Women... part 2

In a post last week, I stated for the record that I am complementarian in my beliefs about gender roles, not egalitarian. I provided a link for a summary of those issues, but it was a rather lengthy one. Just in case you got tired-head trying to sort it out – here’s the issue in a nutshell (at least as I see it).

Complementarians believe that men and women have different roles to fulfill in the family and in the life of the church. These roles are not inferior to each other; they are complements to each other.

Egalitarians believe that men and women are created equally and have equal rights and responsibilities in the family and the church.

I also mentioned in the post that I have a set of unresolved questions regarding my own position. Rather than listing them for you, I submit a portion of an opinion piece written by an egalitarian in the Associated Baptist Press. (The full article can be found here.) While he and I end up on different sides of this debate, David Gushee clearly articulates several of the issues I struggle with. He respectfully submits the following questions and comments to his complementarian brothers and sisters in Christ:

1. Are you successfully communicating to young men the conviction that a complementarian perspective must elevate rather than diminish the dignity of women, and therefore inculcating a moral commitment on their part to act accordingly?

It has been my experience that a context of male leadership, and steady teaching that reinforces it, can sometimes lead young men to a rather boorish attitude toward the women in their midst. While perhaps church leaders are teaching a highly nuanced complementarian view stripped of classic male chauvinism, this is not always successfully transmitted to the next generation. Many young Christian women, and even some sensitive young men, come to associate the complementarian position with outright sexism and male chauvinism, and therefore reject it. How can you prevent this outcome?

2. Are you absolutely clear on which positions of Christian service (you believe) are barred to women?

Complementarians often seem to lack either consensus or precision related to this question. Is it only the senior pastor position that is banned for women? What about co-pastor or pastoral team arrangements? Is it all ordained positions? All positions in which adult men are taught? All ministerial positions? All paid positions? What about seminary or Christian college professors? In what fields?

Doctrinal precision requires clarity on your part about which positions are barred to women, with clear biblical warrants offered. Otherwise, what often remains is a kind of blanket discouragement for women to think of themselves as ministers, or to pursue ministry positions in the church. What can also occur is a wide variety of approaches, even within the same church, about what the Bible actually teaches concerning the role of women in the church.

3. Once you have determined what positions of Christian service are barred to women, you have therefore also determined which positions are permitted. Are you active in encouraging women to pursue the positions that are permitted?

It is possible to take very different approaches related to encouraging the use of women’s gifts from within versions of the complementarian position. For example, in Catholicism women are barred from the priesthood, but in daily and weekly Catholic life they are otherwise highly visible—in teaching, worship, committee work and local service.

Yet some complementarian settings seem to go out of their way to present an entirely male face to the world, all the way down to the ushers handing out the programs and the men taking up the offering. Is there really biblical warrant for excluding women from these and other roles? Are you aggressively looking for ways to affirm and make use of the gifts of women in all roles not barred by your understanding of Scripture?

4. When women occupy positions of church leadership that parallel those of men, are their positions named equally and are the individuals involved treated equally?

Many larger churches have internships for promising young men and sometimes also promising young women. Consider a church that has a female youth ministry intern and a male one. Are they paid the same? Is one called “youth ministry intern” and the other called “youth assistant”? Are they both actively apprenticed by older leaders? Are they given a similar mix of “ministry-type” and "non-ministry type” duties? Are they treated with similar respect for their contributions? In my experience, this is often not the case, with women interns treated more as office assistants than as ministry peers.

I appreciated the spirit in which Gushee wrote these words. If only we could all be so civil to each other in our discussions.

I’m challenged by these questions. And since I still have a few random thoughts rolling around in my head about this issue and how it relates to Christian higher education, I may have one more post coming.