Of all the women and men who acknowledged Jesus as the messiah, only the woman who anointed Jesus with oil dared signify Jesus' messiahship in a concrete priestly way, defying the customary, religious and historical bondages that denied women their right to perform such public acts, and the donor-consumer mentality of those who "scolded her" as a wasteful woman, saying, "this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii" (14.5). Jesus countered this trivialization of a woman's ministry by saying "wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her." He used her unique action as a pointer to his coming death by saying "she has anointed my body beforehand for my burial" (14.8). She foreshadowed the priesthood of the whole body of Christ, the church, by her anointing of Jesus, signifying Christ's death and resurrection.

No longer male and female

As Paul explains the new liberty of the gospel, he declares the transforming nature of the new community in Christ. All the former walls of distinction between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, have fallen.

This experience of a new community of "the discipleship of equals"¹ seems characteristic of the church in the earlier writings of the New Testament. Women and men worked together in sharing the gospel with others and nurturing the young church communities, which often met in the homes of Christian women like Lydia. Paul's injunctions to women to be silent (1 Cor 14.34) were addressed to a specific problem in Corinth, and were not understood as a general rule requiring passivity of women in church life. In fact, Romans 16 commends Phoebe, a leader in the church in Cenchreae, Prisca, who "risked her neck" for Paul, Mary, who "worked very hard", and Junia, who was "prominent among the apostles", as fellow workers with Paul in ministry.

The PACT consultation in Africa studied the partnership of Prisca (Priscilla) and her husband, who took Apollos aside to teach him more accurately the way of God (Acts 18.1-4, 24-26). They also studied the role of the businesswoman, Lydia, who was an active Christian in Philippi (Acts 16.11-15, 40) and opened her home to the Christian community². The Middle East consultation cited as examples of partnership Phoebe (Rom 16) , Philip's daughters who prophesied (Acts 21.8-9), Euodia and Syntyche who struggled beside Paul in the work of the gospel (Phil 4.3), and the disciples Mary and Martha (Lk 10.38-42 and Jn 11.17-44).³

There is evidence in the book of Acts that women and men were held equally accountable for their faith and life. Paul speaks of having persecuted and imprisoned both women and men prior to his conversion (Acts 8.3, 9.2, 22.4). When Ananias lied to the church about the proceeds from the sale of his property in order to keep some money for himself, Peter confronted him. But Peter also confronted his wife, Sapphira, who knew of Ananias' plot and consented to it (Acts 5.1-10). Both were held responsible.

It is significant that Peter in the Acts of the Apostles chooses for his sermon on Pentecost the prophecy of Joel, where God declares that in the last days he will pour out divine Spirit on all flesh: on sons and daughters, on young and old men, and even on male and female slaves, so they will have dreams and visions and will prophecy (Acts 2.17-18; Joel 2.28-29). The Spirit will come to all: to the least likely (women and slaves) as well as to men. This vision of God's gift of Spirit undergirded the understanding of the "discipleship of equals" which allowed the equal partnership of women and men with God in a community without divisions, where "there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female" (Gal 3.28).

The loss of partnership

The community of equals did not last very long. Even in the later books of the New Testament institutionalized governing structures evolved, and instructions for women to be submissive to men increased. During the second and third centuries persecutions came and went, and women were martyred along with men. An example would be the martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity in North Africa around 200 AD. When the persecutions ended with official state toleration in the fourth century, worship moved out of house churches into public buildings, and the church increasingly assumed the structures of secular hierarchical order. Theologians became increasingly disrespectful of women's nature and taught that men reflect more fully the image of God than women.

Gradually the public church offices open to women disappeared until, in the high Middle Ages, women could serve the church only as nuns, celibate and usually cloistered. When a learned and prophetic nun like Hildegard of Bingen (Germany, 12th century) was permitted to preach publicly, it was because the hierarchy regarded her charisma as an exceptional case.

