CRC rejects women's ordination - Christian Reformed Church

Christian Century, July 27, 1994

Less than 24 hours after voting that women cannot be ordained ministers, the Christian Reformed Church told local congregations June 22 to remove from office any women currently ordained to the lesser office of elder. In a tangle of procedural maneuverings, emotional protests and sharp debates, the 184 male delegates to the 300,000-member Calvinist denomination's annual synod - its highest policy-making body - spent the better part of two days wrestling with the issue of the role of women in the CRC. For the most part, women lost. But also on June 22, synod delegates voted against invalidating a 1992 decision allowing women to "expound the Word of God," which is tantamount to preaching without ordination.

The key vote on the women's issue, which has gone back and forth like a ping-pong ball for the past four years, came on June 21 when delegates narrowly voted not to ratify a 1993 synod decision that opened ordained offices - minister, elder and evangelist - to women.

The next day delegates rejected three separate efforts to rescind the earlier vote. They then went on to adopt a resolution calling on churches that have already ordained women as elders to "release them from office" by June 1, 1995, and "not to ordain any additional women elders, evangelists or ministers." An estimated 15 churches have already ordained women as elders in the past several years as expectations have mounted that all offices of the ordained ministry would be open to women.

Some of the churches that ordained women elders declared that they would disobey the synod pronouncement. "I don't know of one of them that's likely to reverse course," remarked Rolf Bouma, co-pastor of a Grand Rapids congregation that voted two years ago to ordain women elders. Conservatives in the denomination, however, viewed the votes as the first signs in turning what they believe is a tide of liberalism. "Barring any unusual turn of events, I think people and churches will be satisfied to go on and work within that context," said Lauri Vanden Heuvel, coeditor of the Outlook, a conservative publication.

Supporters of women's ordination, however, while expressing disappointment, were still confident. "This is not surprising to me," said Joan Flikkema, head of the Committee for Women in the Christian Church, a women's advocacy group. "I don't think it's over," she added. "It will be back again and again," she said, predicting that the church will make the change by the year 2000.

Conservatives estimate that the denomination has lost some 15,000 members in the past several years as opponents of women's ordination have dropped out. But progressives in the denomination are also leaving - including a number of theologically trained women - many for the CRCs more liberal and slightly bigger sister, the Reformed Church in America, which has ordained women since 1979.