Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!ncar!gatech!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: cctr114@csc.canterbury.ac.nz Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Sexism in the church Message-ID: Date: 5 May 91 03:36:08 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand Lines: 90 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu >In article , mls@sfsup.att.com (Mike Siemon) writes: [snip] >Now if a woman says that she feels she has been called to the preaching >ministry, I think there are valid reasons to say that she has not. The Lord >does not contradict himself; and God's Word is particularly clear on this >point: a woman should learn in quietness and full submission, and not act >as a man's master-teacher. (1 Timothy 2:11,12). If a woman claims to have >been called to the preaching ministry, then first of all she claims to have >a new revelation that contradicts the revelation we already have. We should >reject her as a false spirit, as would the Bereans. [snip] Well, maybe the Lord doesn't contradict Himself but that doesn't mean the Bible is always totally consistent. Pauls' teaching here is quite different to the teaching of Jesus about women, the Old Testament teaching, and whats more its is also different to other things that Paul says. (assuming, of course, that we take it at face value.) What about the place were Paul says that in Christ there is neither Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female. There has been enough written about the circumstances of the time that it is not very difficult to find out some of the opinions about the underlying problem which motivated Paul to write this letter. In reading Pauls' letters it is a bit like listening to a person talking on the phone. There is someone on the other end talking who we cann't hear and we can easily get the wrong idea about what was being said. Paul was writting to real people with specific needs in a specific culture at a definite point in time. Without understanding who these people were and what their needs were which motivated Paul to write to them we fall into the trap so well illustrated above where a verse or two are ripped out of context, (both in the literary and cultural sense) taken to be the absolute divine revelation for all mankind for eternity and used to bludgeon people into submission. A friend of mine who teaches at a Bible College told me that a good way to understand the place of women in the church is to start with the teaching of Jesus, study that, then go back into the Old Testament, particularly in Genesis, (the Hebrew makes a few things clearer in Gen 2 about the place of women which I have not seen in any English translation so others may not be in the fortunate position my friend was in) and then finally come to the teaching of Paul. The mistake so many people make is that they start and finish at the teaching of Paul and ignore the rest of the scriptures which they claim they believe. A bad case of ``Paul''-ianity and not ``Christ''-ianity. In the church which I attend, which is very much a fundamentalist Pentecostal church, we practice a glaring double standard with respect to women's ministry. Women are allowed to do just about everything such as lead worship, lead home groups, conduct Bible studies, gives testimonies and so on and so forth. But there are three things which are absolutely prohibited. (1) They are not allowed to preach in the Sunday meetings. (2) They cannot hold the office of elder. (3) They cannot hold the office of pastor. I personally cannot see the difference between teaching from the Bible in a home group (a church in my opinion) and teaching in the Sunday meetings. In fact women are even allowed to be missionaries and go to other cultures and preach the gospel, and teach and train and instruct the believers in other countries because, it is claimed, that this is not specifically forbidden. They are even allowed to teach from the Bible in our Bible Colleges with male students in their classes, because this is not ``in church'' where such speaking would not be tolerated. There was an article in one of the Christian newspapers here which either had as its title or maybe a subtitle ``A Woman is worse than nothing.'' In which the true story of a woman who had been a missionary for some years, and with high theological qualitications offered herself for the office of elder in her home church when there was a vacancy on the eldership. She was refused because she was a woman. The office remained vacant and short time later a second eldership became vacant and she again offered herself but was refused. No man was willing to take the office and so the two elderships remained vacant because a woman was worse than nothing. Do people actually realize what they are saying when they deny women the right to preach? Are women so grossly inferior to men that they can't teach truth from the word of God? To those who think women should be excluded from pulpit ministry I have a question, what is the reason women should be excluded from this ministry? Apart from the old ``Paul says so'' argument I don't understand why they should be excluded. Bill Rea ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Bill Rea, University of Canterbury, | E-Mail b.rea@csc.canterbury.ac.nz | | Christchurch, New Zealand | Phone (03)-642-331 Fax (03)-642-999 | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- [The claim, of course, is not that they are "worse" than men, but that each sex has a specific role, and that women's role does not include certain kinds of church office. --clh]