Women in Ministry: Redefining the Disagreements

I’ve been growing increasingly frustrated of late with the way conversations about the role of women in ministry seem to play out.  I often find myself closer to some of the people I disagree with than with some of the people I supposedly agree with.  What’s going on here?!?

When it comes to considering the role of women in ministry, we are usually presented with only two basic options: complementarian and egalitarian.  Simply put, complementarians would summarize the teaching of the Bible by saying that men and women are of equal value, but have been given different roles according to gender.  Egalitarians believe that the Bible teaches equality not only in value before God, but also in service and calling for both men and women.  In my own Presbyterian setting, that means complementarians do not think it appropriate to ordain women as elders because of their God-given role as women.  Egalitarians think that being a women does not automatically exclude a person from being ordained as an elder.

In most church discussions, the two positions are mutually exclusive.  You are either one, or you are the other.  If you are one, you think that the other is wrong, and vice versa.  When all is said and done, we function as if there is a gulf between the two convictions.  Just try being ordained in the Presbyterian Church of American – a strictly complementarian denomination - as an evangelical and an egalitarian.  Same thing goes for an evangelical complementarian in the Presbyterian Church (USA).

But those two options, and particularly the gulf between them, do not serve us well, I’m afraid.

For example, I’m an egalitarian. But I had a short stint in a mainline seminary and remember only too well the stereotypical bra-burning, cigar-smoking feminist theologizers who were demanding rights and reimaging their god.  WHOA!  I am far, far from those folks.

I’ve observed as well the “keep-them-barefoot-and-pregnant serving in the kitchen” sort of complementarians who spout Bible verses and insist that a male must be present for women to study the Bible even among themselves.  Personally, I don’t find that those people represent the most compelling of the complementarians that I know.

In fact, and here’s the rub, I find that I am closer in conviction overall to the best complementarians I know, even regarding women in ministry, than I am to the most radical of egalitarians that I am grouped with.  I would bet that many of my gracious complementarian friends share more convictions with me than they do with those that strike me as extreme, but would be considered complementarian.

I suspect it is the Gospel of grace that pulls people from each of these differing camps to a point where they are closer to each other, despite their differences on this one topic, than they are close to others who are placed on the same side of the gulf between the two acknowledged positions.

I find myself wanting to share relationship with people regarding the Gospel of Grace even when we disagree about how it applies to a question like ordaining women.  At the same time, I want little fellowship with people are happy to ordain women but who also spout left-wing moralisms as their gospel.

Am I the only one?

Addendum:
In my own denomination - The Evangelical Presbyterian Church - we have concluded that this matter is a "non-essential" of the faith.  Believing Christians may hold differing views on some matters like this, while holding other more essential doctrines in unity.  That means, for instance, that conclusions regarding ordination of women is a disagreement on Bible interpretation while both parties are committed to biblical authority.  The feminist classmates of mine mentioned above also rejected biblical authority.

Disagreement on an essential of the faith becomes a reason to break fellowship - although that should be done with "charity."  Disagreement regarding a non-essential becomes an opportunity to live with grace together, which is much easier said than done sometimes.

This approach presumes that there are matters both essential and non-essential.  To read the EPC statement of essentials, click here.

Finally, I realize that among evangelicals in the United States, the complementarian view is the more traditional, and perhaps in the majority.  In settling my own convictions, I would say that once I was able to step back from the arguments a bit and try to sort through the whole counsel of God, there was better biblical case for the egalitarian view, though as a non-essential.  I've not kept up with every book and article on this issue over the past decade, but if I were to recommend a single book in helping a person consider the egalitarian view from a thoroughly evangelical perspective it would be Beyond Sex Roles by Gilbert Bilezikian.

Click Here for a previous post on this topic.