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blogging, churchians, insanitybytes22, misogyny, pastors, sexism, women
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I thought this was really well done, “No, no, women must not help, rather let the people drown!” Click to read it, it’s brief and to the point. She is absolutely right, too. When I look at history, including the history of the early church, I’m surprised by how false this dominant narrative is that tries to act as if women have just arrived on the scene in the church and now all this alleged female progress is sending us to hell in handbasket.
That’s a total lie.
For those blessed not to know, it can be absolutely brutal to try to share your faith while female. Brutal. Death threats. Hate mail. Porn. Endlessly. There are several pastors, especially some of the Reformed and Southern Baptist variety, who are opposed to woman pastoring and whether they realize it or not, their angry words and advocacy disguised as “standing up for Biblical values,” simply empowers every nut job out there looking for an excuse to vent and a target for their rage.
It’s not just men either, there are many women who will also just relentlessly attack and try to lay waste to anything you say. They call you a Jezebel, a feminist, a heretic, they claim to be discernment ministries, often completely unable to discern the irony in the fact that they are indeed, women teaching and preaching, that women shouldn’t be teaching and preaching.
It can be really rough. I’m tough and I’ve thrown in the towel more than a few times. This is my third blog. I’ve been around addicts, pornographers, felons, rather cheerfully, but the venom coming from people calling themselves “Christians” has almost crushed me several times. The world is a dark place already, many people aren’t really open to hearing about the goodness of Jesus, and when you add the church to your list of people who hate you, it can be really painful.
That’s nothing, that’s from just having a tiny blogging platform or writing a book. My heart goes out to those women who have a bigger platform, or (gasp!) are actually pastoring churches. I can’t imagine the grief they go through. Well, actually I don’t have to imagine it, I’ve witnessed it. Social media, twitter and facebook, are forever coordinating some pretty nasty attacks on women like Beth Moore and others. Anne Graham Lotz was once invited to speak to 8oo church leaders, invited mind you, but many of them turned their chairs around in protest and refused to listen.
Neither of these woman ever expressed any interest in being ordained or becoming pastors, but that doesn’t seem to protect you from the backlash. I too once had no interest in women becoming pastors and no desire to get on that particular bandwagon. I really just wanted to talk to people about Jesus. Still do.
Pastor Doug Wilson just gave a speech on the alleged, “Biblical Virtues of Sexism.” I’d like to name my complete change of heart after him, to make sure it is known far and wide that it is in his honor that I now I fully support ordaining women. At some point while watching all these self ordained, denominationally independent, jerks for Jesus, defend the rights of pedophiles, but not womens’ basic dignity, well, I broke.
I’m quite certain I’m a nobody, but I’m a nobody who loves Jesus with 621,834 views, heading for a million. People are drowning, and as Laura wrote, it’s all hands on deck.
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See, there's this thing called biology... 
“It’s not just men either, there are many women who will also just relentlessly attack and try to lay waste to anything you say.”
That’s very true. We had a woman who was going to our church for a few years, then all of a sudden decided (probably read anti-women pastor blog) that we were in sin because we had a woman pastor on our staff. I told her I respected her opinion, just don’t get in people’s faces about it. Also mentioned that the denomination she had belonged to for several years now was started by a woman! But she didn’t stop, and so she become the only person I’ve ever had to ask to leave. She left claiming her reason was that she “believed the Bible.” (Like we didn’t!)
The funny thing was, she kept saying “women should keep silent” (taking that phrase in 1 Cor.14 out of its context) but she herself was doing anything but keeping silent! LOL!
Frankly, I don’t get the argument, considering how many women leaders were in the New Testament. Obviously, Paul was making pastoral admonitions about particular situations in local churches, not making sweeping doctrinal statements about women.
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Thanks, Mel. Ha! By far, I’d say in my experiences women are a much bigger obstacle in faith than men. It sounds kind of crazy, but men tend to just be dismissive and patronizing when they disagree. Women are more prone to think you’re tearing apart the fabric of the universe and threatening their very existence. As gently as I can here, that’s it exactly, the Lord tore the temple curtain in half and He does threaten the part of our existence that is unpleasant, comfortable to us perhaps, but just not our best, not our full potential.
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“Women are more prone to think you’re tearing apart the fabric of the universe and threatening their very existence. ”
Interesting observation. I’ve actually experienced that. 🙂 It may be because women are more relationally connected than men so it’s more personal to them.
I also totally agree that the Lord is only threatening the part of us that’s unpleasant and keeping us from our full potential.
