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An Uncontested Space
I’ve been in church leadership since my 20s (nearly 36 years), when I married an Anglican clergyman and we were committed to being in ministry together. Throughout our marriage, we’ve served in four diverse and wonderful churches. Just after getting married, I trained to be a lay preacher. In my 30s I started studying for a Bachelor of Divinity. In my late 30s I enrolled in a master’s in systematic theology, and in my 40s I did a PhD. All the time I was preaching, leading Bible studies, mentoring younger Christians (men and women), and writing academic and non-academic work for the church. When I took over as Principal of WTC, I continued to serve in our church as much as I was able and I still do today.
In the four churches we have had the privilege of being a part of have I never encountered anyone who told me that the Bible said I shouldn’t lead or preach or that I should only lead or preach among groups of women. In fact, I encountered nothing but unqualified support and prayerful love from our congregations. It wasn’t until I started teaching at WTC in 2010 that I found myself among quite a number of women (and men) who had been deeply affected by the idea that the Bible (and therefore, in their eyes, God himself) stipulated that men should lead and women should follow. They were taught this as a basic and general principle that sometimes was applied to church governance and leadership, sometimes marriage, sometimes life in the world, and sometimes all three. Men were called and naturally equipped by God to lead, women were called and naturally equipped by God to submit to their leadership. They had been in churches, heard teaching from the front, read books, and seen in real time, how this hierarchy was supposed to play out. It would be an understatement to say that they were both grateful and relieved to find a different story being told at WTC from the same Bible.
In contrast to the hierarchicalists mentioned above, WTC, where I’m now the President, is fully committed to a mutualist vision where men and women serve together in all aspects of life, work, and church. We are, therefore, fully behind the vision of Kyria in every respect. We are all convinced the mutualist vision comes from the scriptures in the first place and is God’s intention for the flourishing of men and women. Human beings, male and female, are made in God’s image, and living out the calling to bear his image here on earth applies to all humans equally which means all forms of ministry, service, and leadership are open to all. Ministry is not sex-specific, where women are called to fulfil one role (revolving around the home and in submission to men) and men another (revolving around leadership). In addition to this, we see marriage as a gift from God where men and women together take full responsibility for every aspect of life together and mutually love, support, and protect one another to thrive and flourish. We teach that God has an “all hands on deck” approach to service in his kingdom and uses any human who is willing to submit to his will to fulfil his purposes here on earth.
Crucial Questions
This series will be a rich and fascinating exploration of some of the more detailed ways in which the Bible can be interpreted to yield an empowering and liberating message for women. As we begin, I want to ask an important question. My questions, as an academic and as a woman committed to serving in God’s church, are: How did we get to the place where we see the Bible and the world in such opposite ways on such a crucial topic as how God sees men and women in the church and the world? How are we going about our reading and interpretation to get such strangely opposing results? Thus, before we dive in to some of the treasures of this series, we’re going to take a step back and see if we can get some clarity on how we read the Bible to yield such different results. Here, I’ll focus on just two methods or strategies that hierarchicalists and mutualists both employ, either intentionally or unwittingly, and explain why one is preferable to the other.
Reading the Bible
How do we go about reading the Bible? What do we do, either instinctively or because we have been taught to read in a particular way? First, I want to describe the approach that leads to a mutualist vision. Everyone knows there are a few passages about how women should behave in the Bible, but strangely enough, not that many: 1 Tim 2:11-12 and 1 Cor 14:34-35 are verses about women not being permitted to teach and remaining silent in church; Eph 5:22, Col 3:18 and 1 Pet 3:1 are about wives submitting to husbands; 1 Cor 11:2-16 contain the most difficult and baffling verses about women and men in the whole Bible which seem to imply that women cannot prophesy (or pray) in public unless they have a head covering or a certain hairstyle and that men alone are made in the image of God. How do we go about interpreting and living out these verses?
One way of approaching the scriptures is to read the Bible as a whole with the assumption that there is a vision of God enshrined within the scriptures that gives the whole Bible a sense of unity, direction, and coherence. I would call this a “theological canonical approach.” Theological, because there is an understanding of God’s nature and character, derived from the scriptures, which continually informs our reading. Canonical, because we read each section of scripture in light of the rest of scripture, the whole canon. I’ll return to this.
