Already in the 1930s, opinions and debates were voiced on equal rights for women in religious institutions.
The first call to recognise women’s right to all offices in the Church was voiced at the First General Women’s Conference in 1925, convened by the seven largest women’s organisations in Latvia at the time.
On 31 March 1932, the Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia adopted a resolution stating: “To allow a woman to speak in church from the lectern” (Minutes of the Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia, 1932). Women theologians serving in the pastoral office were given the opportunity to preach, but they were not allowed to do so from the pulpit, only from the lectern, since the pulpit was regarded as a sacred space. Women were also given the opportunity to engage in mission work abroad and in Latvia. In the church, women were more often deaconesses, who cared for the sick, looked after children, and tended to works of charity in congregations, which were also established in rural districts.
Following the decision adopted by the Synod, the Latvian Women Theologians’ Society approached the Church Administration with a request to allow women theologians to preach in church from the pulpit, since church premises are not designed for speaking from a lectern, which causes additional inconvenience and confusion among listeners, as the pulpit stands empty. (State Historical Archives of Latvia, fonds 2413, inv. 1, file 5, p. 34.) Further arguments for speaking from the pulpit were that it is technically inconvenient. “In a technical sense, the pulpit differs greatly from the altar, which is recognised as the holiest place, where the liturgy and the parts of the service connected with the sacrament take place. It is therefore understandable that only an ordained clergyman may enter the altar, while unordained persons also go up to the pulpit. [..] The pulpit is nothing other than a special place intended for speaking. The pulpit has no particular confessional significance. [..] Listeners may get the impression that it is not the true Word of God, since it is not permitted to be proclaimed from the pulpit.” (State Historical Archives of Latvia, fonds 2431, inv. 1, file 3, p. 55.)
V. Tēraudkalns’s research on the discussions of that time in the press shows that in 1932, in the popular newspaper Jaunākās Ziņas, an article by Saeima deputy Berta Pīpiņa appeared as a call to debate, in which the author linked the clergy’s negative stance on the question of women’s ordination to a fear of strong competition. As a pragmatic argument for the need for a woman pastor, she cited the fact that at the time 35 Lutheran congregations were without a pastor.
An article published in the newspaper Zemgales Balss expressed the conviction that “one cannot deny women the honour that, in terms of religiosity, they stand above men”. In another publication, drawing on the notion of woman’s special nature, it was written that women in particular “could best understand those suffering spiritually and offer them support”. The assertion made in one publication, that “women pastors would never fall into the sin of alcohol”, sounds naive, but it must be borne in mind that at the time, in women’s groups in many countries, the view of woman as the keeper of traditional values and morality was widespread, especially contrasting this mission with the image of man as a destroyer. These groups did not seek to portray woman as identical to man in all respects, but rather to show the features characteristic of each sex.
The socio-political activism of women theologians contrasted with the emphasis on individual cultivation of spirituality that prevailed in the Ladies’ Committees of many congregations. This reality is well illustrated by A. Zvirbule’s paper “Obstacles to a Woman’s Spiritual Work”, read at the conference of the Ladies’ Committees of Valmiera District in August 1933. The speaker cites duties towards the family, unbelieving family members, and working conditions as external obstacles.
The opportunities given to women theologians to preach may be regarded as a small step towards a woman’s service in the pastoral office. Yet even this permission was overshadowed by the understanding, formed over the centuries, of sacred space and the positions of the persons acting within it, which symbolically showed who is “above” and who is “below”. Women were allowed to speak not from the pulpit but from the lectern. They retained the opportunity to take part in mission work abroad (Anna Irbe) and in Latvia. The Society for the Promotion of Women’s Diaconia was active in the Baltic German Lutheran congregations. Several Latvian women were spiritual workers in the society “The Evangelical Brethren Congregation of Latvia”, which existed under the auspices of the Lutheran Church and sought to maintain regular activities in the surviving Herrnhutian meeting houses. Women were indispensable in such a branch of home mission work as the night mission (as work with prostitutes was called).
In Edgars Ķiploks’s research we read how women theologians were allowed to work as religious education teachers in schools. One woman theologian revealed to Ķiploks: “In my student days, on Mother’s Day, theology students were invited to deliver the word of God from the lectern in the altar space. Many of Latvia’s churches remain unforgettable in my memory. Women likewise served with the word of God in student organisations.”
Sources:
1) Ķiploks E. “Latvian Women Theologians” in the publication “Go and Tell”, Ogre Evangelical Lutheran congregation, 1995
2) Dr. phil. Tēraudkalns V. “The Path to the Ordination of Lutheran Women in Latvia”, University of Latvia Faculty of Theology publication Ceļš No. 57
3) Priede Ž. University of Latvia Faculty of Theology bachelor’s thesis “Women’s Ordination in Latvia in the Time of Archbishop Jānis Matulis”, Riga, 2007