Why Are We Still Talking About Women's Equality in the Church?
Because There's Still a Long Way to Go
A common misunderstanding about women's equality in the church is that this is no longer worth talking about. We've already solved this issue, right? Almost every denomination, including my own (PAOC or AG) that is slightly egalitarian now ordains women, and on paper they are "allowed" to do anything men can do. So we're all good now, sexism has been defeated in the church!
Well, the reality is there is still a LONG way to go, and relaxing our pursuit of equality in the church would be a dangerous posture to take.
Once you're aware of male dominance in the church, you'll see it everywhere.
It's not that I want to keep talking about this subject, it's that unfortunately we have to. In a great recent article on Vancouver Pentecostal pastor Bernice Gerard, Linda Ambrose quotes Gerard's 1988 autobiography, written at a time when women's ordination was still somewhat debated in the PAOC. Gerard declared,
"I'm not belligerent on this subject. I'm bored, bored as a black person is bored with explaining what's wrong with apartheid."
And yet we must keep explaining, keep working toward a more egalitarian church. Here's just . . .
5 Reasons Why We Must Keep Talking About Women's Equality in the Church and Intentionally Empowering Women
1. One of the largest Assemblies of God churches in the US thought it was okay to partner with Mark Driscoll
I don't like to unnecessarily call out churches or pile on when they make mistakes. I'm a pastor, and I realize we can't ALWAYS get everything right. You can find all the YouTube videos about this but I won't post them here.
I also understand an apology has been made by James River Church.
But when I first saw the promo for this "STRONGER" men's conference a year ago, I assumed it had to be joke. Surely, a Pentecostal church would not associate with a known misogynist? People in the church, particularly the women, would never put up with that, right?
I've researched and written about this church and know a lot of people there, including some pastors, so even though I thought about posting about this when the promo first came out, I didn't. Not sure it would have made a difference anyway.
But the fact that this influential AG church promoted this event for a year and there was not enough outcry to stop it shows how far we have to go in creating an egalitarian church culture.
2. The right of women to preach and teach is still considered a small issue by some
Certainly my goal is never to divide complementarians and egalitarians in the church. But the reality is it is a major difference, even if some want to downplay it.
I appreciate this recent article in Christianity Today by Gordon Hugenberger to try to bring the two together, but I have trouble with this statement:
"Complementarians and egalitarians are not as divided as some think. Their main difference concerns only the very narrow issue of the right of women to teach and lead men within the church with what may be characterized as an intermediate level of authority."
Many men and women would not consider that a "narrow issue" or "secondary issue" as Hugenberger calls it later in the article. They (as I do) would consider it a gospel issue.
3. Male authors still dominate, even in Pentecostal scholarly circles
A recent article on the trends in the fifty-year history of the journal Pneuma showed that 85.8% of contributions to the journal were by men and that articles in Pneuma written by males were cited nearly twice as often.
4. Women are particularly underrepresented in biblical studies and Bible commentaries
One our staff policies is to make sure at least one commentary we're using in our current preaching series is by a woman. But, especially for some books of the Bible, it's surprising how hard it is to find one sometimes.
In our current series on 1 Corinthians, I looked over 30 commentaries on major sites such as Amazon and Christianbook.com and couldn't find one full commentary by a woman (our default is to always at least consult the one volume Women's Bible Commentary).
This represents a lack of women in biblical studies. The same Pneuma article cited above showed that only 15 out of 105 (11%) biblical studies articles in the journal were by women.
5. The default thinking for Lead/Sr. pastors is still male
This week I read an article by a very prominent evangelical pastor, not openly associated with complementarianism, who still referred to the pastor as "he" in the entire article. Another recent book by a PAOC pastor about church ministry assumed the entire way through the book that we're talking about men when we talk about leading churches.
On the flip side, I was recently encouraged by hearing of a church praying for their pastoral search and repeatedly using "he or she" in their hopeful prayer of finding a new Lead Pastor!
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ABOUT JOSEPH
Pastor, Author, and sometimes pretends to be a scholar
Joseph (PhD, University of Birmingham) is the author of The Pentecostal Gender Paradox: Eschatology and the Search for Equality.
Since 2015, he and his wife have together pastored Oceanside Community Church on Vancouver Island, where they live with their four children.
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