How you view the line. . .

The state of the Missouri Synod on the question of the role of women seems to hinge upon two very different viewpoints.  On the one hand, there are those who insist that everything matters.  They worry about having women in classes as the seminaries (deaconesses) and about women doing anything publicly that is the domain of men or pastors.  A woman leading an LWML Bible study is often seen as different only by degree with a vested woman in a stole leading worship.  They are constantly on the lookout for places where the line is transgressed, where woman are usurping the roles given exclusively to men or to pastors.  There is nothing innocent in this point of view.  Every infraction is nefarious and threatening.

On the other hand, there are those who insist that it is no big deal.  They see the line as flexible, adjusted in part by circumstance and in part by age or generation.  They insist that it is local and nothing more.  A woman leading a women's Bible study is just that.  Nothing more.  A woman holding congregational offices is just that and nothing more.  A woman doing what any layman might do on Sunday morning is just that and nothing more.  They are hesitant about making anything more out of something specific or local.  It is no big deal.

In between there are those in Missouri who are caught between the two positions.  They have a concern for principle but they also have a concern for rigidity.  They see women all around us in society, government, and industry but they know that the Church is not the same as those domains.  They realize that this is messy and it might mean that the same answer is not the same in every place -- that come congregations may not have women's suffrage or officers and others might.  They want to respect these differences but they also know that both sides push and pull toward the edges and not the middle.  They do not want to make too much out of it all but neither do they want to ignore the real differences which deserve to be noticed.

On the one side, those who want the line to be movable insist that we must trust them in every decision they make and on the other side are those who insist that rules are rules and they must be respected.  And this is not simply about the role of women.  It touches upon the issues of close communion, worship rites, and a host of different things.  Every three years we attempt to blend them all together in something called a convention.  It is sometimes a train wreck.  It is sometimes shallow, preferring to push off things that are urgent and photo ops for real substance.  It is sometimes hopeful, when progress is made even if it is slow.  It is sometimes a real conversation in which people are listening and sometimes it is people shouting at each other without paying attention to what the others are saying.  It is a call to trust with some insisting that there is no trust and others insisting that their trust has been violated over and over again.  And all of this is magnified by the bullhorn of social media and armchair commentators (like me) and backseat drivers who insist they can see clearly what others cannot.  I wish it was going to change, resolve into something less stressful, but I doubt that this will happen soon.  In fact, I suspect this is the shape of things to come -- made more urgent and more difficult as we witness the decline of things around us in the Church and in the world.  What do you think?