Ordaining the Zeitgeist

...1) The history of his madness is not explained...

...In 1968 he was sacked from his post as a mathematician...

...Gennady Shimanov ignored a summons for psychiatric examination for several months...

...a responsibility in fact to claim my own authority and live accordingly...

...There are now women priests in the Episcopal Church of America...

...The reasons for this controversy are to a great extent historical...

...To non-Episcopalians, this fact may seem insignificant...

...Fearing the Terry Qui.rt is a student in philosophy and classics at the University of Texas, Austin...

...The bishops can recognize me or not--but they can't do anything to invalidate the sacrament...

...When I woke up the next morning, I saw two male nurses beating up a patient...

...Who has perpetuated this unfortunate myth...

...Speaking after the Convention vote, one bishop, John Spong of Newark, remarked: "The issue is simple justice...

...A. flames McAdams, a graduate student in political science at the University of Cakfornia, Berkeley, wm?es regularly for the New Oxford Review, a/)lg, h-c/aurc/a pubkcation...

...Faith is of course central to catholic doctrine, but i~ is also no small matter for Protestants since, it wilt be lemembered, faith is precisely what the): che.~se to defend in their Reformatiom This is one rear, on wLy religious Americans were at least stigbd), shocked when they recen,:ly heard Barbara Waiters in~er,,'iewJacqtml:i;e Means, Lhe first women: io be orta[ned undec new Episcopal law...

...his "incorrect behavior" consisted entirely in his religious activity (churchgoing, religious witnessing to friends...

...The study of religion is important because it is one of the few indicators that we have of the sources and motivations of human action...

...Sex IVill Never Be the Same Nevertheless, there is one major stumbling block which the advocates of the female priesthood have had to overcome...

...But it is quite different with you...

...in 1972 he was arrested and jailed for six months...

...Others have simply split from the church body, while retaining the "Episcopal" designation...

...American post-industrial man, however, is prone to rebel against his past, increasingly demanding reasons, concrete reasons, for his actions and beliefs...

...But I do believe in caring, and that's what religion's all about, isn't it...

...He likes to know what he is doing, and he likes to have control over it...

...General Pyotr Grigorenko, born in 1907, was a Party member at age 20...

...Since the church has taken a strong stand against racism, it can only court hypocrisy if it fails to take a similarly strong stance on sexism...

...In fact, sex is proving diminishingly effective as a way to organize society...

...The "broad" Protestant perspective is primarily organizational and functional...

...verified...

...The ordination of women is in fact so controversial a measure that it may eventually rip the church apart...

...Yet, argue the ordination advocates, men and women are not only equal in the mundane terms of democratic politics...

...When we talk about the sexes, he writes, "we are dealing with male and female not merely as facts of nature but as the live and awful shadows of realities utterly beyond our control and largely beyond our direct knowledge...

...Significantly her ordination comes also at a time when one Washington, D.C...

...The response: "No, Barbara, I do not...

...It was in "my childhood," she confesses, "that I first became aware of what I now would name androgyny, the interesting blending of so-called 'male' and 'female' characteristics in all people...

...From this admission onward, the road to the priesthood is an easy one...

...On the ecumenical level, the consequences have already proven profound...

...But it is eviden,ly socie...

...For one thing, Protestants do not claim to have "priests...

...But the issue is not solely religious...

...This is why it is not surprising to find that one of the Philadelphia 11, Betty Bone Schiess, was so determined to be licensed as a priest that she filed civil suit against her bishop, charging him with illegal sex discrimination...

...Generally speaking, there are three major types of Episcopalians, "high," "broad," and "low," the first being catholic-minded, and the latter two leaning toward Protestantism...

...Low," or evangelical, Episcopalians are split on the ordination issue, and because they are numerically the smallest of the three types, they have exercised the least clout in the debate...

...And, various catholic-leaning groups are presently in the initial stages of organizing a separate Episcopal communion on a national scale...

...But the ordination of women is by far the most controversial issue confronting Episcopalians, and its acceptance represents nothing short of a revolutionary- change in the church's selfconception...

...We are," Ms...

