Is it a manipulative power-dyad? So that they will be able to talking against single individuals in the congregation who question the authority? What I have seen looking at American Baptist or Presbyterian Churches there are only one pastor at a time.

Because it's very lucrative for man and wife.

Which churches specifically have you in mind?

Example, Megachurch. The team ”Os” who dribble and perform plays in the old Compaq Center in Houston. Everybody seem to have a role.

What I mean is that is not the traditional role. Does it have any scriptural explanation?

I don't think it's scriptural,but it's a variation on tradition. In previous generations, before women hit the workforce in large numbers, when a Protestant pastor/minister/preacher was hired, it was "two for the price of one" if the clergyman was married. The wife was expected to take care of various and sundry tasks related to the church (accompany the choir, take over any Sunday school class when a teacher was absent, type the bulletin if there was no secretary or if the secretary was ill, fill in for the janitorial service if there was an issue, serve as a wedding coordinator - basically everything other than handling money) and not just those which directly aided her husband in fulfilling his job description. The clergyman's salary didn't reflect the labor the wife provided, nor was the wife compensated personally.

With women joining the workforce en masse, pastors' wives as sources of free labor disappeared. Protestant churches had to create committees and find other ways to take care of the tasks pastors' wives had previously handled for free. At least the wives are usually compensated under the present "co-pastor" system. If it's a megachurch, they're compensated quite generously.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/18/2021 03:47PM by scmd1.

Osteen does it so he can make his sheeples pay his wife $10,000,000 a year, like they pay him.

Its always the money, always the money. Follow it and you will find the truth.........

My experience with various churches, including mainstream evangelical, is that the minister is male and his wife is considered his partner/helper. A wife is not considered a pastor just because she is married to a pastor.

In some denominations, women cannot be a pastor (leader).

In churches such as the United Church of Canada, women can be pastors unto themselves, not through their husbands.

A United Church in my neighbourhood has a female pastor. She and her husband and that congregation helped me very much with some refugee families nearby. The pastor's husband, for instance, gave me fresh veggies from their garden several times. I'm not sure what type of work he does.

The Mennonite Church of Canada ordains women but not as lead pastors. The Anglican Church in Canada ordains women as pastors and even bishops. Evangelical Lutheran as well as Presbyterian churches have female ministers. The first Presbyterian female minister was ordained in 1962 so they were well ahead of their peers. Pentecostals ordain women. Evangelicals are changing somewhat, and slowly. Some denominations have ordained women, such as the Christian Reform Church. Convention Baptists in a couple of provinces have also done so.

Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches do not ordain women, believing that because Jesus was male it takes a male to represent him. Some Roman Catholic women are ordained (calling themselves "Womenpriests") but they are excommunicated for doing so.

I hope I've got this all correct. Some of the denominations are evolving, even perhaps Catholics, and there will be more and more that have females serving in lead roles. Religious thought and ceremony are slow to change in most cases. This is a big one.

Perhaps it's the mega-churches and quasi-EV/Protestant churches who specialize in the husband/wife pastor format.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/18/2021 12:57PM by Nightingale.

You are correct, Nightingale. In my experience I know of no pastor couples where each is a pastor.

A friend of mine & her husband are both Lutheran Ministers and serve the same congregation. Both seminary trained and ordained. They were hired because they were both ordained.

Yes, it makes sense both ways, kentish and sbg. In regular churches I know of (excluding the megas where, as noted, even the male partner may not be an ordained minister) a woman is not a pastor just because her husband is. Undoubtedly, she has an important role in many ministries within the church but not as an ordained pastor just on the strength of her husband's position.

However, a woman may be ordained in her own right, in some churches, as noted above. I mentioned a United Church pastor I know whose husband is not ordained. Then, occasionally, there is a couple where both are ordained and each can serve as fully qualified pastors.

A lot depends on the denomination of a church, the principles of the individual church and the qualifications of each marriage partner.

A mixed bag, iow.

Here is an article discussing this question. It is religious, by definition, so I'm not going to post excerpts. It may answer your questions. You can find it here:

https://www.gci.org/articles/women-pastors/


Bottom Line: The Bible does not prohibit females from serving as pastors, leaders, teachers, according to its analysis. It makes sense to me, fwiw.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/18/2021 01:06PM by Nightingale.

How come it's always "man and wife" and never "woman and husband" ?

A leadership within Churches were married as a common occurrence.

One good take on why it stopped is that with developing legal systems the land ownership, art and other wealth could potentially be distributed to the children.

So that meant no marriage paperwork.

Then the most "divine" (deviation from norms) got underway, meaning only deviants were now hired.

