Word: synods
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Three major branches of world Christendom have held out against ordaining women to full clergy rank: Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Anglicanism. The Anglicans have been wrestling over the issue, however, and last week the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada (membership: 1 million) voted overwhelmingly to allow female priests. The breakthrough in Canada is bound to make waves in other provinces of the Anglican Communion, notably the U.S. Episcopal Church, which is deep in an emotionally charged debate over women priests and faces a decision on the matter at its convention next year...
Thus we in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod are left with liberty of interpretation in these two areas until he arrives at a decision...
...Bible is being called as witness in other kinds of current ecclesiastical debate. Both Jesus' selection of his Apostles?all men?and St. Paul's restrictive remarks about women ("It is shameful for a woman to speak in church") are cited by Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and Missouri Synod Lutherans as precedents that forbid female clergy. On a quite different level, Gospel polemics against the Jews still help to nourish a residual anti-Semitism in Sunday-school and catechism classes...
...world's most famous believer in inerrancy is Evangelist Billy Graham, but the most controversial hard-liner today is the Rev. Jacob A.O. Preus, 54, a Minnesota Governor's son with a Ph.D. in classics. Preus' crackdown as president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod led to the seminary walkout and the current threat of church wide schism. His personal view of Genesis includes a global flood in the Noah story and a six-day creation (though he leaves open to question how long the "days" were and how old the earth is). He believes literally in the Adam...
Clearly there are two sets of assumptions at work in Bible criticism. Like a Missouri Synod mother who insists that God "would not give us a book with errors," the literalists insist that an omniscient and loving God would give the world an absolutely inerrant Bible. Today's liberals, on the other hand, recognize and generally emphasize the human, historical factor in the Bible's composition?a view that goes much farther in explaining its apparent contradictions and deficiencies. Believing critics argue?and experience has sometimes shown?that rigid faith is the most vulnerable to complete destruction. In their view...