Reformation protests

The Protestant reformers, like Martin Luther and John Calvin, adopted a vision of the priesthood of all believers (1 Pet 2.4-5), where all the baptized share in the priestly functions of praying for others before God and speaking God's word to the neighbour. More democratic church structures developed, including the Reformed system of corporate ministry of pastors, elders and deacons. Bucer in Strasbourg and Calvin in Geneva realized that there had been women in the New Testament holding the office of deacon. A few women deacons were selected in German Calvinist churches for a short time. Otherwise the reformers did not understand the priesthood of all believers to mean that women should have in their day the same freedom as men to serve in public office in the church. The full equality of women and men was seen as an eschatological vision; for women to speak publicly in church would cause scandal.

Nonetheless there were women in the 16th century like Marie Dentière of Geneva who read the Bible differently, noticing the passages we have been discussing and defending women's natural equality with men. We are left still today with the challenge Marie addressed to her readers:

"I ask, did not Jesus die as much for the poor and unlearned...as for my lords who are shaven, tonsured, and mitred? Did he only say: 'Go, preach my gospel to my lords the wise and great doctors?' Did he not say: 'to all'? Do we have two gospels, one for men and the other for women? One for the wise and the other for the foolish? Are we not one in our Lord? In whose name are we baptized, that of Paul or Apollos, of the Pope or of Luther? Is it not in the name of Christ? Certainly he is not at all divided."⁴

Reclaiming partnership

For Reformed Christians, ministry is fundamentally rooted in baptism and the priesthood of all believers. It is the calling of the whole people of God. Yet certain tasks in the church require public ministry: preaching, teaching, the administration of the sacraments, governance, diakonia. The community recognizes by ordination God's call to some for these tasks and God's provision of the gifts needed to accomplish them. Ordination is not a sacrament. It creates no special "order" in the church, no higher status, no specially privileged class, and it confers no indelible mark on the one ordained. Because all humanity, female and male, is created equally in the image of God and can equally reflect that image, and because all the baptized, male and female, are equally members of Christ's body, gifted with graces as the Holy Spirit wills, the church must recognize God's calling to public ministry regardless of sex. Since the mid-19th century Reformed churches have slowly moved to do so. We have written above about Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown Blackwell of the Congregational Church in the USA.

Churches in Europe took much longer to allow women in the ordained ministry. In 1909, the Council of the Congregational Union in London struggled with the issue, as Miss Hattie Baker and Mrs Coltman had fulfilled all the requirements for ordination and had requested ordination.⁵ The Congregational Union ordained its first woman minister in 1919.

In 1887, the Church of Scotland created the order of deaconess for the leaders of the Woman's Guild, the official churchwomen's organization, and the following year, the first deaconess, Lady Grisell Baillie, was "set apart": "what the general assembly of the Church of Scotland resolved upon, was nothing less than restoration of the scriptural office of deaconess, which had been in abeyance since perhaps the fifth or sixth century AD."⁶

In 1963, Mary Levison petitioned the general assembly of the Church of Scotland to accept her call to the ministry.

"I do not regard the issue as a 'woman's question' nor as a fight for 'equal rights' nor even as a challenge to the church. I am prompted simply by the awareness of a call to service for which the authority of ordination is required... It is difficult, I think, for anyone to say precisely how such a call comes. But this at least I can say: that it has come through an awareness of the work and mission of the church and of the need, within the total ministry of the church, for the full-time trained servants. When I first responded to this call, the church said to me: 'Be a deaconess'. This I did, with the fullest training I could get. I was duly commissioned as a deaconess and licensed as a preacher of the word; and I have found great scope and satisfaction in the service of the church - as an assistant in a parish, as a lecturer in St Colm's College and now as assistant chaplain in the University of Edinburgh. I now find myself appointed to a task of a kind normally undertaken by an ordained minister, and this I ask the church to recognize, and to give me for it the full authority of ordination..."⁷

In 1968, the Church of Scotland declared that women were eligible for ordination to the ministry of word and sacrament on the same terms and conditions applicable to men. Mary Levison was ordained in 1978.

