So what do we learn from the actual records of women in church ministry over the past 2000 years?  Does church history teach us that God blesses woman pastors and preachers, or is it clear that this is against the will of God?

My goal today is not to provide a comprehensive survey of church history – I haven’t researched it completely, and others have done a much more thorough job.  I would like to give a summary of an interesting take on this subject given by theologians Stanley Grenz and Denise Muir Kjesbo in their 1995 book, Women in the Church.  As they look at the history of women in ministry over the past two centuries, they see these trends repeating themselves in many spiritual movements:

   1) A renewal movement of the Holy Spirit causes people of all genders, races, and classes to be raised up for ministry and church leadership (a la Pentecost and Galatians 3:28)
   2) The denomination, Bible school, or ministry associated with the movement becomes more institutionalized
   3) As it institutionalizes, the denomination/Bible School/ministry begins to value theological training and cultural respectability more highly and begins to hire predominantly men

Read that one more time before we consider some historical examples.  If their assertion is accurate, then it would seem that history shows that when leadership involves the choice of God by the gifting of the Holy Spirit, women are included in ministry, but as factors such as education and respectability become more important, women are excluded.  Following the three stage model proposed above, let me give some of Grenz and Kjesbo’s examples of how this has played out in church history:

The early church: 

   1) Despite the patriarchal culture, there is evidence of some women acting in various leadership roles, including bishop/elder and deacon, and performing various ministerial activities, including administering the Lord’s Supper, teaching, baptizing, caring for the physical needs of the congregation, and leading in public prayers. 
   2) The church gained greater respectability and became more institutionalized
   3) Church councils, as well as bishops and popes, in the 300s and 400s produced statements restricting and prohibiting women from holding the offices they had held in earlier centuries.  As a result, many religious women (among them Catherine of Siena and Teresa of Avila) flocked to monasteries, where they could exercise more influence.

The Wesleyan Revival:

   1) A movement associated with John Wesley in 18th century Britain (also known as Methodism), it involved Spirit-gifted preachers who brought revival to the crumbling English church.  Wesley allowed women to participate fully and to serve as leaders, but gave them permission to give short “exhortations” and to call their meetings “prayer gatherings” so that no one would think they were female preachers leading congregations.  However, the success of these women’s led Wesley to conclude that if a woman was called to the ministry, then she needed to obey that call, and he eventually affirmed the right of women to preach, regardless of public opinion.
   2) The Revival eventually institutionalized into the Methodist Church.
   3) Women’s roles diminished quickly following Wesley’s death as the church gained greater respectability.

The Holiness Movement:

   1) Women such as Phoebe Palmer and Aimee Semple McPherson were leaders in the 19th century holiness movement that gave birth to or influenced denominations such as the Church of the Nazarene, the Christian & Missionary Alliance, the Salvation Army, and the Church of God.
   2) Some of these denominations continue to have women in leadership; others, like the Church of the Nazarene, have shifted as they gained more respectability. 
   3) Originally the Nazarenes recognized the right of women to preach in their original constitution, but now only 3% of their pastors are women, because of their desire to blend in with the evangelical mainstream.

Baptists:

   1) In the early Baptist movement in England and North America, women preached and served as ordained deacons. 
   2) Baptists moved from despised sect to established denomination in the 1800s.
   3) By the mid 1800s, Baptists questioned the right of women to vote in church conferences or to speak in mixed assemblies, and many churches did away with female deacons.  Today, many Baptist denominations such as the Southern Baptist Conference do not teach that the Bible allows for women to teach men or be pastors.

Moody Bible Institute:

   1) Dwight Moody, one of the foremost American revivalists, founded Moody Bible Institute in 1886.  In their early days, they actively promoted public church ministry for women, using women as evangelists, Bible teachers, and Bible conference speakers.
   2) The second and third generations of school leaders sought credentialing and respectability
   3) Women were increasingly excluded from positions of leadership and responsibility as theological education and ordination, unavailable to most women, became necessary.  Moody Bible Institute no longer teaches that the position of elder or pastor is open to women.

I believe the validity of this pattern is worth considering.  There is no doubt that cultural factors have always played into the question of women in ministry.  The only question is whether it is cultural forces that kept women predominantly out of ministry for 1900+ years (against the will of God) or whether it is cultural forces that are now causing churches and denominations to recognize women as pastors, elders, and preachers (against the will of God).  If we could only throw up our hands and declare that “we don’t know,” that would be simple, but there are women who feel called to ministry who are waiting on an answer. 

