The Southern Baptist Convention’s recent vote to further restrict women from pastoral leadership has reopened a debate many Baptists thought was settled long ago. Their denial of the Holy Spirit’s gift of ministry to women equally to men is reminiscent of the Pharisees who debated whether Jesus was a sinner, devil or sent by God, upon giving sight to a man blind from birth.
Instead of accepting the fact that this was God’s manifest work, the Pharisees chose to expel the man from the synagogue, much like the SBC has expelled women from the pulpit. Just as the Pharisees saw the truth (but failed to “know” it as Jesus said), so the SBC sees the truth: Capable women — many more intelligent than many men, and many, who preach far more impactfully than many men — but in their debates and denials, they fail to know the truth.
Michael Friday
This seeing truth but denying it is killing America; and it will kill the SBC. The SBC sees gifted women preaching, teaching, being pastors and leading with remarkable effectiveness. Yet rather than acknowledging the Spirit’s evident work, they continue to debate and dismiss it because those through whom it comes are women.
Baptists historically have recognized three requirements for ministry fitness: Evidence of grace and giftedness, recognition and affirmation by a believing community, congregational confirmation of the candidate (via licensing, commissioning or ordination) signaling affirmation of God’s authority to preach and do ministry.
Baptist principles of soul freedom, the priesthood of believers, church freedom and the autonomy of the congregation all point to the competence and right of a congregation to call their own pastors and celebrate those among them called to ministry. The SBC is a convention of autonomous and ministry-competent congregations — not a church with a monarchical Bishop Mohler or Rice.
The question then, is not whether women can be gifted, called or affirmed. The question is whether we are willing to acknowledge what God already has been doing, while the Pharisees protest, obfuscate and obstruct.
Just as the Pharisees could not countenance a man born blind being given sight from someone not from among their ranks, so the SBC continues to deny that female preachers and pastors are from God, just because of their gender. It matters not that these remarkably gifted daughters of the faith continue to give sight to many, every day including the Sabbath, of a quality and character that matches or exceeds many a pharisaical man.
“Prejudice, supremacy and patriarchy remain at the heart of this issue.”
Prejudice, supremacy and patriarchy remain at the heart of this issue.
Most complementarians would dismiss that charge and cite biblical authority. Well then, let’s talk about biblical authority.
Robert Johnston’s almost 50-year old Evangelicals at an Impasse cites several interpretive principles that remain timeless and which should govern any interpretation of Scriptures as a whole. He makes direct reference to the Pauline passages on the role of women in the church. I cite a few of them.
First, a text must be treated within its full unit of meaning. The haste to affirm that women should submit to their husbands, “because Ephesians 5:22 says so” must be balanced with two things.
First, in the original Greek, verse 22 possesses no verb. Greek, like English, needs a verb to make a complete sentence. So where is verse 22’s verb? It is in verse 21, which charges all people in the church, male and female, to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Understood this way, a mutuality of submission is required in the church between everyone, including husbands and wives.
Only the mechanics of it — not its fundamental character — differs for the married couple. Paul equates the way a husband loves his wife with the way Jesus submitted to the Cross, for the love of his church.
Second, some translations must be corrected for their sexual bias. Passages such as 1 Timothy 3:1 should be rendered, “if a person (not man) desires to be a bishop” to faithfully represent the Greek. In the English translation of Romans 16:1, Phoebe, the diakonon, is described as a servant. The 22 other times Paul uses this word is in relation to men, including himself and Apollos. I wonder what that makes Phoebe?
Third, the literary form of a passage must be understood if it is to be adequately and properly interpreted. Paul was writing letters to the Corinthians and to Timothy — not “scriptures.” He was responding to specific questions asked by specific people about specific situations and problems, at a specific juncture in time and in life. These letters should not to be (mis)taken, literally, as doctrinal treatises, valid for all time, places and peoples. They must be accepted, first, for what they originally were, then interpreted and applied to today’s situations accordingly.
Fourth, the historical context of a passage helps the interpreter understand both the function and the meaning a text had in its own day. In the Bible, a man could offer his daughters to be raped in lieu of visitors to his home. Another man could give his concubine over to a mob of men to be raped to death and sever and distribute her dead body. It is the interpreter’s job — not the Bible’s — to ask (in a manner of speaking, “What the hell is this?!”) at the end of these episodes, especially where it it appears to leave such acts justified.
Fifth, the immediate context of a passage should be considered before jumping into to today. Woes have followed women for generations when interpreters fail to deconstruct the inferior status of women intrinsic to biblical cultures and literature, despite Jesus’ female-affirming ministry.
Sixth, the author’s explicit intention can provide interpretative tools. Paul’s controversial statements on women’s silence in church and not being permitted to teach are statements of logic — not theology or dogma. In Paul’s society, women weren’t permitted to learn; how could they therefore teach? Logic. Education was a man’s world; hence, Martha wanted her sister Mary back in the kitchen, while Jesus affirmed her “better” place as learning among the men.
Also, women were targets of heretical teachers who, knowing unlearned women’s vulnerability, exploited them to spread their heresies.
Was the Spirit poured out at Pentecost only on males? Was there not a church in Lydia’s house? Did Priscilla not take Apollos home to tutor him in the Scriptures and the faith? Does not being in Christ erase any dichotomy between male and female? Are we not all baptized into Christ? Does that not remove all inequalities?
If women are eligible for the new covenant, baptism, the Holy Spirit’s indwelling and for gifts as the Spirit determines, then women are eligible for ministry, teaching, preaching, being pastors and ordination.
Paul had something to say in his letters about slaves. His narrow concern was that slaves (some of whom were chattle property, not mere household servants) understood their Christian grace to serve their masters well. Will someone therefore claim today that the Bible supports the horrific transatlantic slave trade and slavery in the Americas and Caribbean?
Well then, those who continue to preclude women from pastoral leadership today, based on “certain Scriptures,” should delete the word “emancipation” from their vocabulary and go out and purchase a slave or two. I say this, tongue-in-cheek, lest anybody down South, still moored tightly to their 1845 “biblical convictions” take me seriously.
Michael Friday serves as executive minister of the American Baptist Churches of Greater Indianapolis and is author of the book, And Lead Us Not Into Dysfunction: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, of Church institutions and Their Leaders. He is a member of the BWA Commission on Healthy Church and Gender, Racial and Economic Justice. He has served Baptists in Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and the USA.