We can trace a similar pattern of development, especially in the last thirty to forty years, in churches elsewhere in western Europe: in the Waldensian church in Italy and in Reformed churches in France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Switzerland, etc., all of which began to ordain women.

It was not until the 1950s that churches in central and eastern Europe began to consider women as eligible for ordained ministry.⁸

In the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren (Czech Republic), the ordination of women was preceded by a long discussion between the first and second world wars. In that period, theologically-trained women proved competent in their ministry in the congregations: some worked as catechists; others were active as pastors' wives. In a convincing paper, Prof J.B. Soucek, who taught New Testament at the Comenius Faculty of Protestant Theology in Prague, showed that there were no defensible biblical and theological reasons against women's ordination. Women were first ordained to the ministry of word and sacrament in 1953. In spite of forty years of work by female pastors, the Synod (the highest governing body) of the church is still dominated by men.

In Hungary, two women gained admittance to the Theological Faculty of the University in Budapest in 1917. They could teach children, and could preach during Bible study or on similar occasions, but were not allowed to preach from the pulpit or to conduct worship. After 1948, as the social order changed, national churchwomen's associations ceased, and women became more and more active at the congregational level as Sunday school teachers or women's Bible study group leaders. A few women continued to study theology but they were confined to teaching children in schools and churches. Some, who married ministers, acted occasionally as substitutes for their husbands. In the 1960s, because of a shortage of ministers, and the growing number of women trained theologically, women began to be employed as full-time assistant ministers. But certain restrictions remained. They were not permitted to preside at communion, officiate at baptisms, weddings or funerals, or wear a clerical robe. In the 1970s, Prof Dr Klara Lenkei, Professor of Greek Language and New Testament at the Theological Faculty in Debrecen, wrote her Ph.D. thesis on "Women in the Gospels, Acts and the Apostolic Letters", which helped greatly to convince the male leadership in the Synod to vote for equal rights for women in the ordained ministry. This was in 1981; the first woman was ordained in 1986. Today there are many women pastors in the Reformed Church in Hungary. All clergy, male or female, qualify to become a bishop of a district after serving for ten years. But clergywomen still face many difficulties and prejudices. In the governing Synod Council of a hundred members, there are only three women.

The first ordination of a Reformed woman in Africa took place in the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa in 1963. In Kenya, the Presbyterian Church of East Africa accepted women elders in 1965, and resolved in 1976 to admit women to seminary training and the ordained ministry; the first woman minister was ordained in 1982. Several factors were at work: the agitation of the Woman's Guild and a strong ecumenical spirit, in response to the World Council of Churches and WARC, helped to break the resistance in the church to the leadership of women.

By 1992, women's ordination had been endorsed by slightly more than half the WARC member churches both in Africa and in Latin America, and by an even larger percentage in Asia and the Pacific. In 1995, after a long struggle, the Presbyterian Church of Korea (PCK) voted to ordain women, and now is faced with the new challenge of pastoral placement for the large number of theologically-trained women eager for a congregational call!⁹

Women's organizations in Reformed churches have long been helpful in providing knowledge of the Bible and of the church beyond the local situation. Nevertheless, access to formal theological education has been crucial in permitting women to break the chain of dependence on men for their self-definition and for biblical interpretation. It opens both to laypeople and to those called to ordained ministry the equipment for critical work in theology and for full participation in the life and decision-making of the church.

Affirming the role of laywomen in church and society

Women's ecumenical prayer movements

The ecumenical spirit among Reformed women has given birth to two ecumenical prayer movements, the World Day of Prayer (WDP) and the Fellowship of the Least Coin (FLC).¹⁰

In 1887, Mary Ellen Darwin James, president of a Presbyterian home mission board, called for a National Day of Prayer in the USA, "at which time there should be confession of individual and national sins with offerings that will fitly express the contrition"; the USA had not yet recovered from a bitter civil war, and immigrants arriving in search of a new life seemed lost and without hope. Her idea caught on, and soon spread beyond the US borders, first to Canada, and then to Europe and South Africa. After the second world war, the WDP was significant in helping Christian women to deal with the deep wounds of hatred and racism. It has been focal in empowering women to work ecumenically both locally and internationally. Today, Christian women from different traditions in 170 countries come together every year on the first Friday of March. In 1967, an international World Day of Prayer committee was created, which meets every four years.

