I could get in serious trouble for this.
Let me begin by reminding people that:
- I married my campus minister (and she hates that I keep saying that – sounds like she was some sort of stalker or predator who seduced one of her students when in fact I chased her okay?)
- Who received her seminary degree years before I did
- Who has preached for me on numerous occasions
- I attended a seminary affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship
- Where some of my teachers were women
- About half of my classmates were women
- I received one of those “Leadership Scholarships” – so must have been at least somewhat acceptable ideologically to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship
- I serve at a church that contributes to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship
- I serve with women ministers
But I am increasingly uncomfortable with how fellow moderate Baptist Christians articulate and practice their convictions concerning “women in ministry”. In a nutshell when did “women in ministry” become a central dogma of the Christian faith?
One must immediately and carefully distinguish “women in ministry” from “ordination of women” from “women as pastors-or-priests”. Of course it is precisely such distinctions which fellow moderate Baptist Christians do not appear to accept. Fair enough. But I will so distinguish nonetheless.
One can speak of “women in ministry” without necessarily agreeing with “ordination of women” or “women as pastors-or-priests”. “Ministry” simply means service (here in the context of the life and work of the Christian church). My wife was a campus minister - but is not ordained and has never served as a pastor (or priest – if we were part of a different Christian tradition). She ministered to college students. She has also served as a minister with children and youth. She is functionally one of the ministers with children for Church of the Nations. “Women in ministry” can take a nearly endless variety of forms. Teaching. Preaching. Visiting. Counseling. Organizing. And so on. It is true that some Christians will argue that not every form of “service within the church” is appropriate for women (typically preaching because of its association with the pastoral office?).
One can even speak of “ordination of women” without necessarily agreeing with “women as pastors-or-priests”. This is where both critics and supporters of the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 statement (from the Southern Baptist Convention) have gotten off track. Critics failed to appreciate the careful and limited statement against women as senior pastors. So theoretically one can have women in ministry along with ordained women along even with women as associate pastors and so on. Just not as (senior or sole) pastor of a congregation.
However this has been lost even on supporters of the statement. Since the ratification (adoption?) of the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 statement several churches have been kicked out of associations simply because they had women who were ordained (sometimes on ministerial staff and sometimes not even that). And the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention stopped endorsing or supporting women chaplains. It was intellectual laziness and/or disingenuity for defenders of the statement to argue “we are not against women in ministry – just women as senior pastors” and then on the other hand to target Baptist congregations that had women who were not senior pastors.
My own private beef with “ordination of women” is that it is unclear to me exactly what “ordination” means in the Baptist tradition. We are so ardently anti-sacramentalist in our theology. Everything is a symbol or a memorial. None of our rituals actually does anything in terms of changing reality – right? As far as I can tell ordination in the Baptist tradition means almost nothing more than a change in your tax status. So it is difficult to argue for or against “ordination of women” until we are clear about just what ordination is and what it does theologically and ontologically.
But in the meantime theoretically one can ordain women in the Baptist church without those women serving as (senior or sole) pastors.
Now – back to “women in ministry” as central dogma.
Several years ago David Currie came to speak at University Baptist Church. I remember well when he said the reason many Texas Baptists were unhappy with the direction of the Southern Baptist Convention was “look – we might be fundamentalist but only if we want to” (something along those lines) and “Texas Baptist churches might not have a woman as pastor – but we can if we want to”. The issue then was freedom. A congregation that supported the Cooperated Baptist Fellowship might not have a woman pastor. Might not want a woman pastor. But will not try to stop other Baptist congregations from ordaining women or calling a woman as pastor.
There was a point – when exactly? – when that changed. When the issue was no longer “you can be against women as pastors so long as you do not try to tell others what they cannot do”. But “you must be actively in favor of women as pastors or you are not welcome in this organization”. What once was optional became mandatory.
Some will argue that this is a mistaken impression of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. It may well be. But can we at least agree that while this impression might be technically mistaken it functionally is correct? And so the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship goes out of its way to hold up women in ministry and women as preachers and women as pastors. Please note I am not saying this is wrong.
