 Orthodoxy takes Sylvia Dooling to the ‘hard places’ By Rebecca Price Janney Special to The Layman Volume 37, Number 1 Posted February 2004 Sylvia Dooling has been to some pretty hard places in the past few years, including the 1998 Re-Imagining Revival in St. Paul. A long-time pastor’s wife and active laywoman from Colorado, she and a dozen women hoped to present a quiet witness to Jesus Christ in the midst of an event designed to undermine historic, orthodox Christianity.
It wasn’t the first time she had faced opposition. She also remembers how lonely she felt at a Presbyterian Women’s Churchwide Gathering and how several like-minded women called together an impromptu time of fellowship in a little room. It ended up packed. “We felt,” Dooling recalls, “that we needed to do this every time at PW Churchwide Gatherings so we didn’t feel so isolated.” When Terry Schlossberg of Presbyterians Pro-Life heard about it, she “stopped dead in her tracks,” Dooling says. “She said she’d be in contact.” Schlossberg put her in touch with a group under the auspices of Presbyterians for Renewal, and although they had no money to give, they liked the idea of having regular women’s support meetings and offered the use of their name. Dooling says she was terrified of what lay ahead. She had never traveled by herself before, and she wasn’t looking forward to confrontations or being snubbed by her opponents. “When Terry asked what we were going to do next, I said I wasn’t sure,” Dooling said. “She asked to have an accountability side to PFR’s umbrella organization, the Network of Presbyterian Women in Leadership. When their board told me that it wasn’t their place, however, we decided to form something new.” That is how Voices of Orthodox Women developed, and Dooling, who was able to volunteer her services full time, became its president. VOW began with 25 names of women they had met along the way, and its current monthly newsletter goes out to 2,200 congregations and individuals. “We don’t have a membership,” Dooling explains. “A network is a living organism and bigger than anything we have on a list.” VOW has reached into every synod in the PCUSA, as well as internationally. “We have people around the world who are keeping track of what we’re doing,” she says. VOW is a volunteer effort with no paid staff, and its supporters work hard to produce a quarterly newsletter and web site with stimulating articles and news of the denomination. Dooling says that VOW is working for accountability in the women’s ministries program area of the Presbyterian Women and, thus, build up the PCUSA by promoting the doctrines and practices of historic, Biblical orthodoxy. “We encourage women to be involved in Presbyterian Women, which is the part of our church that most women and congregations are knowledgeable about and is an especially strong force among older women.” Too often, however, Dooling says church members have assumed that their PW is one that upholds the church’s historic faith. Instead, the denominational organization has used radical feminist philosophy that has consistently challenged orthodoxy. She does not believe that all of the PW’s coordinating team is comprised of radical feminists with an unorthodox agenda, however. “It’s not that simple to identify one’s enemy,” she says. “There is a minority, a dangerous one, that understands exactly what they are trying to do, breaking down the historic faith. But there are also all kinds of people in between. Some of the minority is making headway, but they are being watched now.” VOW is seeing to that. “The women we are reaching have become upset and concerned about what comes to them from the denomination,” she says. For example, most women’s circles use the PW’s Horizons Bible Studies, which have not been consistently orthodox. “We support the studies that are solid,” Dooling says, “and when they are not, we spread the word so that Christian education committees and local congregations will be aware.” This year, VOW recommended that churches not use the study because it had a “very feminist agenda and brought it to the Scriptures,” she says. “When you do that, you aren’t listening to what Scripture says first.” Many women’s circles have decided not to use Horizons because of this. In late August, Mississippi pastor Steve Bryant contacted Dooling. “He was writing a curriculum using the same Bible passages as Horizons and giving them to his church. We ended up putting it on our web site, and many are benefiting from it.” VOW also encourages women to ask questions about where their money is going with PW, and Dooling believes that the denominational organization is starting to make an effort to be more forthcoming. “We write, we ask questions. A lot of women aren’t going to give without knowing how it’s being used,” she says. Dooling says that VOW is not trying to offer an alternate women’s ministry to PW but to be “an accountability group, supporting men and women across our church to work for reform. I believe that PW should uphold Biblical and constitutional standards in all its programs and resources, but they don’t do that.” Instead, she sees them using “radical feminist philosophy that extends beyond the boundaries of the Christian faith.” One consequence of the unorthodox agenda is that evangelical female pastors who are candidates for churches often find that churches are nervous about them, afraid that they will promote radical feminism. “They want to know what a woman pastor believes before they look at her. We believe that women who have an inner call, should also have the outer call.” Many female pastors are in the VOW network, says Dooling, along with theologians such as Catherine Clark Kroeger and Donna F.G. Hailson. Other scholars who contribute their time and resources include Deborah Milam Berkley and Viola Larson, who have written extensively about radical feminism for VOW’s Web site. Dooling never imagined that she would be at the forefront of a movement. She laughs as she recalls how different her life was before all of this started. Not only did she find herself flying solo after never traveling alone, but she was going to “hard places.” “I was fearful,” she recalls. “Actually, I was the most fearful person I have ever known. Today I am not that person. God has allowed me to do what he called me to do. He has given me the strength.” She depends heavily, she says, on a prayer support team that begins interceding for her long before various events occur. As much as she is trying to make a difference in reforming the PCUSA, Dooling says she would “pack my bags tomorrow if God released me. I would love to be the pastor’s wife I was before, but I can’t. It’s not that I’m on a crusade, but I really care about women who haven’t been able to distinguish spiritually between what is true and what isn’t true, and they’re being harmed. The light has been turned on now, and we in the pews are the ones who have to hold others accountable. We have to be willing to put forth the effort. A few years ago, people didn’t want the boat rocked. Today, it’s different.” Dooling believes that the Internet has greatly contributed to the present environment. “It’s hard to have blinders on now,” she says simply. VOW’s president considers this an exciting time in the life of the church and is hopeful about what lies ahead. “I hear from people who are tired of the fights,” she says, “but what we are doing in our generation is upholding right faith. It’s simply our turn. That great cloud of witnesses who have given everything to uphold the authority of Scripture and the content of the faith encourage me. We haven’t died. It may be difficult, but this network exists so people who feel lonely can find help, and stand, and be faithful.” Ultimately, Dooling is working for the reformation of the PCUSA, and she believes that with people aware of what’s going on, important changes are taking place. “The faith,” she says, “doesn’t pass on to us easily. We must go through the crucible, through the suffering, through the hard places, in order to pass it to the next generation. If it wasn’t radical feminism threatening the historic faith, it would be something else.” And one senses that Sylvia Dooling would be there to address it. |
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