This is Ben and this is Keith and this is Main Street Lutherans. And for this first episode of 2025, we've been looking at some of the feedback we've been getting from some of our listeners and that's been kind of fun to discover that we have listeners. It has, yeah. Yeah. Ben, you pulled a couple of emails and notes back from. I think one of them is from the Reddit thread, is that right?

Yeah, one of them's from a message on Reddit from Casa de Carol username there. You know, it's interesting. We never know the effect of putting this stuff out there. And this one's really cool, is that after listening to our episode on membership, they decided to become a member in their congregation two weeks later. That's really cool. That's pretty awesome.

Yeah, yeah, I'll get the note that says, never thought I would be a Lutheran.

Yeah, pretty cool.

So they commented on, you know, appreciated the discussions we've had around church polity and the roles of leadership and social statements and things and they want to hear more about stuff like seminaries and aid groups and whatever thrivent is. I thought that was fun. Yeah, that can certainly give us some topics for the future.

Well, and we're certainly. They're in the, they're in the pipeline. In fact, in a way what we're going to talk about today is like a social statement. It's before I think we had that formalized method for that. Well, actually this has a. We'll talk about some of this, but it sort of relates to those social statements.

Yeah.

We also got an email from Dan in Calamus, Iowa, or just outside of Calamus, a member of a two point parish out there and he says it's been told that it's a very non traditional congregation, which it seems to be. Dan pointed out that he listened to the youth gathering episode with four of their kids, with a son who went to the youth gathering in New Orleans. And so all four kids listened intently to the episode and really enjoyed it. And so they were driving back from the in laws, listened to the whole episode. And so I'm really glad that that was a nice thing. We listen to books when we're driving back from the in laws, but my kids wouldn't want to listen to me talk talking about it too. Well, that's true, that's true.

At least it can be.

So Dan also brought up that, Keith, you brought up this idea of the of Land and Seasons liturgy and Dan suggested it to his worship committee and so they did it for Thanksgiving and for Advent services.

That's really cool.

Yeah, that's a real impact. It's amazing.

That's really awesome. Yeah, it's really great to find out that we've got people that are listening, that are giving us feedback, that are, you know, some of them are issuing some challenges and some helpful criticism, but also some are just saying that they've appreciated some of the things we've had to say and given us some topics to look at in the future.

Absolutely. The other thing that Dan includes is that his church turns, I believe it's the sermons into podcasts. And so you can reach [email protected], i'll include a link in the episode notes, as you would imagine. You know, give them a listen, see what. See what they're doing out there. Congregation dates back to 1861.

Wow.

And then we also got another note from Naomi from near Elk Point, South Dakota. Naomi sent in an answer to our question from the last episode, or actually two episodes ago, when we asked about where the next youth gathering was going to be. That was our Advent episode. Unfortunately, we'd already edited and gotten ready to publish the next episode, so we didn't get to include it on that one. But congratulations, Naomi, you are once again a winner.

And the correct answer for that question was, the next gathering will be in Minneapolis. Minneapolis, Minnesota.

That's right.

Very good.

Yeah. So this, this episode, we want to talk about ordination of women. And let me, Let me. I'm going to do a explain why we get to this. There was an interesting topic on the ELCA subreddit on Reddit. Someone asked, what is the justification for ordination of women? Not that they were wanting to argue its validity. They just wanted to know where that was at and why they hadn't read anything about it. And it was pointed out that we celebrated the 50th anniversary of Lutheran churches ordaining women in 2020. That was 50 years. It started in 1970. And so for almost all of us, well, for most of us, anyway, this is a settled issue. And what's interesting about it is that on the other side, the churches that do not ordain women, it is also considered to be a settled issue. And so there are very few people actively debating this topic. And so it was interesting to get pointed to some things that gave some history of how it happened and the process, the thinking process that went into it and sort of the political process that went into it as well. And so for this episode, we're going to talk about Sort of a summary of that. We're going to have some links to the resources that we're using and some suggestions for some things to dig in deeper to this. I think it's really interesting. We'll talk about it at the end of our discussion here about what further interesting things this has an effect on how the church moves forward from even today. So let's start with the history. So apparently in the 1960s, as the women's rights movements and feminism were taking hold, well after women got suffrage in 1919, women were starting to demand equal rights in all aspects of the life. So family, in the workplace, in public life, and in the home.

