Women Bishops: "Unhierarchical and Related to Everyday Life"

Maria Jepsen

Article Type: Face to Face

Publication Date: 7/1/1993

Paired Article (Face to Face): Women Bishops: The Opening Door of Pentecost

Issue: Faith, Science, Technology (Vol. 13, No 3, Summer, 1993)

The church cannot live in a ghetto; it needs to enter the public arena and assume its responsibility for social issues. A church cannot be measured only by its institutional structures and leaders, but must be encouraged to allow public debate and lively controversy. Church life should be more diverse; the guiding image for me is the picture of the church in the New Testament, with its different theological directions and types of piety. A church of officials, a pastors’ church, does not fit with my own belief. I regard it as a serious mistake that, in its history, the church has seen or treated women—and the laity in general—merely as objects. Therefore, I support a feminist theology that corrects the existing internal ecclesiastical hierarchy by casting a new eye—a woman’s eye—on history and church tradition.

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