H26 Women's Leadership in the Church according to Tradition, 100-2010 C.E.

Women’s Leadership in the Church
according to Christian Tradition

Objectives of the course

• to trace the historical stages of development in women’s involvement in Christian ministry;
• to understand why and when women were ordained as deacons;
• to become aware of the various social and cultural prejudices that gradually caused the ban on women’s ministerial leadership to be enshrined in Church law;
• to be prepared to assess the correct rules of assessing what is, and what is not, genuine Christian Tradition;
• to engage in friendly discourse with those who, for the moment, hold different opinions.

Aaron Milavec is a strong communicator who has a rich background bringing biblical studies to bear upon pastoral issues.   Click here for details.

Course Outline

	Lesson 1. The issues at stake
	Lesson 2. The characteristics of authentic Tradition
	Lesson 3. Women in ministries in the early churches
	Lesson 4. Nature of the ordination of women as deacons
	Lesson 5. The Church Fathers re. women's leadership
	Lesson 6. Medieval theology and the Ministry of Women
	Lesson 7. Church Law and women's ministries
	Lesson 8. The ‘tradition’ of not ordaining women priests

Learning Style

Preparation: The course presumes that one has a basic understanding of pre-Reformation Christianity within the context of the history of Western civilization.  For someone who has never had a course in church history, it would be advisable to read one of the fine short histories that are available today.  For example:

• A Short History of the Catholic Church by J. Derek Holmes, Bernard W. Bickers (416 pp.)
  Amazon.com has a few economical used editions. 
• A Concise History of the Catholic Church by Thomas Bokenkotter (624 pp.)
  Amazon.com has a few used editions.
• Wikipedia provides a very brief overview for those who may be short of time.

Types of feedback called for: careful analysis of primary texts (including the bible)

Cross-cultural component = +4  Based on a scale +1 to +10.  This rating indicates the degree to which the presentation of this course includes an examination of (a) the rich diversity of cultures existing today and (b) the transformations that a given culture experiences over a span of time.

Interactivity: Besides offering one's own thoughts for comment, each participant normally spends ten to twenty minutes each week reflecting upon and offering feedback regarding the reflections of others in the class.  Guidelines for offering feedback are presented and implemented in such a way as to assure respect for the individuality of each participant and to provide a safe atmonsphere for free and open exchanges. Tutor availability: A tutor will be overseeing each session.  You may contact your tutor via email anytime (and, in some instances, via phone during limited hours).  You will receive regular feedback, encouragement, and challenges from your tutor each week.

Chatroom activity: On the eight Fridays, all the members of this course will participate in a 90-minute chatroom exchange on the topic of that week. These chatroom exchanges help to put a human face on the other members of your learning circle, and they result in depths of understanding that go beyond the Exploratory Questions in each Lesson. These chatroom sessions are highly structured, highly engaging, and offer strong elements for feedback as well.

Since participants in your learning circle live in various times zones, I ask that you click here in order to determine the local time for you when it is 10:30 a.m. in New York city. Please arrive in the chatroom 10 minutes early so that everyone can begin together on the designated Fridays. 

If you notice that the local time when the chatroom runs presents a grave difficulty or an impossibility for you, then please send a notice immediately to <font color="#0033cc">Moderator@fuse.net describing your difficulty.  If you foresee that prior engagements prevent you from participating in two or more chatrooms, then please describe this in an email as well.

To activate the chatroom, paste this address below into your browser or click here: Please try out this link now so that you can assure yourself that it will work for you when you need it.

http://www.basechat.com/c-files/catherinecollege.net/chat-two.htm

Participants are welcome to meet with other participants in the chatroom at times and for purposes they set for themselves at any time during the course.  If you notice that a class is in session, then please do not login.

Tutor availability: A tutor will be overseeing each session. You may contact your tutor via email anytime (and, in some instances, via phone during limited hours). You will receive regular feedback, encouragement, and challenges from your tutor and other participants of your learning circle each week.

