Opposition to Female Pastors in Church of Finland Becoming Stricter
By Audrey Barrick
Christian Post Reporter
Sun, Jul. 08 2007

Lutheran female pastor Leena Salmensaari administrating a communion in Kirkkonummi church, outside Helsinki, Finland. Twenty-one years after the Lutheran Church of Finland allowed women to become pastors, a small but vocal group of male clergy remain vehemently opposed to their ordination, embarrassing the Church as it tries to halt declining membership.

More than one third of all clergy in Finland’s largest church body are women and female pastors are expected to outnumber male clergy by 2015, according to Agence France-Presse.

"In 1986 we organized the work in a way so that conflicts were avoided, but now that the number of women ordained is sharply increasing, it's not possible anymore," Archbishop Jukka Paarma told AFP.

The Lutheran Church of Finland has approved the ordination of women for 21 years and according to the denomination's Church Annual Report 2006, opposition to female clergy has decreased. the rest