As I mentioned on Sunday, I believe that Galatians 3:28 – “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” may offer the clearest picture of what God intends his church to be like:  a community where people’s access to God and spiritual roles are not determined by the typical cultural categories of race, class, and gender, but by the salvation offered in Jesus Christ and the gifting of the Holy Spirit.  If this is true, then it means that if someone is a gifted leader or preacher, it doesn’t matter if they are a rich Mexican man or a poor British woman; they should use the gifts the Holy Spirit has given them to build up the church.

If you have any thoughts or comments to add, please post your comments so that we might all learn and seek the truth together.  May God grant us wisdom and discernment as we seek His will.

As an evangelical Christian, I believe that the Bible is the authority for faith and practice for believing Christians.  This is why I’ve been preaching through a series on what the Bible has to say about gender roles, so that our church leadership and our families might be line with God’s will on this issue.  However, as I mentioned last week, I also know that all theological conclusions are informed by three other sources besides Scripture – reason, personal experience, and tradition.  Last week I briefly addressed what my reason and experience tell me about the question of whether or not women should have equal access to church leadership roles.  Briefly, I believe that both reason and experience teach me that not only do we all have a lot to learn from a woman’s perspective on God and church, but that a church or any organization is stronger when men and women are working together, complementing each other’s gifts in leadership. 

But what about tradition?  What does church history add to the debate?

Last week I argued that many evangelical Christians assume the following three things about the history of the church on the role of men and women in church leadership:

   1) The church has traditionally held that only men can be pastors, teachers, and elders
   2) The increase in women pastors, elders, and teachers is due more to the influence of secular feminism than it is to Biblical scholarship. 
   3) Therefore, a Biblical church will resist cultural influence and allow only men to be pastors, teachers, and elders

Today I’ll address these assumptions.  Has the church traditionally held that only men can hold positions of authority or teach in the church?  And if so, is there a good reason for it?

The short answer is that for most of its history, the church has believed that God’s will is for only men to be in positions of leadership and teaching in the church.  And the increase in women in church leadership has coincided with the women’s movement of the past century, which fought for equal rights (like the right to vote and equal pay) and access to more opportunities for women.  All of which leads many to draw the same conclusion as #3 above, that the issue of women in leadership is more a cultural issue than something that is in line with Biblical teaching or historic Christianity.

So why do I disagree with 99% of church history?  And why am I not worried that I disagree?

The answer is that as I read the history of the church on this issue, I found that the majority of church leaders and theologians throughout history have believed and taught that women are inferior to men.  As they read the Biblical texts on the roles of men and women, they found support for what their reason and experience told them, that women were inferior to men, that they were more gullible, more sensual, too emotional, and that their place was largely in the home with the children while the men did the leading and teaching.  I believe that this fact could just as easily lead me to argue the following in regards to church history and women in leadership:

   1) The church has traditionally held that only men can be pastors, teachers, and elders
   2) The lack of women pastors, elders, and teachers was due more to the influence of the surrounding culture (which taught the inferiority of women) than it was to Biblical scholarship 
   3) Therefore, a Biblical church will resist cultural influence and will recognize that leadership & teaching roles in the church should be distributed to those with spiritual gifts of leading and teaching, not by gender

What do you think?

Let me just say before we look at some examples of what the church fathers have taught on the issue of gender roles in the church that whether or not you believe the Bible teaches that women should be in church leadership, that this is an area of church history of which the church should be ashamed.  I believe the clear teaching of the Bible, from the creation account to the actions and teachings of Jesus, to the teachings of Paul, is that men and women were created equal in the sight of God, and that the disharmony and imbalance between the sexes is a result of the Fall (see Genesis 3:16) and not something the church should ever be perpetuating.  The church fathers have influenced the church for good on so many areas of theology; however, the nature of man and woman has not been one of them.  Consider the following:

Tertullian, a 3rd century theologian who coined the word Trinity, developed aspects of the doctrine of original sin, and defended the dual nature of Jesus, wrote a treatise called “On the Dress of Women.”  In this treatise he told women that they needed to dress in humble garb, “walking about as Eve mourning and repentant, in order that by every garb of penitence she might expiate the ignominy of the first sin and the odium of human perdition.”  He continued with some harsher words, saying “You are each an Eve… the guilt must of necessity live with your sex.  You are the devil’s gateway; you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree:  you are the first deserter of the divine law:  you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack.  You destroyed so easily God’s image, man.  On account of your desert – that is, death – even the Son of God had to die.”  In Tertullian’s mind, the Fall of man and the death of Jesus were all a result of woman’s sin, and therefore all women must live their lives in constant penitence.

