Thoughts on the Priesthood

Alice C. Linsley

Christianity is the one true expression of the faith of Abraham and his Hebrew ancestors. The Church has received this tradition and therefore, the Church is the only entity on earth that can preserve it. The all-male priesthood is central to the received tradition. It is an aspect of the binary distinctions that are expressed throughout the canonical Scriptures. Women were never priests because they represent the giving of life through conception and birth. The altar is a place of sacrificial death, the binary opposite. That is why I often say that "The priesthood is about the Blood."

The male-female binary set is poorly understood in our time when the biblical worldview is set aside in favor of "equal rights" and egalitarian values. Though the Scriptures maintain masculine language for God Father and God Son, some insist on non-gendered language which is to disconnect the message from its mooring. 

The consequences of rejecting a received tradition are evident to anthropologists. We see the sad outcomes among populations that have been uprooted through slavery or commercialism. It takes only two generations for a people to become disconnected from their historic identity. Soon the young people begin to wonder who they are and what they are to believe. They go in search of something to replace what is lost. 

Protestants are a good example. Many Protestant innovations are attempts to gain "tradition" apart from the received tradition represented by catholicity, the historic priesthood, and the consensus of the Church on Scripture.

Anglicans who reject the received tradition concerning the priesthood cause division. Their attempts to replace what they have lost cause confusion. A woman standing as a priest at the altar is confusing because form and gender matter.

A personal note

Some readers of Just Genesis know that I was ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church in 1988 in the Diocese of Pennsylvania by Bishop Allan Bartlett. I left the Episcopal Church on the Sunday that Gene Robinson was consecrated bishop in New Hampshire.

The celebration of gay rights, or the rights of any group, has no place in the Church. The redeemed stand before God justified through Jesus Christ. To speak of rights outside of that context is a form of blasphemy. 

That day was the line in the sand for me. Everyone should know where their line is before the day comes when they are tempted to cross it.

I believe that I was a caring and effective church administrator and I trust that God was able to use my offerings, meager as they were at times. Yet as I stood at the altar, I sometimes had the feeling that I didn't belong there, or that I was wearing someone else's shoes. Indeed the priest wears the shoes of the Man Jesus Christ, the universal ruler-priest. Not every man can wear those shoes, and they are not meant to be worn by women ever.

After I renounced my ordination vows I was able to dedicate myself to research and began to explore the origins of the priesthood as a biblical anthropologist. If you are interested in some of my conclusions, you might read some of these articles:

The Church's Consensus on Women and the Priesthood

On Blood and the Impulse to Immortality
Ancient Words for Priests
God as Male Priest
Ten Objections to Women Priests
The Priesthood as Heavenly Ordinance
Males as Spiritual Leaders: Two Patterns
The Priesthood is About the Blood
Why Women Were Never Priests
What is a Priest?
C.S. Lewis on Women Priests
The Priesthood in Anthropological Perspective
Terah Means Priest
Aaron Was Buried in Edom