...Of course, the conference was immediately condemned by several U.S...

...Senate candidate, has solemnly observed, the radicalism of the '60s has become the common sense of the ' 70s...

...But here the advocates turn to sociology to bolster their claims...

...Thus, one of the ordained women, Alia BozarthCampbell, could use one of her homilies to urge "everyone to actively seek out his or her own freedom...

...In the ward there were more patients than beds...

...Some Episcopalians have left the Church for other churches...

...One is astonished at the readiness of the proponents of women's ordination unabashedly to admit this influence...

...Either He was blinded by the "environmental conditioning" of His milieu and failed to appreciate the potential role of women, or He was merely inhibited by the hostility of His society to such a heightened female ;ole...

...Authority inhibits...

...Diagnosed later that year by state psychiatrists as afflicted with "sluggish schizophrenia from an early age," Plyushch began the internment at Dnepropetrovsk which ended only Veith his expulsion from the country in January 1976...

...The very same forces, we are informed, that have oppressed American minorities for centuries...

...There are," he argues, "parallels between the Civil Rights Movement and the Women's Movement and this is what we are witnessing today...

...Naturally, the great bOte noire of the movement is the issue of sex, that is, specifically the difference between the sexes, and the controversy over this topic has produced some unusual and innovative interpretations of Christian theology...

...But the appeal to "common sense" is a tricky exercise, for all human beings, whether they live in huts or condominiums, tend to act on the basis of what makes common sense to them...

...The problem has been that their opponents do not maintain that women are inferior, only that they are different...

...Both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches have condemned the new ordination policy, and the Polish National Catholic Church has severed its ties of intercommunion with the Episcopal Church...

...The issue is clearly a matter of equ~tl opportunity for women...

...Because the Christian God chose to become incarnate in male form and because Christ selected only men to number among His Apostles, catholic Episcopalians argue that the priest can only be male...

...But, Spong continues, the ordination of women is a breath of fresh air...

...In 1961 he delivered an antiStalinist speech and commenced anti-Khrushchev and antigovernment fulminations, all from a Marxist perspective...

...One high-ranking laymember of the church, Charles Willie, has summed up the contention...

...This is the spirit which has moved one Roman Catholic woman to intone: " I ' m in the rage stage, which comes just before revolution...

...In contrast, while the catholic perspective includes all of these functions, it is primarily based on the notion of a ministry of sacrifice, that is, on the representation of Christ's sacrifice for mankind...

...An old dear crosses herself, goes out and carries on with her own affairs, having forgotten about God already...

...Mary's Episcopal Church...

...Some lay and groaned with the painIthey had been given injections of sulphur...

...But it is still too early to predict the course of this imminent social reformation...

...Perhaps...

...The Ahernative: An American Spectator April 1977 5 precedent have combined to serve as the bases of the Episcopal conception of priesthood and, in this light, the decision to ordain women may be seen quite logically--by "broad" and "high" churchmen alike--as ridding the church of much of its catholic temper...

...Thus, the battle has principally been waged between "broad" and "high" Episcopalians, each of which has a different view of the church...

...Shimanov had engaged in no dissident political activities...

...It is anathema, too, to speak of God as " H e " ; why not also as "She...

...The Episcopal Church has left us by creating a new PrOtestant sect...

...The Convention also took steps to adopt a substantially revised version of the church's Book of Common Prayer, an initiative which, for many Episcopalians, signaled a drastic departure from the communion's doctrinal and liturgical heritage...

...Schism is no minor problem at the moment...

...In large measure, the debate centers on the priority of authority and the challenging of its validity--a spirit which the '60s certainly did a great deal to foster...

...It reminds us of the 'separate but equal' doctrine in education which this country devoutly cherished for so many years...

...Only men can take part in the "apostolic succession" which emanates directly from Christ, and to put women in the position of acting as Christ's vicars would be to set everything askew...

...We Christians have known some great moments...

...The church could be seen as acting---for better or worse--as a strategic factor influencing society's course...

...they are, moreover, equal in all the essentials...

...George Gallup has recently pointed to a resurgence of religious conviction in America and, as everyone knows, the U.S...

