Women in Church

"Let your women keep silence in the churches," said St. Paul (I Corinthians 14:34). But Christ put women very near the center of things, and they have played a mighty role in church history as saints and martyrs, organizers and spiritual guides.* Orthodox and Roman Catholic canon laws forbid females to administer the sacraments, but Protestantism opened the door with its conception of the priesthood of all believers, and in recent years, women ministers have become almost a sectarian commonplace. The U.S. census for 1950 reported an alltime high of 6,777 --4.1% of the total number of clergymen.

Last week the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (see below) voted to ordain women, but left the final decision on the matter up to the local presbyteries. Moreover, the cause of the distaff dominae got a new boost from Britain. The Rev. Elsie Chamberlain, 45, tall, dark and handsome Congregationalist minister, was unanimously elected chairman of the Congregational Union -- top job in British Congregationalism.

Chairman-elect Chamberlain was a 24-year-old dress designer in London when she heard her call to the church ("At first it seemed a bit highfalutin. But I just couldn't do anything other than be a minister"). She took a B.D. at King's College, London University, in 1946 was appointed first woman chaplain to the armed forces. The next year she married a Church of England priest, the Rev. John Carrington. For a while she was pastor of the Vineyard Congregational Church in Richmond, Surrey, about four miles from Hampton, where her husband is vicar, but she gave that up officially (she still preaches there) to join the interdenominational religious staff of the BBC.

Congregationalist Chamberlain gets on well with her Anglican husband. "All it means is that we have two sermons to chew over on Sundays, instead of one," she says. "And of course we have some terrific arguments. My husband quite often starts off, 'Call yourself a minister?' Of course he considers that anyone who hasn't been 'properly' ordained, with the laying on of hands, has not really been ordained. Fortunately, we both like to argue . . . But sometimes he's rude about extempore prayers, or he'll say, 'Call yourself a church?' "

Chairman Chamberlain easily had the last word: "In the Congregational Church we're all just ministers. But a woman does have one advantage. She can always talk to the 'mums,' and it's the mums who matter. I think it's the mums who set the spiritual tone of England."

* Though the titles Bishopess, Priestess and Deaconess are sometimes found in the early Church, these referred to the title of the husbands, as modern German wives may be called Frau Doktor or Frau Professor.

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