Religious Scholar

It was encouraging this morning to read a letter to the editor in The New York Times from a Lutheran minister vigorously attacking the hierarchical context that allowed the human rights abuses of the Irish Catholic Church to exist for so many years.

Lest we think for a moment, however, that the Lutherans are the unilateral good guys in this debate, we need to recall that one of the most conspicuous forms of human rights abuse is the relegation of women to subservient, often sexually-defined roles within the religious system. In this expression of sexual abuse, the Lutheran faith is not entirely blameless.

Depending on whose statistics we accept, from one-third to one-half of baptized Lutherans in the United States subscribe to the doctrine that women are not worthy to serve as professional ministers: that women who hear the “call to serve” in this vocation are either deluded or mistaken. Perhaps what they hear is a Divine call to host the covered dish supper!

In its favor, the branch now known as the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America has been ordaining women since the 1970s (still a paltry time span given the 2,000-year history of Christianity). Representing between 2.9 million and 4.7 million adherents, this branch may represent the majority of Lutherans in the United States.

In favor of discrimination against women and keeping them “in their place” are the Missouri Synod and Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, representing between 2.8 million and 3.0 million baptized members. According to some statistical jugglers, the numbers of pro- and anti-female ordination supporters are about even.

Perhaps if we framed sexual discriimination as a form of sexual abuse there would be a greater hue and cry in the media against the oppression of women by male-dominated religious hierarchies. As it stands, we are grateful that the media acknowledge this disparity at all. They would probably rally even more behind the issue of female ordination and its immeasurable consequences for women, from the cradle to the grave, were they able to take religion in the least bit seriously.