One Crusty Hold Out Against Ordaining Women Disagrees with Church and Change, WELS

A Latvian Bars Ordaining Women
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY,
Published: Wednesday, August 3, 1994


The oldest working pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia is 93. The youngest, ordained this year, is 18. The Archbishop of Latvia says the shortage of pastors in his country is so extreme that he has to take anyone he can get.

Except women.

In defiance of his predecessor in Latvia and almost all the larger Lutheran churches around the world, Archbishop Janis Vanags refuses to ordain women.

"It is true we need pastors very much," the Archbishop said, "but it is better to do without them than to do something against the will of God."

The rock-hard views of the 35-year-old Archbishop, who was elected six months ago, have bitterly divided Latvia's largest denomination. Deeper Than Usual Rift

Many other Protestant denominations are divided over the ordination of women. The Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church, one of the largest in America, still refuses. But the rift seems deeper here, where the Lutheran Church is so closely identified with Latvian nationalism.

Mostly, the battle reflects a trend throughout the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe: Even after the collapse of Communism, faiths forged in persecution remain far more conservative than those nurtured in the West.

The issue of ordination of women is not just an internal dispute in Latvia. The issue has also alienated the Latvian-based church from branches in Europe and the Americas that were established by Latvians who fled the Communists in 1940.

This is particularly true of the American branch, a church that grew large and prosperous in exile. Talk of reuniting the Latvian church and its exile branch has stopped, and instead, some Western church leaders are quietly planning to cut back on money sent to Riga. Dispute in Estonia

The same dispute simmers in neighboring Estonia, where only 4 of the country's 100 pastors are women. But there, the Archbishop does not openly oppose ordination. In Lithuania, too, women can be ordained.

"I know of no other place where the ordination of women was started, and then stopped," said Archbishop Elmar Ernst Rozitis, who from Germany heads the Latvian Lutheran Church abroad. "At this time I see no real possibility of a resolution."

Sarmite Fisere, who became a pastor in 1989, the day the Synod in Latvia voted to ordain women, is particularly frustrated.

"It makes no sense," said Ms. Fisere, one of nine women who were ordained before Archbishop Vanags took office. He has not interfered with their work.

Latvia, with 2 million inhabitants, has about 300,000 Lutherans and only 89 ministers and 39 lay preachers to guide them. Ms. Fisere, for instance, is the only Lutheran minister in the village of Ogre (population 28,000). "The need is so deep, and the people have accepted us women completely," she said. Infecting Young Pastors

She said Archbishop Vanags's views were infecting many young pastors, who, she said, were increasingly conservative.

She said, "In my opinion, Vanags is too young and inexperienced."

Ms. Fisere and the Archbishop were seminarians together at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Latvia in the mid-1980's, in the early days of perestroika, when the authorities gingerly began relaxing the strictures against religious activity but still punished those who pursued the new freedom too eagerly.

The Archbishop, who was a chemist, said he lost his job and apartment when he began working as a lay preacher. Ms. Fisere said she was accused of anti-Soviet agitation in the seminary and was almost kicked out. They both took part in the nonviolent revolution that led to Baltic independence in 1991. At Odds With West

The Archbishop is also at odds with his male counterparts in the Western branch of the Latvian church, who have been working alongside women pastors since 1970.

"We in the exile church have put quite a bit of pressure on the Archbishop over this," said Vilis Varsbergs, a Chicago-based church leader who in August will become dean of the theological department of the University of Latvia, which is where the Lutheran seminary is situated. "But it has been resented."

Archbishop Vanags's position on the ordination of women was known before he was elected by the Latvian Synod of Bishops, and most Western church leaders favored the candidacy of Archbishop Rozitis. But most Latvians, including even liberal church leaders, preferred a lifelong resident of Latvia. Many Women in Seminary

More than a third of the students in the Lutheran seminary in Riga are women, and no one is quite certain what will happen when the first women come up as candidates for ordination.

Some could stay in academia, teaching theology. Archbishop Rozitis said he would ordain Latvian women if they came to Germany with the intention of working outside Latvia, but he said he was not ready to defy Archbishop Vanags's authority and ordain women to return and work as pastors in Latvia.

"That would start off a very tense time between our churches," he said. "It is hard to do something, and just as hard to do nothing."

Archbishop Rozitis said there was another, more drastic step.

The World Lutheran Federation, the Lutheran umbrella group in Geneva, could vote to suspend the Latvian Church, in an echo of steps taken in 1984 against two white South African churches that refused to reject their nation's apartheid system. Federation 'Not Our Pope'

But even that prospect did not seem to shake Archbishop Vanags. "I hope they will not go that far," he said calmly. "But they cannot tell us what to do. The president of the World Lutheran Federation is not our pope."

Seated beneath a portrait of Martin Luther in his office in the church consistory, an elegantly renovated building that was used as a Soviet Army barracks during the Soviet occupation, the Archbishop explained his stance.

"It's not that I don't think women are just as capable as men -- they often get better marks than men in the theological faculty," he said. "But we have to follow what the Bible tells us, we can't impose our ideas of human rights or equal rights."

The Archbishop declined to cite specific passages in the Bible that prohibit the ordination of women. "If I cite a specific passage, others would react and say it can be interpreted differently. It would not be serious." Mr. Varsbergs argued that whatever biblical strictures could be found against women as members of the clergy were the word of men -- not God. "Prohibitions against women reflected the cultural situation in Greece at that time," he said. To the conservative argument that Jesus did not have female apostles, Mr. Varsbergs replied, "If you apply that standard, then gentiles shouldn't be ordained, either."

Calling the dispute "the most divisive issue in the history of our church," Archbishop Vanags called on the other side to give in. "If I were a woman and my wish to become a pastor was dividing the church," he said, "then I would give up this demand."

Photo: The Lutheran Archbishop of Latvia, Janis Vargas, has reversed his predecessor's stand and refuses to ordain women as pastors, dividing his denomination. Recently the Archbishop said although the church needed pastors, "it was better to do without them than to do something against the will of God." (Chuck Nacke for The New York Times) Map of shows the location of Riga, Latvia.

Correction: August 9, 1994, Tuesday An article last Wednesday about the refusal of the Lutheran Archbishop of Latvia to ordain women misstated the name of the church's world body. It is the Lutheran World Federation. A picture caption with the article misstated the Archbishop's name. It is Janis Vanags, not Vargas.