...To be sure, the relation between chmch and society is a reciprocal one, and society has always exercised some inflaence o,~ religious belief and practice...

...Tired of being barraged by depictions of God that suggest His maleness, Fr...

...You have cut yourself off from life...

...has been blessed with a President twice-born...

...In reality both are freedom movements for men as well as women, and for blacks and browns as well as whites...

...This shift can be seen as one aspect of an emergent "post-industrial" era, an age in which a premium is put upon science, rationality, and efficiency and in which old myths, traditions, and sentiments are exposed for their ostensive lack of practicality and cast aside...

...From the clinic he was sent to Kashchenko hospital for a couple of weeks for observation...

...As they explained to me, they were being punished for bad behavior...

...In the past, it has been conceivable to point to this or that aspect of church dogma to explain why people acted (or failed to act) in the way they did...

...others have condemned it as heretical...

...Of the two houses of the Episcopal Church's governing body, the House of Bishops approved the ordination of women with the support of only 60 percent of the prelates...

...Terry Quist Psychotherapy, Soviet-style How Soviet psychiatrists cure dissidents' delusions...

...Does this mean that religion is on the upswing...

...Hewitt and Ms...

...Modern common sense revolts against such a claim...

...As Boyd writes, "when a priest is a woman, even God is no longer male...

...priest has announced that he ",viii soon "marry" a homosexual couple...

...As its rector, James Mote, explained the action, "we are not leaving the church...

...As far as the sexual dimensions of this movement are concerned, we are reasonably well-informed...

...In late April of 1969, he was finally taken from his work to a clinic, where he was frankly informed: "...inquiries are coming to us from the KGB...

...This is the case with the recent withdrawal of the Colorado parish of St...

...It is enough to admit, simply, that the proponents of women's ordination are right about one thing--we are entering a new age...

...But you were educated in a Sovie~ school, and were brought up in a family of non-believers...

...Yet, it would be incorrect to suppose that other churches do not share the pressures of the Episcopal Church...

...It is not up to this writer to predict whether the changes in American religion and in American lifestyles presage either the bliss of a bacchanalian revel or the gloom of an Orwellian nightmare...

...No one can deny me this right...

...Hey-ward elaborates, "agents of transformation...

...For this reason, it should not surprise us to find that the greatest opposition to women's ordination comes from Anglican churches churches in the "unenlightened" African continent...

...Take, for example, C.S...

...But there is more to the issue than this particular denial of authority...

...A woman can do almost anything a man can do, so why not ordain women...

...The problem we now face," they explain, "is that the old patterns are changing and we can no longer be as clear as we once were about which sex should do what...

...Christ's actions, they contend, must not be taken too seriously...

...Thus, when the ordination issue was brought to the floor in September, the vote was close...

...In fact, the sociological argument seems to falter on its own logic...

...Thus, one of the women, Jeannette Piccard, could proclaim triumphantly: "I am a priest...

...Keeping close step with its reformist orientation, the Convention also passed a resolution recognizing homosexuals as full members of the church and tacitly acknowledging homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle...

...The literature on women's ordination bears this suspicion out, for the altered priesthood is only the beginning of a larger protest which extends far beyond matters of religion...

...What the NCR has in mind is something specifically modern, "scientific" common sense, and this orientation is manifestly incompatible with traditional approaches to questions of faith and practice...

...After vigorous Western protest, Grigorenko was released in June of 1974, physically broken by his imprisonment...

...I could see that from her face...

...One man's tongue was lolling out, another was rolling his eyes, a third walked around unnaturally bent over...

...That is what worries us...

...but witnessing to friends was forbidden, and the KGB didn't give a hang for the Constitution...

...Our times demand," he has proclaimed, that "both sexes be given the opportunity of serving as ordained ministerial priests" (emphasis added...

...at the Minneapolis meeting of the Episcopal General Convention, they were hardly in agreement on the idea of women priests...

...In light of this trend, we might find ourselves wondering whether religion will continue to be truly religious if it comes to reflect the play of societal forces alone...

...Born in 1939, Plyushch began writing neo-Marxist dissident tracts in 1966...

