Religious women press for change

MORMON WOMEN cannot be priests. Catholic women cannot be priests. Muslim

women cannot lead prayers in mixed-gender congregations. Jewish women are
restricted in praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. But Mormons have the “Let
Women Pray” campaign. Catholics have the “Women’s Ordination Conference.”
Muslims have “Muslims for Progressive Values.” Jews have “Women of the Wall.” What
is going on here?

Last week, a Mormon woman led a prayer before 100,000 people gathered in Salt Lake
City — a first for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Also last week, 150
Jewish women prayed at the Western Wall, five of whom were arrested by Jerusalem
police. In West Hollywood, a Muslim gender-equal prayer space has been in operation
for most of a decade. On Holy Thursday last month, in an annual ritual commemorating
Jesus’s washing of the apostles’ feet, two of the 12 whose feet Pope Francis washed were
women — another first.

Conservatives blasted the pope, since the exclusively male make-up of the 12 apostles
goes to the heart of the church’s rationale barring women from the priesthood. Likewise,
a spokesperson for the Mormon church in Salt Lake City appealed to divine authority,
saying that the male-only priesthood “was established by Jesus Christ himself, and is
not a decision to be made by those on Earth.” Speaking of the women praying at the
Western Wall, a Jewish critic declared, “Their whole practice betrays the creator.”

But religious people are finding that the creator’s will is debatable, and so are appeals to
tradition. Muslims detect no teaching on the subject in the Koran, and find ample
precedent for women serving as imams in early Islamic settings. Christians must reckon
with Jesus’s own choice of women as intimates, and the gospels’ emphasis that all of his
male followers, unlike the women, deserted him at the crucifixion. Women were first to
preach the Resurrection. In his letter to Romans, St. Paul identifies 27 prominent
Christians, 10 of whom are women. He names two, in particular — Prisca and Junia —
as his specially designated leaders of the community. Despite his reputation to the
contrary, St. Paul can only be awkwardly yoked to the movement to keep church women
in their place.

Do these debates among religious people have broader importance? One can note that
the press for change in God-sanctioned male supremacy comes mainly from privileged
women. Is this yet another gender-equality battle that favors the elite? That impression
at first finds an echo in Sheryl Sandberg’s hit book, “Lean In: Women, Work, and the
Will to Lead” — the equal rights manifesto of the former Google executive and current
Facebook honcho. But, in truth, all of the equality battles of women are linked. Sandberg
reports that when she asked Leymah Gbowee, the Liberian peace activist and Nobel
Peace laureate, how Americans can help the dispossessed women of Liberia, Gbowee
replied simply, “More women in power.”

Women and girls make up perhaps 70 percent of the world’s poor. Half of all pregnant
women lack adequate prenatal care. Malnutrition accounts for a third of infant deaths.
Two-thirds of the world’s illiterates are women. The single surest measure of a poor
country’s economic growth is the improvement in the status of women. Education of
girls defines the heart of development, because the benefit is exponential. “To teach a
man is to teach one person,” said a Qatari researcher studying education among Muslim
women in China. “To teach a woman is to teach everyone.”

One can argue that the only true solution to the intractable problem of mass poverty is
the global empowerment of women. One can argue, equally, that the most direct route to
such a goal runs through religion, because of its near universal reach and its hold on the
human imagination. Religion has sanctified male supremacy. Now that the cost of
female powerlessness is openly calculated in the suffering of billions, religion must
generate the empowerment of women. Poverty falls as women rise. Those are the stakes
in Salt Lake City, Jerusalem, mosques around the world, and Rome.

“To protect Creation . . .” This is how Pope Francis defined his purpose in his papal
installation sermon. “. . . and to protect every man and every woman.” Whether Francis
sees it clearly yet or not, that vow can only be fulfilled by gender equality — inside the
Catholic Church, and out. And, yes, creation does depends on it.