One sees this explicitly in my own setting.
Let me share an anecdote. A church planter with the North American Mission Board needed some office space. For some bizarre reason he came to us. There were the usual normal and reasonable concerns from the deacons. But I remember one deacon in particular arguing strongly against this. Because this guy represents the Southern Baptist Convention. Which does not support “women in ministry”. Which is against our values and beliefs. And if we let him have some office space we are guilty by association (my words not hers – but that was the gist of her argument).
What struck me is that the issue of women in ministry was her number one and central argument. It was the hill on which this deacon was prepared to die. If these people do not agree with us on women in ministry then we cannot associate with them or give them any material help whatsoever. That is a pretty strong line to take. We can associate with Jewish people and Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus and Unitarians and work with them on joint projects and have them come and speak to our congregation. But Southern Baptists who do not agree with us on women in ministry – that is going too far.
And now the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Louisiana is pushing the “women in ministry” vector pretty hard. Speakers. Scholarships. The themes of our gatherings. It is all about being missional (where “missional” means what we do is vastly more important than what we profess or teach theologically) and “women in ministry”. These have become the twin poles or central dogmas of moderate Baptists.
Recently former president Jimmy Carter penned a rather strong statement about the role and status of women in the Christian church. It was published as an editorial in the British newspaper The Guardian. The former president does make some good points but they are difficult to extract from the shadow of this singularly weak paragraph:
This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. It is widespread. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths.
This is the central error in a nutshell. If women are prevented from playing a “full and equal role” then it must be because they are viewed as “somehow inferior”. Many people accept that. Many people I know and respect and with whom I serve accept that.
(I note in passing this paragraph as well:
At the same time, I am also familiar with vivid descriptions in the same scriptures in which women are revered as pre-eminent leaders. During the years of the early Christian church women served as deacons, priests, bishops, apostles, teachers and prophets. It wasn’t until the fourth century that dominant Christian leaders, all men, twisted and distorted holy scriptures to perpetuate their ascendant positions within the religious hierarchy.
I wonder what an informed and competent scholar of church history would make of that. The second sentence is problematic because while historical evidence supports some of his examples it does not support all. Jimmy Carter is another moderate Baptist who fails to make appropriate distinctions. And can his third sentence – that the current state is the result of some misogynistic conspiracy – truly stand up to examination?)
Let me get myself in trouble with fellow moderate Baptists by stating for the record that I do not accept the argument that “if women are equal in status they must have the same roles as men in the life of the Christian church”. I do not dispute that many may believe women should have a different role because they are “somehow inferior” (however one defines that). But I assert and argue that some may believe women have a different role in the Christian church for reasons that have nothing to do with misogyny. Disagree with them if you like. No problem. But at least understand where they are coming from.
(Also problematic is the way Jimmy Carter seems to equate various forms of “subjugation” and “discrimination”. As if Southern Baptist opposition to women as senior pastors is somehow equivalent to genital mutilation and domestic abuse. Offensive nonsense.)
Robert Parham also chimed in with “Blaming Men is Not Good Theology”. It is not a bad article – merely weak. What struck me as peculiar is “women are partly at fault because they support these religious institutions with their money and energy”:
Imagine what would happen if rank-and-file Baptist women launched a religious disobedience movement in the local church. If they said no more offerings and no more volunteer hours, the preachers with power would have a lightning-strike revelation about the full equality of women.
Again – not bad so much as weak. This is a subtle form of solipsism masquerading as reasoned argument. It all comes down to experience. “Preachers with power” would suddenly change their minds not because we make a strong case for the “full equality of women” on historical biblical and theological grounds. So far as I can tell Parham simply assumes from the outset that he is correct – everything then becomes a matter of compelling others to conform.
It is possible to believe that men and women have differing roles in the Christian church – and not because one is somehow inferior to the other?
Yes.
But to make this argument I might have to depart just a tad from typical Baptist theology.
