Ordaining Women

In a revealing examination of the complex interrelationship of religion, social forces, and organizational structure, Ordaining Women draws examples and data from over 100 Christian denominations to explore the meaning of institutional rules about women's ordination.

B. T. Roberts saw the exclusion of women from ordination as analogous to racism. His ability to see the new community made possible by Christ offers Christians today a prophetic vision of the difference Christ makes. Roberts's 1891 Ordaining Women takes seriously the scriptural promise that Christ has unmasked the false distinctions and repaired the damaged social arrangements of this world. Like the abolition of slavery, the ordination of women becomes yet another obvious sign of the world made new in Christ. With careful attention to biblical interpretation, church tradition, and empirical evidence, Roberts exposes the biases that have long held captive the Christian imagination. In this new edition, Benjamin Wayman offers an updated and fully annotated version of Roberts's original work and demonstrates the breadth and depth of his analysis. Roberts's vision of the gospel challenges the traditional and still-dominant view of the global church, and invites Christians to reimagine the inclusion of women in ordained ministry. If Christians had for so long been wrong about race, might we today be wrong about gender?

B. T. Roberts saw the exclusion of women from ordination as analogous to racism. His ability to see the new community made possible by Christ offers Christians today a prophetic vision of the difference Christ makes. Roberts's 1891 Ordaining Women takes seriously the scriptural promise that Christ has unmasked the false distinctions and repaired the damaged social arrangements of this world. Like the abolition of slavery, the ordination of women becomes yet another obvious sign of the world made new in Christ. With careful attention to biblical interpretation, church tradition, and empirical evidence, Roberts exposes the biases that have long held captive the Christian imagination. In this new edition, Benjamin Wayman offers an updated and fully annotated version of Roberts's original work and demonstrates the breadth and depth of his analysis. Roberts's vision of the gospel challenges the traditional and still-dominant view of the global church, and invites Christians to reimagine the inclusion of women in ordained ministry. If Christians had for so long been wrong about race, might we today be wrong about gender?

The authentic views of the Coptic Orthodox Church on the two controversial subjects of 'The Ordination of Women' and 'Homosexuality' have been clearly and authoritatively expressed by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III in two lectures given on the 26th of November 1990. A great number of clergymen from various churches heard His Holiness give evidence from the Holy Bible and from tradition relating these two subjects, to which the Orthodox Church is gravely opposed.. Fuad H. Megally, PhD.

This collection of essays highlights the thorny and divisive issue of the admission of women into the sacramental diaconal priesthood of the Christian Church from the Orthodox theological perspective. The contributions here stem from scientific papers presented at an international conference titled “Deaconesses, Ordination of Women and Orthodox Theology”, organized in Thessaloniki, Greece, in 2015 by the Center of Ecumenical, Missiological and Environmental Studies (CEMES). They cover almost all the fields of biblical, liturgical, patristic, systematic, canonical, and historical theology. The volume’s main focus is the ancient order of deaconesses, in connection with the overall issue of the ordination of women. Although most papers address the issues from an Orthodox perspective, their sober analysis can provide theological argumentation for the wider Christian community, both the Churches and Christian denominations that exclude women from the sacramental priesthood, and those that have already adopted their ordination.

Madigan and Osiek assemble relevant material from both Western and Eastern Christendom.--Robin Jensen, Vanderbilt University Divinity School, author of Face to Face: The Portrait of the Divine in Early Christianity "Catholic Historical Review"

For non-specialist readers, the series offers scholarly research on the role of women in Christian ministry and the changing shape of ministry in Christian history. In the first volume, Gary Macy (theology and religious studies, U. of San Diego) discusses the ordination of women in the early middle ages, and John Hilary Martin (Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, Berkeley, California) looks at the ordination of women and the theologians in the Middle Ages. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Baptists are keen to go directly to the New Testament in all major issues of faith. If the Bible is the first argument, then history (and therefore tradition) is another line of argument, that both promoters and opponents of women's ordination can and do use. This book is largely concerned with not just the history of women's ordination, or even of Baptists and women's ordination, but offers perspectives from history that may be useful for the discussion of this issue. The thrust of the arguments are aimed at highlighting that differing biblical interpretations are possible, and it must be admitted that Baptists have their own history, over which, much diversity has developed.