This, of course, was not the first time women. Women had demanded equal rights in many places. But this is definitely one of the more well known, well documented and moderately successful times when some real change was made.

And you get the beginning of the era, the Equal Rights Amendment and all that comes out of that. Sort of simultaneous to that, in 1960s, the LCA was also. And the ALC, the Lutheran Church in America, and the American Lutheran Church were looking into defining ministry differently. And so that was ordained ministry and consecrated ministry, or all the different words we have for things like deacons and such. So in the 60s, they're looking at that. And as feminism merged into those topics, they started to explore the ideas of women also being ordained. Other denominations had already ordained women, and.

Some pretty far back, there are some denominations that don't have a modern equivalent anymore. But there was an ordination of a woman that I read in The, I think, mid-1800s in the United States. So it's not like this was truly a new idea. There were just different denominations kind of pushing for this in a more structured, organized, deliberate, and especially widespread manner.

And European Protestant churches had been ordaining women already.

Right.

So this was a purely American resistance to that at that point. So we get to 1970, the LCA removes the word or they. They change the word men or man to person or men to people, to allow women to pursue ordination in the church. And it's followed by the alc, the American Lutheran Church, doing that in November. So June And November of 1970 is when our denom core components authorized ordination of women. The first ordinations happened November 1970 for the LCA. That's Elizabeth Platz, who was ordained. She'd already gone through seminary education, so she had everything that she needed except the ordination, you know, and that itself.

Is fascinating to me. So you've got women as individuals who are pursuing the education to do this before the church has legitimatized the idea of the ordination itself. So again, we've got. We've got individual people who are, you know, demonstrating, whether you want to call it the. The guts or the resistance or the determination or whatever that this is, that they're just going to do this and the church is just going to have to catch up. And in this case, thankfully, the church did catch up, because it's not like these people, these two individuals and these two dominations, you know, crammed this education into a span of less than a year each of them. They'd been at this for a few years already in seminary, at the same time pushing for the church to make this change. And the church did. Right. That's really. That's really fantastic. So Elizabeth Platz and Barbara Andrews and. And their peers are really to be commended for their determination.

Yeah. And then if we do a comparison to our partner denominations, the one that seems to be the most, I don't know, front of mind for me on this are the Episcopalians, because ordination to them is a pretty big deal. Well, it is to us, too. But to. I don't know what you'd call it, the. The line of historic episcopate. There you go.

Yeah.

Is very important to how they view priests.

Right. The succession of. Of bishops and pastors being ordained by bishops and pastors back through time in an. In an unbroken line is. That's a very simplified picture of it, because that's all I can manage. But there you go. Yeah.

Presbyterians have a different sort of definition of ordination. To some extent, they ordain pastors, but they also ordain their deacons and their elders, and those are all lay people. And so they have a different view of ordination, but it's a little looser. But the Episcopal Church, their view of ordination is pretty important to how we operate as the ELCA because of our agreements with each other. And so in 1974, 11 female Episcopal priests were ordained in Philadelphia, and they were called the Philadelphia 11. But the Episcopal Church doesn't authorize ordination of women until 1976. And so.

So again, some women and clearly some bishops were going out on a limb and doing this before the church had formally given its approval for sure.

Yeah.

You know, I was talking with one of my colleagues in the Lower Susquehanna Synod, or maybe six months ago, let's say, about this notion, and she, you know, and it's. It's worth pointing out neither Ben nor I are women. Casey didn't know. So, you know, we're talking on a topic, you know, from our own perspective as men, and just need to acknowledge that up front. But I was talking with this colleague of mine who is a woman, and she. We were discussing an anniversary. I don't know if it was the specific date of, say, Elizabeth Platz's ordination or just that the 50th anniversary had been a few years ago. I can't remember the gist of the conversation, but. But the one piece that comes to mind was when she said that she gets really upset in discussing these, you know, talking about the. The anniversary again of the ordination of women, because all that does is say that, well, for the last 50 years or whatever, sure, we've gotten this right, but it discounts the thousands of years ahead of that where we weren't doing it, and the subjugation that that represents. That is still, you know, within the lifetimes of many, many, many people. And even once, it's not, it's still within their parents lifetimes or their grandparents lifetimes. You know, it's going to be a long time until, you know, we say this is a settled matter, and it is, but that doesn't mean that it settles easily in everybody's heart and mind. And that's just. I think it's important to acknowledge that.