Ambrose was the bishop of Milan from 374-397.  In “On Paradise,” he wrote “In fact, even though the man was created outside Paradise (i.e., in an inferior place), he is found to be superior, while woman, though created in a better place (i.e., inside Paradise) is found inferior.”  To Ambrose, it was a fact of nature that men are superior to women.

What about Augustine, probably the most well-respected and influential theologian of the early church?  In his “Literal Commentary on Genesis,” Augustine wrote “If it were not the case that the woman was created to be man’s helper specifically for the production of children, then why would she have been created as a helper (Gen 2:18)?  Was it so that she might work the land with him?… Yet for company and conversation, how much more agreeable it is for two male friends to dwell together than for a man and a woman!  I cannot think of any reason for woman’s being made as man’s helper, if we dismiss the reason of procreation.”  In Augustine’s mind, a woman existed for the purpose of making babies, and if you were to take away that ability, then you may as well have given Adam another man to have as a companion, since that would have been preferable.

Thomas Aquinas, another of the most influential theologians in church history, wrote that women are dominated by sexual appetite, while men are ruled by reason (many might argue the opposite today!).  Women, he said, depend on men for everything in life, while men depend on women only for procreation.  He even said that “Children ought to love their father more than their mother, because they are the more active principle, while the mother is the passive principle.”

And Martin Luther, whom I quoted on Sunday, said this in his commentary on 1 Timothy:  “Since therefore God added to the man an inferior aid, the Apostle justly reminds us of the order of creation in which the eternal and inviolable appointment of God is strikingly displayed.”  Luther was just another example of a theologian finding in his reading of the Bible justification for his belief that women were inferior to men.

The fact is that women in church leadership is not the only recent development possibly affected by cultural views; the notion of the equality of women is also a recent development, in society and in the church.  The complementarian (fancy word for those who limit the roles of women in the church) argument today comes to the same conclusion as the church fathers did, but uses a different means to get there:  instead of arguing that the nature of things proves that women are inferior and should follow the leadership of men, they argue that men and women are equal before God, but still should fulfill different roles in the church.  Therefore, it should be noted that NEITHER side – complementarian or egalitarian – is really following church tradition, since both have rejected the premise that women are an inferior gender.

So why in God’s name would we take as authoritative on the gender issue the views of men who saw women as inferior?  Would that not be akin to letting a racist inform our opinions on the superiority of the Caucasian race?  Complementarian theologians, however, are often not so discerning.  Listen to the theologian Thomas Schreiner in Two Views on Women in Ministry:  “I readily admit that those supporting the historic view have sometimes used extreme and unpersuasive arguments to defend their views, and that low views of women have colored their interpretations… (however) an interpretation that has stood the test of time and been ratified by the church in century after century… has an impressive pedigree, even if some of the supporting arguments used are unpersuasive.” 

My conclusion is that I see nothing impressive about misogynistic (if I dare to call them that) men concluding that women are inferior and therefore should contain themselves to the home.  I believe this directly contradicts the creation account and the actions and teaching of Jesus, and is not the way God intended for his church to be.  It is for this reason that I am not afraid to disagree with the church fathers. 

Next week, I will continue to examine what church history adds to this discussion by looking more closely at the last two millennia of women in church leadership.  In the meantime, if you have any thoughts or comments to add, especially if you have ever felt that the Bible or the church still treats women as inferior, please post your comments so that we might all learn and not repeat the mistakes of our fathers.  May God grant us wisdom and discernment as we seek His will on this matter.

We’re in the middle of a preaching series at NewLife on the Bible and gender, trying to understand what the Bible has to say about the role of men and women in the church, in marriage, and in society (you can listen to the sermons online at www.newlife-glastonbury.org).  If you’ve listened at all to the messages, you know that this is a complex issue that mature Christians have disagreed on over the years.  Our church believes the Bible is God’s Word and our authority for faith and practice, and so we take seriously what it has to say about men and women, from the Genesis creation account, to the way Jesus treated women, to the teachings of the apostle Paul on the subject, to the examples of men and women throughout the pages of the Bible. 

Even though we hold a high view of Scripture, there are three other voices that can inform a particular view on the Bible and gender.  The Wesleyan Quadrilateral, credited to John Wesley, the 18th century leader of the Methodist movement, is a model of theological reflection which theorizes that people of faith use four different sources in coming to their theological conclusions:

     Scripture – what does the Bible say about the issue?
     Tradition – what does the past two millennia of church history say about the issue?
     Reason – what does our rational thinking say about this issue?
     Experience – what has our personal experience as a Christian taught us?