The same spirit gave birth to the FLC. In 1956, led by American Presbyterian Margaret Shannon, a team of women calling themselves the Pacific Fellowship Mission gathered in Asia to promote the message of peace and reconciliation. One of the places they were to visit was South Korea, but Church of North India team member, Shanti Solomon, was refused a visa and found herself left behind in the Philippines. There she conceived the idea of women all around the world praying for peace and reconciliation, and for every prayer offered giving their country's "least coin" (Lk 21.1-4), with the coins going into a common pool. On their return to Manila, the team heard and embraced Shanti's vision, and the FLC began. Since 1956, it has spread to 40 countries and to Christian women of other church traditions. The FLC also has an international committee, which meets once a year to decide how the least coins will be used and to plan other activities.

Kiama kia Ngo and the Christian Single Parents Association

In 1922, young Gikuyu women in the Church of Scotland Mission in Kenya organized themselves into Kiama kia Ngo (Council of the Shield) to crusade against female circumcision (clitoridectomy) by preaching, teaching and speaking against the custom to other women. The Church of Scotland Mission legislated against the custom and decided to excommunicate any parents who allowed their daughters to be circumcised. Women met for prayer and Bible study and taught girls how to protect themselves. They sheltered those who ran away from their homes to avoid the practice. The government sided with them and in 1931 banned clitoridectomy on the grounds of health, but the law could not be implemented and remains only in the books. In some areas of Kenya the practice is a thing of the past due to the work of church women in teaching against it, especially by their own example of being exemplary women without circumcision. Contemporary African Christians remember their mothers who were in the forefront of crusading against female circumcision and gave cover to many girls who came to their homes to escape the "circumciser's knife".

The Kiama kia Ngo later transformed itself into the Woman's Guild. In practice, this tended to be a fellowship for successfully married women only. Widows, deserted women, unwed mothers, divorced and separated women are not excluded by the Guild's constitution; in practice, they have felt alienated and without a place in the church. These women are by law and custom denied some of the rights and privileges enjoyed by other women at home, in the church and in the nation. Even where the law says that they can inherit their parents' property, this rarely happens. About 1983 the single women in the church started coming together and formed the Christian Single Parents Association to fight for their rights to name their children and to leave legacies to them, to say no to those who wish to circumcise their daughters, to buy and sell property, to be recognized in the church, and to be ordained as ministers and elders like other church members. This has improved their image and that of their children very much, and the stigma has been reduced. One single mother has been ordained as a minister, and several congregations have ordained single women elders and have appointed some as chairs of their congregations.

Questions

What might women in your church do to honour the memory of the woman who anointed Jesus?
In what way would you identify yourselves with the woman who anointed Jesus?
What have women in your context done to affirm their role as full partners with men in God's mission?
What has your church done to affirm women as full partners with men in God's mission?
Where in the history of your church do you find examples pointing to the oneness of women and men in God's mission?

Notes

1. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, in the Dictionary of Feminist Theologies, p.70.

2. Studies 28, pp.76-77.

3. Studies 37, forthcoming.

4. Studies 31, p.10.

5. The Quarterly Register, vol.xi, November 1917, p.44.

6. Mary Levison, Wrestling With The Church (London: Arthur James, 1992), p.33.

7. Ibid., pp.60-66.

8. For what follows, cf. Nyambura J Njoroge and Jana Opocenska, eds., The Palm-tree: A Symbol of Commitment and Justice, Studies from the World Alliance of Reformed Churches 32 (Geneva: WARC, 1996).

9. Reformed World, Vol.45, No.1, pp.27-34.

10. Update, vol.4, no.1 (March 1994), p.4.