Kathryn, this is an issue you will have to take up with our Lord Jesus Christ, who commanded St. Peter to feed His sheep. Apparently He did think He needed some help with the job after all.

The same thing happens when we teach that the husband is the “priest” of the home. It removes women from God’s presence.

I think you can only say this if you’ve never experienced the ministry of a good priest. Or that of any good spiritual father or mother.

I doubt that science is going to have a whole lot to say about women not being able to lead. A scientist who said that would be laughed out of the academy. No women academics, scientists, CEO’s, politicians? Of course there should be. Then why not women theologians, evangelists, and pastors? Surely the place where the clearest insight into ethics and moral law should reign — within and among the followers of God’s own Son — should be able to make the distinction that if something is a great good (a real good) in the profane world, then it ought to be as great a good in the sacred.

How sad that the gospel that was given to free us from the bondage of sin, death, and the law, is still being entangled by modern-day versions of Judaizers.

You err because you know not the scriptures. Your ’signature’ scripture is actually teaching us the exact opposite of what you claim. The verse “There is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female…” is teaching us that in the anointing (in Christ) it’s irrelevant what you are. But, it OBVIOUSLY does not mean there are no differences. In fact the pairings offered are amongst the most different in human existence. Every cell of a man is different from a woman’s. A Jew and gentile are not the same. Trust me. I’m a Jew. I know. lol!

And there could not possibly be any different experience than that of a free man and a slave. To close your eyes to the multitude of New Testament verses that give gender specific directions to the Body and just try to wash it all away with that Galations verse is laughable. The New Testament, perhaps more than any other notable book makes huge distinctions between men and women, especially in the realm of leadership. To completely miss the point of the “Neither male nor female…” verse and then try hang an entire ministry on this misunderstanding is just sad.

The more we learn, the more we know that men and women are more different than we ever imagined. God told us that a long time ago. Per usual, science is confirming it for us today. Even hard core liberals know that men and women are very different. Yet you, claiming to be guided by the scriptures, want to pretend that there isn’t any? Sorry, but hiding behind the fair sounding guise of
‘egalitarianism’ doesn’t obscure the deep and grave distortion of the leadership mandate given to the church.

Re: comment #8: In I Peter 2, the Apostle Peter, speaking to folks scattered from Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, says: (Vs 5) “Ye also, as lively stones are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ”. In verse 9, he says: “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people, that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” We are all priests before God. The practice of ordaining earthly priests to stand between humanity and God is unscriptural. The Apostles were not ordained to be priests for anyone else. They were called to be evangelists. “Apostle” means “sent one.” There is only one High Priest, and His name is Jesus (Hebrews 9:24-28).

That most definitely is not Bishop Ware’s position on the matter, as he lays out at length in “Man, Woman, and the Priesthood of Christ.” To quote a piece: “The priest is an icon of Christ; and since the incarnate Christ became not only man but a male—since, furthermore, in the order of nature the roles of male and female are not interchangeable—it is necessary that the priest should be male. Those Western Christians who do not in fact regard the priest as an icon of Christ are of course free to ordain women as ministers; they are not, however, creating women priests but dispensing with priesthood altogether.”

What Bishop Ware has said is that the issue of women’s ordination could be taken up at a truly Ecumenical Council. But of course this applies to anything in Orthodox dogma and practice. In the Coptic Orthodox Church, of which I’m a member, the office of deaconess has always been present, resembling what the Bible describes as the consecrated widows. They are not ordained, but consecrated.

This brings up something else that should be considered. Until Protestant churches restore the ministry of nuns, abbesses, and the presbytera (priest’s wife, who has title and great influence in her own right), and venerate even half the female saints that the Orthodox and Catholics do, it is hypocritical to look upon these churches as being demeaning of women. However the bottom line is that Orthodoxy comes at these issues from a completely different paradigm. A paradigm which, as I said above, gives such a vision of heaven and earth from which vantage point these controversies are simply foreign and irrelevant.