Romania: celebrating 30 years of women’s ministry

Pioneering pastor Rev. Dr Elfriede Dörr looks back at the challenges and joys of the past three decades 

(LWI) – The Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Romania is celebrating 30 years since its decision to ordain women for ministry. The year-long celebrations will culminate during the last week of August with a service of thanksgiving and other public events in Sibiu ahead of the General Assembly of the Communion of Protestant Churches in Europe. 

Rev. Dr Elfriede Dörr heads the church’s department for ecumenical relations and pastoral training. She remembers the many difficulties she and other pioneers faced in the early days after their ordination as pastors. “I was ordained on 8 September 1996 in Magdeburg in central Germany,” she recalls, “for ministry in the parish of Mediasch in Transylvania.”  

The decision to accept women’s ordination had been made two years earlier, but it would take several more years before the church was ready to ordain the first woman in Romania itself. “I remember it wasn’t easy when I started my ministry,” Dörr says. “I came to serve in a traditional parish where there was a strong sense of the ‘office’ of a pastor’s wife. I was married to a pastor, but I did not see myself as only a wife, with all the expectations that role brings.”  

Challenging patriarchal culture 

One of the hardest things she found was the lack of role models or companions to turn to for inspiration and support. Some time later, she remembers meeting a young Slovakian woman pastor at a conference in Graz, Austria, with whom she could share stories and exchange experiences of common challenges. “I well remember how we ate ice cream together during a conference break and I had the impression that I was breathing a sigh of relief,” she says.  

Three decades on, Dörr notes that working in an international context, including with the Conference of European Churches, has offered her many opportunities to meet with women who have served as inspiring role models. She says she is often reminded of the significance of being a woman in ministry when people approach her with the words: “The way you speak from the pulpit speaks to my heart – women can do that!” 

Yet she also reflects on the “web of theologically packaged devaluation” to which women are still subjected, with biblical passages used to demean and deny their equal dignity. “Even women have internalized this culture to such as extent that it seems normal to us and we do nothing to question it,” she says. “I am therefore all the more impressed when colleagues speak out against this patriarchal culture.”  

Model leaders and mothers of faith 

To challenge this mindset, Dörr notes the importance of explaining “the historical contexts of the biblical passages” used by opponents of women’s ordination and of presenting “theological arguments for the equal dignity of women.” Similarly, she says, “I could name biblical women in leadership roles, such as Deborah, the judge and prophetess, Priscilla, the teacher and missionary, and Junia, who is called an apostle.” 

To women facing such challenges, she says: “I would ask them to consciously place themselves in the tradition of mothers of faith, of Shiphrah and Puah, Lydia and Phoebe, Hildegard von Bingen and Mary Daly, Marlene Wermescher and Dorothea Binder.” At difficult times, she adds, “I think it is important to stay with yourself, to allow God to guide you in the silence of your home or in the blessing of a public service. This strengthens you to stand as a child of God in the world and to follow your calling.” 

Despite the challenges, Dörr says her work has given her “great joy and satisfaction,” particularly in her mission to further ecumenical and international relationships, as well as training new pastors for ministry. As a member of a minority church in the majority Orthodox nation, she uses the image of an orchestra to describe her task as “the face of my church” in international environments. “A small minority church in the large context of ecumenism is perhaps a piccolo flute that doesn’t always sound in the whole concert, but when it does, it is important that it hits the right note at the right time.”

The ordination of women is an indispensable criterion for the reconciled communion of men and women in the church.

Rev. Dr Elfriede Dörr, Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Romania

A recent satisfaction for her has been the design of clergy dresses with traditional style Transylvanian clasps that date back to the Middle Ages and are normally associated with men’s clerical wear. “In an ecumenical context,” Dörr explains, “I was always fascinated by what Lutheran women from other corners of the world came up with to be recognizable as pastors in public.” The dresses that she and her colleagues helped to design have been well received she says, adding: “I see the real achievement in sending out a signal that we are going to change the traditional understanding of ministry and we stand by it confidently, publicly and visibly.” 

To women in other Lutheran churches where ordination is still reserved for men, Dörr says “Take heart, change is possible!” She emphasizes that “it is thanks to The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) that we have come this far” and it is important to share that journey with others. At the last LWF Assembly in Poland, she notes, Polish women pastors spoke about the many, lengthy obstacles they had to overcome before ordination became possible in their context.  

“It became clear to me there,” she concludes, “that the ordination of women is an indispensable criterion for the reconciled communion of men and women in the church, although by no means the only one. It can be described as a step towards justice and peace, encapsulated in the beautiful Hebrew word ‘shalom’.”