Reflecting on the dialogue about women in the ministry heard at the 2011 General Assembly, Alaina highlights the double speech circulating on this issue. While the some of the clergy praise women's sensitivity to feeling as their singular virtue, they silence this perception and prevent it from participating in the formal discussion of women in the priesthood. This is the first essay in our series called: Women as Ordained Priests (or Not). The seoncd essay, also by Alaina, is called Part II: "Side Notes" and Tradition. -Editor.
“The Writings are clear that the priest represents the Lord. The Lord is male. No-where in the Word do we see a ‘Mother God’. Therefore women are biologically not equipped to be priests.”
This, a New Church minister said in a small group discussion at this year’s General Church Assembly, is the “best reason” for denying ordination to women. The body she was born in cannot represent the Lord.
Our group waited for further explanation, but the minister took our expectant silence for agreement. He settled in his chair and folded his arms. “I rest my case,” he said.
The question of whether we should also deny that the Lord could be seen in a garden, a cathedral, the birth of a child, or any number of things that are not a human male is a vital question for another day. Upon hearing this brief but authoritative ruling on the spiritual limits of my female biology, the questions that ate at me went deeper than a doctrinal lesson.
“As you say that a woman could never represent the Lord, have you ever truly considered how you would feel about that statement – how it would affect you - if you weren’t a man?” I asked.
He shrugged. “No,” he said immediately. It was the calm, self-evident answer to an irrelevant question. “I’m not capable of thinking of how a woman would feel.”
I attended three 2011 Assembly sessions about female religious leadership because I thought this represented an unusual openness in the General Church about this perennially controversial topic. More than learning what the current positions are on a female priesthood, both in General Church policy and among its members, I was curious to explore the debate in the 21st Century.
Well over one hundred attendees gathered for a session led by Rev. Frank Rose, in which participants broke into small groups to list and present reasons it is important to discuss the issue of ordaining women.
“We can’t decide a question of this magnitude based on how we feel,” said one priest, warning that emotions or cultural trends are not important next to strict doctrinal study. Many others, both in seminars and in personal discussion, made similar comments about the importance of referring to doctrinal study and debate, rather than to our emotions, will, intuition, “wants”, or cultural influence. There was a consistent warning against the “danger” of referring to our feelings on the topic.
This shows an admirable commitment to doctrine versus popular sentiment, and may frame the exclusion of women from the priesthood not as bigotry but as a desire to live according to the truth one perceives.
On the other hand, this approach showcases an enduring irony in this debate.
As ministers and many others insist that women are unfit for ordination, their arguments for an exclusively male spiritual leadership are tempered with assurances that this does not imply male superiority. Conjugial Love 125 is often invoked to explain that while men are naturally elevated into a higher realm of understanding, or “light”, women are naturally elevated to a higher realm of will, or “heat”. This means men and women, equally important, complement each other.
Therefore, many New Church ministers self-consciously strive to emphasize women’s value. Rev. Willard Heinrichs, offering a handout of his own doctrinal interpretations to accompany Rev. Rose’s Assembly session on female priesthood, insists that the Lord discourages women from preaching so that their “precious femininity, so needed and important in so many areas of human life” will not be damaged, because that would be “a very sad loss to the church and humanity generally.” Other ministers tout the value of women’s “affectional” nature and the importance of the proper feminine emphasis on affections and the will, versus the intellect or understanding.
However, when ministers declare that they value women’s affectional nature, and then announce that people must divorce what they “feel”, or what they observe in the world around us, or what they “want”, from the question of a female priesthood, ministers devalue what they themselves term the feminine perspective in favor of a traditionally male perspective. Women’s voices are praised and then shut out of the debate, all in one breath.
This avoidance of a practical, traditionally feminine approach that admits both living experience and emotional realities, versus an approach strictly limited to doctrinal scholarship – exclusively male scholarship, at that – comes out in a number of ways. In Rev. Rose’s session, opinions were color-coded, and participants were told whom to gather with, when to speak, and the order in which their views could be aired. A chime was to control the duration of each exchange. At the end of the session, participants were encouraged to pick up a photocopied package of doctrinal excerpts – which emphasized reasons that women should not be ordained.
Rev. Rose is in favor of ordaining women, and expressed many brave and sensitive ideas. He emphasized the importance of a “structured discussion” that “maximizes understanding” and “minimizes misunderstanding”. In other words, keep everything as rational as possible, and, I infer, keep difficult emotions at bay.
A session on developing (rather than debating) female ministry, led by the women of New Church Live, emphasized a very different approach from the start, unfolding as a free-flowing, group-wide emotional, practical and experiential sharing, in which both men and women were welcome to speak. While he was warmly welcomed to attend by the presenters, a man left the room when he learned that the session would not be a forum for him to debate the female leaders on the merit of women’s ministry.
Of course, there is a wealth of written material on this topic, as well. In 2002, Rev. Jeremy Simons presented a paper to the Council of the Clergy on the hazards of ordaining women. It is a thorough, thought-provoking piece, and though the paper is dedicated to excluding women from a New Church office, women are not meant to read it: “this paper is written for the clergy and not for general distribution,” Rev. Simons specifies. “Several of these passages are harshly worded, and can cause people to be offended and react, rather than consider their message.”
Again, there is the fear that emotions, legitimate or not, are not appropriate to the issue. In this instance, even if his teaching affects people in a hurtful way, the writer begs freedom from emotional implications that could jeopardize his message.
