Women Priests – Much Ado About Nothing?

Professor Amina Wadud, an internationally recognized scholar on Islam, recently roiled the Muslim world by being one of the most prominent and very rare cases when a woman actually leads Friday prayers of a mixed gender congregation in the USA. By all accounts, this shook the Muslim theological world to its foundations and the amount of bile, angst, fury, amazement, horror that this event generated was astounding. I think anybody who is anybody in the Muslim theological world spoke out against it and the internet electrons were whizzing past at a furious rate. What is with women religious leaders that gets people all excited?

Women religious leaders are all well known these days. A few years ago, the Anglican Church lead out of the United Kingdom had a similar heart attack moment when women started getting ordained as priests. It was something like what’s been happening now with Professor Amina Wadud. Threats flew left and right, people left the church, parishioners revolted, some went and joined the catholic church, the international branches of the Anglican Church threatened to break away and so on and so forth – you get the idea. Many moons on, it has become de-rigueur and quite commonplace to see women priests officiating at churches, funerals, baptisms and other religious duties and ceremonies. In fact, one of my favourite TV serials, “The Vicar of Dibley” is based around the introduction of women as priests. It was fascinating and wonderful, not to mention a typical portrayal of deliciously light British humorously poking fun at events, which usually make people foam.

That said, there is definitely a tradition in the Christian Church for ordaining women, with documentary evidence going back to the 2nd century AD, wherein an inscription was found referring to Artemidoras, whose mother is described as being a Christian religious official. Then, during the fourth synod of Carthage and council of Laodicea, it was forbidden for women to baptise, teach men in an assembly, oversee religious functions and or even approach the altar. On the other hand, until the 9th century AD, women were ordained as deacons in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Since that, we had a bit of a pause, and then from the late 19th century, there was a rash of various churches ordaining women to become priests. The Unitarian Church, Congregationalist Church, Salvation Army, Armenian Church, Christian Science Church, Methodist Church, Church of Scotland (Presbyterian), Cumberland Presbyterian Church, Mariauiten Church in Poland, Menoits/Algemeen Dopgezinde Societet and Remonstrante Broderschap in the Netherlands, Assemblies of God, Evangelian Church of Czech, Reformed Church of Zurich, United Free Church of Scotland, Baptist Church, Episcopal Church, United Reformed Church in UK and about 50 other churches ordained women in various clerical capacities.

As can be seen, most of the movement towards women clerics was seen in the reform movement, and started in the USA, much like Amina Wadud. Not surprisingly, as a significant proportion of onwards emigration from Old Europe was because of religious persecution. What better way to try to distinguish yourself from the discriminatory boring old ways than to raise your holy womenfolk to positions of piety and clerical responsibility? As a reaction to the old, rusty, male dominated patriarchal behaviour of the parent Catholic Church, large chunks of the church have kept on breaking off and creating their own little piece of heaven. The current Pope John Paul II unfortunately and categorically said and I quote, “She holds that it is not admissible to ordain women to the priesthood, for very fundamental reasons. These reasons include: the example recorded in the Sacred Scriptures of Christ choosing his Apostles only from among men; the constant practice of the Church, which has imitated Christ in choosing only men; and her living teaching authority which has consistently held that the exclusion of women from the priesthood is in accordance with God's plan for his Church." He followed this up with one of his famous declarations in which he pointedly says, “The Church does not consider herself authorized to admit women to priestly ordination."

So that is that then, eh? I am afraid not. Just because the Catholic Church has decided for some really “good” reasons not to ordain women into the church, that does not mean that others will hear and obey. As we have seen, other churches have bravely and admirably gone ahead and ordained their womenfolk into positions where they can lead their congregations on their paths to God. Looking at it dispassionately and with the benefit of belonging to a religion that is old and hoary, the basic issue that the Catholic Church has forgotten is that there are many different ways to God. If the Catholic Church decides not to allow women priests, then so be it. The sad downside of this would be that it will become increasingly irrelevant to the day and age. The more women get out of the male patriarchal handcuffs, the more they will demand their own rights, including ordination. So where and what do we end up with? A bunch of conservative people, slowly decaying, while younger and more rigorous churches flourish.

