specifically sacerdotal call -- often they have TRIED to meet (their initial understanding of) the call by various secular and lay forms of ministry, or even religious orders (monastic or more secular ones like the Franciscan) -- only to find themselves drowning or in the belly of a fish [speaking allegorically :-)]. But let's assume you are right, and vocations are NOT that specific. > This is why a woman saying "I am called to be a priest" weighs > little with me. I will reply, "It is possible that you are > *called*, but the function in which you will serve the Lord > will be subject to what the Church needs". Unless you ABSOLUTELY apply this same blanket refusal to all MEN who seek ordination, I find this to have a dreadful odor of hypocrisy. I have not sensed any such thing in other articles by Mr. Eldberg, so I will try as charitable a reading as I can find for the context here. But note that consistency on your part in this would be only a minor problem for men -- they may continue believing themselves called to a priesthood, and pursue that calling INTO the priesthood with no more than a token deference to your theoretical position. Whereas any woman who faces an opinion like yours at the outset is essentially DENIED a priori. Even if you are right, you have a TERRIBLE pastoral problem on your hands -- men can ignore you, while you have absolute deflectional power over women. Are you SURE that's how the Spirit operates? Is your understanding of vocations REALLY so good that you can stand at the gate with your flaming sword to turn away the women -- while the men stream past you? > This is where each Church has part of the calling. A calling > is not a personal appointment for the sanctification of the > person who is called. It is always done in relation to the > Church -- > The Church must recognize the calling, > and provide a position where it can be used according to > what the Christian community needs. In principle, I can agree with this. But one should be very clear that the "Christian community" in this context poses *limits* on the action of the Holy Spirit. I would agree that a *social* context in which a woman as priest would drive her congregation into rebellion and apostasy is one is in which, however true her calling, she must seek some other way of serving. > The Lord has promised > that his Church shall be led by the Holy Spirit, too. It is > not a privilege for the called ones as individuals. No, it is not a privilege of the individual postulants; but neither is it a privilege of bishops (or presbyteries or other institutions). They have special charges and responsibilites for the care of the church (and I am not dismissing these), but they also must not confuse personal opinion in such matters with the Will of God. If it would disrupt and dismay a parish in Lower Podunk to be forced to have a woman priest, why should that have ANY part in the purely voluntary selection of a woman pastor by a willing congregation? No one from the Protestant tradition has any business using the potential schismatics of Podunk to resist women's ordination. A more centralizing or catholicizing tradition (my own Episcopalian or possbily Ake Eldberg's Scandinavian Lutheran tradition) has trouble with schism, but even doing all we can to avoid it (and in the US, at least, women's ordination has been a troubling issue, but has NOT led to *major* schism) we had better admit that schism lies at the base of our current church institutions. And even the matter of forcing reforms on reluctant parishes is not all that strictly impossible (again, speaking for centralizing traditions, though I note something similar seems to happen even in theoretically anarchic traditions like the Southern Baptist -- in a context where I might be inclined to put ironic quote-marks around the word reform). Since the Cluniac reforms sponsored by a papacy itself reformed through pressure from the Ottonian Empire, it has usually been held that a main governing body of a church may indeed require conformance of reluctant local clergy and laity. Hence, were you actually to discover, despite your initial disbelief, a woman with a specific call to the priesthood, it is NOT beyond question that such a person have a position created for her even if it did not at that moment exist. The Church, as the Body of Christ, is not a dead thing but a living one. People are ever-ready to condemn change as a disease or corruption -- but it may also be growth. -- Michael L. Siemon I say "You are gods, sons of the m.siemon@ATT.COM Most High, all of you; nevertheless ...!att!attunix!mls you shall die like men, and fall standard disclaimer like any prince." Psalm 82:6-7 [While I agree that not all scenarios of compelling the unwilling are realistic, some probably will happen. The Presbyterian Church (USA), of which I'm an elder, has some experience with moving to a policy of ordination of women. We do not impose female pastors on unwilling churches. However we do require that officers of the church -- specifically including pastors -- be willing to work with and participate in ordination of female officers. When our position was newer, this did result in some difficult situations. We did refuse to ordain people if it became apparent that they would not be able to ordain and work with female officers in their church. Furthermore, we expect local churches to elect female elders and deacons. We do not impose it on them -- it is treated pastorally rather than coercively, and it can take years before the first female elder is elected -- but we do expect it to happen, and some congregations have felt that they are being pressured to violate their conscience. It's hard to see how one can make a decision to allow ordination of women without having at least some situations like this arise. --clh]