My father spent a lifetime fighting for women to be pastors. His OAM proves change is slow but possible | Julianne Schultz

All around the world people are saying they want change.

The vagueness of what that change might be has political advantages. It can also be a millstone, as the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, who was elected on the one-word promise is finding.

Real change, as my 94-year-old father, Noel, has found out though a lifetime of advocating for women to be become Lutheran pastors, takes time.

On Monday he will be awarded an OAM in the King’s birthday honours list for services to the Lutheran and Uniting churches.

Social change that endures requires patient explanation and persuasion, navigating processes and systems, knowing when to pull back and when to push forward.

The truth is that the forces of the status quo will fight tooth and nail to obstruct, delay and undermine change, especially if it is designed to improve human rights and equity. Change that makes a buck comes more quickly.

Princeton historian Linda Colley concluded that despite occasional exceptions, most change that lasts takes three score years and 10 – a lifetime.

Think of the big changes that have made modern Australia: removing the white Australia policy, three score years and 12, giving First Nations people the right to vote, three score years and two, making their voting compulsory as for other citizens, and legislating women’s equal rights, nearly four score years.

Eight years ago, my father said to me with some despair, “I am going to die before women are allowed to become pastors in the Lutheran church, I can’t believe it.”

The synod of the Lutheran church of Australia had just voted, again, not to allow the ordination of women – although women were spiritual and administrative leaders in the 70 million-strong Lutheran church in Europe and North America.

That the youngest of 13 children who grew up poor in Queensland’s South Burnett should have become an advocate for women’s rights was itself an unlikely change.

He was the only member of the family to go to college, and eventually train for the ministry learning ancient Greek, Latin, German and Hebrew to be able to pursue rigorous theological studies. Lutherans like Catholics took pride in at least one family member joining the priesthood.

When he was fresh out of seminary, 70 years ago in the mid 1950s, the head of the church issued a dictum citing scriptures that prohibited women from leadership. Noel and several other young ministers questioned the interpretation and asked for a more rigorous examination by scholars at the seminary.

Their request was ignored.

His questioning did not cease.

Over the following 25 years he quietly implemented gender-neutral policies in his own congregations: allowing women to be leaders, not requiring unmarried pregnant women to apologise for their “fall” to the men in the parish – and supporting my mother as she fought to fulfil her dreams of higher education and equality. Within a decade of free university she had a doctorate in psychology and a real career.

In the late 1970s a scholarship to undertake postgraduate studies at Luther Seminary, St Paul, Minnesota provided Noel with the opportunity to return to the big theological question that had troubled him for decades. The resulting doctoral thesis challenged the established truth that had pronounced half of all Lutherans in Australia as second-class believers but was welcomed by other members of the clergy.

The hierarchy was not convinced.

When my mother took up a university lecturing position in Melbourne, my father applied for leave of absence to accept an invitation to become director of pastoral care and community education at St Michael’s Uniting Church. Despite his prominent role he was refused permission, and with a heavy heart left the Lutheran church.

It was clear his theological advocacy for the rights of women was a step too far. Instead, he moved to the Uniting Church, where there were women in many leadership positions and pursued a broad ministry.

In response to his distress at the 2018 Lutheran synod vote against female ordination, I suggested he update and publish his thesis. A few years later Neither Male nor Female – the Bible, Women & the Ministry of the Church was published with ringing endorsements – a sweet 90th birthday present.

I realised the impact this had made when addressing a large audience of Lutheran teachers. It was clear they couldn’t care less about me; it was Noel who was the superstar. He was asked to autograph copies and told how keen readers were gathering in cafes to work through his book, debating the theological points, the sociological and legal context, marshalling their arguments for the next synod when another vote would be held.

In 2024 the Lutheran synod finally voted to allow women to be ordained.

As had been feared in a church that had always been riven by factions, a small conservative group with strong ties to American Christian fundamentalism left the church, pronouncing there was no place for female pastors or leaders in their world.

After nearly three score years and 10 it seemed unbelievable. Not many people get to see change they have advocated all their lives become reality, but in 2025 Noel and Cynthia attended the ordination of the second woman to become a Lutheran pastor in Australia – Rev Sue Westhorp at St Paul’s Box Hill in Melbourne.

He was astonished when the governor general’s office contacted him about the award. He protested, of course, that it should have been given to both himself and Cynthia. Theirs was a team effort over a lifetime.