Finland has for a while now had our first female priest who belongs to the Conservative Laestadianism sect. I know this does not mean much to foreigners so let me give you some background info:
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laestadianism) Laestadianism is an "revival movement" that was started inside the Finnish evangelical lutheran church during the 19th century. Basically they had some disagreements on how to interpret the bible but still wanted to work within the Finnish Lutheran church, it is not the only revival movement in Finland but it is the biggest one. It's large size is partially due to one particular thing they preach, you know the thing about filling the earth? Very firmly against abortion and all kinds of contraception (Well most of the sects in laestadianism are.) it is not unusual to have a Laestadian family with over a dozen children.
Other things that they are known for are:
-Poor treatment of women, since women are seen inferior to men and their main purpose is to be baby-making machines.
-Discrimination of sexual minorities. (Despite the fact that the central teaching of Conservative Laestadianism is the forgiveness of sins they don't seem to like 'sinners')
-Discrimination of single parents. They are very much for people staying virgins untill marriage (Which causes some other problems to teenagers in the sect) and consider divorce to be a sin, so any single woman with children is in for a hell. (Unless of course if they leave the sect and cut all ties to their relatives...)
-Pedophilia. (Well one very large case was in the news while ago. Basically the culprits had been exploiting children in the sect for decades and there had been a lot of victims.)
Now finally getting to the point of this topic. A month ago Mari Leppänen, belonging to Laestadianism sect, was ordained. Since the sect is very much against female priests this came as a suprise. Particularly since the Conservative Laestadians are the most fundie of the movement. And it wasn't like someone just decided to troll them, this person really had grown up in their sect and indeed was in a very high ranking position in their "Association of Peace" (Local groupings of the sect.) I say was since she was immediately fired after being ordained. (Since the sect still belongs to the Finnish state church, the sect couldn't actually stop the ordaining since they were not the ones to do it.)
Well, turns out that this did not cause the end of the world and she hasn't been preaching very controversial matters. Merely that women and men are equal (the horror! She even goes on to say that those bits of the bible that are used to defend treading on womens rights are outdated 'from a different world'),
forcing women to give birth numerous times is wrong and that we should do something to the fact that our society has been divided to the poor and the rich.
Hmmm... That doesn't really sound very controversial or revolutionary. So how did her sect react? They are no longer talking to her. (Well, that's mature.)
I just wanted to share this because I was suprised to first hear about her and I am hoping that this might start a change inside the sect. (Since, really that group is probably the most fundiest/opressive group in my church.)
