Mizo Synod Nod For Woman Pastor?

Aizawl, Mar 8 : Mizoram might get its first woman pastor more than a century after Christianity first entered the hill state. A definitive 90 per cent of this state's population is Christian.

The call to make R L Hnuni, currently principal of the Baptist Church-run Aizawl Integrated Christian Studies ( AICS), the first ordained woman pastor grew louder following the recommendations of the chapel's pastoral committee. The Presbyterian Church, the state's biggest chapel, had observed that women should be ordained as pastors. The highest decision-making authority, the Synod, had however frowned upon the idea.

History will be created if the Synod, as is now expected, gives its nod to a resolution passed by the women's wing of the church last Saturday. But the Presbyterian Kohhran Hmeichhia (women's wing) has anyway passed a resolution earlier this month at its bi-annual meeting at Kawnpui village in Kolasib district that 65-year-old Hnuni be ordained as pastor.

So far, no woman has ever been appointed pastor in any church in the state where Christianity came in 1894. The Presbyterian Church and the Baptist Church of Mizoram had earlier refused to accept women as pastors.

About 40 years ago too, Saptawni was the first Mizo woman to be elected as a Kohhran Upa (church elder) by the congregation of the Aizawl's Mission Veng branch of the Presbyterian Church. However, the church declared her election null on the ground that it could not accept a woman as a church elder.

Now, with the women's wing of the Presbyterian Church once again determined to appoint Hnuni for a pastor, all eyes are on the chapel's decision-making authority.