We need women to serve as pastors and leaders

The Houston Chronicle recently featured a heartbreaking series of articles that catalogued decades of abuse and cover-up by Southern Baptist pastors across the country. In the past two decades there have been over 700 instances of sexual abuse in Southern Baptist churches. And we have heard stories that have plagued the Roman Catholic church of abusive priests who have been protected by their superiors rather than prosecuted for their crimes.

While no denominational body is immune to instances of abuse, the Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention seem to be the organizations that had the most high-profile instances of abuse. Interestingly, the Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention also happen to be the largest denominational organizations in the world that have something in common: Both of them prohibit women from serving as pastoral leaders. This is almost certainly a cause of correlation, but I also wonder if there is some causation at work, as well.

While it is encouraging to see both the Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention beginning to take some steps toward preventing further abuse, I wonder if these actions will go far enough. These actions took place in the context of a highly male-dominated theological construct and unless that construct itself is being called into question, I fear that very little will actually change.

Many Christians feel as if scripture prohibits women from serving as pastors. There are passages in which Paul seems to be bar women from serving as pastoral leaders (most notably 1 Timothy 2:12). Many biblical scholars have argued that Paul is speaking of a specific situation in 1 Timothy and was not meaning to dictate policy for all Christian churches. Further, there are also numerous examples of women who held influential leadership positions in the early Christian church: Phoebe (Romans 16:1-2), Junia (Romans 16:7), Chloe (1 Corinthians 1:11), Priscilla (1 Corinthians 16:19), Eudoia and Syntyche (Philippians 4:2-3), and Nympha (Colossians 4:15).

This is an issue with which there is a lot of disagreement between Christians. Some of my friends who may disagree with me are people of goodwill and authentic faith. And I understand that they may have heightened anxiety at questioning a policy that they see as a fundamental issue of biblical authority. However, I would ask them to please consider the fact that it was not many years ago in the life of the church that some pastors fiercely argued that slavery was allowed in scripture; those pastors also felt that to relinquish on that point was to erode biblical authority.

We need women to serve as pastors of our churches and leaders of our denominations. When women's voices are silenced and barred from pastoral leadership positions within the church, we miss out on a fundamental perspective. We need both men and women to lead us. As the Apostle Peter said on the Day of Pentecost:

God declares: 'I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.' (Acts 2:17)