What issue is shared by Catholics, Evangelicals and Muslims?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

In recent months, all three faith communities have been in he news over women’s  proper role in religious organizations and cultures. Here’s a rundown.

Start with the Catholic Church, where it’s newsworthy when  there’s no news. That is, delegates to a closed-door  Vatican Synod a year ago shared considerable interest in allowing women to be deacons. But Pope Francis has removed this question from the agenda for the second and final Synod session running October 2–27, referring this and other hot-button issues to new study groups.

This week, Father Thomas Reese, Religion News Service’s Catholic pundit, suggested that Synod delegates defy the Pope, take control of the agenda and pursue the deleted issues. However, Francis flatly ruled out any move on deacons during his pontificate in a May interview with CBS News. (Note that in theory, lay women can hold church leadership jobs, and sisters likewise beyond posts within their own religious orders. Some few do.)

Confronting the Pope

The recent death of Sister Theresa Kane brought to mind that in 1979 she spoke as president of the organization for leaders of U.S. sisters’ orders and directly challenged the visiting Pope John Paul II to consider including women in “all ministries of the church.” In 1994, John Paul declared female priests to be an impossible break from Catholic tradition, so deacons became the possibility at issue.

“Transitional” Catholic deacons are men ordained as a step toward full priesthood. The Second Vatican Council added the ministry of “permanent” male deacons who can perform many functions that priests do. There were female deacons in early church history, but scholars disagree whether they were formally ordained ministers or merely acknowledged helpers or wives of priests.

Francis raised feminist hopes in 2016 by appointing a study commission on this as requested by the International Union of Superiors General who lead the 600,000 sisters in religious orders. He authorized a follow-up commission in 2020. The results of both studies remain secret and unaddressed.

The issue may be off the table next month, or until a new pope is enthroned, but U.S. agitation continues. Reese has contended that since the church will not ordain women deacons it should stop ordaining male deacons and instead appoint lay men and women to be “catechists,” a widespread practice in Africa.

In a National Catholic Reporter piece last week, Father Daniel Horan of Saint Mary’s College in Indiana asked “what is our excuse today” for excluding women “apart from patriarchy and misogyny?”  In May, Commonweal ran four articles arguing for women in ministry. This month the magazine published a conservative reply by Charlotte Allen, who cited survey data indicating 41% of regular Mass attenders  favor women priests, “but not that much,” while 56% are “adamantly opposed.”

Evangelical Protestant split

Among the issues dividing “evangelical” and conservative Protestants in the U.S., there are “complementarians” who believe the Bible bars women’s leadership in church and authority in the home, over against competing evangelical “egalitarians.” The dispute won headlines in June when the annual Southern Baptist Convention meeting gave 61% support (short of the necessary two-thirds) to a constitutional amendment to keep women from “any kind of” pastoral role, and expelled a venerable Virginia congregation because it ordains women, formerly an allowable  choice for independently governed congregations.

The egalitarians have a brand-new and well-framed survey: “Confronting Sexism in the Church: How We Got Here and What We Can Do About It” (InterVarsity Press). It’s significant that author Heather Matthews, a former pastor, manages the doctor of ministry program at influential Wheaton College (Illinois) and her book is blurbed as “brave and bold” by that school’s biblical studies chair. Matthews wisely adopts a moderate tone, inviting conservatives to think through the equality approach without bludgeoning those who disagree. But she bluntly depicts church “misogyny” beyond the clergy questioon that complementarians should ponder.

Matthews cites data on Protestantism over-all from Duke University’s National Congregations Study. Over past decades, “mainline” and more liberal denominations have opened up ministry by women and proclaimed gender equality as numbers of female seminary students and ordained clergy increased. But they’re often relegated to assistant pastor, educational or chaplaincy roles. Women are a fifth of Protestant clergy but serve as the senior or solo pastor heading only 14% of congregations in one survey. As of 2019, women led only 3% of evangelical congregations.

Islam: Contradictory situations

Islam has no Vatican to define policy, thus women’s situation is entwined with politics in various ways among the 56 member nations in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Take two contradictory situations. Last month, Afghanistan issued a 114-page code of lifestyle demands the theocratic Taliban regime has been enforcing on the basis of a strict interpretation of Sharia (religious law). The intent, here and elsewhere, is to promote modesty and avoid mixing of the sexes to counter sexual temptation.

Afghan females are now forbidden to attend school beyond 6^th grade, to fill most jobs, to speak audibly when in public, or to visit facilities like parks and gyms. They must also wear head-to-toe clothing that reveals only the eyes. Yet this week The New York Times reported that Tajikistan, a bordering Muslim nation to the north, prohibits women wearing any head scarves in the hope this will counter terrorism (which experts doubt).

By contrast, Saudi Arabia, which considers itself the exemplar of tradition in Islam’s dominant Sunni branch, has opened up on women’s education in modern times. More recent liberalizations include the 2017 decision to let women drive cars, along with flexibility on vocations, clothing, and public mingling of the sexes. But reformers complain that Islamic tradition still limits women’s rights in marriage, divorce, inheritance, and child custody law.

In Iran, the heartland for Islam’s minority Shi’a branch, regulations enforced by the theocratic government provoked global protests in 2022 after Mahsa Amini died while in police custody. She was arrested for wearing her hijab too loosely so some hair was exposed.

Assailing “white feminists”

Another new book is the latest Muslim case for gender reforms: “Muslim Women and Misogyny: Myths and Misunderstandings” (Hurst & Co.) by Samia Rahman, a Ph.D student and former administrator and editor with London’s liberal Muslim Institute. The work is less than ideal for readers across those 56 nations, or in the United States, due to heavy emphasis on Rahman’s personalized account of immigrant Muslims’ particular situation within Britain. She alleges that the “patriarchal, Western-centric world” provokes demonization and “Islamophobia” and resents that “the West frequently positions itself as a savior of Muslim women,” assailing  “white feminists” in particular.

Looking within Islam, Rahman laments the thoroughgoing “negation of Muslim women in Islamic scholarship, in leadership positions, and in public life.” She distinguishes between the “Islam of male supremacy,” created by men over centuries, as versus “an Islam I could recognize as an independently minded critical thinker who values autonomy.” For her, that undermines traditional teachings against promiscuity, adultery, and same-sex relationships — linkage that can only erode Muslims’ support for women’s rights.

All-important complexities

Both Matthews and Rahman assert there’s a good scholarly case for modern equality that remains faithful to the Bible and Quran, but neither digs into all-important complexities regarding frequently-cited texts and interpretations that must be overcome. For that, serious readers need to consult writings cited in the footnotes of the two books and, in the case of Islam, the same with another new title, “The Battle for the Soul of Islam: Defining the Muslim Faith in the 21^st Century” (Palgrave Macmillan) by James M. Dorsey.