Why I Accept Women in Ministry

Woman Preaching

The following was first crafted as an email response to a mentor who wanted to know how I came to my egalitarian position (I have now edited and expanded it). While he asked specially about my egalitarian views, I wanted to take the time to describe why I accept women in teaching, serving, and having authority over all others in a church setting. Please understand that I’m not really expecting this to convince you. It took me a lot of time thinking, studying, reading, discussing and asking questions, so I don’t expect you to change your mind in one blog post.

What I want this post to do is explain my thinking, so you know I didn’t just change my views to “get woke.” Nor do I come to different possibilities lightly without consideration for logical and ethical implications. If you are concerned about the things I’ve claimed, I’ll be happy to point you to the resources I’ve found. After all, my comments are in response to those resources, so if you might want to view those more detailed resources first. If you want to comment on my reasoning, that’s okay–but I may still point you to other resources that inform my logic.

The headings below represent the major areas I’ve studied to inform my view. I believe all theology should be rooted in the Bible, in theological reasoning (meaning it develops out of the nature and work of God), in logical reasoning, in personal experience (in conjunction with the other areas), and church history / historical theology.

woman preaching photo

Woman preaching. Photo by learning_machine

View of the Bible

This all started after changing my understanding of how Scripture works. I learned to not read the Bible like a list of rules. I learned to look at a bigger picture than isolated verses. I believe that Scripture is sufficient for all we need, but that some of it might not carry over because it’s only for that specific situation. For instance, if Paul tells someone that he’ll meet them at a particular city, there isn’t really any way we can develop our lives based on that very time-oriented statement. Understanding the literary context is an important skill, but I am also developing the difficult habit of reading systematically to find a usable theology from several texts by different authors to different audiences. This enabling me to look beyond verses and contextually specific instructions and see the timeless theology present in the text.

Though Paul gives instructions on how things should be organized in the church, by and large, the Bible is concerned with our lived behavior and our life in community–which is not necessarily an institutional community. Acts and the Epistles have no clear and defined concept of a “church service,” liturgy, or even a Sunday morning sermon. There are no instructions on how can pass communion or what color the curtains should be. Setting up the rules for who’s in charge of the church is a relatively minor plot point in the canonical Scripture, and when we do see instructions, it’s hard to tell if that’s for one church or if it’s for everyone (and if it’s for everyone, WHY is it for everyone?).

Biblical Evidence

With that foundation, I began to look at this question in earnest when I was a volunteer college ministry leader. I asked for class topic suggestions and someone suggested women’s roles in the church. I asked one of my New Testament professors for material and he gave me several options on all sides of the debate. One of the books was Women in Ministry: Four Views. I organized the class around the central texts that are commonly employed in this discussion (1 Cor. 14:34-37 & 1 Tim. 2:8-15 are the only texts that prohibit women from speaking). I attempted to fairly present all sides of the issue—I purposely never told the class which view on women in ministry to believe. But I was quite taken with Cynthia Long Westfall’s book Paul and Gender which argued about the passages that Paul is NOT universally restricting women in teaching and authority. I suppose it’s because she’s an astute scholar who focused on the rhetoric of the passages and brought in loads of cultural information. When I read each passage in context, her view made the most sense in explaining the flow and argument of the text.

Finally, I went beyond the specific texts to look at examples of women’s leadership and the view of women in the NT. In the Gospels, Jesus elevates women. It’s often pointed out that the first gospel preachers were women who came from the empty tomb–they proclaimed the Good News of the resurrection! In the Epistles, we get similar positive language about women. As some scholars have pointed out, the “women stay silent” passages in Paul stick out like a sore thumb against all the ways Paul elevated women in his ministry [Some scholars think 1 Cor. 14:24-25 might be a later addition not by Paul]. Paul calls women his co-workers (cf. the women co-laborers in Romans 16:1ff) and has an egalitarian theology (Cf. Gal. 3:28-29). Daniel N. Lee, the Youth & Family Minister at the Mitchell Church of Christ in Indiana, recently wrote my exact sentiments:

“If I were to disregard 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 and 1 Timothy 2:11-12, I could NOT make the case for prohibiting women from serving and leading in the church. The issue is not brought up anywhere else. It’s an entire prohibition based on five sentences while purposefully disregarding the rest of Scripture.”

