That question is sure to offend, but so suggests Donald Miller, executive director for the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at USC, in the first part of a four part series of audio reports from NPR on new trends in religion. (The comments are made about mark 7:32.)
Donald Miller: "A lot of the innovation that is occurring on the margins finds its way back into the mainstream."
Reporter Barbara Bradley Hagerty: "For example, he [Donald Miller] says, paganism, with its reverence for the goddess, has affected the way people think about women's role in religion. And even how some feminist Christians think about God."
(Props to JamesOTN)
Posted by Clifton at May 15, 2004 08:46 AM | TrackBackThis is true, but it is not an argument against women's ordination within Christianity. It is just an argument against influences from without.
Posted by: AngloBaptist at May 16, 2004 06:52 AMTripp:
What you say may well be true. I suppose, though, that's the very question that confronts us. Did women's ordination arise solely from within Christianity on its own terms, or did it arise from without and, in a sense, "force" Christianity to accomodate itself to it.
I suppose one way to find an answer, though maybe not the only way, would be an appeal to history. When did women's ordination arise? What social, extra-Christian forces were operative? And did those social influences bring in a new thing to Christianity?
What I find interesting about the NPR piece is that here is a scholar outside the women's ordination debate making some of the same claims as have traditionalists from within the debate on women's ordination in Christianity. Is this confirmation of the traditionalist view? Or did Miller somehow "take the lead" as it were from the traditionalist argument? I would also be interested in how Miller corroborates his assertion. We don't get much argument for it in the NPR piece. It's just asserted and left unargued for.
Posted by: Clifton D. Healy at May 16, 2004 01:34 PMI'm not up to the effort of trying to determine whether Miller took the lead from a traditionalist argument. And I am content to have any religious organization make its own decisions about who can be ordained within that organization. However, I do think it's a good idea to look at what's "occuring on the margins," as Miller says, to get an idea of what's heading into the mainstream -- or is already there.
Here's a quote from p. 179 of "The Empty Church" by Thomas C, Reeves (an Episcopalian, according to the jacket), (c) 1996:
"Margaret McManus of the Center for Women and Religion at the Graduate Theological Union, in Berkeley, Califormia said in 1992 that women's ordination is just the beginning and that equality was no longer the prime consideration. ' The issue is transformation of our religious institutions.' The transformation is being pursued internationally. Daphne Hampson, a 'post-Christian' Systematic Theologian at St. Andrew's University, described by Naomi Goldenberg of the University of Ottawa as 'one of Europe's finest feminist theologians,' said in 1992: 'We should describe God in our own terms, drawn from our own day and age and not keep looking to the past. I don't think women should be looking at the Bible at all. As long as they do they are promoting patriarchal literature.'"
It also occurs to me that this purported pagan origin/influence for women's ordination may be addressed by the difficult 1 Timothy 2 passage. Tripp helpfully summarizes some interpretations of 1 Tim. 2.1-11.
I'm thinking that the interpretation that prohibits women in leadership because of the Diana cult, may have some bearing on the Miller hypothesis suggested in the NPR audio report. If, for example, the pagan element was behind Paul's prohibition of women in leadership, would that also apply to today? That is to say, if the pagan practices of women in authorized religious leadership is part of the culture, and if that culture is influencing Christianity to accept women in leadership, then, since according to this interpretation of 1 Tim. 2.1-11 Paul prohibits women in leadership for this very reason, would it not stand to reason that the pagan influences (if such there are) that led to women's ordination are such that prohibit women from being ordained to Christian Eucharistic ministry?
I'm just thinking out loud. Since I'm not as much the Bible scholar as I am the philosopher, other more adept Bible interpreters may want to comment on this.
Posted by: Clifton D. Healy at May 16, 2004 05:48 PMThe first woman ordained in the United States was the Reverend Antoinette Blackwell, who was ordained by a Congregational Church in 1853, although she later became a Unitarian. She was a suffragist, abolitionist and advocate of temperance.
Lest you say "aha! Unitarian!" the next reference I could find was my own denomination. The Reverend Anna Howard Shaw was ordained by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1880.
I understand your point about pagan influences, but I'm not sure what pagan influences there were in 19th century America. It was the beginning of the suffragist movement - the Seneca Falls conference was held in 1848, I believe.
Are you trying to say that women's ordination is solely due to feminism, which is not a Christian movement?
Posted by: Jennifer at May 17, 2004 11:58 AMJennifer:
No. I'm not making any dogmatic claims as to the origins of women's ordination.
However, I think it legitimate to call into question as to whether women's ordination is mostly (or even wholly) a Christian thing.
Miller seems to think not. I don't know how would prove it--aside from the suggestions I made.