Alliance Urges Ordination of Women

The World Alliance of Reformed Churches is encouraging member churches that do not ordain women to reconsider their policies and to ensure that salaries of female church employees are in line with those of their male counterparts.

Meeting in Seoul, South Korea, the General Council of the 175-member World Alliance adopted a section report that said the member churches with rules against ordaining females should “seriously reconsider their position in the light of the scriptural declaration of the oneness of women and men in Jesus Christ.”

The General Council, which last met in 1982 and finished its current meeting on Sunday, reelected the Rev. Allan Boesak, South African theologian and anti-apartheid activist, as president--the first time in the organization’s 114-year history that a president has been reelected.

Boesak said his reelection represented “a fundamental choice for participation in the people’s struggle for justice and human dignity and human rights all over the world.”