When Women Aren't Taken Seriously

And when men aren't, either; it's not always the patriarchy

“Deborah was a judge! Huldah was a prophetess! Priscilla instructed Apollos! Philip’s daughters prophesied! Mary was the first to preach the resurrection to the apostles! I’m so tired of all these men trying to keep women from being pastors and preachers! Al Mohler simply wants to silence women. He probably skips leg day, too.”

Christian women on social media have been out in full force over the last few days to protest the recently affirmed SBC resolution to prohibit churches in friendly cooperation with the SBC from having women serve as pastors or preach to the assembled congregation. Occasionally, they have been joined by men offering the same “proof texts” for why women should, in fact, serve in these roles. The thousands of “likes” some of these posts receive indicate that these arguments speak persuasively to many people (particularly women). In light of this phenomenon, three observations are worth making.

How to Instantly Lose Credibility

If you rolled your eyes at the beginning of this piece, you weren’t alone. What’s sad is that the people offering these justifications for female pastors or preachers don’t realize that there are two kinds of people who dismiss what they are saying: patriarchalists (in the worst sense of the word) or misogynists, and people who take biblical interpretation seriously. They then lump all detractors into the first camp—a camp easy to dismiss and easier to disdain.

This is a terrible error.

To be clear, there are very serious biblical scholars who are egalitarian in their theology (or something indistinguishable from it): Scot McKnight, Michael Bird, Lucy Peppiatt, Susan Eastman, Cynthia Westfall, Jeannine Brown, and Linda Belleville, just to name a few. It would be a mistake to simply dismiss what these folks are saying; indeed, they represent the most articulate voices for egalitarian convictions currently on offer.

But these are not the kinds of voices we are hearing in response to Wednesday’s vote. Instead, we are being asked to believe that somehow it follows from Deborah being a judge in Israel that women can be pastors/elders in the local church, or that because Philip’s daughters prophesied, women can preach on Sunday morning.

Huh?

What kind of theological methodology yields inferences like these? One gets the very, very deep impression that something like the following is actually happening: “Here are these examples where God has placed and used women in important ways speaking the word of God. Therefore, they shouldn’t be prohibited from ministering and speaking the word of God.” A fine point, but one that most people aren’t really arguing against (as I type, women are currently speaking at the Women’s Gospel Coalition’s conference attended by thousands of women, most of whom would heartily endorse Wednesday’s vote).

Our confessional, Reformed church, for example, has women reading the Bible and speaking the “call” of the corporate prayer in anticipation of congregational response in our services, along with a robust women’s ministry in which women teach other women and lead women’s Bible studies. This might make some nervous, but we’re eager for our women to speak the word in such ways. But the thought that a woman would be an elder or preach the Sunday sermon is simply 100 miles away from these things, and no one in our church is confused about it. Further, the thought that a woman would functionally serve as some kind of “ruling” elder without the title and without preaching is similarly out of sight.

Perhaps the folks making these popular-level appeals and objections have bought into an all-or-nothing mentality when thinking about women in local church ministry that yields genuine fear—if their pastors agree with Mohler, they may reason, then perhaps their leadership of the food pantry may be on the chopping block. Maybe they're worried about a slippery slope. But whatever the reason, men and women drawing conclusions with elementary-school theological methodology should realize the following hard truth:

The reason many men and women dismiss you isn’t because they are trying to hold women down; it’s because you instantly lose credibility as a thoughtful interpreter of the Bible the second you throw up the “Mary Magdalene on Easter therefore female pastors” line.

Sorry, it’s just that simple.

Tuning Out Church History

On this point we can afford to be brief. It seems to be lost on many of those bemoaning the prohibition of female pastors in the SBC that this is and has been the view of the church for most of church history. Even extraordinarily influential women like Hildegard of Bingen and Catherine of Siena in the medieval period were not ordained clergy. Women began to publicly preach within Quakerism and Methodism in the 18th century, but it would not be until the mid-19th century that the first woman was ordained within a Protestant denomination (Antoinette Brown Blackwell in 1853). Her ordination into an autonomous Congregationalist church was, as you might expect, deeply controversial.

Blackwell was a strong advocate for women’s rights more generally, a fact that reveals more than initially meets the eye. For the rise of women’s ordination has coincided strongly with the rise of feminism more generally. Second-wave feminism in particular (1960s–1980s) saw female ordination skyrocket in the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA), and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. This led to counter-movements and denominational splits (e.g., the PCA) trying to conserve the historic teaching of the church. Thus, people upset that the SBC upheld what has been—and still is—the majority and historic view of the church regarding women serving as elders/pastors/overseers should perhaps consider that most Christians who have ever lived would disagree with them.

And that should at least give one pause.

Historical-Theological Buoys

I’ll admit that I have poked around on a few of the pages of the folks we’ve been discussing. Of note is that, to all appearances, most of these folks serve either in (liberal) mainline Protestant churches or in evangelical churches that have no real confessional pedigree, with charismatic and other non-denominational churches probably being the most prominent. A trend I’ve observed in such churches is that they are often the first to drift away from the truth and call it progress or boldness. Generally, these are very trendy churches, like “The Belonging Co.” down the road from my house co-pastored by a man and his wife.

Perhaps now more than ever I am aware of the importance of being historically and theologically linked to what has been passed down to us for centuries by faithful brothers (and sisters). This is at the core of theological conservatism and is exactly what Paul instructed Timothy: “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it” (2 Tim. 3:14). Paul’s exhortation in his last letter to Timothy does not encourage (or foresee) theological innovation or development, but instead, preservation and holding fast.

When answering questions about what we believe about the Bible, it is not inconsequential for one person to be able to point to the Westminster or 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith while another must appeal to the statement their pastors crafted for the church website. We should be seeking to stand on the shoulders of the best of the Christian tradition, tweaking things where appropriate but not trying to reinvent the wheel for the 21st century.

The debate about female pastors will, of course, rage on—the ACNA is probably up next. But those reasoning about it from within a confessional framework will be able to weather the storm with far greater resilience. That isn’t simply because most of the confessions are clear on the issue; it’s because one’s approach to the Bible will not be an individualistic product of the times.

The humility and solidarity wrought by church history are powerful hermeneutical tools in their own right, and evangelicals who find themselves on historical-theological islands are far more likely to have a “Pastor Cathy” both presently and down the road. Those lacking connection to the great traditions risk becoming theological bobbers on the water of the contemporary zeitgeist.

And fueled by Wednesday's vote, many of them are currently clicking “post” quite a bit.