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Ordination of women

discussion of women's possibilities for priesthood

Ordination of women to ministerial or priestly office is an increasingly common practice among many major religious groups in the present time.

Christianity

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Anglican

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1800s

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  • There are only two classes of persons absolutely incapable of ordination; namely, unbaptized persons and women. Ordination of such persons is wholly inoperative. The former, because baptism is the condition of belonging to the church at all. The latter, because by nature, Holy Scripture and Catholic usage they are disqualified.

1920s

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  • The world to-day needs the faithful fulfilment of women's normal, natural functions–not female priests and bishops, but Christian wives and mothers.
  • What St. Paul said about women cannot justly be regarded as determining the policy of the Church for all time. It was idle to assert that the function of women was to be good wives and mothers. If the State treated women and men on a basis of equality the Church could not always be able to keep women on a basis of inferiority. The time was coming when the ordination of women would be an accomplished fact.

1930s

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  • There is no fear that the truth of the equality in Christ of men and women, will not be ultimately accepted by the Church. Despite the fact that at the present time fewer women are said to be coming to the Church, there is no doubt that women have religious souls. There is no reason why women should be excluded from ordination.

1970s

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  • From our study of holy orders and the difference between the sexes in scripture, church history and contemporary society, we can find no considerations weighty enough to justify any longer the exclusion of women from ordination.
  • To conclude, there are substantial theological reasons, expressed in God's word and based on the divine creation of men and women in relationship, and confirmed in human nature, which are barriers to the ordination of women to the position of headship in the congregation.

1980s

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  • Because the humanity of Christ our High Priest includes male and female, it is thus urged that the ministerial priesthood should now be opened to women in order the more perfectly to represent Christ’s inclusive High Priesthood.
  • 4. We believe 'these Orders of Ministers in Christ's Church: Bishops, Priests and Deacons' to have come down to us from apostolic times; and we do not consider that the churches of the Anglican Communion have authority to change the historic tradition of the Church that the Christian ministerial priesthood is male...While we recognize the many gifts which women contribute to the life of the Church, and we wish to affirm and encourage the development of ministries in which these gifts may be fully used for the building up of the Body of Christ and in Christian witness and service, the ordination of women to the presbyterate is clearly inconsistent with the tradition of the Church since New Testament times and is opposed by the greater part of the Church today. A grave situation has already been created. Full mutual recognition of presbyteral ministries no longer exists in the Anglican Communion. In certain places schism has been caused. If women are ordained to the episcopate we do not see how that can do other than call in question the continuance of the Anglican Communion.
  • it would be analogous to consecrating a meat pie on the altar of God to ordain a woman.
  • I simply took time to work through everything the Bible said about women. I discovered it was once again a surprising book. If I could communicate one thing to my evangelical friends about the ordination of women, it would be that not only have I not thrown out the Bible, I have been converted from a submissive woman into a simple Bible-believing Christian feminist by studying the word of God.
    • Rev Peta Sherlock in Field, ed. Fit for this Office: Women and Ordination. United States: Collins Dove, 1989.

1990s

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  • Women don't want to be priests in order to be female patriarchs. We want to use power and understand power in an entirely different way. We want to be priests in order to enhance others' ability to use their gifts, to use power to empower, and this is a very threatening thing to the current system.
  • Up until now the Church has been able to struggle on with an exclusively male priesthood systematically depriving itself of half of its potential talent. Today our horizon is expanding. Worlds of Christian service and ministry will open up that have not yet been dreamed of.
    • Peter Carnley, Anglican Archbishop of Perth and Primate of Australia in "The yellow wallpaper" sermon at the ordination of the first women priests in the Anglican church of Australia, 7 March 1992 in Carnley, P (2001) The yellow wallpaper and other sermons, HarperCollins, p90.
  • My support for the ordination of women is not in spite of, but because of, the teaching of the New Testament as a whole.
    • Right Reverend Keith Rayner, then Archbishop of Melbourne and Primate of Australia, speech at Melbourne Synod, reported in SEE, April 1992, p11
  • ...during the run-up to Lambeth 1968, prolonged reflection convinced me that there was no valid Biblical basis and no fundamental theological reason for denying the priesthood to women; that such ordinations were not against the divine order.
  • For many years now I have been persuaded from my reading of Scripture as the revealed Word of God that ordination to the Anglican priesthood (understood in an evangelical way) depends on a candidate's godliness and giftedness rather than gender...I am further persuaded that some of the key arguments opposing the ordination of women...are deeply flawed exegetically, theologically, philosophically and pastorally.
    • Graham Cole, Ridley College in The National Journal of the Movement for the Ordination of Women, October 1997: Incorporating Balaam's Ass-Sydney Synod edition. p10.

