The NALC and Women’s Ordination

By Adam Guthmiller

In June of 2020 the North American Lutheran Church’s Commission on Theology and Doctrine (CTD) marked the 50th anniversary of women being ordained in North American Lutheran churches by releasing a two page statement titled An Affirmation of Women in Ordained Ministry. The formation of the NALC has always been downstream of this major decision – already baked in the cake of the ALC, LCA, AELC, and the creation of the ELCA. So, “by the time [the NALC was officially organized in 2010], the ordination of women had become a normal and accepted practice in the church.” The constitution of the NALC therefore declares: “Ordination and reception of ordained ministers shall be a function of the NALC. The NALC shall ordain both men and women to the office of Word and Sacrament” (4.01).

The 2020 Affirmation by the NALC’s CTD is – as far as I can tell – the first public statement by the NALC on what was, and still is, a contentious topic. Perhaps even more-so today as the “jaunty, liberal spirit of the times” (Gracia Grindal, “Getting Women Ordained,” 282) which helped to birth the conditions needed to cultivate the possibility of women’s ordination has begun now to dissipate. Especially among one subsection of people: young men who seek to serve the church. They have grown increasingly disillusioned with the liberalism to which many in previous generations had grown accustomed. 

This could set up a potentially interesting dilemma for the NALC as it looks towards the future and the formation of clergy. The young men who would assent only to the practice of women’s ordination – and not her strange siblings (John Pless, “The Ordination of Women and Ecclesial Endorsement of Homosexuality: Are They Related?”) who seem to share the same theological assumptions – are disappearing. They have either become more conservative, or have already agreed to every recent theological and political innovation which animates the mainline church bodies of the ELCA, TEC, UMC, etc. The opposite is the case for young women. They are now “the most liberal group in human history.” 

The prospective pipeline for candidates for ordination would be thinning according to these theological conditions, and the “spirit of the times.” How are we to convince traditionally inclined Lutheran young men – and potentially women – that the current practice of women’s ordination is faithful and grounded in the Holy Scriptures? The aspiration of the NALC to be a “church family committed to the authority of the Bible as the inspired Word of God,” and that “all doctrines should and must be judged by Scripture,” is a call for continued theological discernment. 

This makes the NALC CTD’s Affirmation of interest to many. It is – as far as their public statements – the NALC’s only formal word on how it understands its inherited practice of ordaining women. The Affirmation begins attempting to establish the practice by appealing to a series of historical arguments made in the 1960s. The first being four theses from the 1968 Luther Seminary faculty.

1. Scripture does not directly address the question of the ordination of women. Consequently, it neither speaks decisively for or against it. 

2. The ordination of women does raise important and, at times, difficult questions. Yet there is no decisive argument from either Scripture or the Confessions against the ordination of women. 

3. Without a decisive biblical or confessional objection, the ordination of women remains possible. Practical objections cannot settle the issue for Lutherans.

4. Consequently, the objection that ordaining women may have negative effects on ecumenical relations is lessened in force. Furthermore, the ordination of women is not the central dividing issue in ecumenical conversations. 

It then points towards the words of 1964 Reports and Actions of the ALC General Convention as a “helpful reminder of biblical teaching”: 

Since the ministry office is not precisely defined in the New Testament, and since the duties of early officers were varied and interchangeable, and since the needs of the church down through the centuries are subject to variation, we are left to Luther’s conclusion, namely, that God has left the details of the ministerial office to the discretion of the church, to be developed according to the needs and according to the leading of the Holy Spirit.

And finally it supplies a short analysis of the Lutheran Confessions: 

Likewise, the Lutheran Confessions were not concerned with this question. Ordination in the Reformation period was only available to men; thus, Article V of the Augsburg Confession gives no explicit prohibition against women’s ordination. The Office of Ministry, “which provides the Gospel and sacrament as instituted by God, is necessary as the means through which God gives the Holy Spirit and works faith, when and where he pleases in those who hear the Gospel.” Article V focuses on the function of the minister and so does not speak about gender requirements for those who are called to proclaim God’s Word.

The theological foundation of the Affirmation mainly revolves around the old assertion that “Scripture does not directly address the question of the ordination of women [Thesis 1],” and thus, “God has left the details of the ministerial office to the discretion of the church to be developed according to the needs and according to the leading of the Holy Spirit [the ALC].” Any argument that attempts to use the Lutheran Confessions is politely placed off the table with the assertion that they are “not concerned with this question.” They claim that Article V of the Augsburg Confession “focuses on the function of the minister and so does not speak gender requirements for those who are called to proclaim God’s Word.”  

Unfortunately, none of these arguments are particularly convincing on their own as an adequate justification for the continued, unexamined, and undefended practice of women’s ordination. The confident assertion that “Scripture does not directly address the question of the ordination of women,” can hardly stand as tall as it perhaps once did. The most accessible and thorough recent Lutheran scholarship found, Concordia Publishing House’s collection of essays titled Women Pastors? The Ordination of Women in Biblical Lutheran Perspective, would advance the opposite assertion quite forcefully. That the Holy Scriptures do address the question of the ordination of women. At the very least – the short opinion of Luther Seminary’s 1968 faculty cannot be the end of a discussion for eternity.

Neither does the “helpful reminder of biblical teaching” that the Affirmation uses from the 1964 ALC General Convention provide much confidence to justify the practice. It seems, rather, woefully simplistic in light of the current theological climate. The principle presented holds that “God has left the details of the ministerial office to the discretion of the church, to be developed according to the needs and according to the leading of the Holy Spirit.” And yet, this, on its own, could easily be spoken to give support to the ordaining of homosexuals into the office of ministry. You have the situation then where the very issue that provided the inertia necessary for the formation of the NALC could itself be realized if its own theology was advanced.

Nor is the use of Article V of the Augsburg Confession persuasive on its own to support the continued practice of women’s ordination. There are many questions that the Lutheran Confessions were not concerned with or understood as already agreed upon. For example, there is no explicit prohibition against the ordination of artificial intelligence. Would this potential defect be enough reason to allow the practice of ordaining artificial intelligence as a development led by the Holy Spirit? Article V focuses on the function of the minister and so does not speak about human requirements for those who are called to proclaim God’s Word. This would be a purely functional understanding of the minister. Who is to stop the stones and the sand from being raised up and ordained? Not necessarily Article V of the Augsburg Confession.

All of this is to say that the 2020 NALC Commission on Theology and Doctrine’s Affirmation of Women in Ordained Ministry almost leaves the reader with more questions than answers. Old remnants and voices remain of the American Lutheran Church and how they understood the Holy Scriptures and Lutheran Confessions to speak on the question of women pastors. The North American Lutheran Church has yet – in her young life – to speak with conviction how she understands this practice. It might be time we do.

Adam Guthmiller holds an M.Div. from Luther House of Study and a B.A. from Augustana University, both in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He currently serves as the pastor of First English Lutheran Church (NALC) in Lennox, South Dakota.