The Culture Beat

Pastor Clay Austin of First Baptist Church of Blountville , Tenn., knows what he would say to his daughter if she ever told him she felt called to become a pastor herself.

“I’d tell her to go to the United Methodist Church, because the doors are open there,” the Southern Baptist minister said. “They’re not in the Southern Baptist Convention.”

If that sounds like odd advice, just remember that the topic of women in ministry can cause all kinds of tensions.

While church groups across a wide theological range ordain women as ministers, many do not, including the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. The Eastern Orthodox churches, the world’s second-largest Christian communion, do not ordain women as priests, nor does the Roman Catholic Church, the largest Christian denomination in the U.S. and the world.

But numbers don’t win philosophical debates, and advocates on each side of the question cite Scriptures and wield impressive theological arguments. Last week in this space, a few local women pastors talked about their ministries. This week looks at why some churches don’t believe women are called to be pastors or priests.

The Roman Catholic Church starts with Jesus’ apostles: He chose 12 men, and they later selected men to succeed them. That example wasn’t an oversight or a nod to society, according to Randy Stice, associate pastor of St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Johnson City, Tenn. It was an explicit, everlasting decision.

“In other ways, Jesus did not follow the norms of his culture,” Stice said. “He spoke with women, and they were the first witnesses to the resurrection. So the fact that Jesus was not in other ways bound by the customs of his time and place but still chose men as apostles is significant.”

Women can work in almost any other aspect of church ministry, he said.

“One of the guiding principles is that there is diversity and mutual complementarity between women and men,” he said. “In our parish, they’re leaders of parish ministries. We have girls as altar servers and women as eucharistic ministers.”

But the Catholic Church draws a sharp line at the sacraments, arguing that because a priest stands “in the person of Christ” as he blesses the Lord’s Supper or baptizes a person, he should possess “a natural resemblance” to Jesus. Jesus’ presence is essential, Catholics will say, and so everything about him matters, including the fact that he was a man.

So the issue isn’t really up for discussion in the Catholic Church, Stice said. In a 1994 letter to Catholic bishops, Pope John Paul II declared that “the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”

“The Catholic Church feels it’s bound by the example that Christ gave,” Stice explained. “The church is steward of the faith, but not master of it.”

The summary of Southern Baptist core beliefs, the “Baptist Faith and Message,” is concise and clear: “While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”

The Baptists’ restrictions, said Austin, are based on biblical teaching, Austin said, but “their interpretation and their culture” also play a role.

All churches, first century or 21st century, live and work within particular places and times, and most Southern Baptists churches are not ready to accept women as lead pastors, according to Austin, even if many are employed as associates.

But as in the past, the possibility of change remains.

“We don’t rise above culture in interpretation of Scripture,” he said. “If we went back to the 1850s, we’d find rank-and-file Southern Baptists supported slavery. What changed? It was a long, hard cultural struggle. Perhaps the women-in-ministry issue is going to follow that course. But it will be a long learning curve.”

Austin said he struggles with the issue – obviously, considering the advice he would give his daughter. But he welcomes “anything that forces you to go back and examine Scripture.”

“I want to have a high view of Scripture, but I also have to interpret it,” he said. “Everyone has to decide for themselves how they would interpret Scripture. I encourage people to explore their call and what it really is. If that’s what you been called to do, don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.”

First published in the Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 28 June 2008. Second of two columns on women in ministry.
Image: The Maria Sjodin Co., a fashion designer in Stockholm, Sweden, features a line of “casual priest” clothing for women clergy.