No Bar Found To Women Ministers

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30602, 19 November 1964, Page 17

No Bar Found To Women Ministers

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright) EDINBURGH, November 18. Edinburgh Presbytery last night approved of women ministers and elders in the Church of Scotland.

The approval followed a long debate on a paper on the place of women in the church sent to all presbyteries by the General Assembly’s panel on doctrine. The presbytery approved, by 98 votes to 31, a motion that there was “no barrier, either biblical or theological, to the admission of women to the ordained ministry of the church.” They also approved by a large majority the recomm en-

dation of the panel on doctrine that women be eligible for election to the eldership.

Presenting the motion in favour of ordination, the Rev. Grahame Hardy, Edinburgh, said the church must have the courage “to discard the strait-jacket of some of our traditional ideas."

New patterns must and would emerge and some might only emerge if the church was prepared to take the step of admitting women to the ministry. Miss Mary Lusk, who unsuccessfully petitioned this year’s General Assembly for ordination as a minister, listened to the debate from the public gallery. The presbytery’s recommendations will now be sent to the panel on doctrine.