2000s

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  • Most women, I find, actually don't want to be led by other women. They actually are more comfortable with male ministers than female ministers. And certainly men would be uncomfortable, as a general rule, under the leadership of a woman minister...I think it's part of human nature. I think it's the way God has wired us.
  • The theological reasons previously advanced with respect to restricting the ordination of women to the priesthood can be found in the substantial report of the Diocesan Doctrine Commission to the Synod in 1985. The Commission concluded that women are not to assume the authoritative teaching office that properly belongs to men in the Christian congregation. In our own context this would not appear to exclude absolutely the possibility of women preaching or teaching in church. It nevertheless appears to exclude the possibility of women exercising the role of a teaching elder or "priest" as that term is defined by the Anglican Ordinal. (Sec 4.7)
  • If the heart of the incarnation is our Lord’s humanity then it is difficult to argue that only some human beings can represent Christ... As I continue to reflect on the nature of the incarnation and on the inclusiveness of the redemptive work of Christ I find it hard to argue that only males can be considered for the priesthood...The women I have ordained and the women who are serving as priests in my present diocese have a deep sense of being called by God and they have gifts that have brought rich blessings in the places where they minister.
  • All I can do is put on the record that I would need to re-ordain any man purportedly ordained before a woman bishop before I could license him.
  • The whole matter takes an even more serious spiritual turn when one considers the sacramental consequences of a ‘purported’ ordination which is not valid. Women, according to classical catholic teaching, are not simply ‘preferably’ not called to be priests, but are actually unable to be ordained into the sacred priestly ministry. This means that many women, whatever else their fine and valuable spiritual and pastoral gifts might be, and however much they may seem ‘priestly’, are not actually priests.
  • I am not afraid to take up the authority of being a priest, but there is more to leadership than telling people what to think and what to do.
  • I had a strong sense of calling to the ordained ministry and that had been affirmed by the Church...I saw it as important that we image God both in the female form and in the male, was following that calling and walking that path...Priesthood for me is about serving, it's about loving, it's about imaging in God and working for justice and peace. It was allowing me to be fully who I was called to be.
  • In brief to resist the ordination of women as priests on the basis that it undermines the unity of the Church simply does not square with what unity actually looks like on the ground in the twenty-first century global Christianity. Indeed, women priests provide a remarkable window into other dimensions of the unity of the gospel that resonates powerfully and authentically with our current cultural context. It is a development that we can confidently embrace for the sake of the coming one church of Jesus Christ.
  • I am announcing that I am opening a discussion on the Ordination of Women in this Diocese...I will then allow appropriate legislation to come forward to the next Synod to permit the adoption of the General Synod Canon which enables women to be priested in the Diocese, and we will have a full debate at the next Synod on that, and I will allow a vote. The Synod will have the opportunity to debate it, and to vote on it at that Synod. Whatever the decision of Synod I will support that decision. If it passes, I will not block it.

Lutheran

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2000s

  • In keeping with the Lutheran Confessions, St Stephen’s congregation believes that the Lutheran church calls and ordains pastors for one reason only, and that is to ensure that the gospel is proclaimed and the sacraments are administered. Through these ‘means of grace’ the Holy Spirit continues to create and sustain saving faith in people’s hearts (Augsburg Confession 5 and 14). By withholding the pastoral ministry from women, the LCA/NZ [Lutheran Church of Australia and New Zealand] has injected a prohibition into its body of teachings that lacks support from the Bible and the Confessions and strikes at the heart of the gospel.

Methodist/Wesleyan

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1930s

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  • We are asking you to accept the principle that no woman should he debarred from the Christian ministry merely on the ground of her sex. The report proposes we should start with the two existing ministries of women in our church — the deaconesses order and the women in the mission field — and bring them together into a new order which should meet in annual convocation and have considerable authority in the direction of women's work. Having done that, the report further suggests that from this new order it should be possible for a woman to offer herself for those tests for the ordained and itinerant ministry of our church for which men offer themselves from year to year.

1990s

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  • If the liberation of women is not proclaimed, the church’s proclamation cannot be about divine liberation. If the church does not share in the liberation struggle of Black women, its liberation struggle is not authentic. If women are oppressed, the church cannot possibly be “a visible manifestation that the gospel is a reality”—for the gospel cannot be real in that context. One can see the contradictions between the church’s language or proclamation of liberation and its action by looking both at the status of Black women in the church as laity and Black women in the ordained ministry of the church.
    • Jacquelyn Grant, "Black Theology and the Black Woman," in Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought, 1995, p. 325

2020s

  • What in our biblical/theological DNA has made women’s ministry and ordination a continued theme?...The biblical basis for women's ordained eldership in the church is Genesis 1...Men and women are ordered by God to be joint mediators of God's Word, God’s blessing, and God’s rule in creation (prophet, priest and king—the functions of ordination in the church). This picture is also God's perfect intention for male/female relations...Our tradition has thus been more open to women elders due to our expectation that God will manifest the restored position of women, relations between women and men, and women's and men's joint ordained role as mediators of God's blessing.

Presbyterian

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2020s

  • Even though PCEA [Presbyterian Church of East Africa] was among the earliest churches to ordain the first woman clergy, the progress of ordination of women compared to men remains inadequate. Cultural aspects, patriarchy, and religious traditions of the Church have influenced the position of women in the church. Patriarchy as a theology of headship continues to be a roadblock to having many women ordained in the church...The study concludes that no theological, biblical, or traditional ratification hinders women from being ordained as ministers of word and sacrament...The church should extirpate all forms of discrimination, patriarchy, negative attitudes, and cultural practices that deny women life in its fullness.

See also

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Wikipedia
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Ordination of women

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