It is a truth so familiar as to have become cliché: Women are the driving force behind organized religion. They fill the pews, they bring their children into the fold. The Pew data help make sense of these facts. But the same data highlight the cruel irony that in far too many religious contexts in this country, women remain second-class citizens.
Another of the findings of Pew’s 2008 Religious Landscape Survey was that, among people who pray “more than seldom,” a significant proportion across most religious groups say their prayers are regularly answered, at least once a week or once a month. This religious demographic was not broken down by gender.
But it is fair to assume that, given women’s greater likelihood to pray at all, a sizable number of these supplicants are women. It is equally fair to assume that, if religious equality is what they are praying for, many of them are going to have to wait a while longer.
>”[i]women cannot become priests because the original apostles were male.[/i]”
I believe the Catholic Churchs, all 23 of them, have stated a “lack of authority” to ordain women.
>[i] religious equality[/i}”
Mary Zeiss Stange seems to ignore biology and seems to think that men and women are the same, thus interchangeable regardless of God’s design and intention. Somehow she ignores the truth that men and women already have religious equality, in both have free will and may choose to accept or reject God. Women have long been equally free to chose heaven or hell.
God bless…
[i]a “lack of authority†to ordain women[/i]
That’s just it: ‘I can’t. I’m only the Pope’.
What strikes me is that in the Catholic world east and west, outside a rich minority living in Protestant countries, the matter just doesn’t come up.
That said the mainline churches didn’t rebound after ordaining women.
[url=http://home.comcast.net/~acbfp/index.html]High-church libertarian curmudgeon[/url]
It is undeniably a fact that when women are included among the ranks of clerics in historic church denominations those denominations instantly begin to decline in numbers and general respect. I know it’s strange, but it’s observably true. As well, including women as clerics just as inevitably results in a rise in doctrinal deviance. Why this is, I don’t want to speculate. The fruits of WO are undeniably bad, even though the women ordained are undeniably good candidates on every level.
Oh, ref my previous comment: I have sponsored women for ordination, and had a female curate. However, the truth is the truth, and I’m not going to pretend it’s not. Why SHOULD the RC Church (or the Orthodox, or the SBC) make even more problems for themselves by indulging in WO, given reality as it is?
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the nation’s fourth-largest denomination with more than 5 million members
according to their own internal rolls which they do not document for the public, but not according to any survey of self-identified Christians.
—————–
Increasingly I think women deserve their second-fiddle status. We are in an era where people can choose whatever church they want, and the vast majority of women choose patriarchal churches. Fine. People who do this can’t complain.
Apparently most women want to live in a world run by men. Like most liberals, there was a time when I would have agreed that the Bible reflected an era where men forced their rule on women, but I no longer am sure of that at all. It’s now perfectly plausible to me that women had a major role in choosing the roles we see them have in scripture.
The reality is that men (that is to say beer guzzlin’ and belchin’ men) don’t want to be part of a feminized church. (The Episcopal denomination is 60% female clergy now (and what percent of men are homosexual?)). And women don’t want to be a part of a church where their husbands or boyfriends don’t want to go. There you have it. To paraphrase senior priest and Sydney say, that’s reality, deal with it.
Senior Priest #3: “The fruits of WO are undeniably bad, even though the women ordained are undeniably good candidates on every level.” I realize that the conservative ranks of TEC or recently ex-TEC folks have some ordained women who are highly qualified and committed to the traditional Christian faith. However, of the total ordained in TEC since ’75, they seem to be a smallish minority. It remains to be seen whether the ordination of women can be sustained along with doctrinal orthodoxy in the ACNA. This is exactly what the ACNA has set out to test. Personally, I think it’s something we should not have done, but I am hoping at least to see ACNA give it the faith test, not the political test which has been its only one so far.
Of course the ‘reason’ that Senior Priests hints at could be:
that whilst women cut the grade on every single earthly level…they fall short on what God himself has set in motion. Thus the decline whilst utterly bewildering to worldly eyes makes utter sense to orthodox eyes that seek to obey rather than dictate.
There are actually two type of female priests.
First are the priests who happen to be female. Their gender is secondary to their priesthood and ministry. I have sponsored or worked with several women in this category.
Second are women who happen to be priests. Their priesthood is part of their gender, not primary to it. Their ministry is often to “marginalized” (e.g. all according to them) women and almost exclusively to the vicitimized women. They are the priests who should not be ordained to begin with and I believe that they are the ones who bring in doctrinal revisions – due to the need to “reimage” God.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
Having read all of the original article, I can only say that as long as some feminists persist in the kind of stunted groupthink they attribute to all women, there will be articles like this. Ms. Stange needs to realize that not all women want to be clerics. She should also understand that admission to the ranks of the clergy is not everyone’s definition of equality. That said, I have a friend who rather interestingly thinks that in some ways Christianity was designed to be a religion for men. He says, “How many bad girls are there in the Bible? It’s mostly the men who get into trouble. They’re the ones who need to shape up!” Think about it.
Dear Phil # 9 – As I pointed out in a previous post, WO in a previously respected denomination instantly results in that denomination’s decline numerically and doctrinally. I think that discussing the abstract merits or demerits (of which there are many of both) is fruitless. Pragmatically, if you want to kill a denomination, ordain women. And avowed and practicing LGBT people.
