When Pirkko Lehtiö was ordained a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (ELCF) 30 years ago, she received phone calls with death threats for several weeks. Now 85 years old, the lady says she is glad that this happened so long ago, before social networks were invented, because the hate speech she would have had to experience today would be unbearable.
The fact that women in Finland could at last represent the largest religious institution was a victory achieved through a hard struggle, because the rules of the Finnish church stated that first three-quarters of the votes of the church council had to be obtained. Even though society had been open to this idea since the 1960s, the inflexible people in charge of church governance did not allow this idea to be realized for decades.
The question of the ordination of women in the Finnish Lutheran church was raised for the first time in 1963, then again in the 1970s, but on both occasions the proposal fell short of the three-quarters support of the church’s general assembly.
In 1984 the now fifth vote on the ordination of women took place, and it too was unsuccessful. But this time protesting church members began to leave the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland in droves.
“I know people who left the church after the 1984 vote. Even in those days the idea of gender equality was quite developed. People could not accept the notion that a woman would be incapable, because of her gender, of working in a particular field,” Lehtiö recalls.
The now emerita bishop of Helsinki, Irja Askola, recalled that when she finished her theology studies, her former coursemates went straight off to serve in congregations. But for her it took 13 years of patient waiting until her calling was fulfilled.
“Some Finnish women moved to Sweden in order to become pastors,” Askola recalls.
The vote finally succeeded in 1986, and after two more years of administrative bureaucracy, in 1988, women were finally allowed to put on the ELCF vestments.
Death threats and police protection
The ceremony at which the women were to be ordained was planned in cooperation with the police for safety reasons. The procession, which usually takes place outdoors, was held indoors. Thus, on 6 March 1988, 94 women from various parts of the country were ordained in the Finnish Lutheran church.
“All my anxiety subsided when we climbed up the stairs from the church crypt into the church. It was a joyful event. I felt strange; the whole time I had a tingling sensation,” Lehtiö says.
“Of course, we received encouragement from men, but the hate letters, accusations and threats were real,” says Askola. Speaking about the situation in the Finnish Lutheran church now, bishop Askola says that discrimination is no longer noticeable and that in congregations there is not even talk of “women pastors”; they are simply “pastors”.
At present in Finland there are almost as many women pastors as men pastors. If ordination continues as it does now, women pastors will soon outnumber men. However, when it comes to the highest offices of the church, only one-fifth are women. Over the past 30 years the ELCF has elected only one woman bishop, the bishop of Helsinki Irja Askola, who retired last year.
Photo: Harri Palmolahti / Yle
Sources: https://yle.fi