...So speaks Leonid Plyushch of the horror of his first days in the Dnepropetrovsk special psychiatric hospital in the Soviet Union...

...And, if one thinks about it, there is certainly more than just a grain of truth to this assertion...

...To ordain women priests, however, is to violate catholic sacraments...

...In the same vein, the most outspoken of the "Philadelphia deacons," Carter Heyward, has expressed the conviction that she has " a right to choose and shape my own life...

...Furthermore, it is equally strange to imagine Christ environmentally inhibited since He destroyed practically every other social convention of His time ("You have heard what is said...

...Heyward~s words are instructive...

...The ordination of women would thus seem an outright victory for Protestant Episcopalians, and on the surface at least, this example of church reform would seem to be just another of the many products of the "winds of change" of the present age...

...But there is also an obstacle that cannot be resolved through the recourse to psychology, and that is the power of precedent, of tradition...

...This re-working, wbether systematic or casual, of religious conviction would appear to fit quite nicely with the demands we have encountered for the fabrication of the "new age...

...Both sides agree, however, that the new priesthood represents nothing short of a radical break with traditional church practice, a break, furthermore which is likely to have consequences reaching far beyond the religious domain...

...Lewis' traditionalist case against women's ordination...

...Once the church is reformed, one might assume, the way will be opened for the reorganization of American life...

...I paraphrase the discussion...

...You had to admit to the doctors you were ill and renounce your views...

...The victory, however, of women's ordination is, at best, only a partial one, because the battle in the Episcopal Church is by no means finished...

...Heyward's is, by the way, no mean statement since the priesthood has heretofore been considered a calling, not a right...

...Numbering among these were women's ordination, the elimination of sexist language from church documents, support for affirmative action, social justice in the third world, revision of church laws concerning divorce, the right to birth control, and the condemnation of nuclear arms proliferation...

...And, it is the very same spirit which has compelled one leader of the National Coalition for Women's Ordination to admit: " I t [ordination] was 20 months of hard work, carefully programmed, and feeling sure that the Spirit was calling the Church into a new a g e " - - a remark which prompted one magazine to ask: "Are we to believe that the Holy Spirit directed the political campaign...

...When he is ordained, the priest is recognized as a "Priest in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church of God...

...As Tom Hayden, erstwhile revolutionary and U.S...

...he'd better leave off "religious propaganda" and save his skin...

...Means, do you consider yourself to be a woman of strong religious faith...

...But there is (or was) certainly more to it than just that...

...These are curious arguments since it is, first of all, odd to attribute myopia to the incarnation of a deity that 6 The Alternative: An American Spectator April 1977 is supposed to be omniscient and timeless...

...A similar passion brought post-Convention sighs of relief and exhilaration to one of the Philadelphia 11: "I feel very much like I did when I heard that the war in Vietnam was over...

...On the beds patients were writhing from haloperidol...

...Historically, both this emphasis on Scriptural revelation and the appeal to Christ's " In facl, :in affirmative vote would ~'em guaranteed, since one avowed lesbian, Ellen Marie Barrett, who believes that "homosexuality is an ahernative life-style that can be a good and creative t h i n g , " has a/rea~y beenordamed...

...The Roman Catholic Church, in particular, seems to be increasingly swayed by the breezes of the Zeitgeist: At the recent Catholic "Call to Action" conference in Detroit, priests and laymen levelled a series of demands, many of which would have been considered "unthinkable" a few years back...

...when we have challenged injustice, our actions have led to great revelations...I have no fear of the future or of change...

...He became a decorated war hero and wrote more than 60 scholarly works on military science...

...Traditionally, the Episcopal Church has occupied an unusual position among Christian churches in the sense that it has acted as a sort of bridge between "old world" catholic conceptions of faith and dogma, on the one hand, and "riew world" Protestant conceptions, on the other...

...Since no man, hence no priest, is wholly male, and since every woman is partially male, it follows more-or-less logically that women can be ordained...

...Some Episcopalians have expressed whole-hearted approval for the change...

...although declared non-accountable and committed to a pyschiatric prison for 15 months, he was deprived of his pension...

