The Scandal of Evangelical Ministry-mindedness

Where we are supposed to accept the ontological disqualification of godly women while witnessing the perpetual reinstatement of ungodly men.

The headlines this week again remind me how easily Christians tell women their femaleness forever inherently disqualifies them while we cannot find the will to tell a man his chosen behavior has permanently disqualified him.

The Annunciation, by: Sr. Grace Remington, OCSO, of the Cistercian Sisters of the Mississippi Abbey.

In recent days, three major conservative Christian denominations agitated to narrow the ministry of women—the SBC worked to remove women pastors, ACNA clerics called for a moratorium on women’s ordination, and the PCA voted to investigate a popular Christian book written by a woman.

This came alongside news of how a megachurch *knew* a pastor molested a girl for years and still "restored" him to ministry, (plus viral threads arguing that women shouldn't be allowed in seminaries).

Among other things, both of these stances are out of alignment with Scripture.

Women Learned and Led and Taught in the Early Church

First: let’s look at the calls to exclude women from seminaries and to limit the ministry of women in various ways.

Guess who didn't have a problem with women learning & fully participating in the church? The early church as seen in the New Testament.

Icon of St. Kassiani

Perhaps these Christians had watched the example of Jesus.

Jesus commends Mary for joining the disciples at the feet of their Rabbi.

"She has chosen what is better," Jesus tells her critic-sister who wants Mary to get busy with culturally permissible, womanly things instead. “And it will not be taken away from her.”

Jesus also tells watching religious men to "leave her alone" when they criticize Mary for lavishly anointing Jesus' feet...the same feet before which she had sat to learn.

Mary is an attentive student. She understands that He is going to die and anoints Him for burial. Jesus commends her & specifically names that her actions will be preached wherever the Gospel is.
Can it be that He well knows that religious men will have a hard time accepting the presence of women among them? That devout men will need reminding more than once that women belong, that they are meant to be learning at the feet of Jesus? Because later Jesus unnecessarily and intentionally meets a group of women disciples and commissions them to "go and tell the brothers" about His resurrection.

So, too, did Jesus' mother and the other female disciples gather with the Eleven before Pentecost, where the Holy Spirit fell on all, where Peter preaches and identifies this with Joel's words that "sons *and* daughters" will prophesy. We see women all over the pages of the New Testament, co-laboring right alongside the men.¹

A stone sarcophagus front from the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, circa A.D. 430, at the Instanbul Archaeological Museum, showing a male and a female figure standing on either side of the altar. (Courtesy of Ally Kateusz/Wijngaards Institute of Catholic Research)

While the early church did not have seminaries or crisply defined ministerial offices, they did have places where people gathered to learn and minister, places where women were present and active. The church has never had the luxury of sidelining half the Body.

The early church gathered in homes, where we have women present and named as identifiable leaders. Mary, John Mark's mother, houses the church in Jerusalem. Lydia also has the believers in Philippi meeting in her home. So does Nympha in Laodecia. Chloe's household is notable in Corinth. We also have the church in Philippi which was at first made up entirely of women. Paul preaches to them. After he's released from prison, he returns to Lydia's house.

Were these women excluded now that Paul had a male jailer to teach? Paul stays with Priscilla and Aquila, disciples them, and they later *together* correct the skilled teacher Apollos. Is Priscilla an afterthought for Paul? What about deacon Philip's daughters who prophesied? Or Phoebe, deacon in her own right? Or Junia, renowned apostle? Or the women Titus was to appoint as elders in Crete?

The idea that there is something ontologically deficient in women that means they shouldn't learn (or minister!) is unbiblical.

Leaders in the Early Church were Chosen Based on Their Character and Conduct

Guess what else is unbiblical? Elevating and "restoring" ungodly men into church leadership.

Is a pastor who molests a child: hospitable, one who loves what is good, self-controlled, upright, holy & disciplined, blameless, not violent/overbearing, not pursuing dishonest gain?

Paul writes both Timothy and Titus so they know that the leaders they appoint must have godly character, must be sensible & sound, a concept which carries a sense of health and well being, must not be violent or overbearing or greedy for gain.

Paul says nothing about aspirant's sense of calling.

The way in which we elevate leaders according to other metrics—our perception of someone's "ministry" success, their charisma, their ability to preach, their ambitions—is often antithetical to what Paul wants to emphasize, which includes a caution against arrogance.

When men also suggest that the very presence of women somehow denigrates the seminary studies of men (who, mind, are supposedly training to serve at churches peopled with men and women), it's simply saying the misogynistic part out loud.

It’s a denigration of the of the Imago Dei in women, it’s ignoring the explicit instruction and example of Jesus, it’s reading right over the Scriptures these aspiring leaders claim to revere—it’s wrong.

AND theology is never theoretical.

When women are treated as less than human,
when men imagine their perceived superiority gives them license to demean and disregard women,
when women are perceived as incomplete men or as existing solely to serve men...
abuses of all kinds follows.

Artist unknown - woodcarved stations of the cross

It's how you end up with a man who violated a girl, lied and deceived and spun a story to minimize his evil actions, still "restored" to the pastorate and given spiritual oversight over others for years.

And who this week had people defending “his” ministry.

It's how you end up with communities loudly boasting about patriarchy and headship and benevolent male-only leadership while also finding themselves incapable of taking abuse seriously and responding appropriately.

Case study: pick your conservative denomination.

Look, I've seen women leading and serving and ministering without the title for years. Some of the best pastoring I've received has come from women who would never even think about trying to claim the title. Which seems apt, because maybe they take Philippians 2 seriously and recognize it’s never been about a title, and certainly not about being greatest in a manmadeup hierarchy, especially not when the work includes becoming all things to all people.

But excluding women from learning and ministering has enormous practical consequences. We see daily proof of how it can impact the health and safety of the church and the well being of those entrusted to our care

Last week, some clerics in my denomination, the Anglican Church in North America, recently wrote that: women's ordination "imperils" the mission of our church. I disagree with them on theological and biblical terms, but also on pastoral ones. The Church is called to a unity and maturity that requires the ministry of every single member whom Christ gifts freely and not on gendered lines.

The mission of the church is imperiled not by women’s presence, but by women’s absence. It is dangerous in many ways to leave ministry and seminary and leading and writing and teaching only to men. It never was good for man to be alone from the beginning, and it also hamstrings half the Church, stripping God’s holy temple of half of her living icons, of half the holy priesthood who together—male and female—bear His image into this world.

1. More on this in a previous post: