Punishment leads to Progress

 

If you are being punished anyway, you might as well do the thing that earns the punishment. This seems to be the thinking behind the vote that was passed yesterday by the executive committee of the North German Union (NGU) of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church.
The constituents of the NGU voted in 2012 to treat men and women equally and to ordain regardless of gender. This vote was later put on hold, as there were no women pastors requiring action. At about the same time hopes came up that the General Conference (GC) might be interested in changing its stance as it instituted a study commission on ordination (TOSC). These hopes were dashed when in 2015 the GC in session in San Antonio refused to allow local world regions to decide this practice for themselves according to their local needs. In 2016 the leadership of the NGU again took up the matter and tried to find a way to be compliant with the regulations of the world church by giving both male and female pastors the same kind of commissioning blessing instead of ordination.

The surprise was, of course, that the GC president Ted Wilson was intent on punishment for any digression from his expectations of obedience. According to his understanding, women should not be ordained but men must be ordained, although this mandatory ordination is not expressed in any paragraph of the Working Policy. Answering a question on this position, Wilson replied that ordination for males is implied as it has always been done.
The NGU was not ordaining women, but, like in other Unions in northern Europe, men were not being ordained either. This should have been a possible compromise in order to preserve the global unity of the church, but Wilson was not satisfied. At Annual Council on October 15, 2019, the GC executive committee voted to reprimand six Unions, including the NGU, for noncompliance. The effort of the NGU to show consideration toward the world church rules had been in vain

Any hope that the GC session in 2020 would change things was crushed as the session had to be postponed twice due to the Covid pandemic. It was now time to finally take action.
Yesterday’s decision has been received with jubilation by some, while others accuse the NGU of apostasy. That was to be expected. So far there has been no reaction from GC leadership. Many have been disappointed at the stalemate as the question of ordination has been practically ignored during the last two years. But if we are to believe the critics of women’s ordination, there is movement going on in many conferences in North America. Maybe they are just going to act and do what they consider right. It seems that they are finally getting tired of waiting for change to happen. The top of the organization has not shown any signs of de-escalation.

To me, this seems to be a direct consequence of the warning issued to the North German Union by the GC for having voted equal treatment of men and women. Trying to be compliant by not implementing the vote of 2012 did not satisfy the GC. So why not do what they were punished for anyway? This was a logical step that had to be taken. We will have to wait and see what penalties the next Annual Council will impose.

 


[Photo courtesy of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists]

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