wfn.org | Cultural Barriers Come down as Guatemalan Presbyterian

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

5-February-1997 
97065 
 
            Cultural Barriers Come down as Guatemalan 
                Presbyterian Women Seek Ordination 
 
                          by Alexa Smith 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky.-- A recommendation to ordain women as pastors and elders is 
expected to come before the Synod of the National Evangelical Presbyterian 
Church of Guatemala (NEPCG) this spring. The proposal is drawing renewed 
attention to entrenched economic, racial and class divisions that 
politically split Guatemalan society and have exacerbated a cultural gulf 
in the church. 
 
     On one side of the cultural gulf are indigenous Guatemalans intent on 
preserving traditional Mayan life.  On the other side are those descended 
from European settlers (Ladinos) and Mayans who generally have opted to 
adapt to Guatemala's rich cultural mix .   
 
     Women on both sides of this racial and cultural breach are working for 
ecclesiastical equality. They're just working separately. 
 
     Getting women together to talk about these issues is hard to do, 
according to Rachel Lausch, who has just returned to the United States 
after more than 20 years of Presbyterian mission work in Guatemala.  The 
long historical memory of racial discrimination and cultural hegemony traps 
women just as painfully as men, she says, even though many of the hurts 
happened in their mothers' lives, not in their own.  "They're not able to 
overcome that memory yet, to reach across those barriers.  That is the next 
thing that needs to be done. 
 
     "There are literally centuries to be overcome," Lausch said, "but 
ordination of women is inevitable.  In a sense, it is already happening." 
 
     It is happening in official and unofficial ways in three of the 
denomination's eight Mayan presbyteries.  In Maya Quiche women function as 
elders, in Mam as licensed preachers and in Kaqchiquel as leaders without 
benefit of ordination.   
 
     Those offices are  not recognized outside each presbytery's boundaries 
and certainly not in the seven Ladino presbyteries, none of which ordain 
women.  But in all 15 of Guatemala's presbyteries, most onlookers 
acknowledge that women perform many pastoral ministries at the local level, 
if only because 70 percent of the members of the NEPCG are women.   
 
     The absence of men may be a result of Guatemala's long and bloody 
civil war that wiped out more than 150,000 people, or  a reflection of the 
prevailing "machismo" culture that still considers church to be the 
province of women and children. 
 
     Whatever the cause, it means there is more work to do than there are 
ordained men to do it.. 
 
     This reality is part of what is changing the theological picture in 
Guatemala, according to the Rev. Juan Giron, a Ladino pastor from Guatemala 
City.  He chairs a 15-member all-male committee that is now "inclined" to 
recommend that the Synod ordain women.   
 
     `"We have a crisis," he told the Presbyterian News Service in a 
telephone interview.  "The church is only 30 percent male and we've not let 
women be ordained."  Reformed government is supposed to be representative, 
he added, and the existing gender disparity is unjust. 
 
     Giron's committee has worked to identify biblical and theological 
grounds to ordain women, he said.  He hopes resistant males may be 
persuaded, as he himself as been, and that women may be more willing to 
seek what will be, in some churches, a controversial office. 
 
       Few deny that ordaining women is a practical, if not theological 
inevitability.  How to do it is complicated by differing practices and 
cultural presuppositions.   For instance, there are Mayan women who claim 
readiness for the pastorate  now, while Ladina women, prefer more gradual 
access, serving first as elders and gaining confidence to seek pastoral 
calls.    
 
     As longtime PCUSA mission worker Dennis Smith of Guatemala City puts 
it: "With Mayan women, there's more emphasis on pastoral practice, less on 
formal academics.  Ladino women have more access to the academic side -- 
how to deal with issues academically and theologically."  But both groups 
of women have long histories of being the people who get things done in the 
church, he said. 
 
     "If you need to get something done, go to the women." 
 
     That's why some women in indigenous presbyteries want to press now for 
ordination as pastors, according to the Rev. Antonio Otzoy of Kaqchiquel 
Presbytery, who is director of the Hermandad de Presbiterios Mayas (the 
Brotherhood of Mayan Presbyteries).  Three Kaqchiquel women, he says, are 
just waiting for the denomination to sanction their ordination as pastors, 
since they are already doing pastoral work in isolated mountain 
communities.   
 
