The Evangelical Covenant Church has affirmed women for ordination and leadership in the church since 1976. So part of me asks why do we even need a Commission for Biblical Gender Equality any more? Yet as I speak with colleagues in ministry and hear some of the rhetoric that continues in the wider evangelical church, I realize that there continues to be barriers to women in ministry in many places – even in our denomination.
Some of those barriers appear to come from unwritten laws or things better left unsaid. An example: many churches follow the lectionary, a three-year cycle of Scripture readings which can be used to provide a wide overview of the Biblical narrative, such that over the three years, congregations and preachers work through a broad base of both the Old and New Testaments and their teachings. While this means that we are exposed to a wide range of texts, there are some things left unsaid: in particular, those more difficult texts (thanks, Paul!) about the roles of men and women in the church.
The unspoken message for me is that some texts are simply too hard – so let’s ignore them and not get in a fight about it! Yet I find myself asking whether that’s healthy. Shouldn’t we go to the hard texts and ask the questions? Shouldn’t we read the texts together, seeking understanding and empowering God’s people for ministry? As we journey together through God’s word, we learn to love God and each other more, despite differences. So let’s take those passages on women in ministry that we might prefer to ignore (I know I sometimes do) and do the hard work of theology – of really seeking to consider the teaching, and its relevance for our church today. Only if we address the texts – to go through them rather than around them – will we move on from the unspoken rules and the unasked or unanswered questions that lead to unseen barriers to women in senior leadership in our churches and congregations.
Blog contribution by A Hague.
Book review: Man and Woman: One in Christ
Categories: Book & Commentary
Man and Woman, One in Christ: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Paul’s Letters by Philip B. Payne.
This in-depth book encompasses something of a lifetime’s work of earnestly reading and researching Scripture, seeking to investigate all of Paul’s teachings on women in ministry, and wrestling with the text in order to understand the meaning of Paul’s statements about women, and their relevance for the church today.
Meticulously taking each of the passages that are commonly used to argue against women in ministry and leadership in the church, the author leads the reader through Paul’s statements in 1 Corinthians 7, 11, 12 and 14, as well as Ephesians 5, Colossians 3, 1 Timothy 2-3 and Titus 1. Investigating both the wider use of individual words that Paul uses, and the original contexts to which the letters were written, Payne affirms that Paul consistently champions the equality of man and woman in Christ in his writings – and calls for the church to affirm Paul’s teaching and reject the view of ‘separate but equal’ leadership roles for men and women.
The book seeks to find a balance between being an accessible read, and faithfully representing 36 years of biblical scholarship on the issue – something which it achieves, as long as the reader is willing to persevere past the regular referral to Greek words! Payne, who has taught at Cambridge University, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Gordon-Conwell, Bethel and Fuller Theological Seminaries, and comes from an Evangelical Free Church background, does a great job of focusing on the centrality of the text and its meaning throughout.
Highly recommended for those who really want to dig in and seek to understand Paul’s teachings on men and women.
Find this book through Indiebound or Amazon or in your local bookstore.
Book review by Alice Hague.
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