Following my recent post ‘What women think/feel/say about being women’ (email me if you missed it), here’s a chapter about women from my recent book ‘The Family: At Home in a Heartless World’ (HarperCollins 1995). I don’t claim significant expertise here (wrong gender to start with): these ideas come from being married for 36 years, followed by three daughters, two granddaughters, and 9000 hours of listening to women (4000 counseling men – about the ratio of women to men who generally seek counseling).

Shalom! Rowland Croucher

WOMEN IN THE CHRISTIAN TRADITION

There seem to be two paradigms relative to male/female relationships in the Scriptures – a male-dominated patriarchical or hierarchical paradigm, and an egalitarian one. Both are there, and it generally depends on one’s religious, cultural and psychological predispositions which paradigm one prefers. We then interpret all the difficult texts to conform with that chosen paradigm. Generally, males have a tendency to lead; women are generally better than men at ‘adapting’ to others’ leadership. (Notice I didn’t use words like ‘domination’ or ‘authoritarian’…)

But fortunately God is not a legalist. Even if male-dominated cultures produced the Scriptures, he raises up a Deborah to lead the whole people of God. Some of us wouldn’t have let him do that… The four daughters of Philip were prophetesses: can you name one or two in your church?

Both males and females were created in the image of God. In Genesis 1 and 2 it seems clear that God’s intention for man and woman is that of complementary partnership… and jointly given the charge to be fruitful, subdue the earth and have dominion… As a result of their sin the note of subordination is introduced (Genesis 3:16: ‘Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.’)… In Jesus Christ [we have a] priesthood of the whole people of God, female and male (1 Peter 2:9)… The church is built (Ephesians 2:20) upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Women are part of that foundation. Hierarchy results from the Fall, in which both the man and woman participated. But you say Eve was to be a ‘helper’ of Adam, implying inferiority? Not at all. The same word is used of God, helping Israel.

Jesus, Paul and Peter were way ahead of their chauvinistic cultures in granting personhood and dignity to women. Some rabbis debated as to whether women had souls! Women were there at the cradle of the Messiah, and at the cross and the resurrection. Women had never known a man like Jesus – he never put them down or flattered or patronized them. He had no uneasy male dignity to defend… Women itinerated with Jesus (Luke 8:13)… They were commissioned by him to tell the good news of the resurrection… (Luke 24:1-11). The double sexual standard for men and women was firmly rejected by Jesus (Matthew 5:27-28; 19:3-9; John 8:1-11). Not a trace of hierarchical behaviour or teaching appears in any of the gospel accounts.

At Pentecost the Spirit fell on women and men: ‘sons and daughters’ both prophesied. In the apostolic church ministries were exercised according to giftedness, rather than ‘office’. That system came later… The early church was more ‘charismatic’ and less institutional, more given to informal contacts than dependent on structures and constitutions. Prophecy is quite common in younger churches, and almost non-existent in older churches. Prophecy, says Paul, is the highest spiritual gift: and both men and women prophesied in the early church.

Brethren scholar F.F.Bruce suggests our understanding of male/female relationships must be viewed through the ‘window’ of Galatians 3:28: ‘[In Christ] there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus’. Although Jewish women did not need to attend worship and were certainly not permitted to participate vocally in it, Christian women participated freely in worship, prayer and prophecy (1 Corinthians 11:5, 14:6; Acts 21:9). ‘In Christ’ is a phrase that occurs 164 times in Paul – ie, ‘within the Body of Christ’ there is neither male or female.

The apostles seemed to be putting their foot on the brake a little so as not to create a scandal by women blatantly abusing their new-found freedom in Christ. The early Christians were way ahead of their culture in their attitudes to women (eg. Paul’s radical injunction that husbands love their wives as Christ loved the church). But many churches today are way behind their culture – we are creating a scandal for the opposite reason.

The main reason why there aren’t more women in positions of leadership is, I believe, psychological. The little boy in us men can’t cope with strong women: we left home to get away from maternal authority. Indeed, many men seem to have a near-pathological fear of losing power to a woman. Few men have women mentors. They usually don’t read books by women. Men usually define themselves in terms of job success; women in terms of relationships.

Men and women bring different value-systems to the task of ministry: they are complementary if we are smart enough to maximize the potentials of each…

Just as the church has moved beyond the New Testament toleration of slavery to a recognition that Christian principles forbid slavery, so too we can with a good conscience accept a larger place for women in the ministry of the church than was possible in first-century society.

When I visited the largest church in the world in Seoul, Korea, in 1978, I was not surprised to learn that 80% of their small group leaders were women. I attended one of these, led very capably by a woman. The church is immeasurably impoverished when more than half its members are debarred from exercising leadership ministries not on the basis of the presence or absence of giftedness or competence, but simply because of gender. The time has now come to practise the principle that in Christ social, racial and sexual barriers have been removed.

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