...As if the courts could decide what people must believe...

...As the opponents of the "new church" argue, priests cannot be female since Christ chose only males for His disciples...

...The patients immediately explained to political prisoners that they shouldn't complain here...

...Grigorenko subsequently gained notoriety by protests on behalf of dissidents such as Andrei Sinyavsky, Yuri Daniel, Alexander Ginzburg, and Anatoly Marchenko...

...Similarly, Malcolm Boyd, priest, novelist, and social critic (who used the floor of the Convention freely to announce his "gayness" to the world) has explained that "we are persons with acceptably different parts of our natures--and we are free even as God is free...

...It seems you have been behaving incorrectly...

...Whichever side of this debate one wishes to take, one thing is perfectly clear--sex will never be quite the same...

...From time to time in history we have oppressed Blacks, American Indians...

...But one should be careful not to underestimate the forces of change in Roman Catholicism, for it too is subject to the very same currents which have polarized the Episcopal Church...

...Hiatt are more explicit...

...Of course, it comes as no surprise that the rhetoric of the proordination movement bears close similarities to that of the cause of women's liberation...

...If you did you were given a reinforced treatment of neuroleptics, injections of sulphur, they prevented you going to the toilet...

...As the National Catholic Reporter has editorialized in support of the ordination of women in its own church: "Holding women back from full ordination in the Roman Catholic Church is a denial of common sense...

...each woman, her male counterpart...

...The climate is particularly unpropitious for faith itself...

...How could such a statement be...

...And, clearly, the decision of 15 women to participate in irregular ordinations was representative of such a challenge (and denial) of authority...

...One pro-ordination priest, Robert Wright, has put the matter in a convenient nutshell...

...They have "ministers," and catholics see nothing wrong with women ministers...

...When church authorities met this past September...

...in 1969 he joined the Initiative Group for the Defense of Human Rights in the Soviet Union...

...Your symptoms are a one-sided fascination with religion...

...In fact, the ordination of homosexuals will be the chief topic of the next Episcopal conference in 1979, and there is, in view of the church's current disposition, relatively little doubt that it too will be approved...

...Again, Ms...

...or bear the burden of responsibility for me...

...The horror of"psikhushki" [the mad house] gripped me from the start...

...But I say unto you," Matthew 5:43...

...Examiners tried vainly to bait Shimanov into saying that he had visions or hallucinations, that he believed himself a saint, that he had eccentric religious notions...

...As Emily Hewitt and Suzanne Hiatt address the subject in their Women Priests: Yes or No?, "the insistence that women are not inferior but simply different from men in profound and irreducible ways has a disquietingly familiar ring...

...After all, how do healthy believers behave...

...bishops and, doubtless, was not favorably received by the Holy See...

...This makes the going quite rough for those aspects of human experience--sexuality, the family, marriage--which have never pretended to be wholly justifiable according to the standards of positive science...

...I was put as the third person on two bunks that had been pushed together...

...Then we must really see that our sex roles are to be discarded...

...Otherwise, we should be inclined to characterize their behavior as abnormal, or deviant...

...The ordination of women had been voted down at the Conventions of 1970 and 1973, and church authorities had censured the three retired Bishops who ordained eleven women in Philadelphia in 1974, but the ordination of these women (as well as that of four others in Washington) had set in motion an intensive lobbying effort for an official change...

...My answers did not please the doctor," said Shimanov...

...Psychiatrists at Tashkent declared him sane and accountable, but perspicacious physicians at the Serbsky Institute of Forensic Psychiatry in Moscow rectified the error and bundled him off to Chernyakhovsk psychiatric prison...

...In large measure, it is this trend clothed in the progressive raiments of the Zeitgeist which--for better or worse--feeds the fires of church revision...

...church offices are seen as administrative, pastoral, and oriented to teaching and preaching...

...How can we catch this schizophrenic?' " At the examination, Haslayeva, the hospital's deputy medical director, remarked to Shimanov: If you had grown up in a religious family or had lived somewhere in the West, well, then we could have looked at your religiousness in another way...

...One vaguely cynical psychiatrist admitted that the Soviet Constitution granted religious freedom...