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The church I attend does not ordain women and I, too, didn’t see what the big fuss was. Like, it didn’t really bother me that “we” didn’t believe in women pastors but it also didn’t bother me that there are women pastors elsewhere. It’s funny because considering my blog and how I talk to people about God, I—a woman—am “teaching and a-preaching.” I liked this perspective, great stuff to consider!!
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Thanks! I’ve been much like you, my denom never ordained women and I was fine with that. It also never bothered me that others did. To each their own! But then I began to see this taken to an extreme, so now just talking about our faith publicly becomes “teaching and preaching.” Then it got kind of silly in some churches with all sorts of arbitrary rules like women can address the congregation but women can only use the guest microphone. Women can speak up front to the church, but not actually step onto the stage because that’s where the podium is.
And as I said, Pastor Wilson really made me look deeper into scripture. His daughters are just heartbreaking, writing about things like the sin of self care and how moms with small children should just repent of their exhaustion, post partum depression, and assorted other afflictions because they are just rebelling against God’s role for them. In the end I’ve seen how we really can bend and mold scripture to reflect our own worldview, rather than letting scripture shape and bend us.
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One thing that sticks out about my denom is that women can teach women and children but not a congregation that has men… I kind of get it for ‘biological/psych’ reasons if you will but it’s also made me weary about encouraging or teaching unbelieving men that I know. As if I will steer them the wrong way because I’m not a man…
Whew felt good to admit that.
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Whew, indeed! I’m so glad you said that. Absolutely, I also love biology and psychology, and yes there are differences between men and women, but the idea that women should never teach men because we’ll just lead them astray is completely bogus. In fact, we could make a sound argument that the Apostle Paul himself is actually being taught by several women, supported by women, nurtured in his own faith by women, certainly Lydia, Phoebe, and Priscilla. Speaking of teaching, Acts 18 also records Apollos being taught, edified, “He began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately.”
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I am going to read those Scriptures today because I love that. I am encouraged by this discussion. Obviously God makes no mistakes and uses ALL of His children for His glory and we are all to spread the Gospel, so why would there be an exception for a specific type of heterosexual teaching?
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Huh. I didn’t know about this.
I haven’t crossed the aisle, I am still clinging to the biblical qualifications for the office of pastor. I really doubt that there’s an argument out that that could change my mind either. Even the so-called “biblical” arguments really don’t pass the smell test for me.
That doesn’t make me hateful towards women.
I have like, 40 years of service in the church, a great deal of which would be considered “leadership” positions. I have served on the BODs at the congregational and district levels and was nominated twice to serve at our national level (though I declined both nominations for purely logistical reasons). For a time, I considered entering into full-time church work as a deacon. I’ve taught Sunday School to the little ones and my pastors have had no problem asking me – a woman! – to teach confirmation classes when they were unable to themselves. I have found no shortage of meaningful, NEEDED service within the church, as a woman or otherwise. There is absolutely no need for me to usurp for myself that which God has not called me to.
I don’t know what it’s like for other denominations, but in mine, there are more pastors than there are congregations. Like, meaning we have a lot more pastors than we have congregations to pastor.
“All hands on deck” only works if all the hands are willing to work *together* where they are most needed. If all the oarsmen rush to take a place on the captain’s deck…who is doing the oarring?
I understand your concern for how this teaching is HORRIBLY abused and I condemn it. But surely the abuse of a thing doesn’t nullify the inherent goodness of the thing being abused; the fact that a thing can be abused, twisted, distorted *implies* the goodness of the thing itself. When we abuse others in the name of Scripture, we abuse the Scriptures themselves.
God has drawn a circle around the office of pastor, delineating clearly what qualities a pastor should have. He didn’t do this to deny women entrance to some exclusive little circle. That’s a really distorted way of viewing it and not at all in line with what He intends.
I trust this, and I am simply not willing to lay my trust in his word aside for what, to me, seems to be a thoroughly manmade argument, no matter how well intentioned it might be.
Full disclosure – I have wrestled with this teaching for a long time, struggled against it, tried to find a way around it in the Scriptures. Believe me, I LOOKED for loopholes! I WANTED to find them. I couldn’t find any, not without doing damage to the clearer scriptural proclamations on the subject.
I can’t go against my conscience on this one, though I wouldn’t go so far as to dictate the conscience of another – that is between them and their God.
I know I am in the minority on this, but I am at peace with it.
