Situation Report

THE democratic spirit of Protestantism gave women their first opportunity in the U.S. as preachers, ministers, and even founders of denominations. Mary Baker Eddy started one of the nation's only female-dominated religions, Christian Science; though the denomination has no ordained ministers, a majority of its 5,848 "practitioners," or healers, are women. More recently the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, founded by Aimee Semple McPherson in the 1920s, has followed a similar pattern: today at least 40% of its 2,690 clergy are female.

More traditional denominations of U.S. Protestantism have been slower, but are coming round. U.S. Presbyterians in the North began ordaining women (103 to date) in 1956; Southern Presbyterians (22 so far) followed suit in 1964. Both the Lutheran Church in America and the American Lutheran Church decided to accept women pastors in 1970, and the A.L.C. already has 116 candidates in its seminaries. Equality of opportunity does not necessarily produce a flood of candidates, however. The United Methodist Church gave women full rights to clerical appointment in 1956, but at the latest count in 1970, only 322 of the church's 34,722 clergy were women.

There are also holdouts. The U.S. Episcopal Church, following a worldwide Anglican move, admits women deacons (83 so far out of a total of 379) but does not yet permit ordination of women priests. Some Anglicans fear that ordaining women might upset ecumenical talks with Roman Catholics, but the Roman Catholic hierarchy is under pressure too. There is active discussion of women deacons for Roman Catholicism, and many Catholic thinkers today see no serious theological objection to women priests--though they will be a long time coming. The rigidly male-dominated Eastern Orthodox churches will doubtless be among the last to capitulate.

Reform Judaism has accepted a handful of female cantors, and will this year have its first woman rabbi: Sally Priesand, 25, who will be ordained in June. But only since World War II have some Conservative Jewish synagogues permitted women to be called to pronounce the blessing over the Torah. Orthodox Judaism does not permit even that, and moreover still decrees that women must sit apart from men in the synagogues.

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