Textbook: none. All readings are supplied online.

Time required each week: 3 to 4 hours at times convenient to yourself plus the 90-minute live chatroom session.

Graduation Certificate: Participants who wish to merit a Graduation Certificate are asked to complete a research project that requires ten to fourteen hours of research and writing beyond the eight lessons of the course. Practice shows that the choice of topic is best left open until the final weeks of the course when further details will be distributed.

Introduction

During the time of this course, you will become informed regarding the roles played by women in the various epochs of church history, and you will critically respond to the way churchmen welcomed or curtained these roles. All in all, you will be examining in detail how the long tradition of church practice and teaching has impacted the mission of God to women, by women, and for women.

The religious enterprise is usually guided by conservative instincts. This should not come as surprise. Whenever one discovers something of great value, the natural impulse is to preserve it for one's own enjoyment and to pass it on to one's children. Accordingly, the way of life taught by Jesus of Nazareth has been carefully passed down from generation to generation by those who gather together as "church" and understand themselves as "disciples" (i.e., followers in his way). In the words of the nineteenth‑century hymn, we can see how both Protestant and Catholic Christians felt about holding tight to the Jesus tradition:

Faith of our fathers [mothers] living still
In spite of dungeon, fire, and sword,
O how our hearts beat high with joy
Whenever we hear that glorious word!
Faith of our fathers [mothers], holy faith,
We will be true to thee till death.

While Catholic and Protestant Christians agree on the necessity of being conservative, they disagree strongly about what it is that God wants them to conserve. Catholics, for their part, have operated under the conviction that "the faith of their fathers" includes papal primacy, ordained priesthood, and devotion to Mary. Catholic Christians have traditionally clung to these things on the grounds that they were thereby preserving what had been practiced by "the one true Church" since apostolic times. Protestant Christians, for their part, have traditionally regarded these Catholic practices as human innovations which obscured the simplicity of faith that characterized "the true churches" of the apostolic period. In this frame of mind, Protestants have, to one degree or the other, removed from their churches those practices and devotions that did not seem to have any clear warrant from the Word of God (the Bible).

Once a church decides what God wants them to believe and to do, it seems that it would be a comparatively simple task to record this and to agree that nothing would ever be added or taken away. Such a rigid conservatism would be theoretically possible in so far as every church is a human institution. However, in so far as every church is a divine institution, such a conservatism would betray its foundational purpose. This is so because the Christian churches are committed, like their founder Jesus Christ, to listening to the voice of the living God: "Today, when you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts" (Hebrews 3:7, 4:7; Psalms 95:7). True religion, consequently, means not only living according to the standards of excellence contained in a tradition, but also training oneself for listening to God in the present moment. Such listening to God includes entrusting oneself to the divine promptings within one's personal and collective existence even when this means altering one's religious commitments in the process. Thus, from time to time, the conservative principle has to bend in order to embrace fresh understandings of "what God wants us to be" or else fall prey to the embrace of a dead and fossilized religious tradition that stands in the way of God's purpose.

When the religious enterprise functions in a conservative manner, it does so in the name of fidelity to God. When the same enterprise functions prophetically, it innovates in the name of that same God. Accordingly, the purpose of our examination here is to probe a Case Study on Slavery that explores when, how and why church traditions sometimes need to be changed in order to remain faithful to the living God.

 Lifelong Learning

This course will equip you with the skills to discover the large roles that women played at various times and places within the long history of the Christian church.  More importantly, however, this course raises again and again the central question as to how and why the Christian tradition has changed in the course of history even though, at every point, it is rooted in its foundational document, the bible.  It is noteworthy, therefore, that this course begins by exploring a very modern question: Why has the Roman Catholic Church judged that it is not free to allow women to be ordained whereas most Protestant churches do ordain women?  The answer to this question is based upon "a tradition of interpreting Scripture" that gets shaped within history.  Discerning what God would have us be and do, therefore, is never an easy task.