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Well, I certainly don’t anyone to think or believe in a way that goes contrary to their conscience. 🙂
But I think it’s important to note here, this is NOT man made argument nor an emotional one. I’ve invested many years in reading people like Wilson and the SBC, and in that process I watched some really bad theology fall out. The idea that Eve sinned before sin even entered the garden, that idea that Eve and all her descendants are now under a curse, permanently deceived, are all totally man made doctrines having no basis in the Bible or in the truth.
In the Bible we actually have Jesus choosing to reveal Himself first to the woman at the well, the first person to share the good news with her whole village. The woman at the tomb, the first ones to bear witness to the resurrection. Phoebe, Junia, so, so many, some actually executed for preaching the gospel in the early church.
My conscience tells me that that banning women from ministry is actually bad theology, an attempt to twist scripture and bend history so it better reflects our desired worldview. There are numerous pastors, men, on Twitter right now speaking of how women are tainted, dirty, deceived, they demean the church. In my book, that is blasphemy, that is an attempt to say the sin of women is more powerful than the blood of Jesus. So as a matter of conscience and good theology I just can’t sit on the fence anymore.
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I can respect that. I’ve been on the same fence, but came down on the opposite side.
To be clear though, I reject a theology that teaches women are “banned” from pastoral ministry because they are inherently deficient to do so (and the proof of that is the Fall, Eve bad, etc.). I know a lot of women, whom frankly, I think would make marvelous pastors, and I can’t tell you the number of times that people have suggested that *I* should consider the pastoral ministry. And, I know some women who are pastors. I am not suggesting that women lack the capacity (or worth, or whatever) to be pastors. All of that is man made lies and not at all in line with Scripture, which you demonstrated well in your reply above. Anyone who argues otherwise is a liar and deceiver. Can’t say that strongly enough.
If I had to summarize how I understand the Scriptures on this, it would be as follows:
God in his loving care has ordained that his servants of the Word (pastors) be called out of the people of God, by the people of God, for the sake of the people of God, and further that he has given us an unambiguous description of what a servant of the Word should “look” like. He does not call women to this office, and from the men He only calls those with specific characteristics. I can say this unequivocally, because Scripture says so without equivocation. Scripture also unequivocally speaks of women who serve as co-workers in the Gospel, and so women clearly are called into the full service of the church, apart from holding the pastoral office.
That’s about as succinctly as I can put it.
And as I mentioned, I’ve wrestled with this teaching a lot and what I struggle with most is, Why?
Why would God seemingly set up his church in a way that was certain to automatically piss off a full half of it? Why would He make it so blatantly unfair?
Why would he exclude women specifically from the pastoral office?
I don’t think Scripture discusses this head on, but I think it does touch on it obliquely – and man, please don’t ask me where these Scriptures are cuz I’m just going by memory – when the disciples are arguing over who’s gonna sit at Jesus side and Jesus is like, DUDE! Don’t ask for that. You don’t want that.
I think I see some mercy in here, Jesus wanting to protect James and John the suffering to come. And maybe it’s wrong for me to conflate the two, but I see a mercy, and a concern for protecting wives and mothers and daughters in keeping them away from the pastoral office.
I also see a parallel between, ah, man, how can I put this…?
Ok. So in the Garden, at the first creation, Eve was deceived into not believing what God said about the Tree. And I sometimes wonder if women in the church are the “New Eve”? If maybe this “prohibition” is actually God inviting us to trust Him in the way our first mother failed to? And in the same way, I wonder if the spiritual care of creation was entrusted to specifically to men because Adam did a pretty poor job of executing that care over his woman the first time around. Eve gets deceived into rebelling and does Adam rebuke her? Nope, he totally joins in!
So I don’t know – that may not be persuasive to you, but I find the parallel rather compelling. It fits in with the whole idea of redemption, of restoring what was lost in the Fall to us. Probably should clarify that I don’t mean this IS Redemption. I guess I would call it a “type” of our long lost archetype as it existed before the Fall.
So..yeah, this is where my wrestling has led me and I full up acknowledge that it’s based inference and some speculation. I can’t think of any Scripture that makes that direct parallel, so that could be a false insight. But it works so darn beautifully, lol!
Is this an angle you’ve ever heard before? (Please say no, I like to think it’s an original insight…!)
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Those are some great thoughts! I often see protection going on in Paul’s words, too So when he says, “I do not permit a woman to teach,” we have to remember “teaching” often meant the first to be executed in those days. He’s not saying women are incompetent, he’s calling men to take responsibility. I also really like how he speaks for himself and not for God, with that, “I don’t. permit…” That’s something I love about Paul, he knows the difference between his authority and the Lord’s. I can sense that in a lot of his words, he will distinguish between his will and the Lord’s will.
