The Church of England has been in the news this week with their decision to open up the position of bishop to women; previously, they had been limited to just being priests. Also, the decision didn't provide for an opt-out clause allowing folks uncomfortable with a woman bishop to get an alternative guy to oversee them; Get Religion has a good rundown on the coverage.
I have ducked the issue of woman ministers in my blog to this point, for I'm not fully in the pro or con camp. One of Eileen's good friends is a female PC-USA minister in Missouri; she played the piano at our wedding six years ago.
However, it's a bit hard to justify women pastors from the New Testament. Not impossible, but hard.
Jesus treated women with respect, more so than most men of His era, but he had an all-male inner circle; that lack of female disciples has been used as the basis for an all-male priesthood, but He's silent on the issue.
Paul has a couple of writings that lean towards a male pastorate. Here's 1 Timothy 2-"11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. 13For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner."
Paul didn't like having a woman teach men. However, he phrased it in such a way that opened the door for others to ignore his advice, as he said "I do not permit a woman ...." If he wanted a blanket prohibition, he might have said "It is wrong to permit a woman to teach..." rather than just state his practice.
The other Pauline line that sometimes gets used in this area is 1 Corinthians 14:"34women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church."
Is that just about holding questions for their husbands until they get home rather than have back-chatter going on during a service, or is that a blanket prohibition on speech? Earlier on in 1 Corinthians, Paul mentions that women should give prophesies with a covered head; that would require them to speak if it to be heard.
It's an easier exegesis to say that Paul thinks women ministers would be a bad idea than to try to loophole your way to a co-ed ministry. It also doesn't help that the churches that do allow women pastors tend to be the churches that are the least orthodox on their theology. When Paul's position on women is ignored, a lot of his other positions on salvation and discipleship also get thrown under the bus as inconvenient stuff from another era.
The egalitarian side of me would like to see a co-ed pastorate. However, the Bible-reader seems to come to the conclusion that it isn't quite right. That's not to say that women can't minister effectively, but that they'll often be doing so in a church that typically doesn't respect the Gospel in its entirity.
For lack of time, please pardon my spellings and I haven't double checked my facts, so I know I could be off... but with that said - What about Prisilla and Aquilla? It appears that they had some kind of home group that each lead? Just a thought, and a very broken one at that, I'll have to delve into this a bit more.
Our church has woman pastors, our Sr. Pastor is male, and our denomination/movement (whatever you want to call it) (Foursquare) has woman pastors, yet we are very keen on discipleship, bible study, etc. We're not liberal on the "liberal" areas that tend to happen...
Okay back to work... just caught my attention.
Posted by: TravisM | July 09, 2008 at 12:40 PM
We live in a society that is so eager to claim that men and women are completely interchangeable. If we err in interpreting Scripture, if we are conformed to the world rather than the Word, surely we will ignore biblical distinctions between men and women. It seems to me that the benefit of the doubt has to go to the idea that women should not be pastors.
Posted by: Nigel Ray | July 15, 2008 at 12:15 PM