WOMEN AS ELDERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 123, 15 August 1927, Page 13

WOMEN AS ELDERS

MINISTER CRITICISED REPLY FROM THE PULPIT WHEN the Rev. L. H. Hunt ** spoke strongly against admitting women as elders of the church at the last meeting of the Auckland Presbytery, he raised a hornet’s nest of criticism about his ears. This he effectively quelled at the morning service in the Mt. Eden Presbyterian Church yesterday. Taking as his subject, “Woman’s True Place in the Modern Church," Mr. Hunt referred to the Scriptures to throw light on the question. “The Bible maintained the spiritual equality of both sexes,” he said. “Every avenue of spiritual culture was open to woman as well as man. The fact remained, however, that woman had been made subordinate to man by the Creator. “The subordination of woman, however, does not imply, and never can imply, her inferiority to man,” the speaker continued. Man was different temperamentally from woman. He excelled in judgment, but she was superior in taste. “Women,” the preacher continued, “fulfilled their true mission in life, not by aping men, but by living up to the greatest ideals of womanhood.” By keeping women out of the sessions. the church was not standing in the way of their emancipation. Without the impetus Christ gave tlie movement, the emancipation of woman would not be as complete as it is today. He opposed the motion therefore because, firstly, it was not in the best interests of woman; secondly, because the best women in the church did not want it, and lastly, because man had not yet surrendered the position fn which he was placed by the Creator.