Well, and it's also easy to think that, well, we ordained in 1970, and so it was. But as recently as maybe six or seven years ago, I was on a call committee where the question arose. We'd had a woman pastor at that point, but the next pastor, it was asked, are we still okay with a woman pastor? And I was shocked that that question was asked.

Right. Well, you survived that one experiment. Are you sure you want to do it again?

Yeah. And it was just part of the process, but it's still something that our synods keep in mind that congregations may not be comfortable with crossing this, and we'll get to part of why that might be. In fact, the documents that we're basing a lot of this on include this one document published by The ELCA in 1992 called Call the Laborers. It is a ELCA publication specifically for call committees, and it outlines the justifications that we have for why we're so open to having women be pastors and why or how a call committee should address that, how should they should go through the call process and the things they should keep in mind in the process of doing that.

I remember reading this with you and saying, it's really, you know, it's a. Like most ELTA documents, It's well researched, it's well written, it's thoughtfully laid out. It's really helpful. But I have to keep reminding myself this was written, this was published 22 years after the decision was made to ordain women. And so, you know, a quarter of a century later, and here we are more than half a century later in some cases and in some congregations still arguing that this is the right thing to do and that congregations should indeed consider calling a pastor who is not a man. And. Yeah, so again, settled, but not. But anyhow, the document itself, though, it was really helpful.

It's not real prominent on the yaleca website. You can find it, of course, you can find a link to it in the episode notes, and I'd encourage you to do that. It was published for the purpose of. It's in multiple sections. If you go to the very back of the document, the very last page, it explains what each of the sections are intended to be used for. One of those is for a Bible study. One of those is for a call committee discussion and retreats and things like that. So take a look at that. It's pretty interesting.

It's also a cool document because even despite the context of what it happens to be written for specifically about considering calling a woman, I think it's a great document just overall for call committees to look at. It gives a really thoughtful discussion on how we've studied the Bible, for example, and the roles of pastors, et cetera. And even though this document's making a particular contextual argument, it's also just great in general for kind of framing some of those discussions that a call company is going to be talking about whether they're considering calling a woman or not, or whether struggling with the notion of calling a woman or not. But just any call committee that's calling a pastor and. Well, that's what they're for, really. Might want to take a look at.

The other website or the other resource that we're using is a website at St Olaf College that is called 50 years on a Half Century of Ordaining Lutheran Women. Of course, in 2020 is when this would have been published. It has some great resources with timelines and charts, statistics. It has videos of. There's. There's videos on YouTube of the actual votes being taken by the LCA and ALC. And you know that they're on YouTube from 1970s. Kind of amazing and sort of some of the background for that. And so it is a great website for that. It'll point you to some books that we'll try to get some of those links in the episode notes to some of the books that had a heavy influence on those folks in the 1960s and early 70s making this happen. So when we talk about ordination of women, when I think of it, I think that God is an all loving God and wants everyone to be part of the ministry. And so I think the thing that needs justification is why not more than four. Right. So against the ordination of women, there are a smattering of things but texts in the Bible. But we start with 1 Corinthians where Paul writes about men being the head of the family as Christ is the head of the church, and how the whole structure should report to that. The second one is in First Timothy two. It says very specifically and it says, let a woman learn in silence with full submission. So those are two big texts that can be pulled out and says this is what the Bible says about this.

But remember, you can argue just about any issue and any side of any issue from the Bible, if you're willing to cherry pick Scripture verses like that and ignore certain overarching themes that run from Genesis all the way through revelation, which I think is where the argument for really kind of comes from is from that overarching theme. We'll get to that in a minute. But there are some, some reasons to not let these particular verses, you know, inhibit the inclusion of women in ordination.

And one of those is in the Corinthians piece. There are biblical scholars who believe that that part of Paul may be an inclusion by someone else later in time. And so that has to be thought of as that happens. And then Timothy also, it's possible that that is not an authentic letter of Paul. And because of that, these are people later in the church adding their justification for the way things are.

Right. And so rather than trying to say this is what God meant from the beginning, it's more of a this is the way things are and this is why we think we can stay that way.

And we're going to have Paul prove it for us.

Yeah, we're going to borrow his name to one week.

Yeah. Now that's not absolute. Not everybody's going to agree with that, but it is a possibility.

