New “Truther” Site Attacks Women’s Ordination in North Pacific Union

This week a new “truther” website appeared opposing efforts toward women’s ordination in the North Pacific Union Conference. Called OrdinationTruth, thus far it includes a list of about 28 pastors who have signed their names promising this site will be:

a fresh venue where information can be shared highlighting Christian teachings about unity, order, and gender in the Church. The site also exists to help assure that the conversation about Women’s Ordination in the Union is balanced. The Union paper has carried only one side of the question. Immediately, and in weeks and months to come, OrdinationTruth.com will carry news, articles, and studies addressing questions of unity and Women’s Ordination, especially within the territory of the NPUC.

Thus far, their freshness is not that apparent as the site features rank and almost unreadable articles like this one Ordination: God’s Purpose versus Satan’s Designs. (Apparently comparing equality for women to Satanism is their idea of promoting church unity.) The direct goal of these few dozen pastors is to “ask that the NPUC Executive Committee rescind its November 2012 decision and that no special constituency meeting to act on Women’s Ordination be held before the 2015 General Conference session.”

Responding to a request for comment from Spectrum, the NPUC made the following statement:

We welcome a thoughtful conversation on this important topic whenever or wherever it happens. Contrary to what some online comments have implied, however, North Pacific Union Conference (NPUC) leaders are eager to work in unity with established church polity. We hope our current regional discussion involving biblical counsel and the good advice of trusted believers will be an added encouragement to ultimate decisions for the world church. While the NPUC executive committee at its November 2012 meeting approved the possibility of a special constituency session to take up the issue of ordination without regard to gender, it did not dictate a date, and there is no such session yet planned or scheduled. NPUC leadership is deliberately giving Northwest members time to prayerfully provide input on this issue while we ask our world church leaders to be intentional about a timely resolution. We invite all concerned individuals to add their voices to a discussion at gleaneronline.org/ordination.

What’s more significant is who’s not on the site—the vast majority of NPUC pastors. These few dozen all male ministers represent less than 9% of NPUC clergy. But this list does include Samuel Pipim’s old Michigan pastor—apparently transferred to Montana. I interviewed him for over an hour while he dismissed both American and African women who had been trying to tell him the truth about the alleged sexual predator he was trying to quietly rebaptise. This list also includes Lee Roy Holmes. If you get tired of reading his thoughts against women’s equality, check out his article tackling the major salvational issue: clapping in church.

This small list of men represents small-minded thinking, the sort that treats truth as an old, hard weapon to enforce unity. The more they write the more they will turn off today’s hopeful Adventists who treat truth as a divine destination—where men and women treat each other as God does.