The situation within the other branches of the Abrahamaic religions, to wit, Judaism is similar. It took the formation of Reform Judaism to start getting women rabbi’s. Again this happened in the USA although a bit later than what we saw with Christianity. Reform Judaism ordained women in 1972 in the USA and 1975 in the UK. Conservative Judaism appointed the first woman rabbi in 1985 while just 10 years ago, we saw the first female rabbi in Germany.

Moving across a few thousand kilometers, India – the birthplace of so many other religions has had the familiar old male dominated structure as elsewhere. Just like the Hindu religion has female religious figures from the year dot, although there were certain rituals (such as the sacred thread ceremony) which were restricted to men. Some temples even did not allow women in, but the same thing applies here as well. Different sects have different ways of working and behaving. While Hinduism does not really have the same concepts as Christianity, women have been known to lead temples, carry out and lead devotions and so on and so forth. If one wants to be more specific, a simple google search threw up Hindu women initiated as women priests in Trinidad, South Africa, India and in other places for decades.

Similarly, Sikhism, Jainism, Buddhism all had and continue to have female religious leaders and priests. In fact, the Chairperson of the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee is a woman, Bibi Jagir Kaur. For those who do not know the significance of this committee, it controls and oversees all historic Sikh shrines and institutions in India and is very powerful indeed. It even got rid of the head priest of the main Sikh Temple in Amritsar. It is like the College of Cardinals being headed by a woman and deciding to turf out the pope.

While I chuckled at a humorous piece at: (http://tinyurl.com/3p7qq), the challenge that came about was huge. As it turns out, women prayer leaders, even on the main Friday prayers have been doing so for a long time in places such as Indonesia and South Africa. However, Professor Amina Wadud’s brave attempt to lead a mixed congregation prayer is extremely visible. Equally, the 100 odd people who participated have to be congratulated and applauded for turning out to follow the good professor. For an independent, but very interested, observer of this debate, it was fascinating to see how it was carried out. Starting from racist remarks to comments about her hair, her face, her education, everything was on display. The sheer bigotry this aroused amongst laymen was astounding. Surely, the theologians were more understanding?

Fat chance. Almost everybody who is anybody in the august precincts of Islamic studies of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India, Pakistan, etc. etc. was in full flow. Thunderous orations and fiery denunciations of this benighted woman daring to overturn a century old tradition, religious jurisprudence scholarship, and religious constraints flew left right and centre. Death threats, threats of violence were bandied about. Arguments ranged from particular hadiths to no explicit verse in the Quran, to the precedent of Ghazala (a woman) who did this back in the time right after the Prophet, to the fact that if a woman is leading men, then the men will get distracted. Obviously, the last one was the most amusing reason of them all.

The impotence of the objectors can be evidenced by the fact that they reacted by making silly threats, hacking http://www.muslim-wakeup.com/ (one of the sponsors of this event), stupid comments about her hair. I would say that this is good. The centres of learning are conservative, no question asked. Nevertheless, to expect reform to come out of these centres is wrong. Take Hinduism for example. The disgusting practises of child marriage, sati, caste and other aspects were not removed by the centres of religion. They were removed by giants such as Raja Ram Mohon Roy, Dayanand Saraswati, Ramakrishna, and Swami Vivekananda. 2-3 centuries on, not all the evils have disappeared completely, but a fair amount has. These visionaries had a direct relationship with their god, they relied on the Hindu scriptures, and they fought against the musty and dusty corridors of traditionalist thinking. So, Professor Amina Wadud, kudos to you and we know this will be a boon to all Muslim women and Islam itself. When I saw the photographs and her serene face, despite the glare of the photographer cameras and the audience of media people, I could only think of a quote, which I had read by George William Russell:

“She sat with hands as if to bless,
And looked with grave ethereal eyes;
Ensouled by ancient Quietness,
A gentle priestess of the Wise.”

All this to be taken with a grain of salt!