FROM VELLTA TO LLSTA
THE CHANGE OF DIRECTION IN THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE ELCL IN THE FIRST YEARS AFTER
THE DEATH OF ARCHBISHOP KĀRLIS GAILĪTIS
Pastor Indra Skuja Grīslis
in collaboration with the theologian Aija Zvirbule
5 November 2010
During the time of the Awakening, the Lutheran Church became very popular thanks to its call for the spiritual freedom of people and its work in restoring the independence of the state. For ELCL women too, paths to all kinds of service in congregations open up widely, and interest in women in the Church grows in society.
At the University of Latvia Faculty of Theology (FT), restored on the basis of the Theological Seminary, an unusual and creative time begins: there is access to teaching staff from the West and the East, and on the recommendation of Lutheran congregation pastors, many talented young women begin to study, aware of both a calling to service and to teaching, and they develop academic interests. Among the women theology students, the idea of organising into an educational women’s association is nurtured.
This idea is finally realised in the spring of 1993 on the premises of the Riga YMCA, when, with the participation of the theologian Erika Mača from the USA, VELLTA (the Worldwide Association of Evangelical Lutheran Latvian Theologians) is informally founded under the leadership of the serving theology student Aija Zvirbule. It is conceived as an academic theological organisation. Its initial members are several of Latvia’s emerging women theologians from the FT and also Latvian women clergy from abroad. The founding document is signed by 12 women theologians, including Aija Zvirbule, Austra Reine, Zilgme Eglīte, Māra Dzērve, Ivanda Ceiere, Inta Funknere, Dace Jaunzeme, Inese Žverelo, Sandra Rozenberga, and others. The members have differing views on priorities. Aija Zvirbule and her like-minded companions are most interested in the education of local laypeople and the promotion of academic theology, but some of the Western sisters see the newly founded association more as a campaigning organisation, since by that time Jānis Vanags, who has publicly proclaimed his stance against women’s ordination, has already been elected archbishop. A wider circle of theology students and also potential male supporters is introduced to VELLTA, with serious hopes of expanding the membership. At this time the role of women in theology in Latvia has not yet been recognised and defined; feminism, including feminist theology, has not been identified and clearly understood in the Latvian context.
Before VELLTA is officially registered in accordance with the then state requirements and its activity priorities are developed further, the theology student Aija Zvirbule is forced to step down from leading and further organising VELLTA. The reason is Aija’s very difficult pregnancy, when she fights for the life of her unborn child. Unfortunately, the legal status of Aija’s expected child has given rise to discussions among the association’s members and promoters on questions of morality and ethics. Aija holds that abortion is not open to debate, and takes the side of life, and, so as not to compromise the service of the other sisters, distances herself from VELLTA. This delays the official registration of VELLTA, and its activity wanes.
Within the ELCL, the behind-the-scenes polarisation over the question of women’s ordination continues.
Since the election of Jānis Vanags, women are no longer ordained. At the start of his time in office, theology students and FT graduates still continue to serve in congregations, both on the assignment of Archbishop Kārlis Gailītis and on a voluntary basis, serving under the pastors of larger congregations. There is a lack of a stable middle generation of pastors. The men, theology students, meanwhile, owing to the great shortage of pastors, are “fast-tracked” into ordination and assigned to serve in ELCL congregations even while still in the first year of the FT. At the start of J. Vanags’s time, no one yet questions the professional service qualification of the women FT students in congregations; unfortunately, women’s service, with quiet hopes of ordination, now continues in a tense and uncertain atmosphere. The polarisation continues without any definite theological discussions. The official ELCL/ELCL Abroad commissions remain at the level of behind-the-scenes conversations and intentions at sessions. Archbishop Vanags expresses in society and in the press his own interpretation of feminism, borrowed from the Western context. His interpretation, however, does not really correspond to the ELCL context and sociological environment. Unfortunately, the concept of feminism publicly interpreted by Archbishop Vanags and his criticism of women’s ordination begin to sow negative sentiments in society at large, since he constantly draws parallels between women’s ordination and homosexuality, and thus the backdrop to the idea of women’s ordination in Latvia is supplemented with the homophobic anxieties sown by the archbishop. It should be added that J. Vanags speaks more about feminism as a social movement than about feminist theology, whose origins, incidentally, are rooted in Catholic theology.
