Some time ago I followed a debate of some clergy and laity on the Ordination of Women. It tried to grasp the implication, and impact, of the recent letter by the LCA Council of Bishops on the three (and a half) options for the future of this saga. The letter can be found on the LCA website.

Essentially, the bishops see three (and a half) “scenarios” for the future of the Church in the context of the impasse around the WO debate:

Scenario 1: A single LCANZ synod, with one teaching and two practices.

Scenario 2: A single LCANZ synod, with the current teaching upheld.

Scenario 3: Multiple LCANZ synods – we can no longer stay together (we separate).

I don’t have sufficient insight to discuss the pros and cons of these options, and this is probably not the space to do so. As I watched the discussion it was clear that the underlying expectation for all three scenarios is the fear of split of the LCA over this decision, all over again: Whatever the outcome, one group may leave. . .

This raised my curiosity. I had been following other such discussions in the past few years and have always been wondering: Why do they not just go for it — either ordain women, or leave the church? After all, this controversy and its underlying issues have, to some degree, paralysed the LCA ever since its merger in 1967. Certainly, as many of the contributions here and elsewhere attest to, it has caused deep pain on all sides seriously involved, and most importantly for those women who actively fight for it or, worse, simply have given up on their calling. I could never understand how the Church could stay together over such a long time with such an apparently deeply divisive controversy at hand. It’s like an old, unhappy couple after some 40-odd years of marriage — “I don’t know where to go. . .”

Then, during this recent debate I was following, somebody made an interesting remark: The LCA and its forerunners have behind them a history of division, controversy, splits, union, re-uniting, and unsolved controversies all over again. “But we know how to stay together despite all our different opinions, and how to communicate with each other in dignity and with respect of each other.”

This remark was not made suggesting a solution, just as an observation from the LCA history. And it is true. Many religious groups (or other ideological movements) tend to have in-fights over the interpretation of key principles (the four gospels in the New Testament are a good example of such differences in emphases). Many fall apart over these conflicts. So far, the LCA has survived its lifelong history of divisions and controversies ever since the first German Lutherans arrived in South Australia.

But — from a fringe dweller’s perspective, this experience of staying together despite all conflicts is actually an invaluable asset. Based on a faith tradition much stronger than the current debates, this is a foundation that should allow exactly what has been suggested as the “half”-option in Scenario 1 of the bishops’ letter: One teaching and two practices.

Essentially, nobody forces me to “take Communion from the hand of a woman”, as somebody wrote in one of the contributions here — and the same would be true the other way around.  What is so difficult in that?

Not to talk about missing, even losing, the insight and wisdom of Biblical exegesis and preaching from a woman’s experience and perspective.  After all, they are not only givers of life, women demographically make more than half of our societies.  We do miss this more-than-half in the preaching, teaching and counselling of the Church.  Let this church come back together again, as was said in this discussion I followed recently, “in dignity and respect of each other”.