A better future
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A better future

When the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) began allowing the ordination of women as clergy, Helen Reitsma anticipated positive change for the church she attends in Brantford, Ontario. Twenty-five years later, however, her congregation still has no women in office, let alone female clergy. Even so, she says, “a lot of stuff is really run by…

The hostile ‘big tent’
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The hostile ‘big tent’

“It’s really hard to keep loving a denomination that doesn’t love you back. Honestly, it’s getting harder and harder to stay.” That’s one of many sobering responses to a Christian Courier survey of ordained women in the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) a quarter century after the denomination opened that office to women. Of the 20…

History and advocacy
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History and advocacy

Dr. Beth Allison Barr’s The Making of Biblical Womanhood takes the reader on a journey of the Christian woman through historical facts, clever quotes and heart-wrenching stories. As a professor of medieval, women’s and church history at Baylor University, Barr is more than qualified to lead us on this entertaining and knowledgeable exploration into why…

Creating space
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Creating space

Amanda Bakale can still picture the first time she saw a woman step up to the pulpit to preach, her long lavender skirt swishing in the silence of the sanctuary. “I remember the movement of her skirt,” Bakale recounts, years later. “Not a suit, but a beautiful, flowing skirt. And a body that looked like…

An Alberta journey
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An Alberta journey

Decades before the first woman was ordained in the Christian Reformed Church (CRC), groups of women (and some men) with a vision for the full expression of women’s gifts were at work, opening a path toward leadership. For me and other Edmonton women, that journey began in 1983 with informal house meetings and grew into…

Serving in the shadow of ‘maybe’ after 25 years
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Serving in the shadow of ‘maybe’ after 25 years

Twin nieces turned 25 the day I began writing this article. They were born in 1996, the very year when the synod of the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) first approved women for ordination and gave congregations the option of calling women as Ministers of the Word. Born prematurely, those two tiny girls spent agonizing months…

When Women Lead
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When Women Lead

In the early days of the pandemic, governments had to decide: who will speak for us? In 10 key locations across Canada, women serving as public heath officers have taken on those increasingly public roles. “The women we’re seeing on the national stage during the pandemic are being celebrated for both their compassion and their calm under pressure,” write Andrea Gunraj and Jessica Howard from the Canadian Women’s Foundation.