ordination consternation
Sunday night I went to an ordination service. It’s not the first one I’ve attended, but it’s the first one I’ve attended as a critically-thinking adult. The other times were when I was a kid, including my own father’s, which I don’t remember at all save for the photographs which allow me to manufacture memories based on the images of my three-year-old self in white tights.
This ordination was for my old youth pastor, who’s still youth pastor, but after seven years has completed his Calvinist seminary education.
There’s a strict and boring order of service to these things, the lowlight of which being a talk by some pastor guy that went on and on. In truth it was only fifteen minutes (I was checking the clock, believe me), but seemed waaaaaay longer. That’s what happens, my dad says, when you try to preach without notes! You have to be a really good speaker to speak without notes and not make an ass of yourself. This particular pastor guy was not one of those speakers.
That’s the explanation my dad offered for why this pastor guy, when talking about young pastors going out into the world, referred to all the “young men” God has blessed us with to serve as pastors. Our denomination is loathe to ordain women, we all know this, but can we at least keep up some sort of rhetorical pretense of equality?! Again, my dad blamed this slip of the tongue on the pastor guy’s lack of notes, but I blame it on systemic sexism and idiocy.
Back when I went to bible college (a denominational one), there was a little bit of a kerfuffle when the dean of students was planning to leave her job with the college and go teach at a seminary in Brazil. Despite the fact that any man with her qualifications would have been ordained already, the denomination only saw fit to ordain her before her big missions thing to Brazil in the name of expediency, since ordained clergy have an easier time with immigration bureaucracy.
The dean of academics spoke out on her behalf, calling the situation for what it was: sexist, and racist. Sexist for the obvious reasons, and racist because why was a woman good enough to teach non-white people in Brazil but not good enough to teach white people men in North America?
Just once in my life I want to have a woman pastor. The church I currently attend has three full-time pastors and they’re all men. I could leave this church, I guess, but if all the feminists leave then how are things going to change? I don’t know.
I’ve been wondering for awhile when and if the point will come when I’ll have to leave this particular church, when what I believe and what they believe will be too far apart for me to have a place in the community. What draws me there now is the familiarity, the people I’ve known since I was five.
I was raised some of these concerns with my small group the other week, and they immediately launched into a litany of praise of me, outlining how much they appreciated my contrary and slightly disruptive presence in their group. But I wasn’t fishing for compliments; I’m serious. I don’t know how long it will last, you know? A year, two, three… but eventually something’s going to have to give.
Then again, that night after the ordination service, I had a really good talk with my dad and brother and realized that the gap between their theology and mine may not be as wide as I thought it was. And at least they’re both feminists, though they’d never admit it or label themselves as such. But trust me, they are. (We can smell our own.)