Books about Ordination from Amazon.com

The Roman Catholic leadership still refuses to ordain women officially or even to recognize that women are capable of ordination But is the widely held assumption that women have always been excluded from such roles historically accurate? How might the current debate change if our view of the history of women's ordination were to change?
In The Hidden History of Women's Ordination, Gary Macy offers illuminating and surprising answers to these questions. Macy argues that for the first twelve hundred years of Christianity, women were in fact ordained into various roles in the church. He uncovers references to the ordination of women in papal, episcopal and theological documents of the time, and the rites for these ordinations have survived. The insistence among scholars that women were not ordained, Macy shows, is based on a later definition of ordination, one that would have been unknown in the early Middle Ages. In the early centuries of Christianity, ordination was understood as the process and the ceremony by which one moved to any new ministry in the community. In the early Middle Ages, women served in at least four central ministries: episcopa (woman bishop), presbytera (woman priest), deaconess and abbess. The ordinations of women continued until the Gregorian reforms of the eleventh and twelfth centuries radically altered the definition of ordination. These reforms not only removed women from the ordained ministry, but also attempted to eradicate any memory of women's ordination in the past.
With profound implications for how women are viewed in Christian history, and for current debates about the role of women in the church, The Hidden History of Women's Ordination offers new answers to an old question and overturns a long-held erroneous belief..
Price: $17.23 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Stanley J. Grenz takes the debate over women and the ordained ministry to a new level with this in-depth theological and historical study..
Price: $12.14 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Wildlife researchers and ecologists make widespread use of multivariate statistics in their studies With its focus on the practical application of the techniques of multivariate statistics, this book shapes the powerful tools of statistics for the specific needs of ecologists and makes statistics more applicable to their course of study. Multivariate Statistics for Wildlife and Ecology Research gives the reader a solid conceptual understanding of the role of multivariate statistics in ecological applications and the relationships among various techniques, while avoiding detailed mathematics and underlying theory. More important, the reader will gain insight into the type of research questions best handled by each technique and the important considerations in applying each one. Whether used as a textbook for specialized courses or as a supplement to general statistics texts, the book emphasizes those techniques that students of ecology and natural resources most need to understand and employ in their research. Detailed examples use real wildlife data sets analyzed using the SAS statistical software program. The book is specifically targeted for upper-division and graduate students in wildlife biology, forestry, and ecology, and for professional wildlife scientists and natural resource managers, but it will be valuable to researchers in any of the biological sciences. Kevin McGarigal is Assistant Professor and Sam Cushman is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Forestry and Wildlife Management at the University of Massachusetts. Susan Stafford is Head of the Forest Science Department at Colorado State University..
Price: $41.21 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In his letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, Pope John Paul II stated: "Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, . . .I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful." With that declaration, the question of women's priestly ordination in the Catholic Church was effectively closed. While the Church's position is clear, many priests, religious, seminarians, and lay ministers search for a way to answer questions regarding the Church's teaching. In The Catholic Priesthood and Women: A Guide to the Teaching of the Church, Sister Sara Butler attempts to answer those questions through a close examination of the Church's teaching on the ordination of women to the priesthood. In response to a call for a greater articulation of the Church's position, Sister Butler seeks to both clarify and defend the Church's teaching as well as explore why so many have struggled to accept it. The Catholic Priesthood and Women: A Guide to the Teaching of the Church successfully explores the complex and fundamental questions surrounding the ordination of women to the priesthood for anyone interested in a deep examination of this issue..
Price: $22.28 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This study of bishops, presbyters, and deacons identifies four conceptualizations of the Church influencing the relationship between ordained ministry and the Church: a monarchical and hierarchical conceptualization; a eucharistic, collegial model representing the communion of particular churches; the priest, prophet, and king motif that structures the concept of the Church as the people of God; and a theology of the Church as a sacrament of Christ and ordained ministry as a sacrament of the Church. It examines the 1990 ordination rites and discusses the sacramentality of episcopal ordination, the identity of the presbyterate, and questions concerning the diaconate..
Price: $18.75 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This book gives the biblical answers to some of the most complex and controversial questions on women’s ministry! Does God choose only men to lead, teach, and preach? What is God’s vision for women in ministry? What do the Bible, the Jewish Talmud and early Christian writings really mean about women in ministry Did the Apostle Paul and the early Christians dismiss the spiritual giftings of women? Are women today defying Scripture? Was Paul wrong when he wrote in 1 Corinthians 14:34, "Let your women keep silent in the churches, for it is not permitted unto them to speak?".
Price: $2.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Why does a denomination prohibiting women clergy support parishes run by women? Why does a denomination opt to ordain women when there are few women seeking to join that clergy? And why have some denominations ordained women so much earlier than others? In a revealing examination of the complex relationship among religion, social forces, and organizational structure, Ordaining Women draws examples and data from over 100 Christian denominations to explore the meaning of institutional rules about women's ordination.

Combining historical and sociological perspectives, Mark Chaves deftly shows that formal institutional rules about ordination often diverge from the actual roles of women and are best understood as symbolic gestures in favor of--or in opposition to--gender equality. Ordaining Women concludes that external pressures from the women's movement and ecumenical pressure expressed through interdenominational organizations such as the National Council of Churches influence ordination practices. At the same time, internal factors such as having a source of religious authority that is considered superior to modern principles of equal rights also explain why some denominations ordain women much earlier than others.

Surprisingly, "the Bible forbids it" does not account for policies even among fundamentalists and other biblical inerrantists. Chaves' historical and comparative approach offers a revealing analysis of how the internal denominational debates have changed over time, becoming more frequent, more politicized, and more contentious. The skillful delineation of forces affecting debates and policies about women's ordination makes this book an important contribution to our understanding of religious organizations and of gender equality.

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Price: $15.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Pope John Paul II's newest work, both personal and spiritually accessible to all, was written on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his ordination as a priest. 16-page line drawing insert..
Price: $5.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]