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Photo: Reverends Vaira Bitēna and Klāvs Bērziņš. Photo credit: Ralfs Kokins

Conference in Riga, Latvia – Woman in church and society. October 2 from 10.30-16.30. Working languages – English and Latvian.

We commend those Christians in Latvia who have stood up in favour of ratification, and who are, or have been penalised for doing so. We salute your solidarity with the victims of violence, and stand with you in prayer as you take your resistance, your persistence and your insistence forward.

Association of Lutheran Women Theologians in Latvia in support of the ratification of the Istanbul Convention

Evangelist and prison chaplain, as well as the president of the Association of Lutheran Women Theologians in Latvia Mrs. Rudīte Losāne, bishop emeritus and the chaplain of the Anglican Community in Latvia Mrs. Jāna Jēruma-Grīnberga and evangelist Mrs. Agnese Kapče will represent Latvia in Wittenberg at the symbolic even that will mark the impact of the Reformation 500 on women’s ministry.

This is a follow up audio interview that took place in December 2016. The main theme – what has changed after the Lutheran Church in Latvia officially banned women from ordination.

On September 13, 2016 Gerhard Ulrich, the bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Northern Germany, sent a letter to Jānis Vanags, the archbishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Latvia and expressed sadness about the decision of the Latvian Church Synod to...

28 July 1975 in an expanded Consistory meeting, the issue of women’s ordination was discussed as the second point of the meeting. After each participant had spoken on this issue, archbishop J. Matulis said: “If you will be against this issue, then I will announce an extraordinary Synod and the Synod will give women the right to be ordained.” In the larger Lutheran countries, like Germany and Sweden, women were already being ordained. It is possible that the most important aspect was that the Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church outside Latvia also was starting to ordain women. In 1974 the first LELCOL woman – Agnese Pone – was ordained. Before the historic voting „for” women’s ordination, J. Matulis said: “This we need to do – to involve women in pastoral work.”

On October 28, 2015 the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia (ELCL) in its Pastors’ Conference overwhelmingly voted in favour of expanding Article 133 of the ELCL Constitution with a gender specific requirement – only males can seek ordination within the ELCL. 57 attendees voted “for” this proposal, only 6 voted “against” and 2 abstaines. Prior to the decision the ELCL never consulted any of the parties involved and affected by such a serious proposal. The fragile hope of reunification with the LELCA (which has its own Archbishop, the Most Revd Lauma Zušēvica) was dealt a blow by this decision. Moreover, if affirmed by the Synod of LELC in 2016, this vote carries the potential of setting the Latvian Lutheran Church further apart from the global Lutheran community embodied in the Lutheran World Federation.

We have learned that on October 28, 2015 a Pastors’ Conference of the Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church (LELC) will take place on the issue of the ordination in context of a proposed amendment to the verse 133 of the LELC Constitution. It is a shame that this information is not available, either at the webpage of LELC, nor in the official LELC newspaper