Growing Number of Women Join Church of Sweden Clergy

Three decades after breaking the all-male tradition in the Church of Sweden, women are becoming priests in increasing numbers, and some think the clergy could become a female profession.

The Lutheran state church was one of the last bastions of conservatism to yield to feminism in this open-minded country, where sexual equality has long been a watchword.

Krister Stendahl, the bishop of Stockholm and former dean of the Harvard Divinity School, calls it a blessing that a growing number of women are wearing the white collar.

“One of the exciting things in our times and in theology is that women are beginning to think not just equal to men, but are trying to find whether they have insights” which men do not have, the bishop told Swedish radio.

Annicka Kronberg, a former actress ordained in January, said she found “most men in my group (at divinity school) understood the value of having more women and how we can enrich the language, the forms and behavior” in church.