Daniel N. Lee, in “A Biblical (Her)meneutic” (02/22/2020)

When I discovered how the passages restricting women were awkward when compared to the rest of the NT, I found it logical to subscribe to Westfall’s conclusions about specific instances that prompt Paul to make the restrictions (For more on that, see Paul and Gender or any good commentary). Through my own study and graduate school, I discovered that so many top New Testament scholars hold a kind of egalitarian view. This list includes influential academics like Scot McKnight, Gordon Fee, Ben Witherington, and N.T. Wright. While I’m not saying we blindly follow them because they have PhDs, these smart guys (men were listed to avoid accusations of bias) have studied the New Testament more than most people ever will (and in Greek!). Certainly, these scholars didn’t become egalitarian just because of the changing tide of culture–they don’t come to conclusions without serious due diligence.

Theology

I could never quite understood why God wouldn’t let women preach, teach, or even serve communion. Why did God do that? Especially in light of the New Covenant, where we are all equal in God’s eyes, it seems so strange. While men and women may be biologically primed toward different personalities and behaviors in different ways (though a lot is probably social expectations), there is no biological reasoning that suggests women are inferior preachers or leaders. I can think of many women who are amazing teachers and leaders who haven’t been allowed to use those talents in the pulpit or for the church in a public way. Remember, Paul’s theology of gifts is not gender-specific. I made this point in a previous blog post. We see in 1 Corinthians mention of women praying and prophesying—essential components of church leadership (The early Christian text The Didache assumes that prophets are teachers and that they deserve a Christian’s utmost respect). Why wouldn’t God allow women to exercise their gifts or natural talents? This doesn’t fit with the God I encounter through Jesus.

Like Peter in Acts who saw the Spirit come over the Gentiles and couldn’t deny God’s favor was on them, I too recognize that if a woman is gifted by the Spirit to teach, preach, or lead–who am I to stop the work of God?

Logic

Logically, I have long seen inconsistencies in how the church restricts women. I lot of these have to do with the term “authority” or “leadership” not have an agreed-upon definition. After all, we sing songs written by women–and I think writing a church song is the same as speaking authoritatively on Christian doctrine. Women are typically allowed to teach kids (until they become teenagers–never got an answer to why their ability to suddenly teach stops). What if a woman writes a sermon that a man preaches? What if a woman preaches a sermon a man wrote? I’ve never got a good definition of “authority” by complementarians, at least not one that did justice to the Greek term! But the real logical issue for me was seeing what harm it’s done to women who are gifted and feel called for ministry—also harm to men who are forced to publically lead or teach because they have an XY chromosome, even if they aren’t gifted.

Church History

Even with all that, I didn’t want to say something new that no Christian has even been on board with. While I know my theology doesn’t match 100% with every Christian through history, I want to be grounded in a historically observant faith. So, I looked at church history which says varying things about women. For instance, there is a letter written by Pliny the Younger to the emperor Trajan dated around 112 that mentions two former female slaves he tortured were termed “deacons” by the Christians. There’s lots more in church history too. There is a lack of uproar in the church about women’s roles until much later in history. I saw on Twitter Nijay Gupta signed a contract to analyze women in the early church so I’m excited to hear his finds. But he’s not the first to do such a project. For now, see Women in the Earliest Churches by Ben Witherington III or Christian Women in the Patristic World by Lynn H. Cohick and Amy Brown Hughes.

Conclusion

With all that Biblical, theological, logical, personal, and historical evidence, I came to my current conclusion on this issue. It was quite the process for me to get there, but I now believe egalitarianism best fits the mission of Jesus and fits his criteria of “bearing good fruit.” While not without potential abuse, I believe this view best describes the evidence and it does the most good.

That’s my journey, take it or leave it. I’d love to engage with comments, but, again, this is not meant to be an exhaustive post where I prove this view right once and for all. Hopefully, it gives you a few starting places where you can think on.

Resources

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