Right.

When we get into the especially this call for laborers, what it spells out is what we consider normative versus programmatic law, normative being things like the New Testament, things like the Ten Commandments, laws that are for all times and all people, so you shall not kill is something that is enforceable not only to the Jews, but to the Israelites, but to all people. We can hold that law for anybody, as opposed to kosher laws, which would be programmatic laws for specific people in a particular time and place. Right. And so programmatic laws are things that are very specific to that condition. And so we take into account things like what are they trying to do with this rule or with this law? Some. Some of the ones that they use as examples in. In the document are the rules regarding treatment of slaves and the punishment for being violent with your slaves. Those are not laws that we consider to be normative. They don't apply to all people and times because we don't believe that slavery should be done at all. And so that makes it. That makes it one of these programmatic laws.

So even those other two passages referred to already from first Corinthians and first Timothy, those could also be looked at as. As programmatic laws commands norms from Paul to say, maybe in those contexts at that time or those settings, these were appropriate statements, but they are not intended to be adhered to by all people for all time.

Well, and part of the justification for saying that is that those are parts of documents that are trying to help the congregations in the. Well, Timothy, and then the congregation in Corinth showing them how they should properly worship and how they should conform to the social standards of their time and not be separate from the rest of the world.

Right. Well, and also, most of the letters in the New Testament are written to congregations that are in trouble in some way, either internally or from. From external sources. And so these letters are trying to help them to deal with the pressures of those contexts and those struggles and come to some sort of reconciliation or peace. And so sometimes those letters will say, on behalf of keeping the peace, they might be prescribing things that would make us cringe in our modern context, but it's what they. It's what they had in mind at the time.

Yeah.

And then Paul himself is also, I think this is, you know, ironic justice that Paul was pointed to in this normative sense as well in Galatians for arguing for the ordination of women, which is in a passage that's really well known and well beloved Galatians 3. 28. There is no longer Jew or Greek, There is no longer slave or free. There is no longer male and female. If you are one in Christ Jesus, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And then verse 29 goes on, and if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise. So that pair of Verses are frequently pointed to in that egalitarian sense of leadership and other aspects of the church for a broad welcome of inclusion to any people, whether you're talking about women's ordination in this case, or the inclusion of the LGBTQ community in our congregations or in leadership and ordination, et cetera.

Yeah, and we're doing a quick, quick brush over this topic. So we're not going to dig in real deep into these things here, but we're going to provide lots of links for you to go deep, if that's what you want to do. What I do want to do, though, is look at how the way. The. The way that we can historically see how our church decided to ordain women, how that relates to how we make decisions, say, about. Well, later on, they'd have to make that decision about black people. Not that I think we ever completely forbid it, but women. Black women weren't ordained until well after 1970. I think it's in the 1980s that it happens. And, of course, then we have LGBTQ folks and their ordinations, and the things that we're looking at here are the same ways that our church went through that process. And so this is a good way to look at a model. In fact, if you're wanting to talk about those other topics with your congregation, it might be a way to look at this document with women and how women's ordination worked and how we came to this decision and then sort of go to the side from this and say, now, what if we apply the same logic. What if we apply the same logic to ordaining gay and lesbian folks?

Yeah. And it's a demonstration of how. Well, this is a sentence I'm about to say without previously engaging my brain. So, you know, it's. It's how the ELCA and how. How Lutherans, general. I mean, there are more conservative Lutherans as well, around the world. But, you know, we really. We really strive to be a people who think with a modern and critical mindset. So I just taught a confirmation class yesterday. We're recording on a Monday, and this was just. Just yesterday, on Sunday, I taught this confirmation class, and the topic was faith and science and how, you know, we, as Lutherans, really. We don't see faith and science in conflict with one another. So, you know, just to talk about Genesis 1 and 2 as. As one quick example, you know, I. I would look at. At those documents and say, you know, this is a great testament of. Of the fact that God created the world and everything in it, but I would not Scientifically say that it's how God created the world and everything in it. You know, when we talk about the ordination of women or the inclusion of LGBTQ folks in our communities, et cetera, we're going to not only look at scripture and we're going to look at scripture in a particular way, but we're also going to look at, you know, modern understandings of science and medicine and psychology and sociology and the effects of trauma, individual and collective, on people and on society and on communities. We're going to be looking at how history has shaped us positively and negatively. So all of this is a part to say that we're not just looking at thousand year old words, 2000 year old words, 5000 year old words, and pretending that we are the same people that those words were written to a thousand, two thousand, five thousand years ago. We are who we are today. And these words are important, but they're not the only source of knowledge and the only source of inspiration. And so, you know, our understanding of inclusion and welcome is going to be informed by that. That was a long rant. Sorry, but thanks.

