Adventist Leaders Debate Status of Women Pastors : Southeastern California Official Urges Ordination and Granting of Full Pastoral Powers

A study commission recommendation that would permit growing numbers of women ministers in the Seventh-day Adventist Church to function as pastors--yet deny them full status as ordained clergy--has been termed unacceptable by an official of the largest regional body of the denomination in North America.

“Our church would lose face and credibility in the context of our culture and society if our women pastors are not recognized as legitimately belonging to the ordained ministry,” said Haroldo S. Camacho of Riverside, secretary of the 48,000-member Southeastern California Conference.

No Stance Taken

In a letter to worldwide Adventist leaders, Camacho hinted that his regional body might ordain qualified women late next year even without churchwide approval. The only other Adventist jurisdiction in Southern California, a conference based in Glendale, has taken no position on women’s ordination.

The Adventists’ Commission on the Role of Women in the Church recommended in July, by a vote of 56 to 11, that women pastors be permitted to perform baptisms and marriages, but not be granted ordination. The commission declared that a consensus is lacking on whether either the Bible or 19th-Century founder Ellen White sanctioned the ordination of women.

October Meeting

International church officials will decide at an October meeting at the Silver Spring, Md., world headquarters of the denomination, what recommendation, if any, to submit to the next Adventist governing assembly, to be held in July in Indianapolis. Most Adventists expect that the annual council meeting next month will be decisive.

The commission report in July repeated objections that women’s ordination would prove divisive for most of the church’s overseas divisions where female religious leadership might be jarring to cultural mores. U.S. Adventists are a minority of about 700,000 within the 5.6-million-member church worldwide.

In his recent letter to world officials of the church, Camacho said he recognized that the “witness and image of our spiritual family” would be jeopardized if some overseas churches were expected to ordain women as ministers.

But, by the same token, he wrote, it is “unfair” and “demeaning” to deny ordination to qualified women serving or training as ministers in a society where civil laws require equality for men and women. Camacho appealed for church leaders to recommend that ordination be a matter of local option.

Some Distinctions

Adventist churches in many ways resemble, both culturally and theologically, other conservative evangelical congregations in America anticipating the return of Jesus Christ. Yet they have been distinctive for their Saturday Sabbath and emphases on church-state separation, health regimens such as vegetarianism and an extensive network of schools and colleges.

The Southeastern California Conference includes Loma Linda University--a source of some intellectual ferment for more than 100 churches in San Bernardino, Riverside, Orange, San Diego and Imperial counties.

Last May, the conference convention stated its readiness, by a 278-179 vote, to ordain qualified women but postponed taking any action until after July, 1990.

Conference officials said the names of at least two qualified women will be forwarded for approval to officials of the five-state Pacific Union Conference based in Westlake Village--Delores Robinson, an associate pastor in Colton, and Halcyon Wilson, an associate pastor in Riverside. A third pastor, Diane Forsyth, was expected to qualify for ordination this year. The union conference must approve any ordination by a lower-level jurisdiction.

Ordination Endorsed

The Pacific Union executive committee voted June 7 to “strongly encourage” the church leadership “to eliminate gender as a consideration for ordination to the gospel ministry.” The body endorsed women’s ordination for regions of the church where it would be “deemed helpful and appropriate.”

Less than a week later, the nine union presidents of the North American Division voted unanimously in favor of a similar action.

Nearly 50 women are functioning as Adventist pastors in this country. On Friday, Hyveth Williams assumed the pastorate of Boston Temple church. She is believed to be the first black female pastor in the Adventist Church and only the second woman to become a senior pastor.

The July study commission recommendation to allow women ministers to perform church ceremonies was termed a “significant development” by Spectrum, an independent Adventist journal published in Takoma Park, Md.

But Fay Blix, an attorney in Santa Ana who chairs the year-old Adventist Women’s Institute, said in an interview that the recommendation was “a pretty sad commentary on the ethics of our church.”

‘Embarrassing Task’

Such a policy would spare “church leaders the embarrassing task of having to come to Southern California to ask the women pastors to stop baptizing while at the same time they are begging for baptisms so they can meet” evangelistic quotas.

“How do you maintain your credibility as a church if you have to ask someone to stop saving souls simply because she has the wrong genitals?” Blix said.

This “so-called step forward,” she said, does not carry with it the privileges of voting and authority granted to ordained pastors, indicating that male leaders “are afraid of women entering the power structure.”