Sylvia Dooling, is the executive director of Voices of Orthodox Women. Reprinted with permission from www.vow.org.
I picked up the March 3, 2008 edition of the Presbyterian Outlook and was moved by Freda Gardner’s article on the history of women’s ordination in the Presbyterian Church. For me, it was one of those “Oh My!” moments. What many of us take for granted about women’s ordination took many years to accomplish.
Women’s ordination is of particular interest to me in that I was recently elected by my presbytery as an elder commissioner to the 218th General Assembly—a privilege that my mother, most likely, would have been denied. I have been preparing diligently for my responsibilities, and moved by Dr. Gardner’s essay, decided to look at the proposed new Form of Government to see what it says about women’s ordination.
I turned first to our current Constitution where in G-6.0105 we find the following stated without ambiguity— “Both men and women shall be eligible to hold church offices. When women and men, by God’s providence and gracious gifts, are called by the church to undertake particular forms of ministry, the church shall help them to interpret their call and to be sensitive to the judgments and needs of others…” (emphasis mine).
Then I turned to chapter 3 of the proposed Foundations of Presbyterian Polity (F-3.0303), where I found the following.
As the unity of the One God is expressed in the diverse activity of the Trinity, so also the unity of the Church is expressed in the rich diversity of its membership. The Church is called to give full expression in its membership to the diversity of the human family, and shall be responsive to that diversity in its worship, government, and emerging life. It shall not deny participation or representation to persons or groups within its membership for any reasons other than those stated in this Constitution.
This is a relatively generic statement that fails specifically to reference the ordination of women.
Next, I turned to chapter 2 of the proposed Form of Government entitled, Ordered Ministry, Commissioning, and Certification. This section also seems to assume that women and men will be involved in various ministries, but it lacks any specific requirement to that effect.
It appears that the Task Force has made the assumption that the entire church is now of one mind concerning the ordination of women, and that “shall” language is no longer required. However, my experience tells me that this is a seriously flawed assumption, and that the Task Force’s failure to include a specific mandate could, in some locations, be used to justify unintended consequences.
Furthermore, I am concerned that the failure of the Task Force to delineate the exact nature of the relationship between the Foundations section and the new Form of Government is also a potential pitfall for women’s ordination (for a complete discussion of this issue see “Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts” [beginning on this page] ).
Absent clarity on this matter, it is entirely reasonable to assume that someone will eventually cite F-3.0101 (i.e. “God alone is Lord of the conscience…” as warrant for excluding women from ordained office.
It is certainly possible that I have missed something here. If I have, please help me. But, right now it seems to me that it would be imprudent to approve the new Form of Government until language is added that specifically preserves the hard won victories for women described by Dr. Gardner in her Outlook editorial.
This article first appeared in Theology Matters, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Mar/Apr 2008).
