Lady in the Pulpit

Olle and Barbro Stahl live in Stockholm's working-class Stora Essingen District. Every morning Olle, 32, kisses Barbro goodbye at the door of their flat and drives his Volkswagen to the city's Vantor parish church, where he is a curate. Barbro, 30, spends an hour or so with her son Krister and then goes across her garden to the Essinge parish church, where she is assistant pastor.

"Let your women keep silence in the churches," enjoined St. Paul, and Christian tradition is strongly on the side of an all-male clergy. Outside Orthodoxy, the Anglican Communion and Roman Catholicism, however, the desperate need for clergy has given many churchmen cause to think twice about the validity of custom. Now at least 50 of the 168 churches belonging to the World Council of Churches admit women to the ministry. Barbro is the fifth of seven women to be elevated by the Swedish state Church to the Lutheran priesthood since Parliament authorized such an appointment in 1959.

She and Olle met in high school at Lund in 1949, went on to study theology together at the university there. They were married before receiving their degrees in 1958, and she worked as a secretary in a parish house before the legal change cleared the way for her ordination. Her clerical duties are long and tiring. Lutheran ministers in Sweden are also civil servants, responsible for recording all births, marriages and deaths. She has visits from parishioners in search of spiritual help, spends most of her evenings on youth work or speaking to women's organizations. Barbro also teaches Sunday school and every other week officiates at the parish Communion service.

There is still plenty of opposition to women ministers in Sweden, and last week ' Barbro was refused permission to preach in the cathedral of Linkoping. Another handicap is her tranquil good looks. "This is not a suitable attribute for a priest," thundered one church magazine after her ordination. "Her beauty might awaken wrong feelings in male parishioners."

Barbro, on the other hand, finds that as a woman minister she is able to communicate with young people, especially girls, "who are able to talk to me about things they could not tell a male priest." Barbro is well liked by her parishioners who seem to share her contempt for the Pauline shibboleth. "The time we live in " she says, "requires that both men and women help carry out and spread the teachings of Christ. Tradition is to help people, and not to bind them."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.