Paul and his terrible PR team: women in leadership part 4

A lot of fingers get pointed at Paul. There are a lot of people out there who see him as an arrogant church leader on a power trip with an inflated sense of God’s anointing who was heavy handed and likes to have a good go at churches. Without careful reading, it’s perhaps understandable why people feel like this; he does sound angry quite a lot. However, particular ‘angry’ statements always need to be put in context of Paul’s thinking shown in all his writing.

When it comes to gender roles, there are a couple of comments that seem to give no room for women to be on the same level as men with leadership. The most direct of these appears to be in 1 Timothy 2 v12 in which he says:

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a wife to teach or to assume authority over her husband; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.

Not only does this seem a little harsh, but the reasoning appears to be pretty whacked too. Women can be saved through childbearing? What the?! The woman has to remain quiet because she was made second and was the one who was deceived? Surely Paul isn’t arguing like this. Surely. Let me suggest we can look at this differently, like this:

If you read the beginning of the chapter, you can see that the point Paul is trying to make is that people should be quiet when they get together so that everyone can learn. If you hold this at the forefront of the reading then it might change things. And also note that Paul is using the creation story here, but for the agenda above, not to put women in their place. He wants everyone to learn.

So, to put it simply, women should be quiet so they can learn. In the first creation, Adam was formed first and Eve second. Adam was taught, but Eve wasn’t, and this led to her deception. To avoid this sort of deception happening again, teach the women this time! After the deception, God promised Eve that she would be the bearer of the Saviour, which through Mary she was, and now he stand as an example for other women to bring forth God’s word to the world.

This kind of interpretation is the only one that will really work with the rest of Paul’s writing. In Romans 16we see Paul referring to Priscilla as a minister (a word often used for Jesus) and a fellow worker equal to her husband, Aquila. In the same chapter we also see him calling Junia an apostle and one third of the people mentioned at the end are female which people are called to submit to, female workers, not merely male. This goes hand in hand with statements in Galatians saying ‘there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free for you all one in Christ Jesus’. To turn this passage in 1 Timothy into a damaging doctrine that stifles the role of women in church is to do something anti-Pauline and completely unnecessary. What a shame that so many people proof-text passages and end up with positions that oppress people – in this case, half the population! Reading the Bible properly is important stuff y’all.

I would like to acknowledge a lot of great work by Roger and Faith Forster on this issue, from which I’ve grabbed a lot of this stuff from.

Ladies, do your thing! We males need to learn to be led by you as well!

jesus was a ladies man: women in leadership part 3

Jesus is awesome. But there are so many annoying people in the world and for some reason a lot of these people end up in church leadership. They end up saying really dumb things sometimes and get angry at stuff that is ridiculous. They give the church a bad name and sometimes cause us to get labelled as bigots, misogynists, sexists, homophobes and worse. This is pretty sad when we see just how inclusive Jesus is with people on the fringes.

Jesus was just awesome with women. Jewish society had become pretty patriarchal by the first century and women were essentially viewed as the property of men (take a look at the ten commandments: ‘do not covet your neighbours possessions, his livestock, his wife, his house’ – she’s not even top of the list!). Jesus consistently acts in such a way as to break this thinking down. And this was pretty radical for a rabbi. Jesus talked with, taught, healed, travelled with, praised and discipled women. He took them seriously, he wanted them to learn and he saw them as important. Luke’s gospel is particularly big on this. You can’t really see it any other way.

However, when it comes to leadership, it doesn’t seem to look like Jesus wants women involved. His 12 apostles were all men. On top of this, Jesus never speaks against the culture of female inferiority, and some see that as indirectly justifying it. Some have argued that he did this because women wouldn’t have been taken seriously in that culture. Others have said that it was because women would have known the scriptures well enough to be a definitive teacher of Christian doctrine.

But in my experience, people like to jump from narrative to what they like to call ‘a biblical model’. They read certain stories in the bible, or certain actions of certain individuals and then decide that those are moral codes, or examples to follow. They turn them into something that is prescriptive. This is particularly common for the church described in the book of Acts. They read about what went on at the beginning of the church’s story and decide that what Luke is actually doing is outlining a blueprint for all of church life from there on in. But there actually isn’t much saying that you should be doing this. To look to the selection of the twelve as a prescriptive model for leadership is to read into the text something that isn’t there.

