Community of Christ celebrates 40 years of women’s ordination

(RNS) — This week marked a momentous anniversary for Community of Christ, the Mormon denomination primarily based in Independence, Missouri, that was formerly identified as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Forty years ago this week, that church’s president announced that women would begin being ordained to the lay priesthood.

In this guest column, David Howlett, a historian at Smith College in Massachusetts, and Nancy Ross, a historian at Utah Tech University, discuss the significant change this new path represented. — JKR

A guest column by David Howlett and Nancy Ross

In the early Nineteen Eighties, Linda Gross sales put became a young mom going attend to college for a journalism degree. As she pulled correct into a car car parking zone on the University of Kansas on April 3, 1984, she heard some info that panicked her. A neighborhood radio internet site reported that the president of her denomination, Community of Christ (then RLDS), had bought a revelation that females desires to be ordained to the priesthood. The governing conference of her church became then tasked with balloting on it as a policy.

Sales sat in her car and thought, “Oh my goodness. It’s going to happen.” In silence, she cried tears of joy.

“It was as if the doors of the world and the church opened up for me,” she recalled.

Background

Debate about females’s ordination began in earnest in Community of Christ for the period of the early Seventies, mirroring greater dispositions in the U.S. on the time. Girls’s rights became a pressing topic, as states debated the Equal Rights Modification (ERA), sexual harassment rules and labor disorders.

Mainline Protestant denominations latched onto these conversations in the Seventies. Many of them began ordaining women. More conservative church buildings held to tradition, which reserved priesthood for men. In the heart of, women’s ordination grew to turn correct into a defining disaster for church buildings, signaling whether or no longer they’ll be allied with innovative exchange or the emergent non secular factual.

By that time, the RLDS Church was wrestling with its identity, balancing traditional and progressive factions. It had long acknowledged its Latter-day Saints heritage and history. Church teachings embraced the Book of Mormon and the writings of the movement’s early leaders.

However in the Fifties, RLDS Church leaders living in Independence, Missouri, began attending a neighborhood Methodist seminary. Seminary education opened up a broader world of Christian education, instruction and practice for church leaders. These academic experiences changed the path of the denomination.

For the time being, the RLDS Church ordained some men to priesthood offices, where priesthood was required for more than a few forms of pastoral and ritual actions. Speaking from the pulpit was largely restricted to those with priesthood. Leadership roles in local congregations also required priesthood. The men who held priesthood had social standing in the church.

Folk who resisted females’s ordination in some unspecified time in the future of the RLDS Church on the final charged advocates with being influenced by secular feminism. On the opposite hand, RLDS feminists did no longer must gaze to secular sources to search out strengthen for females’s ordination. By the early Nineteen Eighties, advocates in the RLDS Church had been speaking about the disaster for roughly a hundred years.

In a single significant episode in the Nineties, a neighborhood priesthood leader ordained Emma Burton to give healing blessings to females. When local church directors asked the leader to demonstrate himself, he said he had been inspired by the Holy Ghost to ordain her. A neighborhood elder who witnessed the ordination complained and then printed an article in the church’s legitimate newspaper reaffirming that females would perhaps per chance no longer be ordained to the priesthood. Later, a formal RLDS policy in 1905 declared that females would perhaps per chance no longer be ordained unless the church bought novel path (i.e., a revelation from its president or a conference vote). Importantly, these episodes left the door launch for future exchange.

Seventies stress for exchange

Celebrated advocacy for females’s ordination began in earnest in the early Seventies. Church leaders in Australia and Unusual Zealand proposed rules that affirmed females’s leadership in the church and asked church directors to define their situation on females’s ordination. The governing bodies selected no longer to talk about these proposals.

These administrative actions did not deter advocates.

In the mid-Seventies, RLDS feminists who had been participating in consciousness-raising groups began to engage in more public advocacy. This group of teams became known as AWARE, which stood for “Awake, Admire, Rush, Renewal, and Education.” They held traditional conferences, wrote letters to church leaders, published a newsletter, trained each other on women’s issues and feminist discourse and held retreats.

Such advocates for women’s empowerment embraced a range of recommendations to achieve their goals. Some wished the church to ordain women or expand their roles. Others wished the church to acknowledge the work that women already did in local congregations. The most radical position was held by individuals who wished to abolish priesthood altogether.

Approving women’s ordination

When the church president, Wallace B. Smith received his revelation calling for women’s ordination in 1984, that was not the end of the discussion. The church needed to approve it. Smith asked conference delegates to consider it for inclusion in the Doctrine and Covenants, a book that articulated significant questions, inspiration and values of the church and held by many as Scripture.

After intense debate, delegates voted to approve the novel revelation by a margin of 4-to-1successfully changing church observe. Girls would now be ordained to priesthood places of work.

Ordaining women became a symbolic victory for feminists and advocates of the practice, and it signaled that Community of Christ had aligned itself with progressive churches. Women’s ordination also introduced practical advantages to the church as a whole. By 1996, the RLDS Church had a higher percentage of women clergy than any other mainline Protestant denomination.

The church benefited from this expanded pool of potential leaders, both then and now. Shall we embrace, Stassi Cramm will be ordained as president of Community of Christ in June 2024. Her past leadership as an apostle and presiding bishop has helped the church through hard monetary crises up to now two decades. She is considered one of thousands of females currently serving in local or denominational leadership positions.

In the 40 years since listening to on the radio that females are likely to be ordained in her church, Linda Gross sales put, an apostle in Community of Christ from 1998 to 2019, has sat with many females brooding about their call to ordained ministry. Some struggle with wondering if they’ll fulfill their roles as priesthood. As she listens to them, she ultimately affirms many things.

“Your shuffle will be divinely led,” she tells them. “It’s that connection of divinity with humanity that leads us correct into a residence where we would perhaps per chance honest additionally be the suitable that you might perhaps also factor in we would perhaps per chance honest additionally be. And no longer handiest be the suitable we would perhaps per chance honest additionally be. However extra importantly, to attend others be the suitable that they would perhaps per chance honest additionally be.” That for her sums up priesthood ministry.

(David Howlett is a visiting assistant professor of faith at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Nancy Ross is the chair of the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences Division at Utah Tech University.)

Linked article about Community of Christ:

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