70 years ago: The Reformed Church of France continues on its downward liberalizing direction by allowing women to become pastors

Like so many mainline denominations, the Reformed Church of France began a downward slide into apostasy in the 19th century. By 1949 the liberalism had extended to the decision to allow women into the clergy. The Edmonton Journal of September 3, 1949 contained the following report from an unidentified international source:

Paris -- National synod of the Reformed Church of France has voted to admit unmarried women as pastors in certain exceptional cases.

First exceptional case will be that of Mlle. Elizabeth Schmidt, an Alsatian, who since she took up church work during a pastoral vacancy in 1928, has been unofficially acting as a pastor, with great success.

As is inevitably the case, the decision to put women in positions of leadership was both a harbinger of greater liberalism in the future and an indication of how far the liberalism had already spread in the Reformed Church of France, which declined to the point that it was no longer able to exist on its own, but merged with the liberal Evangelical Church in France in 2013 to become the United Protestant Church of France, which not only ordains women, but performs same-sex "marriages."