Katherine # 7 – As for the ACNA, since it’s likely to act ruthlessly as regards doctrinal deviance within its ranks (being created in response to heresy), I doubt if the presence of female clergy in its ranks will be a problem in that regard. However, since *in general*, if you want a church to grow the pastor needs to be evangelical (can be Anglo-Catholic as well) male, married, with kids, I don’t think WO will get a lot of traction in the ACNA in the end.
It is very old news that a reliable sign that a church has gone around the bend theologically (and every other way) when they ordain women. Sun comes up in the east, compass points north, water freezes at 32 F. The Orthodox don’t do it and never have because they haven’t. The Anglicans have to because they have.
#12 nwlayman – A very conservative Orthodox Archbishop friend of mine says that women should be able to be ordained deacons. I respond that it’s historically permitted only if they are limited to ministering to women alone (actually it was originally restricted to ONLY applying the chrism at baptism, but I’m being a tiny bit more liberal :]).
#11 Senior Priest, that’s what I’m hoping will happen: the innovation will wither when doctrinal standards are restored.
Alas, 13, it would only be in response to the last 30 years among Protestants. It would have precisely nothing to do with “reviving” something the Orthodox “lost”.
A Senior Priest, I will repeat to you and others here who seem to think it an immutable law of physics that WO instantly and inevitably leads a denomination to decline, only one counterexample is needed to disprove.
The Nazarene Church has had WO on scriptural grounds since its inception 100 years ago. Though small in number, that number has grown steadily throughout its life, and Nazarenes are involved in mission and service work far beyond proportion to their numbers. They are the main distributor of The Jesus Film, often into “creative access countries”, which most other missions call “closed countries” often at great risk and sometimes at the loss of their lives. Some 8 million plus have come to Christ through that work alone. Nazarene churches are being planted at an astounding rate in Africa, and several in the Ukraine, and recently in Nepal.
The GLBT agenda has not found any traction there, and I think it likely that it never will. The Nazarenes I know almost universally have a thorough knowledge of Scripture and little or no judgmental attitude or self-righteousness, remembering full well their life before Jesus if converts and seeing the daily work of God in their lives if lifetime Nazarenes. There are always exceptions, of course, but they are just that, exceptions, rather than being systemic or even institutional problems.
Likely the problem with WO in the Anglican church and mailine Protestant denominations has been the mindset of rewriting personal sin and holiness out of Scripture and rebellion against tradition that were behind the facts-on-the-ground process of reception-by-force by which WO was wedged into practice. Absent the rebellion, WO can bear good fruit. Probably it will take well past most of our lifetimes for the negative results of WO in TEC to fade away along with TEC itself. Then it will be clear what the effect of allowing WO by individual dioceses and provinces will be in a church grounded on the Lord and only Saviour Jesus Christ as revealed in Scripture.
>”[i]including women as clerics just as inevitably results in a rise in doctrinal deviance.[/i]”
This seems true acroos the Tiber as the Roman Catholic Womenpriests (RCWP), not affiliated with the Church at Rome. RCWP seems to have “poisoned the well” for ordination of women in the 21st Century. In their short existance they are already deviating from the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM) :
– Confecting rice cakes for communion.
– Confecting grape juice for communion.
– Glass chalices are used instead of unbreakable metal or stone chalices.
– Carafes and pitchers are consecrated and then poured.
– Communion is given to all present.
– Praying to …God, who is mother, father, son and Holy Spirit.” (so much for the Trinity)
Should authority to ordain women ever be found, those Catholic women ordained would be expected to remain faithful to the Roman Missal (GIRM).
>”[i]That’s just it: ‘I can’t. I’m only the Pope’.[/i]”
Hard to tell the intent of this comment, but it is true. B16 is only the Pope and lacks the authority to ordain women. People often ascribe powers and authorities to the Pope which he does not possess. Like all Catholics, the Pope must abide by scripture and apostolic teaching.
God bless…
Milton #16 – A single exception does not disprove a general rule.
Milton, “I will repeat to you and others here who seem to think it an immutable law of physics that WO instantly and inevitably leads a denomination to decline, only one counterexample is needed to disprove.”
You did not provide a counterexample in that the Nazarene Church had female clergy from the get go. What is needed is that a denomination that starts out male only clergy and the begins WO.
Also, the number of ordained women in the Church of the Nazarene (which has always ordained women) is in decline.
True, Senior Priest, that you did say “in historic denominations”, which may make my counterexample apples to oranges for the same reasons robroy points out in #19. Again, the destructive element of WO in traditional denominations that previously had only male clergy seems to be the unwilingness to submit to authority, from human authority all the way up to Scripturally-revealed divine authority, along with rebellious disobedience to get one’s way by a fait accompli by those not called to the priesthood as a high sacrifice of the self-will to God’s will. And if (I do not question your research) the number of female Nazarene clergy is declining, that may also be God’s will as relatively fewer women hear God calling them to ordained ministry rather than women being kept out of it by men.
In short, we probably agree on more about WO than first meets the eye. I thought #9 brought out some rather relevant points as well.
The Nazarenes are young. Younger denominations tend to be more flexible. The true test would be the state of WO among Nazarenes in the year 2200.