The exceptional Anglican theologian Eric Mascall in his book Corpus Christi begins with an argument concerning the nature of apostolic ministry. Forgive me for quoting in extensio:
I can only reply that this objection seems to be based upon a totally false notion of the kind of superiority that a bishop has to a priest, or a priest to a layman. … Any respect in which there is in fact superiority is surely totally unobjectionable; it is like the superiority which St. Paul ascribes to the eye over the ear and to the hand over the foot, a superiority which is entirely compatible with mutual need and mutual love. And presumably when we are made perfect in heaven, neither will the clergy pride themselves on their ‘superiority’, nor will the laity envy them for it; so what harm will it do? The blessed are able, in Dr. C. S. Lewis’s phrase, ‘to play great parts without pride and little ones without dejection’. [27]
In short – “superiority” of role does not imply superiority of status or value in the eyes of God. Would the truly humble care if their role in the universe is “inferior”? Which leaves one wondering how much such issues are about pride and envy and false notions of worth.
But Baptists do not believe in a “superiority” of clergy over laity – so why should we care about this argument from Mascall?
Then what about the Trinity?
The Church is not only ecclesia de Christo; she is also ecclesia de Trinitate. Her life and unity are the life and unity of the Holy Trinity. The pattern of her life is the pattern of the life of God, into which she is taken up. And the life of God is not an undifferentiated but a a trinitarian life, in which Father, Son and Spirit, though united, are distinct, and in which sonship, with its two aspects of apostleship and priesthood, is not common to all three Persons but is proper to the Son alone. [33]
The persons of the Holy Trinity are “equal”. But they are persons – and each person has a distinct identity and role within the life of the Trinity.
My wife thinks that is a dangerous argument and she may be right. It implies that just as God the Son is submissive to God the Father so women should be submissive to men within the life of the Christian church. I think that is a weak objection. I think a stronger objection might be “wait a second – so are men analogous to the Son or to the Father? you cannot be the ‘Father’ and the ‘Son’ at the same time can you?”
Correlating sex (male or female) with persons of the Trinity may be a colossal mistake. Perhaps the more relevant consideration is that equality of status does not therefore dictate equality of role. The divine Persons are distinct and with differing roles. So human beings can be equal in value – but as persons be distinct and with differing roles. Did Jesus mind being the Son?
Can all men be ordained pastors or priests? And if we answer “well no – of course not” then are we thereby suggesting some men are somehow inferior to others? This point is frequently lost on the dominant leadership of the Episcopal Church.
One last point – expanding on the Church as the image of the Holy Trinity.
Metropolitan Jonah of the Orthodox Church in America touched on this during his address to the Anglican Church in North America 2009 gathering. He notes (starting around 31:20) that the “blurring of gender may create a larger core of workers” (a common argument for why women should have fully equal roles in the Christian church – and is one I have used the most) “but it destroys authentic personhood, it destroys authentic masculinity, it destroys authentic womanhood”. Here he is not addressing specifically the issue of “women in ministry”.
Later he does (starting around 49:00). He asserts that the new Anglican province must resolve the issue of “the ordination of women”.
I believe in women’s ministry. I believe that women have a critical role to play in the life of the Church. But I do not believe it’s in the presbyterate or the episcopate [as priests or as bishops]. Forgive me if this offends you. But this is the universal experience and vision and opinion and position of the Greek Orthodox World the Roman Catholic world and the non-Chalcedonian Orthodox churches.
This is a very important issue. And the issue is not so much about ordination – that’s the negative side of it. The positive side – how can we come together to creatively find the right context for women’s ministry in the Church which is so critical?
Please do not think that there is any misogyny here. Not a bit.
So what am I saying? That I have changed my mind? That I am against women in ministry? or ordaining women? or women as pastors (or priests)?
No.
What I am saying is it appears some moderate Baptists are making “women in ministry” as one of their central dogmas. That it is an understandable but serious mistake to equate “women do not have the same role as some men” with “they are somehow inferior”. That they fail to understand adequately and fairly why some traditions distinguish the role of women from that of some men in the Christian church – even if still they disagree!
