The Laity and Holy Office (read ordination)

Paleo Protestant Pudcast

In this recording, the Anglican (Miles Smith), the Lutheran (Korey Maas), and the Presbyterian (D. G. Hart), each a white Protestant man in case you did not notice, talk about pressures among confessional Protestants to open ordination beyond historic limits. It is another way of asking where the lines are between the tasks reserved for those ordained and what lay people (men or women) may legitimately do in "ministry." If every member is a minister, according to the logic of "every member ministry," does ordination mean anything? This conversation is adjacent to the one that Chortles Weakly and Wresbyterian had with Hans Fiene about women's ordination. We also mention Pastor Fiene's Twitter thread about horse bleep and bull bleep surrounding the hermeneutics of male ordination in the Pastoral Epistles. The subject of ministry turns out to be squishy and that lack of solidity is especially evident in Lutheran designations of parochial school teachers as "ministers," a designation that tried even the justices of the Supreme Court's sagacity.