wfn.org | Brazilian Church Okays Women's Ordination

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5-February-1999 
99062 
 
    BRAZILIAN VOTE TO PERMIT ORDINATION OF WOMEN 
    IS JUST ONE STEP IN A LONG JOURNEY TO EQUALITY 
 
    by Alexa Smith 
 
CAMPINAS, Brazil - Cassia Ciano, relegated to a "cheap seat" in the rear of 
the Assembly Hall where about 200 male delegates to the General Assembly of 
the Independent Presbyterian Church of Brazil (IPIB) voted to approve the 
ordination of women last month, knew she was witnessing a historic moment. 
 
    "This is very emotional for me," the 35-year-old churchwoman said of 
the denomination's decision to permit the ordination of women as clergy and 
elders. "We are seeing an injustice being torn down. . . . We worked hard 
for this. . . . and now we are seeing the results." 
 
    To the Brazilian Presbyterians who had waited and worked for this day, 
the vote signaled victory in a decade-long theological struggle. To the 20 
to 30 women in Brazil who are theologically trained and waiting for calls - 
who have been biding their time, preaching and teaching as volunteers in 
local churches or working unordained in untraditional ministries - the vote 
represented personal and ecclesiastical liberation. 
 
    No one, however, is naive about what lies ahead for Brazil's 
Presbyterian women - more work and more waiting. Actually getting salaried 
women into church pulpits will take time, despite clear majority support 
for the ordination of women. The church's conservative roots run deep, and 
the cultural barriers to women won't fall all at once. 
 
    "This is a change in law, not a cultural change," the Rev. Odair 
Pedroso Matens of Sao Paolo, the president of Brazil's Association of 
Theological Schools, said shortly after the vote. "The cultural change is 
what comes next - and it will be much more painful." 
 
    "It is one thing to change the constitution . . . and another to create 
a culture of respect for women's competencies and gifts in the church." 
 
    The IPIB has been ordaining women as  deacons since the 1930s. Most 
members of the denomination think women will make faster progress in 
becoming elders and winning seats on sessions than in answering calls to 
pulpits. Even three of the 15 presbyteries that voted "no" on women pastors 
said "yes" to women elders. 
 
 
    The Presbyteries that opposed ordination of women were mostly in the 
south of Brazil. Ironically, they are the presbyteries with the 
better-educated members. In the impoverished northeast, Presbyterians are 
more pragmatic about broadening the base of church leadership in order to 
evangelize the isolated interior. 
 
    It was more than four years ago that the IPIB gave unordained female 
evangelists (called "missionaries") authority to baptize, marry, bury and 
serve communion -- as long as no clergyman lives within 100 kilometers. 
Most female missionaries work in the north. 
 
    The Rev. Luiz Alexandre Solano Rossi, the pastor of a 100-member parish 
in a ghetto in the north-coast city of Fortaleza, smiled widely after the 
vote and predicted: "Oh yeah, the next election? Women elders, for sure." 
 
    Ciano, who lives further south in Sao Paolo, said: "As far as elders, 
we'll see those immediately in many places. But pastors? A year or two." 
 
    Part of the delay in getting women pastors into pulpits will be 
attributable to Presbyterian polity. Even those who have finished their 
theological studies - some of whom now are teaching theological students - 
will have to spend at least a year under the care of a presbytery. But that 
is a relatively small amount of time, said Shirley Proenca, a pastoral 
theologian who has run advocacy and reflection groups on the ordination 
issue for the past 10 years, and hopes to be among the first women 
ordained. 
 
    The bigger hurdles have to do with culture. 
 
    "It's a question of power," said the Rev. Aureo Rodrigues de Oliveira, 
president of the IPIB seminary in Fortaleza. "Elders do not have as much 
power as pastors. And it may be a question of money. Elders get no salary; 
pastors are paid. Elders do not preach; pastors do. . . . Latin American 
culture is very patriarchal." 
 
    Change seems to come slowly all across Latin America. 
 
    The Rev. Hircio de Eliveira Guimaraes, president of the Alliance of 
Presbyterian and Reformed Churches in Latin America - a commissioner to the 
IPIB General Assembly - says only about half of Latin America's reformed 
churches ordain women today. "It's a big problem with the culture," he told 
the Presbyterian News Service. "The IPIB has been fighting about this for 
more than 10 years. . . . It took theological preparation and discussion by 
the younger leadership of the church." 
 
    The Rev. Naaman Mendes, of Maringa, who voted against ordaining women 
but says he would ordain a woman elder in his congregation if the church 
called her to ministry, said he opposed ordination for women because of the 
roles women play in Brazilian culture - and in the Bible. 
 
    "Men (in Brazilian culture) like to be leaders," the former sociologist 
said. "They don't like to submit to women. Women giving orders is a 
problem, in a marriage or in an office." 
 
    Mendes said it worries him that televised Pentecostal services - many 
depicting charismatic women leaders - may be leading the IPIB away from its 
Reformed roots. He said  the Bible depicts both women and men in ministry, 
but in different kinds of ministry - male leaders govern, while women 
assume "encouraging" roles. 
 
    "This (decision to allow ordination of women) is not from the grass 
roots, but from the leadership," he said. 
 
    The outgoing IPIB stated clerk, the Rev. Noidy Barbosa de Souza, 
predicted "some difficulties (with the decision) . . . in conservative 
circles, in some regions." 
 
 
    Opposition to the change is attributed to Latin America's inheritance 
from its Spanish and Portuguese conquerors - its own humiliating experience 
of submission and oppression - and to the plantation system, in which 
workers were exploited by authoritative bosses. 
 
    "There is here a cultural expectation for strong authority," de 
Oliveira noted. 
 
    Ecclesiastically, such authority is understood to reside in the 
all-male hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, which has so permeated 
religious experience in Latin America, that it influences even Protestants. 
 
    And then there is machismo. 
 
    "There are many women in academic positions, who are teaching in 
universities and who are in business, but they are a very small group," 
said Sara Mahecha, a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) mission worker in 
Fortaleza who teaches pastoral theology and counseling at the IPIB 
seminary. "The majority of women are at home, and that is the image of 
women in Latin America, not just Brazil: They're good for doing chores at 
home. That's the general concept. . . . And the idea was in the church, 
just the same." 
 
    Nonetheless, IPIB seminaries are expecting an influx of women over the 
next several years. After all, more than half of the 80,000 members of the 
denomination are women; women make up the vast majority of pew-sitters on 
any given Sunday; and, many pastors admit, women do the bulk of the 
day-to-day work of the church. In some rural areas - where men have had to 
leave home to seek work in the cities - congregations are almost entirely 
female. "The daily work of pushing the church, of keeping the parish going, 
is (done by) women," said Metens. " . . . In principle, they're at home 
most of the time, and pastors count on them for their free time." 
 
    None of that is news to Ciano, who has spent much of the past decade 
working and teaching in churches about women's ordination. "It's going to 
be a struggle with the culture," she conceded.  "There will always be 
cultural influences against us - including (other) women." 
 
    Iaci do Valle Pereira Noguira, another activist, agreed that there is 
much to be done. 
 
    "This is only the first step," she said, "and there are, as we say in 
Brazil, many storms in our way." 

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