Womens' Pulpit Progress :: Cleveland Plain-Dealer

Long article in the Cleveland Plain-Dealer subtitled unpretentiously, "More men still lead churches, but women are gaining ground."

Opening:

The Rev. Nancy Roth of Christ Church in Oberlin grew up in an Episcopal parish where the only women in the front of the sanctuary were members of the flower or altar guilds.

So when a woman, the Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, was elected presiding bishop at the Episcopal General Convention last year, Roth said, "I think it's the closest I've ever come to Pentecost."

Some data:

Women flocked to seminaries in the late 1970s after the ordination of the first female Episcopal priests. Now, however, seminary enrollment for women appears to be leveling off at just over one-third of the total, says sociologist Adair Lummis of Hartford Seminary. More than twice as many men as women completed a master of divinity program in 2005, according to Association of Theological Schools statistics.

The article also raises the question of the small number of women in leading large churches - "senior positions." Mostly the conclusion drawn is that parishes resist hiring women. While I wouldn't dispute that conclusion my guess is that the resistance has something to do with differences between men and women. Women want to break the mold of what it means to be a senior pastor, and churches are slow to adapt. (Also, women may have to break the mold because they are less likely to get the same support from their husbands as husbands get from their wives.)

Is the current firestorm in the Episcopal Church over the ordination of homosexuals rooted in the earlier controversy over ordination of women?

Faquier Times-Democrat:

Is the current firestorm in the Episcopal Church over the ordination of homosexuals rooted in the earlier controversy over ordination of women?

The Rev. Caroline Parkinson thinks so. "The Great Commandment is not about exclusion," she said firmly. "I try to test everything against what the Gospel says. I have trouble with the whole notion of excluding people from God's table and from ordained ministry. I am an Episcopalian because we have a tradition not only of Scripture but also of reason."

Parkinson is the Rector of Grace Episcopal Church in The Plains. Before she was ordained, she taught history and political science at the high school level. One day a student interviewing her for the school newspaper asked her what she envisioned doing in 15 years. "Well, I loved what I was doing, but the sense of peace that I longed for just wasn't there," she said.

The ordination of women had recently been approved, and Parkinson began the arduous process of discernment leading to ordination.

"It was grueling," she said. "They pass you through three levels of questioning by individuals and committees, and through physical and psychiatric examinations. They want to be absolutely certain that you're doing this for the right reasons, that people entering the priesthood are healthy both physically and emotionally."

Even more stressful was the fact that Parkinson's father and brother were adamantly opposed to women's ordination; indeed, her father left the church as a result of its decision.

"I've had a few run-ins with hostility over the years," she said. "It's infrequent, but it happens. One Anglican priest I met at a dinner refused to speak to or look at me."
...
Last month, Parkinson was in the running to succeed Peter James Lee as a new diocesan bishop. ...

Parkinson's view on Paul's prohibition against women speaking out in churches? "This is not Corinth," said Parkinson. "Paul was writing to a particular congregation in a particular set of circumstances."

She added, "For centuries Anglicans have tolerated deep disagreements and controversy over official church positions or policy while maintaining the unity of the Church in the love of Christ. The Church has been enriched by diverse interpretations of Scripture, the inclusiveness of the Gospel and openness to the stirrings of the Holy Spirit."

WO, baby

WO = women's ordination. (Evidently, those who are fixated on it (usually the same as those thinking about gay sex all the time) have, over the course of time, developed a shorthand.)

Point (via titusonenine):

You opposed blessing homosexual relationships, but you were in favor of women’s ordination. Those two positions aren’t often held by the same person. How do you understand them going together?

[George Carey] I don’t see any problem whatsoever. On the one hand, the ordination of women is a very clear mandate in scripture, [which speaks] about women’s gifts being used in the church. I was working from that biblical premise and a theology of the equality of male and female. The issue of homosexuality is on a different basis all together. We are talking not about homosexuals being allowed or not allowed to be ordained. Of course, anyone can be ordained, but the lifestyle that’s required in scripture and in the Christian tradition is that ordination is open to either single, celibate men or a married priesthood. You can’t have a third order coming in. The ordination of practicing homosexuals throws up enormous challenges sacramentally about marriage, about [clerical] orders, about ordination itself. These are not easy issues to deal with.

Counterpoint:

[Stuart Smith] The connective tissue between WO and homosexuality advocacy is as follows: Both deny the order built into God’s creation of Man and Woman (with the man as head, the woman as helpmate to the head…see Genesis 2 and Ephesians 5), with WO advocates reading into Galatians’ equality in baptismal dignity the equivalence of man/woman in holy orders; while the advocates of homosexuality deny the order of creation of man for woman in the cleaving together bond of marriage. For ABC Carey, apparently, there is no evidence of the difference between equality of dignity…YES…and the equivalence of position/order/ministry…NO…of women in the church.

Both believe that Tradition can be adjusted for contemporary psychological insights (woman is full inheritor of the rights to ordination; lesbians and gays are full inheritors of the rights to conjugal ‘union’), and both use the suspicious ‘evidence’ of their argument by EXPERIENCE: the homosexuals claiming the holiness and joy of their unions; WO advocates claiming the fruitful ministries and joy by the women who have gained their previously denied opportunities to serve as clergy.