She will not keep silent
I permit no woman to teach or have authority over men; she is to keep silent ... (I Timothy chapter 2, verse 12).
"When we read in the Bible about the creation of the earth, the Bible tells us that humans were created in the image of God", South African reggae artist Lucky Dube told Green Left journalist Norm Dixon recently. "It does not tell us whether God was black or white. So I believe we are God's children, we are God's image and we belong together, black and white."
The idea that every human being can have an equally valid relationship with God — that there is no hierarchy of souls — has been a powerful motive force in struggles for justice from the early Christian era to the present.
This century, the cruel promise of "pie in the sky when you die" has been rejected by black civil rights leaders in the US and by the radical clergy of Latin America's base communities. It has been rejected by lesbian and gay groups demanding that their churches abandon notions of sin which punish people for who they are rather than for what they do.
The same egalitarian vision lies at the heart of the movement for the ordination of women.
The meaning of the scriptures, explains this movement, has always been open to interpretation. They were written by men influenced, as all human beings are influenced, by the attitudes and customs of their time. For each textual injunction against the ordination of women, there are others supporting their right to leadership within the church.
It is a movement that has met with a certain level of success. The Uniting Church (ironically, the church to which arch-reactionary Festival of Light leader Fred Nile belongs) has more than 180 female ministers throughout Australia.
In New Zealand, which is apparently more advanced in this area, the Anglican church this year ordained its first female bishop.
While the Catholic and Anglican churches here are yet to decide whether to ordain women, one could have been forgiven for thinking that change was not far off, that to hold out against the ideal of formal, legal equality in this day and age was a doomed prospect.
That was until the Presbyterian National General Assembly voted on September 11 to overturn the church's 1975 ruling in favour of allowing women into the ministry.
While legal changes in the last 30 years have allowed the women's movement to shift from struggles for formal equality to a recognition of deeper structural impediments to change, this church action is a reminder of how frail some of these formal rights are.
And whether or not one belongs to or identifies with a n ruling represents an alarming boost to an ideology that tells us that justice is something we can expect in heaven, but not on earth.
Hearteningly, the Beecroft Presbyterian Church in Sydney voted on October 20 to dissociate itself from the National General Council ruling. "We are breaking ranks", said assistant minister Rev. Roland Boer, "because there's great concern that the decision is detrimental to the activities of the church and the ability of the church to communicate with people in the community."
By Tracy Sorensen