And you're (RC church) unhappy with what you got?

Dumb situation, for sure..

This is an interesting question that I (as a convert to Judaism) have thought about on many occasions, especially in recent decades (since gay marriage, in particular, has gradually become accepted throughout a growing number of Jewish denominations and populations).

The general historical "rule" (I don't know if it is an actual rule, especially in our current times) is that a congregational rabbi WILL be married, and most likely, as well, will be a parent (either through birth or through adoption).

To a certain extent, congregational rabbis (not all rabbis are congregational rabbis; many are academics, etc.) and the spouses of those rabbis are considered, by their congregations, to be a functional unit--with the spouse-of-the-rabbi often responsible for many practical needs which do not require an ordained rabbi.

"Wife of the rabbi" (and, today, likely "spouse of the rabbi," at least in certain sectors of Judaism where gay marriage is now possible) is a position of honor and practical significance in much of Jewish life, and has been going back to at least medieval times.

Today, however, female ordination is possible in most of the Jewish denominational spectrum (and future rabbis do indeed often meet each other at rabbinical schools), so rabbi/rabbi marriages do exist. In these cases, "who" does "what" would likely be up to the couple involved, and--to some extent--with the, at least occasional, input of a given synagogue's chosen legal structure.

From an individual congregation's standpoint, rabbi/rabbi marriage would be of economic benefit to the entire synagogue membership since it would probably reduce somewhat the costs of running that synagogue (costs which are paid for through the membership dues agreed upon by that congregation).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/18/2021 02:18PM by Tevai.

You always provide an interesting perspective, Tevai. There's a lot I don't know about Judaism. I have much to learn.

I didn't know that some congregations accept gay marriage. Progress indeed. Glacial as it's been but at least moving forward, as with much of society and especially religion.

Nightingale Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You always provide an interesting perspective,
> Tevai. There's a lot I don't know about Judaism. I
> have much to learn.

Thank you, Nightingale. Your words mean a lot to me. :)

One of the things I always (since I was growing up) found particularly attractive about Judaism is the continual existence of "things to learn." Basically, most everyone is constantly learning as much as they care to explore, and there are always new subjects which come to your attention on everyone's personal lists.


> I didn't know that some congregations accept gay
> marriage. Progress indeed. Glacial as it's been
> but at least moving forward, as with much of
> society and especially religion.

There is a spectrum of Judaism/Jewish life as a whole which can roughly be equated to the political spectrum, left to right (or right to left, depending on where a given person "starts").

Right now, gay marriage is fairly widely accepted on the Reform/Reconstructionist/Humanist [and Jewish "Conservative"/Masorti "denomination"/movement part of the spectrum, but Conservative/Masorti has NOTHING to do with being politically "conservative" in the American/and North American[?] sense.].

In certain areas--I'm thinking mostly of parts of New York state here, plus Tel Aviv ;) -- gay life/relationships/marriages exist in fairly large numbers, comparatively speaking. Doesn't mean there aren't gay Orthodox Jews, because there most certainly ARE gay Orthodox Jews...they just have to work a bit more diligently within "the system" in order to keep their "Jewish card" in good standing.

Judaism is evolving. I vividly remember, in 1972, the national news reportage about Sally Priesand, who had just been ordained a rabbi by the leading [American] Reform seminary. She was the second woman IN HISTORY to be formally ordained a rabbi.

Quoting from Google: "Most Reform and Conservative Jews today are used to seeing a woman leading services." (I would add Reconstructionism, another Jewish "denomination," to this list.)

The FIRST woman to be ordained a rabbi was Regina Jonas, and it happened in Berlin, in 1935. Several years later, during WWII, she was sent to Auschwitz, where she was murdered at age 42.



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 10/19/2021 09:01PM by Tevai.

This is an interesting post.

In Jesus the Christ, Talmage mentions that rabbis have always been married and uses that as evidence that Jesus must have enjoyed that status as well. He goes on, of course, to say that Jesus had multiple wives, but putting that awkwardness aside the Jewish principle/tendency is recognized in important Mormon books.

As for the special status of the wife of a rabbi, you are right to date that to the Middle Ages. The Kabbalah has a lot to say about the "bisexual" nature of God, the female as well as the male manifestation. It follows that an unmarried rabbi is in some senses incomplete, unable fully to understand and represent divinity. Viewed that way Mormonism is closer to Medieval Judaism (and the derivative forms of occult Christianity) than to Catholicism and other celibate sects.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> This is an interesting post.
>
> In Jesus the Christ, Talmage mentions that rabbis
> have always been married and uses that as evidence
> that Jesus must have enjoyed that status as well.