In light of the story of Israel before Jesus, to understand that the very structure of how the nation was understood, it is clear that what Jesus is doing is a highly symbolic action: he is choosing a new twelve. It is a subversive act, it is a statement to Israel that he is ushering a new beginning. This is one of many re-enactments of the Israel story that Jesus takes into himself and gives new meaning. To do anything else with this is to treat the bible like a manual. Don’t do that. It’s not a Western book.

for the ladies: women in leadership part 1

Some of you may be wondering why I think this issue is worth talking about - isn't this done and dusted? Unfortunately not.

I’ll never forget hearing a certain statement preached as truth in front of that many people. I had flown to England to be part of an international leadership conference and the guest speaker was Pastor Mark Driscoll from Mars Hill Church, Seattle. There were around 12,000 leaders gathered from all around the world, and mid-way through one of his presentations Driscoll declared to everyone, “If you allow women to be elders in your churches then your movement will fail.” It took me a while to pick my jaw off the floor. He based this assertion on scripture, citing Paul as the authority on the matter and insisting that he was simply being biblical. Scary stuff. I would actually argue the opposite of Driscoll. Time will tell on that one I suppose.

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard stuff like this though. I’ve grown up in churches that didn’t move from a position that women cannot lead churches or preach in them. Funnily enough, there was often a loophole that allowed them to teach and lead other women and children, but men were always out of the question. They told me the bible was clear on the matter: women were never to be a man's superior. I remember sitting in a leadership meeting for a church, and a guest to this meeting was a prominent leader from among the movement. He had come to offer direction and guidance. I decided that since he was so privy to the thinking that had shaped the movement I would ask him why they had arrived at the conclusion that it was beyond doubt that women could lead churches. I told him that in my view it was a bad reading of Paul. This basically led me to being told that I was essentially fearing the opinions of man, rather than God. He told me that at an intersection, one person has to give way to another in order for anyone to get anywhere and that it was like that for men and women. Women have to submit to men in order for any decisions to be made in the end. Impressive reasoning right?

The women in these churches were told that this was the biblical model, and that God only likes it that way. They were told that to be a godly woman meant that submission was the way it had to be. There was no discussion on the matter outside of intending to indoctrinate people to this point of view. I became increasingly uncomfortable with this thinking. For one thing, I knew so many women gifted in leadership and preaching that were unable to exercise their gifting because of this oppressive theology. And it seemed that men actually needed to learn to be led by women and the church looked like the perfect environment for this. It also seemed to sound like something very foreign to the voice of Jesus. It sounded counter-intuitive on so many levels. But it also seemed that the writings of Paul gave them no room on this either.

To put it simply, it’s just not as clear as that. Like anything in the bible, it is dangerous to take one verse or passage out and use it as a rule without considering other writings. As it happens, not even Paul sticks to this thinking. So where does this thinking come from? Many are convinced that this argument is only important now because of modern feminist thinking. But the Waldensians of the 12^th and 13^th centuries, the Anabaptists of the 16^th century, the Quakers of the 17^th and 18^th centuries and John Wesley’s Methodist movement in the 18^th century all allowed women to be preachers, teachers and leaders. The Salvationists even put it into writing.

Crazily enough, the bible has its fair share of female leaders; we have Miriam, Deborah and Hulduh who led the people in different ways in the Old Testament period. And the early church was countercultural in this respect too, Paul addresses Priscilla, Pheobe and Junia as leaders of churches and fellow co-workers. In AD 112 Pliny the younger wrote a letter to the Emperor Trajan about Christians asking for advice on how to deal with them. He told Trajan that he had tortured ‘two female slaves who are called deacons.’ The Christian community had already transcended the boundaries of sex and class. Amazing stuff.

I’m stoked that Windsor Park allows women to lead. It’s so good that Amanda is our pastor in some ways just because she’s a woman! But this conversation is long and complex with many viewpoints and reasons for taking certain positions. I’ll try and cover as much as I can over the next few posts. It’s an important conversation to have, which is why I want to give it some air time. I don’t want to see women, often gifted people in key areas of church life with lots to offer, made to feel as though they are going against God’s will if they want to lead. I don’t want them made to feel like submission is the only option. This isn’t the voice of modern feminism or a product of moral relativism. This is getting back to the roots of the gospel. Proclaiming freedom. Listening to Jesus.

Archaic patriarchal notions of male dominance are not okay.