Yeah. Our discussion about the youth gathering, one of the things that came up over and over again was about authenticity, that they wanted, they wanted speakers and they wanted bands that spoke authentically about life as a Christian. Right. And I think that works with the elca. I think we as a denomination are trying incredibly hard to live authentically in the 21st century as people who believe in something that is amazing to behold. Right. And so there's a lot of complication to that. And I think the easy way out of that is to say, well, the Bible is infallible and I'm going to ignore reality and society because it's easier. Right, Right. Instead, we try to balance everything and make it real and make it something that you can live with in your day to day life. That the whole world is. Church is our vehicle for doing the work of God, God's work, our hands everywhere, not just in a pew somewhere.

I was in a coffee shop this morning and I was sitting, working at my computer and, and just doing my own thing. And it was kind of slow, in a moment. And two employees, two young, I think teenage, perhaps early 20s women, were just chatting with each other and they were talking about their Bibles and their churches. I heard, you know, and sometimes I'll be honest in when I, you know, kind of am on the sideline of a conversation like that in public, I can sometimes get anxious because I'm like, you know, where, where is this going to go. What are they going to have to say about the Bible or the church that, you know, may. Or maybe from a different perspective than I'm comfortable with? And again, I'm just on the sideline of the conversation. I'm not participating in it. I just happen to be overhearing it. And so they started talking about. One of them was naming this list of phrases or memes or something, and she's naming off the ones that she likes. And the one that she's like, no, I don't believe that. And one of them had to do with something. It really was something about women and, and kind of, you know, being submissive and, and minding themselves and letting men lead. And she's like, no way. And so I was really, I was really encouraged by that, that she's thinking critically, based on her own experience, about these tropes that may or may not be. Be true for her or in her context. I thought that was a really healthy response.

How very Lutheran.

Yeah.

That was one of the things that was in there too, is this pamphlet for call committees. Starts with Luther and his attitude towards these things. Like, well, if the Bible doesn't say we have to do it, then it's a rule made up by people. And if it's ruled. Made up by people, I'm a people too. And so we can change those rules. Right. And so I think that's just wonderful. And I wish all Lutherans actually believe that.

But yeah, I mean, that's, that was how the conversation came along for, for pastors to get married, for example, you know, and that, that happened in Luther's day. And that was exactly why, you know, they're, you know, this is a, this is, you know, ordination as Luther understood it was a human institution, got roots theologically and scripturally, but. But we made it up so we can modify it. Yeah, there we go.

Awesome.

So we've got our catechism question for last week, which was for the last episode, rather. In First Timothy, Chapter 4, Verse 12, Paul writes, speaking 2 Timothy, let no one despise your blank. But set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. So let no one despise your blank. The options fill in are character, youth, droll, little mouth, or piety. And the correct answer is youth.

Youth.

There you go. Let no one despise your youth. All rights to Timothy.

That's right. And if you want to be declared a winner for the next one, just send us an email. We've got. Email is in the episode notes go to our website. You can go to Facebook, we're on threads, I think, and all sorts of other stuff. But all the links are in the episode notes. You can also leave a voicemail on our message on our on our line. Nobody will answer the phone.

Don't worry.

Just leave a message for us and we'll, we'll get it. This episode's question relates to a woman in the Bible, Deborah. There are a few Debras, but this is referring to the the Deborah in the Book of Judges in the Old Testament. Who was Deborah in the Old Testament Book of Judges? Was it A, Rebecca's nurse, B, a wise counselor to Solomon, C, a prophet, judge and military leader, or D, the designer of the Ark of the Covenant? And you can respond through our email, social media, our phone number. As I said, all of that is in the episode notes.

Main Street Lutheran is hosted by Keith Fair and Ben Fote show is produced by Fote Media Productions. You find all of our contact information, links and a transcript of this episode in the episode notes. Until next time, go in peace. Serve the Lord.

Thanks be to God.