The second approach depends upon an understanding of what might be called both a “plain sense” and “flat” reading of scripture. This means that when we read a verse that appears to make some kind of sense on its own and have some kind of immediate plain sense, we might allow this verse to become a controlling verse even if it is starkly contradicted by the larger narrative. A very good example of that is the following. In 1 Tim 2:11-12 we read, “A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.” On the surface of it, this seems like a fairly obvious rule. There doesn’t seem to be a lot ambiguity. And in many churches, this has been taken as a rule for women. However, if we trace how this has been applied throughout history in multiple different contexts, we realise quite quickly it is hardly ever applied in any universal or consistent sense!
Attempting to read this and the other verses I cited in a unified and coherent way with the rest of scripture raises multiple problems about which we need to be honest. Try reading this alongside, say, the Gospel narratives where women become disciples of Jesus, are empowered for mission, are the first to witness to the resurrection despite being dismissed by the men, and are recipients of Jesus’ most profound teaching, with the assumption they will also proclaim the gospel. How do we now read verses about women staying silent and not teaching? Or if we try to reconcile this statement with the stories in Acts of women disciples and church leaders, or the letters of Paul where the women are his “co-workers” and letter-bearers. We run into trouble. Or read in the light of the OT where we have numerous examples of women’s roles and deeds as worshippers of Yahweh, or with the backdrop of church history with stories of countless women leaders, teachers, prophets and priests—all these make the verses cited above deeply problematic to the point that they just cease to make sense as a “rule.” And the same is true again for 1 Cor 11:2-16 which is riddled with inconsistencies, hence my own proposal that we read it as a conversation with Paul’s opponents.
Reading the Bible as a whole shows us that from the beginning of the story of God and his people, women have leadership giftings untethered to male permission or supervision. They are simply called by God for a task which they undergo with courage and faith. Think of Shiphrah, Puah, Miriam, Jochebed, and Pharaoh’s daughter who, between them, all save Moses against all odds. Or how about Deborah, Jael, Huldah, Rahab, Esther, Naomi, and Ruth, all essential to God’s plans for saving his people. Then we get to the NT and we see countless women disciples, witnesses, leaders, and teachers, the most outstanding of which is Mary, the mother of Jesus, herself a prophet, apostle, witness, and co-worker with God himself. In this series, we’ll explore them all. How is it God uses women to carry out his purposes on the earth, raises them up as “sons” of God, equal to the firstborn male heir, co-heirs with Christ, filled with the Spirit and all his gifts and then out of the blue would tell them to sit down, be quiet, and submit to the men?
In other words, the statements that seem to control and limit women to needing to be quiet and under male authority can only be understood as universally true for all women at all times if they are deliberately taken out of their historical and textual context, outside of the context within the Bible itself, and outside of the context of how they’ve been understood and lived out throughout church history. There are better ways of reading and interpreting the Bible.
Where We Begin and Where We End
Hierarchicalists and mutualists have completely different methods of reading, following these two interpretive strategies. Both parties have deeply held convictions before they even start. But hierarchicalists truly struggle to bring unity and coherence to the narrative. In one sense, I can see how someone might claim certain verses have a plain sense (less so for 1 Cor 11:2-16 which is highly complex), but when we begin to dig deeper, it becomes quickly apparent that taking these verses at face value completely fails to be able to explain the rest of the Bible. The rest of the scriptures problematize the verses about women needing to be in subjection to men to the point that they need to be explained in much more nuanced ways. It won’t do to make a decision to ignore any other data that contradict these verses, especially as the data contradicting the silencing and subjection of women is somewhat overwhelming.
Mutualists begin with other verses (Gen 1:26-27; Joel 2:28-29; Gal 3:26-28; 1 Cor 7:4) and the big picture. They see that men and women are made in the image of God, that women play a crucial part in the story of salvation, that the Spirit is poured out on all flesh, and the commissioning of the baptized in Christ to tell out the good news in leading, preaching, teaching, and evangelising on the earth. The verses that limit women then are explained with more nuance and framing.
This series is a celebration of how the Bible can be read in ways that empower women. It means these readings will be truer to the spirit of what the Bible really conveys about how God sees women, they will be more faithful to the texts in their context, will bring out more interesting and deeper meanings, and will not shy away from the problems but face them head on. Reading the Bible in this way helps us discover the unity, coherence, and vision for men and women that concords with the love of God and his purposes for all humanity made in his beautiful image.
About Lucy
Lucy is the President of WTC, where she also teaches classes in Christian Doctrine. She is the author a number of books on topics such as discipleship, the Trinity, and women in the Bible. She is the Chair of Trustees of Crossnet Church which is part of the 24-7 Prayer network.
