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Ministerial Authority and Gender in Dutch Protestantism around 1800
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
In 1807 Carolus Boers published his Manual for Young Clergymen. He started this introduction to the ministry with an overview of prerequisites for theological students. Physical requirements come first. A strong body, a good voice, a hardy constitution are necessary. Bodily disfigurements will expose a minister to ridicule. A weak or sickly clergyman will perhaps be pitied, but certainly not respected by his flock. The body bearing these physical perfections is male. This, for Boers, went without saying. Dutch Protestants did not seriously discuss opening the ministry to women before the twentieth century; and even then it was solely the growing number of women having finished their studies in theology that made this an issue at all. The Dutch minister around 1800 was a man. Yet maleness is not the same thing as masculinity. What kind of man was the minister supposed to be?
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1998
References
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