Women in the Church

Five days ago, I posted an article about an important decision made in the Roman Catholic Church in 1870. This article is about an action of the Catholic Pope 100 years later, as Pope Paul VI announced in July 1970 that he was going to name Teresa of Ávila the first female Doctor of the Church. 

Teresa of Ávila (1515~82) 

Women Doctors of the Church?

“Doctor of the Church” is a title given by the Roman Catholic Church to saints recognized as having made a significant contribution to theology or doctrine through their research, study, or writing.

Up until 1970, there had been thirty named as Doctors of the Church. The first four, so designated in 1298, were Ambrose (340~397), Jerome (c.343~420), Augustine of Hippo (354~430), and Gregory the Great (540~604).

Over the next 672 years, twenty-six other men were similarly declared as Doctors of the Church. But then on September 27, 1970, Pope Paul VI declared Teresa of Ávila (1515~82) the first female Doctor of the Church. Just a week later, Catherine of Siena (1347~80) was also so designated.

Since then four more Doctors have been added to the list, and two of them are women: Thérèse of Lisieux (1873~97) and Hildegard of Bingen (1098~1179).

In spite of this high recognition of four outstanding women of the past, though, the Roman Catholic Church still does not permit women to be ordained as priests.

Women Pastors in the Churches?

Before 1970, hardly any Southern Baptist (SB) women had become preachers/pastors. During the time I was a graduate student at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, though, in 1964 Addie Davis (1917~2005) was ordained in an SB church in North Carolina.

Other Protestant denominations had ordained women much sooner. For example, Anna Howard Shaw was ordained by the Methodist Church way back in 1880, and women were similarly ordained by the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in 1888.

According to this 10/18 Christian Century article, at seminaries and divinity schools affiliated with mainline churches, women have been about half of M.Div. students since 1998—but are still only 27 percent of pastors in congregations.

The church that June and I are members of belongs to the Western District Conference of Mennonite Church USA. An Aug. 2019 article in Mennonite World Review reports, “Today, 40 of Western District’s 85 active pastors are women.” This includes Ruth Harder, who has been June’s and my pastor for the past six years—and a fine pastor she is!

My Experience with Women Pastors

Long before being a member of a church with a woman pastor here in the U.S., from the early 1980s I began to have more and more female students in the seminary classes I taught in Japan. Many of them went on to become pastors in Japan Baptist Convention churches.

One of my students was Okamura Naoko-san. While a student, she began attending the Fukuoka International Church, of which I was the founding pastor, and then after graduation she became the assistant pastor. A few years later she became my co-pastor, and that worked out well.

It was my privilege to preach Okamura-sensei’s ordination sermon. And it was partly because of that close relationship with a woman pastor that June and I could not conscientiously sign the statement that we would work “in accordance with and not contrary to” Baptist Faith & Message, 2000.

That historic doctrinal statement of Southern Baptists as revised in 2000 stipulated that women should not serve as pastors. Our refusal to sign our agreement with that statement led to our being unilaterally placed on retirement status in 2003 by the International Mission Board of the SBC.

The Catholic Church, in spite of now having four female Doctors of the Church, and the Southern Baptist Convention since 2000 are, by far, the largest Christian churches/denominations that do not ordain women.

What a shame!