Tag: female clergy

No matter how qualified, how passionate, or how accomplished, women have often been shut out of religious community elderships.

(RNS) For now, statements from church headquarters in Silver Spring, Md., focus less on gender and more on concern that regional church bodies have forged ahead with their own decisions without consensus from the wider denomination.

The Church of England has said no to consecrating female bishops and says the issue can't be addressed again until 2015.

According to the Religion News Service, "Many of the 470 members of the church's three-tiered General Synod (bishops, clergy and laity) were stunned that the House of Laity couldn't garner a two-thirds majority in favor of women bishops.

Two U.S. regional groups of the Seventh-day Adventist Church have recently approved the ordination of women pastors, moving faster than the worldwide church’s study of the issue.

The Pacific Union Conference, which includes California and four other Western states, voted 79 percent to 21 percent at a special session on Aug. 19 to “approve ordinations to the gospel ministry without regard to gender.”