c. 2006 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) When the Rev. Margaret Aymer took part in a celebration of this year’s 50th anniversary of ordained women preachers in the Presbyterian Church (USA), she relished the moment to bask in the success of those who had struggled in the past.
“It’s extraordinary to stand under the legacy of women like those women who have gone before and paved the way for me, such as it’s a nonissue in my church,” said Aymer, an assistant professor of New Testament at Atlanta’s Interdenominational Theological Center.
But Aymer, who was ordained in 2004, teaches some students for whom access to ordination and pastorates are real issues indeed.
“Some of these women are very much experiencing a call to ministry,” she said. “They then have to make the choice: Do I stay in my tradition, which I love, in which I have been raised, or do I leave my tradition to follow my call?”
As women in the nation’s mainline Protestant denominations rejoice over decades of ordination _ 50 years for both the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church (USA) _ their more conservative counterparts continue to challenge whether their place in the pulpit is appropriate.
Even some supporters of women’s ordination say the “jury is still out” on substantive changes in religious leadership, and worry about statistics that show the percentage of women clergy has actually fallen in some denominations that pioneered the idea of women in the pulpit. What’s more, advocates say many churches that officially support women clergy nonetheless remain reluctant to fill their pulpits with women.
Opponents to women clergy, meanwhile, see the milestones as no reason to celebrate.
“I think it’s an act of defiance against a very clear New Testament teaching,” said the Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.
“I’m not saying that all those who affirm this intend to defy the word of God, but I think that’s the net result.”
(FIRST OPTIONAL TRIM BEGINS)
Both Mohler and Frank Page, the current president of the Southern Baptist Convention, supported women’s ordination in the 1980s, but now stand behind the 2000 version of their denomination’s faith statement, which declares “while both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”
Page explained to the Florida Baptist Witness newspaper: “To have women serving as pastor would be to put that woman in spiritual authority over men and I think Scripture clearly prohibits that.”
(FIRST OPTIONAL TRIM ENDS)
The Rev. Eileen Lindner, deputy general secretary of the National Council of Churches, said she begs to differ with evangelical leaders who hold that view, and instead celebrates that three NCC member-denominations have prominent women leaders: the Rev. Sharon Watkins is the president of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ); Bishop Vashti McKenzie became the first woman bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 2000 and was followed by two more in 2004; and Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori is to be consecrated Nov. 4 as the first female presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church.
Adair Lummis, a sociologist of religion and an expert on women clergy at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut, applauds the milestones being marked by mainline Protestant denominations. But, she offers a “don’t just relax” caution about the status of women’s ordination.
“Just because you have more women and you’re having these milestone celebrations, please remember that in some denominations, like the more what they call the spirit-centered, evangelical denominations, … there were more women ordained 50 years ago than there are now,” she said.
In “Clergy Women: An Uphill Calling,” Lummis and her co-authors cited changes in such denominations, including the Church of the Nazarene, whose percentage of women clergy decreased from 20 percent in 1908 to 6 percent in 1973. That figure stands at 8.5 percent today.
Likewise, in the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, which was founded in 1927 by Aimee Semple McPherson, currently 36 percent of clergy are female. Thirty years ago, about half of Foursquare clergy were women, and there were even greater percentages at the start of the denomination, said the Rev. Ron Williams, church historian. He attributes the change, in part, to the growing focus on different roles for men and women in some evangelical circles.
Once women are ordained, they may still face resistance to some kinds of leadership.
“For the larger churches, the better-paying churches, they want a man in the pastorate,” Lummis said. “This is a problem.”
But even as women continue to face what scholars have long labeled a “stained-glass ceiling,” some are bucking tradition. In August, eight Catholic women, defying church hierarchy, were ordained as priests in a Pittsburgh riverboat ceremony organized by the group Roman Catholic Womenpriests. A month later, Dina Najman became “rosh kehillah,” or “head of the community” at an Orthodox Jewish synagogue in Manhattan without the title “rabbi.”
Mary E. Hunt, co-founder of the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual, said Women-Church, an ecumenical feminist movement of which her organization is a part, will celebrate its 25th anniversary next year. Even as she applauds women in “Catholic feminist ministries,” she’s seeking greater transformation of the traditional hierarchies.
“The consensus has changed enormously in the last 30 years since the ordination of the Episcopal women to the priesthood in the mid-1970s,” said Hunt, who is based in Silver Spring, Md. But, she added: “I think the jury is still out on whether the ordination of women has occasioned substantive structural changes in any of the churches.”
In Southern Baptist circles, where opposition to women clergy is particularly intense, officials of Baptist Women in Ministry intend to start a pro-active campaign for at least occasional changes in some pulpits.
“One of the things we’re going to do is encourage pastors, male pastors, in Baptist churches, to put women in their pulpits on a specific day,” said Pamela Durso, associate executive director of the group. “The more women are in a pulpit, … the more exposure they get and the more congregations get over what I call `fear factor.’ There’s that scary-woman-in-the-pulpit fear factor.”
(SECOND OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)
In a report issued in June, her organization found that more Baptist women than ever are serving as pastors and co-pastors, but the vast majority of Baptist churches have not called a woman pastor. That report found that more than 20 percent of churches affiliated with the Alliance of Baptists had women in such a role, while three other Baptist bodies had less than 5 percent. Overall, the report found that 102 women served in top pastoral roles in the alliance, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and moderate conventions in Virginia and Texas in 2005, up from 85 in 1997.
Supporters and opponents of women’s ordination may disagree on whether it’s biblical or appropriate, but they do agree that the debate about it is bound to continue.
“There’s an increasing realization that there’s a connection between the ordination of women and more liberal views of the authority of Scripture,” said Wayne Grudem, a Phoenix Seminary professor and author of the new book, “Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism?”
“In that sense, leaders in the conservative groups think that the survival of the denomination as a Bible-believing group is at stake in this issue ultimately.”
Member denominations of both the National Association of Evangelicals and the National Council of Churches remain divided over whether women should be ordained.
“It is an interesting and dynamic picture,” said Lindner, of the NCC. “But there is nothing more characteristic of the American religious scene, of that kind of dynamism.”
KRE/JL END BANKS
Editors: To obtain headshots of Aymer, Hunt, Lummis, Durso and Grudem go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.
Also see related stories, RNS-WOMEN-VIGNETTES, RNS-WOMEN-STATS and RNS-WOMEN-BAPTIST, and photos transmitted Oct. 11, 2006.