It is paradoxical that, among laypeople and pastors, the men/supporters of women’s ordination remain publicly silent. It is unclear why, soon after the election of Archbishop Vanags, a time of fear and distrust about publicly expressing one’s view in the Church has begun, if that view differs from the view of the leadership. After all, the KGB no longer persecuted anyone from the late 1980s, yet the courage of the Awakening movement among the pastors has fizzled out… Pastors, if it does not affect them personally and, possibly, fearing to lose something, usually remain publicly silent. By contrast, the women theologians, who have no congregation and are being deprived of opportunities for service and ordination, have nothing to lose, and they dare to speak out. Those who work in a congregation are perhaps already beginning to feel partly threatened. The optimism in the Church of Archbishop Gailītis’s time is replaced by Archbishop Vanags’s unyielding backbone and the dominance of his private theological conviction. The serving women theologians for the most part continue their studies, as well as quietly and humbly doing their work in congregations. There is oral testimony that many are privately warned, so as not to lose their opportunities for service, not to meddle in Church politics, not to split the Church of Christ, not to get mixed up with “feminists” (which, with Archbishop Vanags’s help, has already become a negative term among the people).
Initially, the association has gathered women (pastors, theologians, students) who are interested in theology and service in the congregation, but they represent a very broad spectrum of theological views – from the liberal to the conservative. Both directions are found in various wrappings and nuances – respectively, they are united by sex, but not always by theological views. I can confidently assert that among the ELCL women there is not a single representative of any lesbian Church. It should especially be added that the women serving in the ELCL cannot be characterised uniformly in how they themselves understand women’s service. Some of the serving sisters are traditional, with relatively conservative theological views. In many cases their views are indirectly determined by the congregation in which they grew up in faith (yes, and the pastor too). There are unclear positions on whether a woman’s sex determines how the role of a woman pastor is understood. Some sisters are more charismatically inclined. There are nuances in differences of generation, culture, and education. The only common denominator is rather that all these women have a unique understanding of a calling to service. They are all united by the awareness that they have received God’s call to serve. Yet it is an awareness of an individual calling, felt in solitude with God. At that time, for a large proportion of them, the classical arguments “for” or “against” women’s ordination grounded in biblical theology are perhaps not yet familiar, or are known only superficially in theory, and the classical texts of feminist theology are also little known. The feminist movement, about which Archbishop Vanags is so alarmed, is for the most part not at all a priority or within the horizon of the first women pastors at that time. The views of the pastors ordained in the time of Matulis and Gailītis are clearly grounded in the Bible and tradition. In the congregation and the pulpit, they more or less unconsciously copy the role of the male pastor. Even the order of women’s ordination in the ELCL Abroad, in the so-called Lūsis exile agenda, liturgically describes a woman as an exception in the pastoral office. Even those brethren who support women’s ordination nonetheless criticise women’s emotionality and privately remark that only a few, by way of exception, may be pastors. Thus, at this time, the role of the woman pastor is defined most of all by the male pastors, and a large proportion of women, as it were, indirectly agree to this by keeping silent. It is therefore no surprise that many serving pastors and theologians at that time see themselves theologically most of all as the women disciples of Jesus on the morning of the resurrection in the Gospel of John – total isolation and loneliness with the Lord, where the disciples have scattered, but Jesus says to Mary Magdalene and sends the woman: “..go and tell my brothers…”