I had totally forgotten this, LW, but you are absolutely correct. I remember when I was growing up (1950s), there were general audience (means: "everyone": all Americans including Jews), dramas (film and TV), books, and magazine articles which made either pivotal plot points, or passing reference, to the accepted "fact" that "all rabbis must be married in order to be [congregational] rabbis." Some of these productions were overtly dramatic, and some were general audience comedic, often centering around "getting Moishe married" so HE (there were no female rabbis in the 1950s) could qualify to become a rabbi.

[There were no female rabbis in the 1950s, but females who had the knowledge and skills to become rabbis often chose to become rabbi's wives, since it was the nearest they could get to the rabbinate. Throughout much of Jewish history, countless Jewish women chose this path because they could not, themselves, become rabbis.]


> He goes on, of course, to say that Jesus had
> multiple wives...

This is actually a possibility. When Israel became a state, many new male immigrants arrived (mainly from Muslim lands) with more than a single wife, and more-than-one wife was a real problem for a time. As I recall, a decision was made by the Israeli government that a man could enter with as many wives and children as he had at that moment, but no additional wives would be allowed once that man became an Israeli citizen. To my knowledge (which may not be correct) this policy is still in effect today, because new immigrants to Israel are still arriving in Israel with multiple legal wives.


> As for the special status of the wife of a rabbi,
> you are right to date that to the Middle Ages.

Thank you.


> The Kabbalah has a lot to say about the "bisexual"
> nature of God, the female as well as the male
> manifestation. It follows that an unmarried rabbi
> is in some senses incomplete, unable fully to
> understand and represent divinity. Viewed that
> way Mormonism is closer to Medieval Judaism (and
> the derivative forms of occult Christianity) than
> to Catholicism and other celibate sects.

My knowledge of Kabbalah is not sufficient to respond to this.

I do know that, for basically all of American history, "the rabbi's wife" was often an extremely important part of the Jewish community. When communities were "rabbi shopping," the rebbetzin ("rabbi's wife") was often a central deciding factor for those who were doing the rabbi selecting, since the rebbetzin so often became pivotal in community affairs. (Often, according to tradition, she also lobbied her husband on behalf of individual members of the community if she thought it was the right thing to do.)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/20/2021 07:37PM by Tevai.

Mormonism screws the wife. No Bishop calling for her.

Traditionally in Protestant churches, the pastor's wife (now spouse) takes an active role in the life of the church community. This does not elevate her (or him) to the role of pastor.

But not all pastors are created equal. Anyone can start a church and call themselves the pastor or "Reverend." Those titles do not mean that they ever had any formal training for the job. I think in the case of the "pastor couples," it is more likely that neither has any formal training for the job. JMO.

It seems now that the conceptual pairing I thought I saw through my lens is passed on inside the frames of a much more complex cultural, religious and social heritage. The legal framework concerning ordination is a broad phenomenon. Over my capacity to grasp in any detail. I lack that kind of understanding and knowledge. But all perspectives you share in the thread give me broadened perspective.

Working life is becoming increasingly differentiated in our society and I see the concrete examples in this thread on how the woman in theory can fit into the leadership of a congregation. The woman can be a co-pastor in our days but not the way I thought about it. I thought that the co-pastor act like in a dynamic therapeutic role, in a power triad with the other priest, trying to control lukewarm individual members in the group.

Thank you for answering my question and giving me a greater context with more pieces of knowledge.

To pry money out of both sides of the gullible population.

It is not Biblical.

lisadee Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It is not Biblical.

This practice is man-made. It is not scriptural.

Yes, there are women pastors (singly) and women bishops and elders and ministers. But co-pasturing is not Biblical.

It fits the marketing strategy for the market the pastoral couple is working.

Another context to my question is that we have a couple of churches here in Sweden with names that gives hints of having connection to some controversial global churches. Looked at the the presentations on the homepage and the congregations seems to be run by married couples. Like they alternate between 2 or 3 couples in charge of the sermons. From time to time I look up what kind of local churches we have and they come and go over time. Many of them rebrand and take a more english name. One postulate someone on internet gave me was to look for the symbols both prosperity and quackery-churches use. Most of the time it is a globe or a picture of the earth. Sometimes a bird, mostly and eagle. The words used are about something Global, international and so on.

There are all kinds of ways to impose Christianity on a people, and this is just one way to skin the cat, so to speak.

cludgie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> There are all kinds of ways to impose Christianity
> on a people, and this is just one way to skin the
> cat, so to speak.

You may choose what you want.

Wonderful brain storming going on. Lots of knowledge being shared. Good forum. Even if I can not keep the pace I learn a lot from you all.