(Image: RLDS leaders listen to debate on legislation by conference delegates at the 1982 RLDS World Conference. Photo courtesy of Community of Christ Archives)
This episode features the story of the fight for women’s ordination in Community of Christ, leading up to the 1984 conference that approved women’s ordination.
Featured interviewees: Marge Troeh, Charmaine Chvala-Smith, Linda Booth, Gwendolyn Hawks-Blue, Carolyn Brock, and Jane Gardner.
Written and produced by: Naomi Brill, C’22; Em Papineau, C’20; Raleigh Williams, C’20
Duration: 17:25
Transcript
Music…. [“Bird Therapist”]
Raleigh: This is ‘Women’s Rites: A Podcast about Women’s Ordination,’ written and produced by students at Smith College.
Music….
Naomi: Hi, I’m Naomi, (Em) I’m Em, (Raleigh) and I’m Raleigh. We’re your hosts for this episode of ‘Women’s Rites.’ This season, we are exploring the story of women’s ordination in Community of Christ, a church with a quarter of a million members, formerly named the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or RLDS. This denomination began ordaining women in 1985. On the 35th anniversary of these first ordinations, we’re taking this season to look back on the journey towards women’s ordination in Community of Christ. To do so, we’ve interviewed women ordained in the first decade after the 1985 policy change–women who went on to become leaders in Community of Christ.
Em: Each episode in this series investigates a different topic. Today, we’re going to look at the controversy over women’s ordination. The issue first arose in 1970 at the RLDS World Conference, and the debate continued for 14 years. A 1 984 survey of RLDS members found that 32 percent of respondents were pro-women’s ordination, 49 percent were against, and 13 percent were undecided. Based on these figures, it would seem that the church was decidedly not ready for women to be ordained.
Raleigh: Yet, despite this, Section 156 was passed at the RLDS General Conference in 1984. Section 156 was more than a piece of legislation–it was considered a revelation from the RLDS prophet, but it had to have legislative approval from the church’s delegates at the World Conference. This document implemented women’s ordination, and women were first ordained to the priesthood in 1985, despite widespread opposition. We spoke with some ordained women about their experiences with the controversy.
Naomi: The first question that we asked these ordained women was this: Did you yourself ever question whether women should be ordained, or were you always sure that it was the right thing to do? And, how did you react to the news of Section 156?
Em: To start, we’ll hear from Marge Troeh, head of the RLDS Women’s Department in the 1970s. She was at the forefront of the fight for women’s ordination in the 1970s and 80s. When she started to think about the question of women’s ordination in the 1950s, she was surprisingly ambivalent.
Marge Troeh: I did not think about it [women’s ordination] at all. I can remember in the late 1950s in Los Angeles area, when my husband was in medical school, I was at a women’s meeting and it came up one night in our class discussion. And that’s the first time I remember even talking about whether women should or should not be ordained. And it just… At that point it was not an issue for me, I wasn’t against it, but it didn’t seem like an important thing to me, then.
Raleigh: Though Marge was initially ambivalent, she went on to take a strong stance for women’s ordination. Next, we’ll hear from Charmaine Chvala-Smith. Charmaine is currently the chaplain at Community of Christ Seminary at Graceland University. She felt strongly that women should be ordained after serving in important unordained positions.
Charmaine: But the more doors that kept being open for me that shouldn’t have been there, the more I really sensed that my desire to serve God and people was being honored in some way. So it felt like that was moving towards—it felt like that thing I was sensing inside, that stirring, was accurate. I was feeling like that was being validated as more doors opened for me to do these things. So by the time Section 156 passed in the World Conference in 84, I would say by that point I was—I felt quite strongly that I was responding to God’s call.
Naomi: So, Charmaine was sure that women should be ordained. But she wasn’t sure that she would be ordained, and if she wasn’t, she was happy to serve as an example of how women could participate in unordained ministry. Still, she was part of the first group of ordained women in 1985.
