Ordination of Women in the Lutheran Church, 1970 Donna L
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Old Dominion University ODU Digital Commons History Theses & Dissertations History Spring 2001 Theology, Tradition, and Turbulent Times: Ordination of Women in the Lutheran Church, 1970 Donna L. Koch Old Dominion University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/history_etds Part of the History of Religion Commons, United States History Commons, Women's History Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Koch, Donna L.. "Theology, Tradition, and Turbulent Times: Ordination of Women in the Lutheran Church, 1970" (2001). Master of Arts (MA), thesis, History, Old Dominion University, DOI: 10.25777/7tf2-5745 https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/history_etds/21 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the History at ODU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ODU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THEOLOGY, TRADITION, AND TURBULENT TIMES: ORDINATION OF WOMEN IN THE LUTHERAN CHURCH 1970 by Donna L. Koch B.S. June 1966, M.S. August 1969, Illinois State University A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Old Dominion University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS HISTORY OLD DOMINION UNIVERSITY May 2001 Appj Ived by: J. Lawes (Director) Annette Finley-Cros^hite (Member) Jane T. Merritt (Member) ©2001 Donna L. Koch. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 1403792 Copyright 2001 by Koch, Donna L. All rights reserved. UMI___ __ ® UMI Microform 1403792 Copyright 2001 by Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT THEOLOGY, TRADITION, AND TURBULENT TIMES: ORDINATION OF WOMEN IN THE LUTHERAN CHURCH 1970 Donna L. Koch Old Dominion University, 2001 Director: Dr. Carolyn J. Lawes Women have been the diligent toilers, the faithful attenders, the patient servers in the Christian Church for centuries. And yet only relatively recently in the United States have they officially been able to preach, administer the sacraments, and minister fully to the spiritual needs of congregations as ordained Protestant clergy. For millions of Lutherans in the United States, 1970 was the beginning of a new era in their church when the Lutheran Church in America (LCA) and the American Lutheran Church (ALC) changed centuries of tradition and prepared the way for women to join the clergy. The third national Lutheran body, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS), at both its 1969 and 1971 conventions retained its conservative position, as it still does today, that the Word of God does not permit women to hold the office o f pastor. This thesis argues that for the LCA and ALC the duality of the push of internal forces within their churches and the pull of external forces in society moved them to accept women’s ordination. For the LCMS, however, the push of its own internal forces was very different, and when confronted with the same external forces, this church body reaffirmed its opposition to women’s ordination. The internal forces include the nineteenth-century immigrant character of American Lutheranism, the assimilation factor, Lutheran theology, and the historical role of women in the three Lutheran bodies. The external dynamics of events occurring in society in the late 1960s include the civil rights Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. movement, the Vietnam antiwar protest movement, and the women’s movement -- all of which brought about a questioning of authority, values, and institutions. A brief overview of the contemporary situation for women clergy in the Lutheran Church reveals the continued relevance of these forces. To support this thesis, the paper will examine secondary sources in Lutheran theology, Lutheran history, and the social history of the late 1960s. Primary' sources include interviews with women and in men in LCMS and LCA/ALC churches, official church publications and periodicals, oral history narratives from the ELCA Archives, and popular and scholarly works from the sixties. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Dedicated to the Reverend Judith Ann Cobb, who has lived the history Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I want to thank Dr. Carolyn J. Lawes, the director of this thesis, in whose class on women and religion in 1996 I first began to research the ordination of women in the Lutheran Church. She has been unfailingly supportive, perceptive in her comments and suggestions, and very patient waiting for me to complete this study. The other members of my committee, Dr. Annette Finley-Croswhite and Dr. Jane T. Merritt, have also offered invaluable assistance and guidance. All the faculty members in the Old Dominion University History Department with whom I studied deserve much praise for not only being excellent scholars and instructors but also for graciously accepting the President’s wife into their midst; it could not have been easy. For all those who so generously gave hours of their time in interviews, I am very grateful. Their knowledge and experiences added "life" to the printed sources. The Reverend Jean Bozeman also loaned me many books and papers from her personal files, and best of all, never in five years asked me when I was going to return them. And finally, years of conversations with the Reverend Judith A. Cobb far exceeded the two formal interviews cited in the thesis. Her life in the church and personal faith provided not only information for this thesis, but also inspiration in daily life. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I...................................INTRODUCTION.................................................................... 1 H. THE INTERNAL FORCES AFFECTING WOMEN’S ORDINATION...........................................................................27 THE IMMIGRATION FACTOR.....................................................27 LUTHERAN THEOLOGY...............................................................58 THE HISTORICAL ROLE OF WOMEN IN THE AMERICAN LUTHERAN CHURCH..............................79 IE. THE EXTERNAL FORCES AFFECTING WOMEN’S ORDINATION.........................................................................108 LUTHERANS IN A CULTURAL CONTEXT............................108 THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT.............................................124 THE ANTIWAR MOVEMENT.....................................................131 THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT.....................................................140 TV. CONCLUSION.................................................................. 173 THE ORDINATION OF WOMEN 1970...................................... 173 WOMEN’S ORDINATION THIRTY YEARS LATER..............177 INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL FORCES THIRTY YEARS LATER................................................................189 CONCLUSION.................................................................................201 WORKS CITED...................................... ...............................................................................205 VITA......................................................................................................................................... 220 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Women have been the diligent toilers, the faithful attenders, the patient servers in the Christian church for centuries. Women have been exalted as mothers who lead their children, and often erring husbands, to church; they have traveled to distant lands as nurses, teachers, and missionaries; they have been canonized as saints. And yet, only relatively recently in the United States have they officially been able to preach, administer the sacraments, and minister fully to the spiritual needs of congregations as ordained Protestant clergy. While most American Protestant denominations today accept women into the clergy, others still heed the warning of Thomas Aquinas that women are not up to “that eminence of degree that is signified by priesthood,” or they agree with Samuel Johnson: “A woman’s preaching is like a dog walking on its hind legs. It is not done well, and you are surprised to find it done at all.”1 American religious bodies have lagged far behind secular groups in recognizing women professionals and promoting gender equality. By 1917 all but four states admitted women to the bar; by 1972 every law school admitted students on an equal sex basis; by 1944, 90 percent of American medical schools admitted women. But women in the clergy Style manual used is Kate L. Turabian,A Manual fo r Writers o f Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 6 ed., revised by John Grossman and Alice Bennett, (Chicago: University o f Chicago, 1996). ‘Thomas Aquinas quoted in Raymond Tierneyer,The Ordination o f Women (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1970),