Next month, my denomination’s synod will receive the final report from the Special Committee on Female Deacons. In the report, the study committee recommends that synod should remove the statement “Women as well as men may hold the office of deacon” from the RPCNA Testimony or “fundamental law.”
The committee argues that their recommendation is a win for peace: both sides will be able to abide by their conscience within the denomination.
The committee describes the current situation as inhospitable to men who disagree with the constitution, claiming that “For too long we have not been welcomed to hear the arguments for and against certain positions.” This ignores the facts that 1) men are permitted to take exception to the doctrine of women deacons without fear of backlash and 2) that they were given a study committee (rather than being sent men to lecture them on the written doctrine of the church and defrocked when they hold fast to their conscience). The undeniable reality is that the church has welcomed their arguments.
In its description of the peaceable outcome assumed by this change, the committee only considers ordained men. The hoped-for peace would be the exclusive benefit of some of the ordained men–men who freely sought ordination in a denomination that expressly permits women to be deacons. This permission is not a change that has occurred since their ordination, such that they have now found themselves in a denomination in which their consciences are not at peace. It has been the practice of the RPCNA for over one hundred years.
The benefit of striking the sentence “Women as well as men may hold the office of deacon” is that it makes the currently ordained men who disagree with our standards more comfortable, freeing them to teach a position contrary to the present law and order of the church. Indeed, the committee states plainly that ordained men are currently acting in opposition to the law and order of the church by not ordaining female deacons and that removing this sentence from the Testimony would eliminate “the fear of charges being brought.”
The risk of removing the sentence “Women as well as men may hold the office of deacon” is that women are erased from the description of the office in the Testimony, requiring men of good faith to teach their congregations that the standards of the denomination do not fundamentally exclude women, and to not keep them from this office even though they may personally disagree. Again, those who benefit from this change are the men who are in disagreement with the fundamental law of the church and yet have been granted an exception, freeing their conscience already.
It is striking that in this report, there are no considerations about what their recommendation means for the women of the denomination. What will be the effect on them? The cost of this change will be borne by their sisters in Christ. We will be left in a position where our ability to be deacons is not clearly stated in our church documents, in which we will have to begin from scratch to prove from Scripture and our denominational history that the office of deacon is open to us. The women of this denomination will be left diminished, robbed of the honor due for their service and labor in the church.
Many may respond that the proposed change does not limit women’s gifts being used, that it still permits women to serve in the church, both in ordained and unordained capacities. This is true. What it does is make women even more invisible in their service than they often are, failing to give them the honor due to faithful servants of Christ’s church.
If we need an example, we simply need to observe the RPCI. As the committee report notes, the RPCI does not ordain women deacons. Yet their testimony does not expressly exclude them. Thus, what is not a clear inclusion has become a tacit exclusion.
The report presents the main problem as the lack of doctrinal unity among the elders, rather than the failure of the church to pass on her doctrine to the men she has ordained. This is the true problem, and one which the church courts have been woefully lacking in remediating. Why have the church courts not noticed the increasing number of men taking exception to the ordination of women deacons, and formed a committee in order to investigate the nature of the problem and suggest a solution?
My own analysis is that, at almost every turn, we are more comfortable with restriction, because we assume that if we err, it won’t be because we were too cautious. Like the servant entrusted with the talents, do we perhaps fear God to be “a hard man,” and think that if we bury what he has given us, we will not risk judgment? Why would we not instead fear God’s judgment for ignoring the women “ezer”s he has given the church, and squandering, or worse, exploiting, their gifts?