How I Changed My Mind About Women in Leadership

Last autumn I was in the midst of a series entitled Exploring a Woman’s Freedom in Christ when the holidays hit. I pretty much dropped the series at that point mostly because of time issues. Between the holidays, selling a house, finding a house, and moving, I wasn’t doing much studying!

I’m picking up this series again from a bit of a different angle. I’m sharing quotes from some books I’ve been reading that I think offer some excellent food for thought.

I’m currently jumping around How I Changed My Mind about Women in Leadership: Compelling Stories from Prominent Evangelicals. I say jumping around because it is a collection of personal essays and so they don’t need to be read in order. I discovered I have some real life connections with some of the essayists which has made the book even more meaningful for me.

To add to the mishmash, I’ve also been processing some other online reading that all relates in my world although at first blush they might not seem to all matter. I’ve continued to follow the story about SGM and C.J. Mahaney (on SGMSurvivors.com and BrentDetwiler.com) that I mentioned in my own post about our experience with spiritual abuse. The discussions in the comments on SGMSurvivors have given me much food for thought. My ponderings haven’t necessarily been about SGM and their current situation specifically, but about church polity and structure, women in the church, cults, hierarchtical patriarchy/complementarianism, group think, and the accountability before Christ of those who lead and teach.

I’ve also been following a bit a few recent posts at Challies.com where Tim Challies has been taken to task by some regarding posts he wrote on public school/homeschooling and the SGM/C.J. Mahaney situation. The challenges regarding how he has handled these topics, SGM in particular, as well as allegedly deleting challenging comments have caused me to reflect on the difficulties of maintaining integrity online when writing for a significant portion of your income.

Lastly, I’ve been thinking about two posts written by John Hawkins of Right Wing News entitled The Slow, Painful Death of the Independent Conservative Blogosphere Part One and Part Two. He addresses the significant changes in blog writing, influence and income. Although he is writing about conservative political blogs, the ideas get me thinking about how it applies to my own life.

Seriously, they are all related in my mind. Clearly.

And they are all related to this book for me and why I’ve frankly felt a lot less like blogging lately. I’m still sorting through it all and having great conversations with David about it.

So where to start?  Every chapter in this book is a gem and it is hard to pick one to start with.

I’ll start with Stanley N. Gundry, who is Executive Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of Zondervan. His chapter is entitled “From Bobbed Hair, Bossy Wives, and Woman Preachers to Woman Be Free: My Story.” Raised in a Fundamentalist Baptist home, his preacher father knew “the place of women.” Gundry tells his own story that came to the forefront when his wife began asking probing questions about women in the church. He provides a long list of questions that troubled her that pretty much mirror most of the questions I’ve asked in this series. He speaks of the fear of becoming an egalitarian which turned out to be well-founded as he was forced to resign from his position at Moody due to his changing views and the book his wife wrote: Woman Be Free. (Ironically, the same Moody Bible Institute that had sent forth many women to the mission field and church earlier in its history.)

Here are a few quotes…

Please note that I prefer to use the phrase biblical egalitarian to designate the position I hold, though at times I simply use the term egalitarian. I believe it is the most accurate and descriptive because I believe this view is biblically based and because the essence of the position is that all individuals are equally created in God’s image. Consequently, they have equal worth, privilege, and opportunity in God’s kingdom without reference to gender, ethnicity, or social status. I use hierarchicalism or patriarchal hierarchicalism to designate the opposite view. I am aware that those who hold this view prefer to be called complementarians. That term was invented in the mid-1980’s  allegedly to portray the position as holding that men and women are complementary to one another. The problem is, though, that egalitarians also believe that in the body of Christ all believers, including men and women, are complementary to one another. So the term does not apply uniquely to those who would claim exclusive ownership of it. It is difficult not to think that the term was invented as a euphemism to avoid calling attention to the real essence of the position –that men are in hierarchical order over women who are to submit to men. In any case, I use the term hierarchical order because I believe it is the most descriptive and accurate term to designate this view.

Gundry writes of the sweep of redemptive history and how different “difficult” Scriptures fit into the whole of God’s redemptive plan with an excellent discussion of Adam and Eve, the fall, and the descriptive, not prescriptive, results of the fall.

He also tells of the significance of studying slavery in the U.S. and how that profoundly impacted him while preparing for a doctoral exam. In this section, he writes of reading primary documents regarding slavery and abolition and how church leadership from every angle (Baptist, Catholic, Presbyterian, etc.) supported their views with basically the same arguments.

Abolitionism was said to be anti-Christian. Defenders of slavery claimed that abolitionists got their ideas from other sources and then went to the “Bible to confirm the crotchets of their vain philosophy.” Scripture, it was repeatedly argued, does not condemn slavery. In fact, Scripture sanctions slavery. In his parables, Jesus refers to masters and slaves without condemning slavery as such. (Gundry goes on to give further examples of how slavery is clearly supported by Scripture by these men.)

I had heard about this line of reasoning before, but to actually read it for myself was an eye-opening experience. I was appalled and embarrassed that such an evil practice had been defended in the name of God and under the guise of biblical authority. How could churchmen and leading theologians have been so foolish and blind? I had been reflecting on these readings several days… I still remember the exact spot….. where it hit me like a flash. Someday Christians will be as embarrassed by the church’s biblical defense of patriarchal hierarchicalism as it is now of the nineteenth century biblical defense of slavery.

Many more thought-provoking quotes to come.