Religious women press for change

http://bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/04/14/women-religion/73Xl4dePHsmiLzDeSyxkwM/story.html

By James Carroll | GLOBE COLUMNIST APRIL 15, 2013

MORMON WOMEN cannot be priests. Catholic women cannot be priests. Muslim women cannot lead prayers in mixed-gender congregations. Jewish women are restricted in praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. But Mormons have the “Let Women Pray” campaign. Catholics have the “Women’s Ordination Conference.” Muslims have “Muslims for Progressive Values.” Jews have “Women of the Wall.” What is going on here?

Last week, a Mormon woman led a prayer before 100,000 people gathered in Salt Lake City — a first for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Also last week, 150 Jewish women prayed at the Western Wall, five of whom were arrested by Jerusalem police. In West Hollywood, a Muslim gender-equal prayer space has been in operation for most of a decade. On Holy Thursday last month, in an annual ritual commemorating Jesus’s washing of the apostles’ feet, two of the 12 whose feet Pope Francis washed were women — another first.

Conservatives blasted the pope, since the exclusively male make-up of the 12 apostles goes to the heart of the church’s rationale barring women from the priesthood. Likewise, a spokesperson for the Mormon church in Salt Lake City appealed to divine authority, saying that the male-only priesthood “was established by Jesus Christ himself, and is not a decision to be made by those on Earth.” Speaking of the women praying at the Western Wall, a Jewish critic declared, “Their whole practice betrays the creator.”

But religious people are finding that the creator’s will is debatable, and so are appeals to tradition. Muslims detect no teaching on the subject in the Koran, and find ample precedent for women serving as imams in early Islamic settings. Christians must reckon with Jesus’s own choice of women as intimates, and the gospels’ emphasis that all of his male followers, unlike the women, deserted him at the crucifixion. Women were first to preach the Resurrection. In his letter to Romans, St. Paul identifies 27 prominent Christians, 10 of whom are women. He names two, in particular — Prisca and Junia — as his specially designated leaders of the community. Despite his reputation to the contrary, St. Paul can only be awkwardly yoked to the movement to keep church women in their place.

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