Tulip, Liz, and Trevor.
Just to clarify my earlier post.
The love story of Abraham and Sarah is beautiful.
It is not proof of patriarchy. But they most certainly lived in a patriarchal society. One where if a man’s wife produces not heir, the man could take another wife. Or if not he could descretely get rid of her and the other patriachs living in the area would have looked the other way.

But Abraham was not of this sort. He loved Sarah to his own hurt. To the point that he was resigned to have no heir from his own loins. This is no ordinary patriarch. This was a man that God could call a friend. And I believed Sarah was both worthy of this devotion and thrived in it. No wonder she was willing to call herself Abraham’s sister to save his life (I’ve heard that she actually was his half-sister. There were no laws against this back then.)
She was also willing to humble herself, admit her own fault of not being able to bear Abraham a child and gave Hagar to him in order to promote him.

These actions… These mistakes… They are not proof of male headship. They are proof that Abraham and Sarah were human who were full of love for each other and God but made mistakes. Together they stumbled about without a Bible and without a Church Home to learn what it means to be people of faith. They were pioneers. And God blessed them.

I guess I do get a little agitated with men trying to make scripture say the things it does not say. People must be more careful about assuming scripture proves something it doesn’t.

http://home.no.net/pgjendem/artikler/pg_Hauge_H_N.htm

“Hauge also preached equality between men and women. He encouraged men to learn to do housework and women to work on the farms. This was revolutionary at that time, and not everybody took it seriously. Hauge had
no objection to placing women in leadership positions, whether it was in business or as preachers or…. in the Societies of Friends. The most important
question for him was placing the right person in the right place. He also placed great emphasis on the equality of the sexes in his teaching, but after his death this idea eventually faded out.”

The Danish-norwegian fellow is Hans Hauge. I have a link.

http://www.haugeinstitute.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5&Itemid=4

When we discovered this vain in our family, i felt something of a kinship. These were my people, i am not wierd. God has been at work for women for many years.

If your pastor thinks the Hagar thing proves male headship then I have twice as much reason to believe that the “Sarah is my sister” thing proves male stupidity (Huge apologies to all my beloved bretheren on this site who don’t hold to the same view as Tulip’s pastor. I’m just making the point that his point is completely invalid and is in no way proof of male headship.) If that’s how sweeping he wants to make his conclusions, just give me time, I can come up with some really “out there” conclusions by pulling out whatever scripture I feel like messing with.

As far as Kuhlman is concerned, she was under a great deal of pressure because she was a woman. She may have actually believed what she said to make peace with herself and the men around her. But I don’t believe it for a minute any more than I believe that God chose Deborah because there was no man available. This is just extra interpretation stuff thrown in because of people who cannot handle women being in leadership.

I too was a homemaker theology student. It finally led me to bible college, then seminary. I also felt very odd and unusual. I can relate to what you are experiencing among people who do not expect you to be a good thinker.

The history i studied in my denomination told about a man named Fredrick Franson. He was one of the founders of the Evangelical Free Church. He wrote a paper entitled, Prophesying Daughters to show the counsel of God’s word and send out women to preach the gospel.

I have also been studying my family’s history from Norway and Denmark. There was a Norwegian-Danish Evangelical Pietist movement in the Scandinavian countries in the mid-1800’s. My relatives followed a person named Hans Haugen… who taught that men and women were equal and called in Christian mission. He had some association with the Quakers as well as the pietists. They were called the Haugeneons and some of them settled in Northwestern Minnesota.

Why don’t you read the “God and Sarah” blog.

http://blog.cbeinternational.org/2008/07/god-and-sarah/