For several decades, outspoken Christian and non-Christian feminists have insisted that the Bible must not be considered a reliable source of objective Truth if only for the fact that it holds women in lower esteem than men.
For years there’s been a conflict within Christianity about the role of women in the church. And like most political fights, there are two sides dominating the debate: complementarians believe God assigns certain roles for men, and other roles for women, and any blurring or crossing of those lines is missing the mark of God’s ideal for creation. A man’s role is to lead, and a woman is to follow his lead and submit to his authority. Egalitarians, on the other hand, believe that, in Christ, there really should be no traditional gender roles, and we should stop boxing men and women into classical definitions of masculinity and femininity.
In complementarian churches, only men are appointed to serve as leaders and elders, while women aren’t permitted to lead or teach men because of Bible verses like the one where Paul says, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet” (1 Timothy 2:12). But here’s the thing: I’ve been around complementarian churches my whole life, and one thing never fails: behind the scenes of these churches, women are always running things. They run the choir, Sunday school, VBS, weddings, funerals, hospitality, everything. They even run the board meetings by simply sending their husbands as proxies to do their bidding.
“Kenneth, honey, you will vote to replace that awful shag carpet. Are we clear?”
Egalitarian churches look at other verses, like the one where Paul wrote, “There is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28 NRSV), and take it to mean that Jesus canceled out gender roles for Christians. That sounds great in theory, but I’ve been around these churches too. What tends to happen is that masculinity becomes synonymous with toxic masculinity, and men who are masculine in the traditional sense feel bored at best and unwelcome at worst. All the men who like to do strategic planning and fix up the church building and run the scout troop and play sports with the youth group stop coming, as do many of the women who love them, because many of them are feminine in the classical sense, and they feel judged for doing things like dressing pretty and wearing makeup and serving their husbands.
Biblically speaking, neither egalitarians nor complementarians get it completely right. Complementarians have no answer for all the times in Scripture when God called women like Deborah to lead men and speak on his behalf. In the New Testament, the apostle Paul trusted women to carry his letters and to preach in some of his churches. That’s right, the same Paul who ordered women in one congregation to remain silent assumed that women in another congregation were preaching to the church. He wrote, “Every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head” (1 Corinthians 11:5).
The head covering issue can be confusing, but the most important point here is that Paul expected some women to prophesy in some church services. But what did he mean by prophesy? Lucky for us, he defined it later in the same letter: “But the one who prophesies speaks to people for their strengthening, encour- aging and comfort….The one who prophesies edifies the church” (1 Corinthians 14:3-4).
That sounds an awful lot like preaching. So which is it—are women supposed to keep silent in church like Paul said to Timothy, or are they supposed to preach with their heads covered like Paul said to the Corinthians? The rules aren’t clear, and I believe that whenever the Bible isn’t crystal clear about an important issue like this, it’s generally a good idea to look to Jesus.
Complementarians and egalitarians will never agree; they’re both locked into their dogmas and will be fighting it out on Twitter until the second coming of Christ. That’s fine. As for the rest of us who don’t fit neatly on either side of that debate, let’s look to Jesus to observe how he behaved in the presence of women, how he treated them, and what he expected of them. In the words of Christian scholar Dorothy Sayers:
Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man. . . . A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronised; who never made…jokes about them, never treated them either as “The women, God help us!” or “The ladies, God bless them!”; who rebuked without queru- lousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unself-conscious.
There’s something beautiful and good about masculinity, and something beautiful and good about femininity. So instead of allowing the narrative to be commandeered by one ideological side or the other, perhaps the best place to begin is here: the Bible insists that both men and women uniquely embody the image of God in which we all were created.
And no one can argue with that.
Excerpt from “Scripture and the Skeptic” by Eric Huffman.