     "There's a recognition [among Mayans] for all the work they've already 
done," he said.  Indigenous culture historically has allowed more parity 
between women and men in both religious and family life, he says.  The 
culture places less value than does Ladino culture on titles as a way to 
confirm a call to ministry. 
 
     "Women want to be respected because we've been doing this work 
together with men up until now," said Margarita Valiente de Similox, the 
moderator of Kaqchiquel Presbytery.  She pushed human rights abuses 
perpetrated on the presbytery's clergy into the Inter-American Court last 
year -- getting the government slapped with an order to arrest the former 
military commissioner charged with killing at least one Presbyterian 
minister.  "We haven't studied," she said, "but we have experience with 
people in the communities." 
 
     Another Kaqchiquel candidate, Josephina Martinez of Chimaltenango, 
assumed the responsibilities of her husband, Lucio, who died of a stroke 
last August after nearly two years of unrelenting death threats. 
 
      Sonia Gonzalez de Gomez, a teacher who is vice moderator of the 
Ladina women's organization, the Women's Synodical, is conscious of how 
slow the debate may go about standards for clergywomen.  But she wants 
sanction to ordain women as elders, so they can move into the church's 
hierarchy and begin building the necessary confidence to explore calls to 
ministries of word and sacrament.  "We know that [many male pastors] are 
not even prepared educationally themselves," she said.  Demanding more 
strenuous standards for women than currently exist for men is a tactic that 
opponents to ordination may use to stall the current momentum, she 
believes. 
 
     "There are women who feel called [to the work of clergy] right now," 
Gonzalez said.  "Not many ... I am one of them," she added.  Gonzalez is 
allowed to preach occasionally in her local church and frequently at 
denominational women's gatherings.   
 
     "We're going to have to convince other women that the Lord is calling 
us for service and [the ordination of elders] would give us time. There are 
not," she admits, "many women prepared theologically for a pastorate." 
 
     Preparation for ministry in the NEPCG -- even for males -- is often a 
vague process, Lausch says.  Most of the denomination's male clergy have 
less than a sixth-grade education, and most women who might be considering 
ministry have far less.  Language is a barrier in Guatemala, where there 
are 22 different ethnic groups, often living in isolated mountain 
communities.  
 
     The denomination has tried to adapt by conducting informal workshops 
in presbyteries and by conducting some seminary courses by correspondence. 
But in a country -- and a church -- with an awakening Mayan cultural 
perspective,  a collision of world views complicates how to understand 
theology and interpret church tradition. 
 
     The NEPCG's stated clerk, the Rev. Roberto Lopez, expects the 
ordination recommendation to be studied for at least one more year, maybe 
more.  Any recommendation that the Synod approves then goes to presbyteries 
for a vote.  "Most of the women that come forward, will come as elders.  To 
be ordained as pastors will require more study.  A few are trying to work 
toward that," he said.  "But it will take time." 
 
     Still, Lausch observed the whole framework of the debate has changed. 
"The question," she said, "is no longer if ... but when and whom.  In good 
Presbyterian [fashion] ... they'll wrangle over the details for some time 
to come." 
 
     Some Mayan and Ladina women are beginning to broach common concerns, 
even though they are unable to bridge the gulf that separates them.  "The 
first step was made by indigenous women," said Gonzalez.  She recalls 
vividly how Mayan women petitioned the Synod for ordination in 1992 and 
were denied a hearing because they were not the official church women's 
organization.  "But that was an excuse.  The real object was to say no to 
the petition." 
 
     The petition was resubmitted by the Women's Synodical the following 
year and in 1996 a commission to study the ordination of women was formed. 
Despite divisions between Ladina and Mayan women, ordination "is a point of 
union," Gonzalez said. 
 
     "The principal relationship between Mayan and Ladina women [has been] 
head-of-household and maid," Smith said.  "And very frequently, that has 
been reproduced in the church.  Mayan women were expected to tend to the 
kitchen.  It was simply a reflection of society as a whole.  So the issue 
is how ... to encounter each other as sisters within the church, 
confronting a common political and theological goal. 
 
     "It's been kinda tough," he said.  "They don't have much experience 
talking to each other."     

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