Female Clergy.

[Theland]

What are your thoughts?

[Hazi-Hammenuhoth]

Female clergy- it depends whether you want to follow what the Bible teaches or not.
Churches can have female priests, vicars and bishops by all means, but don't claim to be a Christian! One of the main reasons for the current confusion in the Church of England is the departure from biblical truth.

[emmie]

not religious in any shape or form, but if women want to join the clergy then why ever not. In this day and age we have more things to worry over.

[woofgang]

There are many ways in which the modern church departs from what is in the bible...so are you saying there are NO modern day Christians?

[naomi24]

One of my best friends is an Anglican priest in charge of five churches – lovely lady - and a very good job she does too. I keep telling her she’s working too hard. (When we were going through a particularly sad time she had all five congregations praying for us every week. Told her it doesn’t work!).

[kvalidir]

Oh you hilariously got my name wrong again Enema, oops must be catching.

What's special about the last 2000 years of Abrahamic oppression? I would have thought that was obvious, if it's not I could point you in the direction of several excellent books, but really in this day and age why don't you just google it?
Essentially in a nutshell, since you'll whine if I don't answer your question myself, most history and prehistory suggests that there were multiple Gods and Goddesses, several cultures not affected by the big Abrahamic religions had women in powerful office, Priestesses were as revered as Priests, there were female generals and ruling Queens and so on and so on. It's an enormous subject to try to cover but a little about prehistoric equality in societies can be found here:-https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/14/early-men-women-equal-scientists

[maggiebee]

Just an observation. Was at church this morning and it was a female who was preaching (we are currently without a minister). Very good sermon. Looking around the church, women outnumbered the men by at least 10 to 1. Feel the church would close down without women so they should be given their place. This is Church of Scotland.

[Jackdaw33]

I have no objection to women playing a part in the church but I cannot accept that a woman can say mass, marry people or give absolution.

[maggiebee]

See where you're coming from Jackdaw. However, in the Church of Scotland we don't have mass or give absolution. Marriage is slightly different and we would probably have an ordained minister to carry this out.

[Jackdaw33]

LOL!

[woofgang]

Why do you not think they should not administer sacraments Jackdaw?

[Jackdaw33]

because I am of the opinion that Christ ordained a male-only priesthood. I know that many will disagree with me but that is what I was brought up to believe and still stand by that.

[modeller]

Hazi " biblical truth. !" Since when has the bible been based on truth ?

[vetuste_ennemi]

//Oh you hilariously got my name wrong again Enema, oops must be catching//

Although the rest of your post was an answer to my question, I didn't at first get the (obvious) reference to me in your opening remark, Kvalidir: I had to go back to my post to see that I'd transposed the v and the l.

Why you think I was doing this for comic effect I don't know. My own sobriquet is a bit of a mouthful, but I've never seen - and therefore taken - offence at misspellings of it. If I'd wanted to be offensive there are more obvious things I could have done with your monicker, don't you think?

[kvalidir]

Apologies then VE-you always appear to do it and it has been mentioned before, so I assumed you were being facetious, if that's not the case then I wholeheartedly apologise.

[vetuste_ennemi]

//VE-you always appear to do it//

Never unintentionally, Kvalidir.

That apart, I'm familiar to an extent with the Mother Goddess school of anthropology having read (as a kid) some of Frazer's "The Golden Bough" and all of Robert Graves two volume "The Greek Myths" published by Penguin (still in print?) where he explains all European myth (not just Greek) in terms of the religious matriarchy, ritual slaughter of the male consort. All this before the Iron Age arrived to spoil it all.

I asked about your "last 2,000 years" reference because Abraham - Ur of the Chaldees - would have lived another 2,000 years before that, and so you would seem to be implying that it was the arrival of Christianity which has set back the cause of sexual equality.

This doesn't particularly chime with what I know about pre-Christian history, or with what I know about the status of women generally in non-Christian cultures (e.g. polygamy and concubinage).

The Guardian article is about hunter-gatherer societies (most of our evolutionary history for sure) before the arrival of agriculture and the building of cities, but not obviously relevant to religious belief as such. Presumably they could have had one god, many gods or none.

I liked this quote, however:

"A study has shown that in contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes, men and women tend to have equal influence on where their group lives and who they live with."

Most of the women I've known have not had an "equal" influence on where they live, they've usually been the deciders.

[vetuste_ennemi]

Did I just say unintentionally[i? Dear me, must do better.

Never [i]intentionally].

[vetuste_ennemi]

Was it Graves who postulated a female authorship of the Odyssey? All those strong women - Circe, Calypso, Nausicaa and Penelope.

[DTCwordfan]

Moses came down the mountain to see the Israelites.

"I've been spending some time reading Answerbank.

Forget the Jehovahs, forget Theland, forget Vestute, forget Bishop Oilwell.....in short, religion is bunk, the 10 commandments have been superceded by American or Sharia law....

Now where is my pension as I'm outta here - Malta is a more attractive environment as well, though I prefer Spain for the wine and the Balearics, as Sqad is there.

"Oh, by the way, He ain't too bothered about coveting thy neighbour's wife."