Dates That Draw a Line Between Similar Churches

The doctrine that ordained ministry is open to women on the same terms as to men has, in most churches that hold it, a specific date attached to its adoption, which is part of what makes it such a clean dividing line between otherwise similar bodies. The Episcopal Church in the United States voted to approve the ordination of women to the priesthood in 1976, and the ordinations of the small number of women already ordained somewhat irregularly beforehand were formally regularized on the first day of January 1977. The Church of England took longer to reach the same point: its General Synod approved the ordination of women as priests in November 1992, and the first women were ordained under that decision in 1994, more than fifteen years after the Episcopal Church had already crossed the same line. Community of Christ, tracing to the same nineteenth century movement as the Utah based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, reached its own decision earlier still, opening priesthood office to women in 1984 after its president reported a revelation calling for the change, a decision its parent movement in Utah has never made. Each of these dates marks a formal act of a governing body rather than a slow drift of custom, which is exactly why the position can be stated for any given church as a fact rather than a matter of degree.