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Great point! In Paul’s writings it isn’t always easy to tell whether a passage is to be applied to that particular era, location, and culture, or to the Church throughout time. A man in our church was bemoaning the “fact” that some people “no longer accept the authority of the Bible!” because they’re OK with women teachers. And yet he allows his wife to attend church with her head uncovered – and short hair to boot! I am still wrestling with this issue, but I am aware that any of us can be guilty of cherry-picking our verses to get the conclusion we want.
I have been invited to India to teach a group of pastors in training, and an aspiring pastor in Uganda who is reading one of my books has asked me to be a sort of mentor to him through our Facebook messages. When I mentioned the teaching opportunity to one of our elders, he seemed excited for me, and when I asked him if that would get me in trouble with the church, he just looked thoughtful and commented that “That would be an interesting conversation to have [with the pastor and elders].”
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That is awesome! I am so pleased with the ministry you have. That is good news, indeed!
It is kind of pathetic that we have this thing about women teachers and the authority of the Bible, because that is very symptomatic of modern Western churchian culture, and not the bigger picture of greater Christian history over all. We have archaeology, ruins of house churches with women’s names on them. They were doing communion, leading praise and worship, teaching, and it was their house, their names sometimes carved right on the Lord’s table. Also, the Bible carefully preserves those truth for us, all those women in the Bible.
The issue of Biblical authority can be really tricky, so I definitely empathize with that struggle. I’ve seen far too many people try to make it say what they want it to say, to affirm or validate their own worldview. Also we have lots of cultural norms, which are fine, but they aren’t necessarily “Biblical.” When we confuse the matter, we sure put needless stumbling blocks in front of people. 🙂
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I’m wondering if one of the reasons is the overly sexual nature of our culture. I read of a recent study that said the average male mind thinks of sex once every 8 minutes. If that’s the case, it would be very hard for a man to give a woman his undivided attention for an hour and focus solely on what she is saying. The most godly man could likely be targeted by the enemy, who wants to cause as much distraction as possible. If the man is trying to fight a spiritual battle the whole class time, it will be very hard for him to learn much.
That’s my theory, anyway. (which would mean it’s an even WORSE idea for women to try to teach teen-aged boys!) If that’s the real reason one of our elders said “If I went to a Sunday school class taught by a woman I would be sinning,” (eye roll) it would be nice if the men would just be honest and tell us that. I think most women would be very understanding, and if we truly love our brothers, we wouldn’t want to put a stumbling block in their way.
Another thought I’ve had lately … Women in general may be weaker than men physically, and evil men (bullies and abusers) take advantage of that, but men are weaker in other ways, and evil women take advantage of that weakness, too. (A well endowed woman in a low-cut blouse can get a guy to do pretty much anything she wants him to do.) But as Christ followers we need to respect one another’s weaknesses and act accordingly. I’m not trying to be critical of the way men are wired – if I did that, I’d be being critical of the Creator that made them that way (for reasons I don’t understand)! Just saying, there’s SO much we don’t know fully about one another, which is why I’ve really been wrestling with this issue lately.
I had a dream one night where God hinted at some of these things, and the next day I had an epiphany – If the pastor in India is already having the seminar with the young men – and he is – and if I truly believe that women are equally important – and I do – why not go to India, speak briefly to the men that are reading my book, and then let the pastor continue teaching them while I have a separate seminar with the women!? 😀
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Great observations!
My two cents, fwiw – Go to India and speak to everybody. Any lay person, male or female, can do this. Just don’t do it from the pulpit so as not to give the appearance that you have been called to it.
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“He’s not saying women are incompetent, he’s calling men to take responsibility.”
Bingo!! I suspect this is at the heart of the matter.
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Reblogged this on Madison Elizabeth Baylis.
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Thank you for the reblog, much appreciated 🙂
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You Stated — “I’m quite certain I’m a nobody, but I’m a nobody who loves Jesus”
no·bod·y
pronoun
a person of no importance or authority.
My Response — That’s an interesting perspective. It occurs to me that when you say it in here it most likely causes an empathy
response in others but if you were to suddenly stand up on a crowded plane and say it out loud a few times it may cause a panic.
Strange how nobodies have so much power
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Ha! That’s a really good point. “I’m a nobody” can simply be dismissive or it can make everybody really, really, nervous. Context is everything. 🙂
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Yep
I bet people though Jesus was a nobody… for the first few weeks and then look how that turned out Oo
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LOL! They did try to throw Him off a cliff, in His hometown no less. Apparently His preaching didn’t go over very well. 🙂
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