This model can be helpful in understanding the differences between many strands of Christianity.  For example, Catholics place a high value on both Scripture and tradition, believing that the teachings of the Popes are just as important as the teachings of the Bible (which is why sometimes there is such extra-Biblical emphasis on things such as the saints, adoration of Mary, purgatory, sacraments, etc.).  So-called “liberal” churches place a high value on reason, which can lead to a downplaying of the miraculous elements of the Bible or an acceptance of cultural practices that may contradict the Bible.  Many Pentecostal churches place a high value on experience, believing that many manifestations of the Spirit are legitimate, even though they may not be found or emphasized in the Bible (e.g. holy laughter, being slain in the Spirit).  Evangelical churches like our own try to treat Scripture as of primary importance, and the other three sources as all of secondary importance.  In other words, we believe that we can learn a lot from tradition, reason, and experience, but if they contradict the Bible as we understand it, then the Bible takes priority.

All this introduction serves to bring us to this question:  what do we learn about the roles of men and women in the church when we take into account tradition, reason, and experience?  Recognizing that none of these trump Scripture, nevertheless, does looking at these three sources influence us in any way on the question of whether God’s will is for both men and women to fulfill all roles in the church?

I think I can deal with the “reason” and “experience” issues fairly quickly.  My experience, and that of many today, is that we have a lot to learn from both godly men and women, and that to silence the voice of half of God’s people in church or in leadership is to weaken the church.  Some may argue that their experience is that allowing women to be in leadership will cause fewer men to participate in church or to step up to leadership roles.  However, if men are insecure about sharing leadership with women or resort to passivity in the face of assertive women, that is hardly grounds for banning women from leadership.

As for “reason,” most rational thinkers would agree that men and women can complement each other well as leaders and teachers, having observed this in many secular professions.  In fact, many who believe that women should not function as pastors, teachers, or elders struggle to understand why God would make it this way when there are many women who are gifted leaders and teachers.  Therefore, I would argue that both experience and reason heavily support an egalitarian point of view, that church roles should be distributed on the basis of spiritual gifting, not gender.

The tradition issue (what church history has to teach us), of course, is much more complicated.  My hope is to raise the important questions in today’s post and then spend next week answering the questions, because I do believe we can learn something significant from examining church tradition.  I think this is a crucial thing to do in the discussion we’ve been having, because I would argue that many evangelical Christians assume the following three things:

    1) The church has traditionally held that only men can be pastors, teachers, and elders
     2) The increase in women pastors, elders, and teachers is due more to the influence of secular feminism than it is to Biblical scholarship. 
     3) Therefore, a Biblical church will resist cultural influence and allow only men to be pastors, teachers, and elders

Does this resonate with you?  Have you heard this argument before, or do you believe it yourself?  I have found that many churches and Christians, when faced with the complex issue of gender roles in church, would rather err on the side of “men only” leadership, because “that’s the way it’s always been.”

But is that the way it’s always been?  And if that’s the way it’s always been, are there good reasons that it has been that way?

Next week I’ll do a more thorough analysis on how church tradition has handled this issue.  In the meantime, I would love to hear your thoughts on how reason and experience influence your views on the roles of men and women in the church.  Bible and tradition aside, what has been your experience of “men-only” church leadership?  What has been your experience of men and women working together in leadership, whether in the church or in society?  Do you see any rational basis to exclude women from positions of authority or teaching in the church?  If you have any thoughts or questions, please post your comments so that we might learn from each other on this subject. 

The issue of women in church leadership (pastor or elder) has rightly been considered a “secondary issue” in inter-church relations by most Christians (as opposed to primary issues such as the divinity of Jesus or the Trinity).  In other words, believing Christians have differed on this issue over time, and therefore it is not worth dividing over.  However, it is also true that this is hardly a secondary issue for any woman who feels called to the ministry but finds most doors shut, nor for a congregant who feels that the church leadership is lacking some feminine qualities that might improve the functioning of the church.  For these reasons, the topic is certainly worth some careful study and discussion so that our church might be in line with God’s will. 

Our belief as a church is that the Bible is authoritative for faith and practice.  In other words, we believe that the Bible is God’s Word, and therefore should be the measure we use in how we live and what we believe.  Certainly there are plenty of churches and Christians that do not hold such a view of the Bible, and as a result are free to believe and decide whatever they wish regarding issues such as women in leadership.  But our church’s hope is to do our best to understand the Bible in the context in which it was written and then to apply it to our world today.  Unfortunately, this can be a very difficult task, given the different language and cultural situation.  For instance, how would you apply passages such as the following to today’s world?

