Background
Women were commissioned as deacons (or "deaconesses") from 1888, and allowed to preach from 1949. Serious debate on the ordination of women as ministers began when Mary Levison petitioned the General Assembly for ordination in 1963. She was eventually ordained in 1978 and later was the first woman to be appointed Queen's Chaplain.
In a Presbyterian Church, elders (who together with the minister form the kirk session and fulfil some of the functions of a parish council in other denominations) are ordained for life - ad vitam aut culpam - though without the laying-on of hands. The minister ("minister of Word and Sacrament", to use the full title) is a "teaching elder", the other kirk session members are "ruling elders", and the difference is understood to lie in the authority of the appointment rather than the spiritual nature of the ordinance. Consequently the theological arguments for and against the ordination of women as elders were identical to those concerning women ministers, and the two debates ran in parallel and were settled more or less simultaneously. The General Assembly changed its legislation to allow the ordination of women as elders in 1966 and as ministers in 1968.
Read more about this topic: Ordination Of Women In The Church Of Scotland
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