Em: While Marge and Charmaine came to support women’s ordination over time, some had a more revelatory experience, such as Linda Booth. Linda was the President of the Council of Twelve Apostles in Community of Christ until she retired last year. She had a dream that defined her position on the issue.
Linda Booth: And this story that I’m going to tell you sounds pretty mystical- I wouldn’t consider myself a mystical person and I don’t have a lot of dreams, but I had this peculiar dream about five years before the revelation was given. And in that dream, an elderly man- whom I considered elderly at the time- named Marvin, who lived in Osawatomie, Kansas, was in my dream. And he said to me that he believes someday women would be called to the priesthood and, in particular, I would be called.
Raleigh: She went on to say:
Linda Booth: Well, I had gone back to school at the University of Kansas driving from Olathe, Kansas, five days a week to finish my degree in Journalism and Mass Communication. And when I was pulling into the parking lot on April 3, 1984, I heard announced on the radio that during the World Conference, or the International Conference in Independence, Missouri, that the President of the church had given a revelation that women would be called to priesthood. And I sat there in the parking lot and I cried. I thought, “Oh, my goodness. It’s going to happen.”
Naomi: So, each of these women had a unique perspective on this issue, even though each of them would eventually be ordained. There was just as much variation in opinions among the members of their congregations. We wanted to know more, so we asked a few more questions: Did you find that male leaders in your local congregation were generally for or against women’s ordination? What about women? How did friends and family in the church respond to the controversy?
Em: Marge, who we heard from earlier, was in a supportive congregation, but also saw some backlash among other congregations in her area.
Marge Troeh: Oh, it varied. We live here in Independence, which is the center place that’s often called and it’s where the headquarters is. There are more congregations here in Independence than anywhere. And so, it really varied congregation by congregation. I was in a quite supportive congregation, but our congregations were then organized into stakes and when women were first called in our stake, they were rejected when others were first included in the vote, but it was also a skewed vote. People came across lines to fight against the ordination of women. But in my particular congregation, there was a… support.
Raleigh: While Marge’s congregation was supportive, some women faced rejection from within their own congregations, and even within their own families. Gwendolyn Hawks-Blue was one of the first African American women to be ordained in Community of Christ. Today, she serves on the Standing High Council, a group of High Priests who present and approve policies for the denomination as a whole. She told us about her close experience with direct opposition.
Gwendolyn Hawks-Blue: I did not…when the call came, I only shared it with my then-husband. I didn’t take it outside of our immediate family. He…he was opposed. As I watched the process, because I would have been a part of that first wave had I accepted at the moment, but it was a year later before, within a year because you only had a certain amount of time and then you had to let them know something. So, just short of a year I had watched the trauma that affected the Church overall, with people leaving, people refusing to be ministered to by women. But none of that occurred within the congregation I attended.
Naomi: Some ordained women were sympathetic towards those who disagreed with their ordination. Carolyn Brock was serving Community of Christ in Kenya during the 1980s. She would later serve in the Office of Peace and Justice, and then Integrated Formation Ministries until she retired in 2010. She reflected on why she thought many broke apart from the denomination to form independent congregations. These groups are called Restorationist groups.
Carolyn Brock: Some of the more conservative congregations were resisting, rebelling, refusing to do this. And it was, I think that things perhaps were not handled real well. Really very well at that time. Maybe some more harsh like okay well we’re just going to shut you guys down. And then those congregations tend to go off and become kind of offshoot groups that are still functioning, some of the Restorationist groups.
Em: Charmaine met those who opposed women’s ordination with compassion and understanding.
Charmaine: And you could just see people struggling. Not because they were mean spirited, or knowingly sexist, but because this was a lot. This was a lot to deal with in their image of who God was, and what the church was about, and, I mean, you could kind of say well, if we’re saying now that ordaining women is okay, that means we didn’t get it right earlier. And how could we be the one true church, for those who are still hanging onto that, how can we be the one true church, if we didn’t get it right earlier? So we must’ve been right earlier, so we can’t go forward with this.