“All religion is of life,” Swedenborg explains in Spiritual Diary 6023, as he describes the spiritual fate of people who deny that your place in heaven depends on how you live your life, not the faith you recite. This phrase strikes me in separate but related ways. It reminds me that faith is no good unless you marry it to your actions. But to me, it also seems to say that religion can be attached to the business of life in all sorts of unexpected ways – it does not bide only in church or in scripture – it applies all the time, no matter what you’re doing.
This is one reason General Church clergy and members should not stake major questions of policy exclusively in the realm of papers and tightly controlled intellectual debate. A female priesthood, or the prevention of a female priesthood, has all sorts of real-life implications which strike church members deep at home – not just in their literal homes, where religious and cultural dogma consigned women for decades, but in their emotional core.
Even for those staunchly in favor of a female priesthood, emotions can seem like a minefield – an impediment to their message. Bryn Athyn College alumna Hannah Reynolds led an Assembly session about her life experiences, and the call she feels to become a General Church minister.
She told her life story – an extraordinarily tough one for a young person. She suffered family tragedies as well as abuse and sexual assault, and struggled with alcohol and drug addiction. She sees beautiful providence in a series of events that brought her to school at Bryn Athyn College, revealing the Lord’s call to her. Earnest, lucid, and compelling, she briefly shared her favorite New Church doctrines, with special emphasis on the need for faith joined to good works.
She applied to three schools: divinity programs at Harvard, Princeton, and the Theological School at Bryn Athyn College.
“I got into two,” she said. But after visiting both Harvard and Princeton, she felt more than ever that the Bryn Athyn Theological School – and New Church ministry - was the right place for her.
She said that many have suggested that she join another church, enter the Master of Arts in Religious Studies program, or pursue ordination at the hands of the New Church Convention, since a woman’s ordination in the General Church is impossible.
At this point in her presentation, tears welled in her eyes.
“I was not going to get emotional,” she choked out, as if to herself.
She held her ground, and her emotions washed through the audience. “This is my church, too,” she said, her voice shaking with repressed feeling. “This is my church, too.”
Instead of derailing or invalidating the session, her personal vulnerability gave a poignant, challenging immediacy to the truths and experiences she shared. The General Church may watch her leave for one of the nation’s top theological schools. Meanwhile, Reynolds’ perspective on the essential marriage of works and faith, and good and truth, are as fresh and clear and real as a glass of water in my hand.
The truth is that even with our best efforts to proscribe uncomfortable or messy parts of this discussion on female priesthood, Church policy about this will continue to affect us at all levels. A denial of the policy’s practical and emotional effects – evidenced by doctrinal scholars who avoid listening in person to those whom their teachings exclude - is tantamount not just to a tacit, widespread marginalization of women: it’s a kind of faith alone. It’s a denial of what really happens when teachings come off the page and into our lives.
All religion is of life.
A pastor can write a paper promoting the continued ban of women from the priesthood and stipulate that the general public not read it, because of our failure to be dispassionate about “harsh”, exclusionary terms. But lay-people may still find it, read it, and discuss how they feel about it. We can call for stoutly organized discussions, with timed allotments for ordered talk. But in practice, as happened in my own discussion group at the Assembly, the structure inevitably gives way to an organic exchange. It’s rife with awkward chuckles, speech out of turn, uncomfortable silences, and heated repartee, everything that brings a debate to life, both in the sense of making it interesting, and in the sense of applying what you’ve learned once the session is over.
Structured debate and analytic study have their place in any important topic. Especially, as with the large group Rev. Rose presided over, a sturdy structure can be necessary to getting a charitable chat off the ground. But difficult, unpredictable and sometimes emotional interactions are also needed. It saddened me to hear a clergy leader as he was invited to participate in an Assembly discussion group about female priesthood.
“I hate groups,” he said, and left the room.
The sooner church members and clergy admit that disagreements over the ordination of women have a relevant personal and emotional side – a side that should be discussed face-to-face, not only in doctrinal papers - the sooner they can talk about the merits or dangers of a female priesthood in a way that includes everyone. Until they acknowledge all of the everyday repercussions of women’s ongoing exclusion – such as what some women term the “apartheid” in the General Church, and other women call a “closed door” between them and the Lord - and the complex, legitimate feelings this provokes in people of both sexes, the debate will not be balanced or productive.
One male attendee of the 2011 Assembly shared with other attendees his experience of this challenge.
“I was irritated,” he said, on seeing multiple sessions about women’s spiritual leadership. “I thought, why can’t we just leave this subject alone?” But his curiosity got the better of him, and his perspective began to shift. From believing that the movement to ordain women was limited to perhaps a “small group meeting once a month,” he realized for the first time that it is a movement with widespread support, encompassing priests, laypeople, and men and women of all ages. This was leading him to re-examine the source of his own convictions.
Rev. Andrew Dibb heads the Theological School at Bryn Athyn College. He attended Hannah Reynolds’s session, listening quietly and intently. This simple act resonates deeper than Rev. Heinrichs’s advice in the paper accompanying Rev. Rose’s session: “one will only feel comfortable in their response to questions and challenges [about female priesthood] after they have done their own thorough study and reflection on the matter.”
This is true in more ways than one: Rev. Heinrichs is right that thorough study is vital to a well founded debate. But this statement also reminds readers that silent, individual scholarship can indeed be much more “comfortable” than face-to-face connections with people of differing opinions.
Rev. Dibb’s attendance at Reynolds’s session shows the courage and the courtesy we need, from people on every side of the debate. Questions about the real-life impact of these teachings should never be met with a quick exit, a shrug, or the assertion that we’re incapable of imagining how someone else might feel.