Women and American evangelicals

A crisis of faith or crisis of sin?

A quick—and short—homily about women and evangelicals in America.

Today at my church, something very usual is happening. A woman is preaching the main sermon from the pulpit. This also happened at the church I used to attend before this one, and the one I attended for years before that. But at some American evangelical churches, not only is this unusual, it’s also heretical.

User:Sjwells53, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

There are Biblical reasons for allowing women to preach, teach, and minister to congregations. A simple Google search for “women in the New Testament who preached” yields several examples. In Acts 21, when Paul completed one of his missionary journeys, he stayed with Philip the evangelist, who “had four unmarried daughters, who prophesied.” This is Paul, who also wrote in 1 Corinthians 14, “it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.” Theologians have spent (and continue to spend) barrels of real and digital ink arguing over the meaning of “shameful” and what, exactly women should be allowed to do, and where they can do it, in the evangelical church.

Woman can do whatever God calls them and equips them to do, according to their faith.

Let me answer that quickly for myself, though it may make me a heretic at some places. The answer is: whatever God calls them and equips them to do, according to their faith. If a woman can prophesy to the writer of two-thirds of the New Testament, if a woman can be one of the closest friends of Jesus himself, if a woman can be the first person to speak to the resurrected King, then a woman has no limits on her ability to serve God. Any rules placed on women, to limit them in office, place, or ability, has been placed there by men.

And it continues to be men who control the fate of women who have been belittled, abused (even—especially—sexually), accused, and discarded in the church. Story after shameful story continues to come out, including Nancy French’s book “Ghosted: An American Story”, detailing abuse in the church, and the coverups so rampant in a religion dominated by powerful men. There’s nothing more disgusting than petty men exercising power over a small church, who fail to discipline themselves or their buddies, and bury actual abuse, along with the souls of the women who are victims.

But this has happened over and over—hundreds of times—according to investigative journalist reports. Despite years of these stories, the plaintive pleas of damaged families, wives and daughters, and mountains of evidence, many of the worst offenders simply move on to another church, or the victims are told to be silent, or even given strict non-disclosure agreements to sign to ensure their silence.

I believe much of this problem stems from the belief that woman have a subservient role in the church. That women should be silent, not serve in leadership, not preach from the pulpit, and enjoy a weak, wilting relationship with a man-centered, masculine religion that says it worships Christ, the King of Kings, who revered women.

There’s ears to tickle and money to be made selling books about masculine Christianity, about making boys into men of discipline, of keeping women from tempting men with their sumptuous bodies and their inscrutable ways. Hogwash, all of it. Women can’t be blamed the all the moral failures of men, and simultaneously be silenced as the victims of those moral failures when men fail to hold themselves accountable. But that’s exactly what many American evangelical churches and denominations have done, and actively advocate for and teach. It’s a vicious teaching.

Now, I am not going to claim that Paul was wrong in the New Testament. I believe that the Gospel and the epistles, every word of them, is God-inspired and “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,” as written in 2 Timothy 3:16. But I also believe that men, who traditionally have controlled the translation of the Bible, the interpretation of Scripture, and the preaching of the doctrine, have tilted all those away from the proper role of women as God intended. (Even the scripture I referenced mentions “the man of God” but really means “the messenger of God”).

Paul was not married, and believed that, for him, that was the best way to serve the Lord. The Roman Catholic Church took that fact and made it doctrine: priests still may not marry. But that created a literal perverse incentive, a culture designed around older men mentoring young men and boys, which, as anyone might predict over a long period of time, led to incubating a culture of pedophiles covering for each other’s sins.

Knowing the wiles of the enemy—the devil—is not difficult, for, as Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 10:13, there is no temptation or sin that has “seized you” but what is common to mankind. We are all creatures bound up in various temptations and sin. We self-sort by those sins: unmarried men who feel ill at ease among woman but are attracted to boys will find themselves moved into places where that’s encouraged (I won’t get into Hollywood, or certain theme parks, but it’s the same story). Men who are raised to be the masculine leaders over women will find their faith moved to that place where it is built up.

I won’t go as far into motives as Kristin du Mez, who I think tends to find malicious intent where poor doctrine may suffice, but the church in America needs more women teaching and preaching the Gospel. If that’s heresy, then consider religions which mistreat women and how they’ve fared.

I am glad that the church I attend, and the denomination I have affiliated with, has a more open doctrine regarding the role of women. I encourage others to seek churches that are similar.