Female Clergy

"Let your women keep silence in the churches," wrote St. Paul to the Corinthians, and most of the traditional denominations have paid him heed. But the pressure is on. In 1956 the Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. opened the ministry to women. Last week Sweden's state-church Lutherans decided that the Swedes, too, were different from the Corinthians.

This battle of the sexes was not won without a struggle. "Pregnant preachers would be unseemly in the pulpit," said some of the traditionalists when the subject came up at the church convention last year. "Less so than fat, smug male priests," countered the feminists. When the convention vetoed the reform, the press kept up the pressure until Parliament convened a special church assembly of 45 clergymen and 57 laymen to reconsider the matter. When it came to the vote last week, it was 69 to 29 for the women.

But where were they? Instead of a throng of putative priestesses, there seemed to be hardly any women who wanted the job; 75% of the 152 female theology students at Uppsala University were against having women in the pulpit. At week's end one candidate came forward--pretty, blonde Britta Olen, 30, daughter of a vicar and already fully qualified for ordination. Scheduled to be married by year's end and to do mission work in South Africa with her missionary husband, she hopes she will find a bishop to ordain her before she leaves.

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