Raleigh: Similar questions and issues were reverberating throughout American culture during this time, so how did this Community of Christ-specific narrative fit within its broader social context? To find out more, we asked each ordained woman, do you consider yourself a feminist? Do you think that the wider social context (Second Wave Feminism, the ERA, etc.) influenced the movement for women’s ordination? If so, how?
Naomi: Carolyn, who we heard from earlier about Restorationist groups, explained how the social context prompted women in the church to ask big questions.
Carolyn Brock: And yes, I think the ERA and women’s rights and feminism and all of those things impacted our whole denomination, particularly the women who are older than I am, some of whom are still alive and are my heroes. Barbara Howard, Marge Troeh, some of the women who were first ordained and had to put up with a lot of that hassle. And they had definitely been forward thinkers in, and had worked in women’s ministries for the church and promoted some of these thoughts and had actually posed questions to the denomination like, why isn’t this happening. What’s our problem here, and they had stirred up some of the old male leaders of the church to, to look at this issue and to pose the question as to why is this wrong? Why isn’t this an equal rights thing?
Em: Jane Gardner is the Presiding Evangelist in Community of Christ, and is the first woman to serve in this position–before women’s ordination, her position had been called Presiding Patriarch. In this office, she offers spiritual counsel to the church as a whole. She felt that the movement in the church was more subtle than the wider social movement, but women’s ordination was definitely influenced by its context.
Jane Gardner: So, I do consider myself a feminist. I don’t… I’m not a… In my day, in the 1960s and 70s, it would have been called a bra burner, I don’t consider myself that blatant about it, but I certainly advocated for it.
Raleigh: She continued,
Jane Gardner: So yeah, I think things that were happening in the 60s and 70s with the women’s movement were important. I do think they had an influence on the Church, but I don’t remember it being a really blatant, like there were no marches or anything like that in terms of how people felt about it.
Raleigh: Charmaine was adamant that women’s ordination was a direct result of the Second Wave Feminist movement. Even today, Charmaine argues that controversies within the RLDS church are far from over–there are always new barriers to break in regard to inclusion and leadership.
Charmaine: We’re deeply indebted as a church to the cultural movements around us, particularly at that time. But today as well. Our ability to be able to move, maybe not as quickly as I would like, but fairly quickly on issues of ordination and marriage for gay and lesbian, same-gendered couples, was partly too because the society was able to start talking about it, and create that arena in which we could, as a church, see some of our blind spots and say no, we believe in the worth of all persons, and we believe that all are called by God to ministries of different times. So what happened then in the 80s with ordination of women was essential for many of the other changes that followed.
Em: From Linda Booth to Charmaine Chvala-Smith it is apparent that section 156 and the controversies which came with it affected women in the RLDS church deeply and uniquely. Some women talked about how they went from ambivalent to pro-women’s ordination over time, while others had single moments that defined their perspective on the issue. While some women had supportive families and congregations, others faced painful opposition from other church members and loved ones. Additionally, they all considered themselves feminists to varying degrees. Based on Charmaine’s concluding thoughts, the passing of Section 156 was just the tip of the iceberg in the fight for full inclusion for all in Community of Christ.
[Theme Music]
Raleigh: In the next episode, we’ll be talking about what it’s like to be called to the priesthood.
Naomi: That concludes our podcast for today. Special thanks to Marge Troeh, Charmaine Chvala-Smith, Linda Booth, Gwendolyn Hawks-Blue, Carolyn Brock, and Jane Gardner. Also, thanks to Dan Bennett, Travis Grandy and Yasmin Eisenhauer of the Smith Learning, Research, and Technology Team. Thanks to Rachel Killebrew of Community of Christ Library Archives. And thanks to the Andrew Mellon Foundation that supports public-facing student writing at Smith College.
Em: Tune in next time on Women’s Rites! [Theme music]