Gradually the number of conservatively inclined educated brethren grows statistically, many with roots in the Mežaparks congregation. Their theology is doctrinaire and therefore logically comprehensible. Unfortunately, it should be added that there are superficially perceptible parallels with the old communist ideology, doctrine, discipline, and hierarchical obedience. Also the fear of those who hold positions of power. This is a familiar and comfortable situation for those who lived in the former USSR. Might this be the reason why laypeople are receptive to the authority of conservative Lutheranism, and why more and more voices are raised by doctrinaire conservative women, opposed to women’s ordination, the fellow travellers and followers of these brethren? It is precisely the role of these women that the conservative men help to define most clearly. (See, for example, Solvita Šmite in the article “The Founding of LELSA”.) This is only a fragmentary touching upon those ideological aspects of dogmatic theology that have not helped to promote the dialogue on women’s ordination in the Latvian context. In such an atmosphere, the idea and informal leadership of VELLTA are taken over by the Western women clergy Austra Reine and Vija Klīve from the USA. Pastor Austra Reine is a missionary of the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) in Latvia. Vija Klīve is a deaconess of the ELCL Abroad. Both also worked in congregations in Latvia. Their theological positions, looking back with the distance of time, were probably not identical at the time. What these sisters had in common was that both had the very best intentions of promoting women’s ordination in Latvia. Unfortunately, in their American idealism and naivety, Reine and Klīve do not fully understand the context of Latvia and the ELCL at the time – that, without recognising and identifying the role of woman in the Church and without educating laypeople and society at large, one cannot popularise ideas. To Reine and Klīve, as Americans who actively and openly try to speak publicly about the question of women’s ordination, opponents can most easily pin the careless, superficial label of aggressive feminism. The Latvian brethren misunderstand the cultural contexts, since they have never lived in America and at best see the American mentality in clichés and prejudices. Traditional American volunteer service (volunteer work) and the freedom of speech proclaimed in the US constitution (Freedom of Speech) are negatively labelled as aggressive feminism and as interference in the internal affairs of the ELCL. Thus the well-intentioned activities of Reine and Klīve, with the help of Vanags’s fear of feminism, have now become a negative measuring stick for the idea of women’s ordination, and by it all the sisters who support women’s ordination are judged.
During this time, Archbishop Jānis Vanags continues very actively to ride his three hobby-horses – feminism, women’s ordination, and homosexuality – throwing them all into one bag in a manner ill-suited to the Latvian context, arguing on the basis of the threats of Western liberalism. The idea of women’s ordination and feminism (not feminist theology) is gradually received and seen in society in Jānis Vanags’s interpretation; that is, it is not the women themselves but the archbishop who defines for the laypeople in the Church and for the wider public how feminism is to be understood and why women must not be ordained. Seeing that the atmosphere in the ELCL is spoiled, the majority of serving women distance themselves from public statements and hope to prove their calling through their work.
The women faithfully continue to serve in congregations and to study, awaiting the start of an official theological dialogue and discussion in the Church, and hoping to witness the miracle of Archbishop Vanags allowing exceptions. During this time, Archbishop Vanags’s popularity continues to grow in society as an outwardly honest, conservative, and unyielding man, a man of his word with a firm backbone. On the back of the wave of the Awakening, he still has high ratings of Church trustworthiness and authority in society, but at the same time processes of internal polarisation are taking place in the Church.
When, in 1995, the 20th anniversary of women’s ordination in Latvia is celebrated and LLSTA is founded and registered, which is essentially the heir to the ideas of VELLTA, the archbishop and the doctrinaire pastors, without delving into the essence of the matter, see LLSTA as an aggressive feminist combat group. (A vivid illustration of this is the article by Archbishop Vanags “An Ideological Campaign Against Common Sense: Feminism”, published in “Svētdienas Rīts” on 10 September 1995.) It is not the serving women, but the archbishop and the doctrinaire pastors and their female followers, who now “publicly command and manipulate” the theological arguments of women’s ordination and define the role of woman in the Church through the criticism of feminism and a corresponding interpretation of Pauline theology.
“Miracles” do not happen – Vanags’s heart never softens, his backbone remains unyielding. The time of hope is over, an intelligent dialogue on the question of women’s ordination does not begin, and the possibility of such a dialogue is poisoned for many years to come.