The facts of the decision to ordain women to ministry, both to the eldership and to word and sacrament are before me as I write. The timeline for decision-making is so easily set out. In 1953, the Synod of Manitoba sent an overture to the General Assembly on the place of women in the church, and in the following year clarified that “yes” the overture included the ordination of women. In 1955, the dialogue began and continued with a committee and then a new committee — more overtures, a “no” decision. More committees at work, another vote and in 1966 the decision is made. It all seems very Presbyterian!
However, a timeline contains very little of the story. Only in reading between the lines do we get the real stuff of history. The timeline does not indicate that this story began long before the Manitoba overture. There is no reference to its origins in scripture where the story attests to Martha and Mary Magdalene and Prisca and Junia, to all those women in the early Christian movement who exercised ministry in full partnership with Peter and Paul, as disciples, missionaries and apostles. Ordination as we know it did not exist way back then. In fact, Paul himself was continually called to attest to the communities he founded that his call to be an apostle was authentic — that his ministry and his gospel were valid.
Nor can a timeline help us experience the personal pain embedded in such decision-making. I became part of the story in 1969 when I began studies at Knox College. Writing this article brings back memories that are so vivid, memories of my own moments of hope and despair. It brings back my experiences of living and working in the church after the decision was made, after all was supposedly resolved! I can only imagine the stamina it must have taken for those women through the long years of decision-making to listen to and to be subjected to a roller coaster of hope and despair.
Nowhere does the timeline acknowledge that for women the debate around whether or not women can be ordained cuts to the core of our identity as human beings created by God. For men to be ordained, or not, required the church to recognize and affirm gifts for ministry. No man has ever had to listen to these words: “Because you are a man, you cannot be a minister.” For women in those years gifts and call did not matter; one’s sexual identity alone determined whom God called and to what ministry.
While not part of the initial struggle, I can still remember the great laughter that greeted my first tentative announcement that I thought I would go to Knox to study theology. Notice I did not divulge that perhaps I had a call to ministry. Looking back I am surprised how deeply I had intuited the church’s ambivalence about women’s call to ministry! Even more worrying is that this ambivalence is something I continue to see in 2006 as I listen to women, often from the ethnic communities within the PCC, speak hesitantly about a call to ministry. It is hard to find the right words when you know that the culture within which you have been nurtured holds such ambivalence about you as a woman called to ordained ministry.
In 1966, the decision was made and many within the church rejoiced. However, 1966 and the end of the timeline was really only the beginning. The church now had to turn its attention to what such a decision meant in terms of its everyday life. It needed to make a huge cultural shift, and here my experience would suggest that not only did it do so very slowly, but also that it is not yet completed. There are numerous stories, at one and the same time painful and humorous, delightful and just plain sad, of the ambivalence with which this shift was made. A few personal reminiscences will suffice: “My goodness we’ve never had a woman preach before — we could hear you!” “Now that you have children, you will surely give up ministry.” Perhaps the most painful was the decision of one family to leave the congregation in which I served, and my recognition that no matter what gifts I had, my femaleness closed for them any possibility for effective ministry.
One of the most painful moments in the living out of this decision was the liberty of conscience debates of the early 80s. It was a defining moment. Had an institutional shift actually taken place? Was the partnership of women and men now “bred in the bone” of the denomination? Or was it something that was subject to individual choice? I know these were acrimonious days with much anger on both sides, but our denomination is not unique. The question as to whether the church should require its leadership to commit to participation in the ordination of women to word and sacrament and to the eldership is a question of institutional identity — of its gospel values. If some opted out, could the full partnership of women and men in ministry ever be a reality?
This is the time in my life when I can most keenly imagine what it was like for those women in the 50s and 60s. I realize that I have suppressed much of the emotion and content of those debates. I do remember consoling one of my colleagues who came away in tears from a particularly painful meeting. If I am honest, I need to confess how devalued I, as a daughter of God called to ministry, felt. Those were indeed painful days! This debate took its toll. How I rejoice when the new generation of women and men who were personally unscathed by these debates express such astonishment and dismay that this actually happened and such a short time ago.
An anniversary is a time to look back, but it is also a time to discern the future. Let me leave with you some personal reflections:
- Although 40 years have passed, the PCC must continue to work at the institutional shifts that still need to be made in order to express fully its commitment to the partnership of women and men in ministry. In my work I continue to see signs that younger ordained women are perceived and received differently than younger ordained men, particularly, but not always, if they are married and planning a family. There can be no stained glass ceilings!
- Although 40 years have passed, around the world many women still struggle to get to 1953; others hope for 1966 while others are presently going through the painful days of the early 80s. If we believe in the full partnership of women and men we need to stand in solidarity with them in their struggle and to use our resources as a denomination to call for change.
- And finally, the church, given its experience since 1966, must honestly continue to ask itself difficult questions. What have we learned from the past 40 years of shared ministry? We need to celebrate how blessed the church is through the ministry of those who were outside and voted inside. Even more, however, those who were outside and now inside must speak in truth about the pain of exclusion and challenge the church to work to end all such exclusions. To ask ourselves what it means in our time that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, no slave or free, not male or female. The experience through the ages is that these differences have been sites of great struggle and places of wondrous blessing when the church in response to the Holy Spirit has included where it initially excluded.
