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Women's Ordination Accepted in LCA, ALC and AELC
 While “It Didn’t All Begin With Ordination,” the history of ordination
of women in the Lutheran Church in North America did begin on June 29,
1970 when, in an evening session of the fifth biennial convention of the
Lutheran Church in America, Section II, Item1 of the Bylaws was amended
to read, “A minister of this church shall be a person whose soundness in
the faith, aptness to teach and educational qualifications have been
examined and approved in the manner prescribed in the constitution and
who has properly ordained….”
The action was described as
“tradition-shattering,” and as having been taken with dramatic and
unexpected suddenness. Following the convention’s action, Dr. Robert J.
Marshall, president of the LCA, observed, “ The proof of the pudding
will be in the eating.”
Only four months later, at its fifth
general convention, The American Lutheran Church, on the morning of
October 24, 1970 voted to adopt the recommendation of the Church Council
“that women be eligible for call and ordination in The American Lutheran
Church.”
As with the LCA, the decision came
swiftly, the vote being taken only one-half hour after the resolution
was brought before the convention for discussion. The only woman to
express her views, Mrs. Colin Harris of Byron, Minnesota, drew laughter
when she observed that “needless to say, I’m a delegate.”
The Association of Evangelical Lutheran
Churches wrote its constitution in such a way that women were eligible
from its inception. The constitution adopted on December 3, 1976, at the
church’s founding convention. On the following day, the convention
adopted a resolution to assist the synods concerning the ordination of
women. The intent of the resolution was to support action of the Pacific
Regional Synod which had approved the ordination of women at its first
convention and to acknowledge the relationship between the AELC and its
synods which called for the decision on ordination of women to be made
by the individual synods and their congregations. |
