The ordination of women

The doctrine that ordained ministry is open to women on the same terms as to men has, in most churches that hold it, a specific date attached to its adoption, which is part of what makes it such a clean dividing line between otherwise similar bodies. The Episcopal Church in the United States voted to approve the ordination of women to the priesthood in 1976, and the ordinations of the small number of women already ordained somewhat irregularly beforehand were formally regularized on the first day of January 1977. The Church of England took longer to reach the same point: its General Synod approved the ordination of women as priests in November 1992, and the first women were ordained under that decision in 1994, more than fifteen years after the Episcopal Church had already crossed the same line. Community of Christ, tracing to the same nineteenth century movement as the Utah based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, reached its own decision earlier still, opening priesthood office to women in 1984 after its president reported a revelation calling for the change, a decision its parent movement in Utah has never made. Each of these dates marks a formal act of a governing body rather than a slow drift of custom, which is exactly why the position can be stated for any given church as a fact rather than a matter of degree.

Churches that ordain women and churches that decline to do not typically divide over whether scripture speaks to the question at all; both sides argue from it directly, which is part of why the disagreement has proven durable rather than a matter that further study alone could resolve. Those opposed to ordaining women commonly point to New Testament passages restricting the exercise of teaching authority to men within the gathered church, and to a doctrine of headship they read as establishing a created order between men and women that ordained ministry should not set aside. Those in favor commonly point instead to Paul's declaration in Galatians that in Christ there is neither male nor female, to women named in the New Testament as apostles, prophets and deacons, and to a reading of the restrictive passages as addressed to specific first century circumstances rather than laid down as permanent law for every church in every age. Both readings claim to take scripture's authority seriously rather than set it aside, which is precisely why the churches that hold each position generally describe the other not as ignoring the Bible but as misreading it. The practical result is that the question remains argued on exegetical grounds within nearly every tradition that has faced it, rather than settled once for the wider church.