Jonathan Luxmoore

Warsaw (ENI). A leader of Poland’s Lutheran church has rejected accusations from an international conference of theologians that the church’s refusal to ordain women as pastors amounts to “structural violence”.

Jerzy Sojka, spokesperson for the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Poland, which has 80,000 members, told Ecumenical News International that the matter of women clergy was not excluded from discussion but added, “Our situation is not conditioned by theological considerations alone but also by economic, social and cultural questions, as well as by ecumenical relations. Although a debate on this issue is taking place, it also needs quiet reflection.”