WOMEN AS PASTORS

Southland Times, Issue 19986, 28 September 1926, Page 8

WOMEN AS PASTORS

WESLEYAN DECISION. London, July 24. A recommendation that women should be made eligible for the ministry of the Wesleyan Church as far as possible on the same terms as men was passed by the Wesleyan Methodist Conference by a majority of 14 in a total vote of 360. The recommendation was based on the belief that “there is apostolic authority for regarding women as on a spiritual equality with men in the Christian Church.” One important qualification was, however, made) The Rev. C. Ryder Smith, in presenting the report of the committee which has dealt with the matter, stated that marriage of a woman minister should be regarded as equivalent to resignation or that on marriage she should withdraw from the active ministry to a position analogous to that of a minister without a pastoral charge. The committee held a preference for the first alternative. The opposition was led by the Rev. C. Ensor Walters (secretary of the London Mission), who moved an amendment rejecting the recommendation, referring it back for further consideration, and urging further development of the existing Wesley deaconess order. “We are neither retrograde nor reactionary,” he declared, “but there are lines drawn in humanity, and there are paths of life where men cannot enter and others where women cannot.” He argued that there was no Scriptural Catholic authority for the proposal, and protested strongly against a sub-committee trying to do something which the church had not done for 2000 years, and setting aside a tradition of 2000 years. The subject of Catholic agreement was a somewhat delicate one for Wesleyan ministers, remarked Dr Scott Liddgett, for the so-called Catholic Church had never recognised the ordination of Wesleyan ministers without the imposition of episcopal hands. Miss S. Pugh Jones (Llangollen), supporting the admission of women, commented upon the “sentimentalists,” who said that women had more spiritual influence than men. They were the people, she added, who, as a rule were most reactionary in their attitude towards women. So far as breaking with tradition was concerned, the early Christians broke with it to such an extent that they were described as having turned the world upside down. Unless Christians to-day continued to turn the world upside down they could not continue as a vital church. The Rev. J. E. Rattenbury (Southport) opposed the recommendation because of the distinction it drew between married women and single. A call to the ministry could not be countermanded, he said, even by a thing so important as matrimony, and the introduction of the qualification was an indication of the practical difficulties in the way of the proposal. He suggested it would be wiser to develop other ministries than to admit women to a field in which there WQuld_ be