Gender issues in the 21st Century

On Sunday we had our Annual General Meeting at church to discuss various issues and the past year’s events involving all the different committees. Being the secretary of the Spring Festival Committee (aka THE Bierfest) I had to write a short report about last year’s event. I made the pastor read it cause I swore to myself that I would never go near a microphone again after my birthday party blooper! Haha! I was then voted as Chairperson of this year’s committee – a huge promotion for me and something which I want to use to my full potential and make this year’s Festival even more successful.

But that was not the issue of the day. We also had to vote three new Church Elders – one from the German group and two from the English group. The issue here was that Synod’s (the governing body of the Lutheran Church in South Africa) constitution does not allow women to be part of the Church Council. Our constitution does, but theirs, which is the ruling body in the end, does not. How backwards and condescending. We have submitted proposals several times over the years to amend this, but it has fallen on deaf ears. Someone should tell them to wake up and realise that this is not the 1800s but in fact 2007, where men and women are treated as equals.

Apparently they get their reasoning from the Bible where some verses, which are open to interpretation, state that men are, for lack of a better word, superior. I am not going to even attempt to find such verses or even debate this at length. The fact is, that we live in “the new South Africa” where men and women are equal and are given equal voting and authority rights. Its time the church did the same.

After much heated debate in our own church hall, the majority voted to elect whomever we wanted as a Church Elder, man or woman and resubmit our petition to the Synod (a basic screw you, we are following our own Constitution whether you like it or not – bad choice of words from me, I know, but I feel quite strongly about this). We know very well that we are going to get ourselves in serious hot water now, but so be it. In the end we voted one man and two women as new Church Elders. The two women are from our English Group. And it was so true what one of them said after being elected: she thanked the congregation for electing her and assured everyone that she is very capable of doing the job. At the end of the day, the women are the voice of the English congregation, they form the bigger group (only one male was present at the meeting) so it’s only right that a women should be elected to do the job. Amen sister.

A few angry people walked out afterwards and rushed home but there is nothing we can do about that. We simply have to move with the times – and it’s time that the small German communities realised that. Its gonna get ugly soon, Im sure, but it has to happen.