CRCNA Inside Baseball #10: Dissonance, Respect, and Women in Office (or not)

In Evangelical Christianity, there have been many debates on the role of women in the Church and life. Generally, we throw these into two buckets; compartmentalization and egalitarianism. But these words are categories that are imported from outside of the culture of a denomination. Because many traditions use these words, they develop their own meaning that can start to override the position that denomination has come to.

This is relevant for the CRCNA because of the conversation that we had about women, church office, and ordination. Our conversation began with a basic question: Can women serve in Church office (especially as ordained deacons, elders, and Ministers of the Word)? At one time they were barred from all these roles, but once the question was asked there was a report at Synod in 1973 that said there was no Biblical case for barring women from these offices. This obviously represented a large change, so a big debate began in the CRCNA. Lots of this conversation centered on 1 Timothy 2:8-3:13, but as good Reformed people, we also discussed the whole of Scripture together. The debate was trying to determine “Where does Scripture lead us?”

The debate when back and forth for the next twenty-ish years causing many contentious Synods and being described as the “women in office wars.” In 1995, almost out a sense of exhaustion over the endless debate, a report was published outlining two comprehensive Biblical views on whether or not women were permitted to serve in church office. Both views covered the whole scope of popular texts on women in Scripture, and both address the strengths and weaknesses of each position. The report endorsed both views as acceptable Biblical views with neither one declared the “correct” one. Women were permitted to be ordained in Congregations which took that view, and a five-year moratorium on the topic was declared. When the decision was reviewed in 2000¹ it was kept in place. We call this resolution the “local option” because a local congregation can decide which of the two official views it accepts and practices. Eventually this has worked its way into other assemblies (Classis immediately and then Synod as of 2008) so that Synod and many Classes seat women as delegates at their meeting.

So are we complementarian or egalitarian? Well we don’t actually fit into either box. We have a unique approach to this issue. Most other denominations either bar women from official church office, or require that all churches allow women to serve in church office. They have picked one². Because of the wrestling we did together as a denomination, we came to a different decision and this is the one which we live in. It’s an expression of our denominational culture.

This debate and then its resolution feel very Christian Reformed to me. There is a focus on interpreting scripture and discerning what is right. When the body could not stably agree on what the right answer was (after much back and forth), it recognized the serious work done on both sides and suggested maybe there are two answers that can be drawn from Scripture. This decision has held in the denomination since then.

Many CRCNA congregations were not happy about this decision. A large number of congregations left and formed the United Reformed Church in North America (URCNA). But many stayed. Conservative congregations who remained had to live with the tension of having other congregations that they completely disagreed with work alongside them as part of the denomination

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This position requires you to hold on to some dissonance. I love this dissonance. You need to believe one of two things.

1) To believe that women should not be ordained officebearers, and yet recognize that other congregations who have women officebearers are doing so for sound Biblical reasons.

2) To believe that women should be officebearers, and yet recognize that other congregations do not allow that for sound Biblical reasons.

Because this position involves dissonance, it requires a certain kind of respect to maintain. We cannot assume that other congregations hold the same position as ours does. When we’re doing pulpit exchanges, we have to know whether another congregation is open to women preaching or not. When we talk together about leadership training, some congregations are looking to train men, while others are looking to train men and women. We have a little checkbox when congregations are calling a Minister which indicates if they are open to only men, men and women, or only women. We have to respect the discernment that local congregations have gone through in coming to one of these two positions. Each of these actions is about respecting both views.

One of the challenges of this position is that not everyone may be as comfortable with the dissonance as I am. If you’re not interested in the dissonance, you may be in one of two categories.

1. It’s possible that some who believe women should not be officebearers do not believe that other congregations are doing so for sound Biblical reasons. They may be waiting for the time when the denomination revisits and changes this decision.

2. It’s also possible that some who believe women should be officebearers do not believe that other congregations do not allow for that for sound Biblical reasons. They may be waiting for every Church to come around to their position.

There’s no way to know if you’re truly abiding by our decision, or if you’re in one of these categories. We have to have a little bit of trust. But we build trust by demonstrating respect in some of our public actions. This is difficult.

I think part of what enables us to hold the dissonance and keep up respect comes from our institutional memory. The “Women in Office Wars” were a very difficult conflict that many witnesses in the CRCNA don’t want to revisit. We rely on people to maintain our shared culture as a denomination. But eventually that institutional memory will run out. When that happens, the acts of respect for people who disagree with us can maintain this dissonance within our culture. Both sides have to continue to agree with what was originally decided, that there are two Biblically valid answers to this question.

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The first point I wanted to make from retelling this story was to mention this role of memory in a denomination. I sometimes see people join the CRCNA and then start to ask a lot of questions about why we do certain things. We have some quirks, and there isn’t always a specific decision or theological statement that can explain it clearly. Sometimes our actions come out of our story as a CRCNA culture. This decision and its ongoing presence are tied up in the story of those twenty-seven years of conflict at Synod along with a host of other stories. Part of what makes us the CRCNA and not another denomination is that we continue to tell these stories and we continue to respect the decisions that were made at the end of them.

The second point I wanted to make is about my personal feelings about this story. I LOVE the dissonance required by this decision because I think it’s a very faithful reflection of some pieces within the Reformed perspective. We hold a high view of Scripture, and so we believe that Scripture should inform our decisions as a body. We wrestled with Scripture together for a long time, not allowing for easy answers and presenting the best version of both positions. So this decision, which comes out of the story of a long period of discernment and disagreement, still comes from our wrestling with Scripture. I love what that says about our denominations ability to see God at work among us even as we look at his unchanging word.

Next time the dissonance of this decision comes up, I hope that people remember where it comes from, what part of our culture it is tied to, and that you treat others on the opposite side of this decision with respect for their place.

1. This report is in the CRCNA’s “Agenda for Synod 2000” pp. 355-373. I wish I could link it directly here, but reports from Agendas aren’t published separately anywhere (which is its own inside baseball post that I will write when I get to it in two years).

2. There are some exceptions. The Evangelical Presbyterian Church in the US considers this a “non-essential” doctrine on which there can be disagreement. This is similar to the CRCNA’s decision in consequence, but I think it’s still different.