1 Corinthians 11:4-5 – Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head.  And every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head– it is just as though her head were shaved.

1 Timothy 2:11-12 - A woman should learn in quietness and full submission.  I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.

As you can see, anyone who wishes to treat the Bible as authoritative for faith and practice needs to do a careful job of understanding the passage in its context and applying it appropriately to today’s world.  Otherwise you’ll wind up with a church full of angry women in head coverings staring at you in stony silence.

As I spend time studying gender issues and the church, I am considering ending the series on men and women by dealing with what the Bible has to say about homosexuality.  This is certainly one of the most complicated and difficult issues the church is facing today, and the gay community is a population that the church has largely failed to love as Jesus would have.  If I believe that I can do justice to the complexity of this issue as well as to what the Bible says, then I will preach on it.  Please pray for me as I attempt to do all of this in the spirit of Jesus.

Here’s how you can help me as I prepare.  I am sure that many of you must have questions about gender roles, women and men in the church, and homosexuality that you would love some answers or at least some fruitful discussion about.  Please do me a favor and post a comment with the questions you would like me to address in this series (you can do it anonymously if you wish).  Or, if you have no questions and all the answers, you can take a look at some of the questions I am currently wrestling with as I study this issue:

Questions about the Biblical role of men & women:

- Can women be pastors?  Elders?  Can they preach?  Have authority over men in a church?  Speak in church? 
- What has been the church’s history on women in church leadership?  Does that impact our understanding of God’s will?
- Can a woman have authority over a man in a workplace?  What about in their home?
- Which passages do you interpret universally (applying to everyone everywhere at every time), and which ones are culturally bound (specific to the writer’s locale), and why?
- What does Paul mean when he says that in Christ there is neither male nor female (Galatians 3:28)?
- What does it mean that men are the head of the wife (Ephesians 5:23)?
- What does it mean for a wife to submit to her husband (Ephesians 5:24)?  When is it correct not to submit or to challenge a husband’s leadership?

Questions about Christianity, the Bible, and homosexuality:

- Which passages about homosexuality do you interpret universally, and which ones are culturally bound, and why?
- Does the Bible ever speak about mutually loving, committed homosexual relationships?
- Christians throughout history have reversed their stance on issues like slavery, interracial marriage, and the role of women; could they be wrong on this issue as well?  If there is even a chance we could be wrong, how should that affect the way we handle this issue?
- Did Jesus ever speak to sexuality and gender?
- If Jesus were on earth today, would he even speak to “the issue of homosexuality”?  Or would he stick to ministry to individuals?

If homosexual behavior is against God’s will, then…

- What are the options for a gay person who concludes that homosexual behavior is against God’s will?
- If someone is in a loving relationship with a member of the same sex but they are not sexually active, is this against God’s will?
- How do you teach that homosexual behavior is against God’s will without damaging the psyche and faith of countless of people who question their sexuality?
- How do you convince a gay person that God loves them and is worthy of worship if He will not allow them to experience a loving, committed relationship to the person they love, simply because he is the same sex?
- If the Bible only speaks to homosexuality specifically about four times, should we devote so much attention to it?
- Where does homosexual behavior rank in the hierarchy of sins?  Is there such a thing as a hierarchy of sins?
- Can an active (not celibate) homosexual be a pastor?  An elder?  A member of the church?  Teach Sunday School?  Sing on the worship team???
- If you answer no to any of the above questions, are there other sins that need to be “screened for” as well in other people (e.g. greed, gluttony, bigotry)?
- Is there a middle ground between “open and affirming” and “closed and condemning”?
- Do you “legislate morality” by trying to make your beliefs part of the national law (i.e. not allowing gay marriage)?  Or should you advocate for gay marriage or civil unions in the name of justice and equality for all?  Or should Christians avoid the political aspect of this issue altogether?
- How do you fight unjust oppression and bigotry done to homosexuals while still not condoning their sexual choices?

If homosexual behavior is not against God’s will, then…

- How do you support that Biblically?
- How does the church need to respond to gay people and gay marriage?  Do these become justice issues which the church needs to be involved with?

The above questions only scratch the surface of the complexity of this issue for a church or Christian that is genuinely committed to both submitting to the truth of God and displaying the love of Jesus.  Again, I encourage you that if you have other questions or thoughts, please post a comment so that I might deal with these issues in all their complexity.  Pray for me as I attempt to understand and communicate God’s heart, but more importantly, pray for everyone who is struggling to figure out how to live out their gender and sexuality in the light of God.