...Generally, catholics favor literal interpretations of Scriptures, and when they read that "the man is the head of the woman, just as Christ also is the head of the Church" (Ephesians 5:23) and find, furthermore, that "it is a shocking thing that a woman should address the congregation" (I Corinthians 14:35), they are bound to take such teachings seriously...

...Yes, religion is about caring...

...Christ can't have been only male, so He must also have been female, or possibly neuter...

...How could anything of importance or consequence lie beyond our direct control and knowledge ? The Transformation o f Faith This question of "control" is of course inextricably bound up with the ascendancy of scientific rationalism in modern times...

...Evidently, some Episcopal leaders have come to see the light...

...She informs us in her book, A Priest Forever, that "as in all matters of justice, one is faced with the choice essentially between the worship of God and the worship of an idol--in this case the phallus of male anatomy, every bit as much an idol as the breasts of fertility goddesses might be considered...

...It is to preserve a superficial catholicism but to drain it of content...

...Heyward knows this...

...In the action of the Mass, the catholic priest is the representative of Christ...

...In line with Jungian psychology, each man has his female side...

...Yet it is important to note that many of our churches are of a radically different stance and color than their predecessors of just a generation ago...

...And suddenly...wham!...you're religious!...lt's very odd indeed...and makes one wonder if some abnormal processes were not already developing in your youth, which later on brought you to religion...

...Boyd wonders why we don't have pictures that suggest "Lillian HeUman or Helen Keller, Eleanor Roosevelt or Marian Anderson...

...In fact, what lies at the heart of the matter seems to be a total antipathy for any authority whatsoever...

...He was arrested in 1964...

...Evidently, 1976 was a tumultuous year for at least one major American church, and that experience could indeed prove a harbinger of future changes in other churches...

...The vote in the House of Deputies (which represents both laity and clergy) was even closer...

...Clearly, the dilemma lies in this alleged "difference" between the sexes...

...There is something incongruous here, and theology alone will not help us expose the driving issues at hand...

...which now has the upper hand...

...publicity of an arrest in Moscow, authorities detained Grigorenko in 1969 while he was testifying in Tashkent for the rights of Crimean Tatar leaders...

...As social scientists have argued in recent years, we are presently undergoing a dramatic shift in our attitudes toward change and in the criteria we employ in assessing the relevance and validity of cherished institutions...

...This catholic view is bolstered through the appeal to sacred Scriptures...

...it limits one's pursuit of freedom, one's right to choose to act as one pleases...

...Waiters posed a question that one would think to be rather daring: "Rev...

...You are an educated person, I am ready even to admit that you know more about philosophy and religion than I do...

...indeed, so muca ~o ~hat r~:'iigion's freedom of movement r'nigh~ be The Ahernatb,,e: An Am~:,rican Spectator April 19:7 7 called into question...

...Not our faith, but our times...

...2) 8 The Alternative: An American Spectator April 1977...

...Not our faith, but our times...

...Rage Stage From the ordination debate, in fact, more can be learned about the pursuit of the Spirit of the Times, the Zeitgeist, than about the workings of the Holy Spirit...

...We have treated women as property...

...What differences exist between the two sexes are trivial, insignificant...

...He edits an unofficial campus monthly, Forum...

...But to those in the church, the admission of women to an office once reserved exclusively for males is extraordinary indeed...

...The laity voted 64 to 49 and the clergy only 60 to 54 to grant final approval to the changed composition of the priesthood...

...This quasi-revolutionary fervor is central to the new direction that the church is taking...

...What is truly amazing," writes Orthodox priest Alexander Schmemann, "is that while absolutely convinced that they understand past 'cultures,' the advocates of women's ordination seem to be totally unaware of their own cultural conditioning, of their own surrender to 'culture.' " Of course, the psychological and sociological arguments are part of a larger picture, and they tell us quite a great deal about the state of the American mind, its likes, its dislikes, and its changing sympathies...

...Indeed, we find that the issue is permeated with a spirit of revolution and upheaval, a passion and a fervor pregnant with the hopes for a "new world" to come...