The CBE Scroll

(Adapted from a paper given at the 2007 annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society)

My interest in women and missions of the 1800s is reinvigorated, of late, by a number of experiences I’ve had lecturing at Christian colleges and seminaries around the county. When invited to speak for chapel services, I make an effort to learn something about the school, particularly the achievements of the founders and their graduates. In doing so, I have discovered the vast number of women alumni, who were also leaders on the mission field in the United States and abroad. And, they had the full support of the school’s founders. As I include these findings when I lecture, I am often surprised at the responses I receive… some of these Christian colleges appear almost embarrassed to learn of the number of women who held positions of significant leadership and who were trained in this capacity by their institution.

Most of our evangelical colleges and seminaries initially began as Bible institutes - and nearly all Bible institutes had many more women enrolled than men. Why? Because Christians in the 1800s, influenced by premillenialism, believed that Christ’s return was imminent - and therefore, they were far more concerned about the Great Commission than they were with gender or ethnicity. As a result of placing less emphasis on gender, women outnumbered men on the mission field, two to one. This led to one of the largest expanses of Christian faith in history - during what has been called the ‘Golden Era of Missions’ - which began in the early 1800s, in which women were the driving force.

Bible institutes trained men and women for evangelism, in anticipation of Christ’s immediate return. Over time, these institutes became today’s Christians colleges and universities which broadened their curriculum to prepare Christian men and women for professional service in many disciplines. In doing so, some lost touch with their evangelical moorings as it relates to women’s gospel-leadership.

As I celebrate the legacy of their female graduates who preached to men and women all over the world, I am frequently asked two questions:

1. If women were the driving force behind the Golden Era of Missions, what took the church so long to use women in this capacity?

2. What has happened since then? Why has their leadership been lost, and where are women gospel leaders today?

First off, it was during the Golden Era of Missions, with the enormous success God granted the gifts he had given women and slaves that Christians began to question the presumed ontological inferiority of both women and slaves. They did so from a thorough examination of Scripture. Their biblical research was published in more than forty-six biblical treatises between 1808 and 1930, from many branches of the evangelical church, in support of the shared leadership of women. These documents signified the emergence of the first wave of feminists - a deeply biblical movement. The advancement of women’s ontological and functional equality grew out of a commitment to biblical authority, evangelism, and an activism that came to characterize or identify the evangelical movement as a whole, beginning in the 1800s. And, it was the early evangelicals - both men and women, who were among the first to provide both a biblical and social voice for gender and ethnic equality. By doing so, they represented a radical departure from previous generations of Christians whose patriarchal and racist assumptions went unchallenged by Scripture.

Biblicists (those who affirmed the supremacy of Scripture), were early evangelicals who supported the evangelism of women and in doing so they not only challenged higher critical methods that undermined the authority of the Bible, they also resisted the ‘proof text’ method or plain reading of Scripture that gave support not only to slavery, but also to women’s exclusion from public ministry. Rather, evangelical biblicists sought to harmonize those passages that appeared in conflict with the whole of Scripture regarding the equal value (ontology) and service (function) of women and slaves. Thus, the first-wave feminists developed a whole-Bible hermeneutic that addressed gender and ethnic justice and advanced an ontological equality for women and slaves.

This comes to the second question - why Christian colleges (formerly Bible institutes) appear unfamiliar with the legacy of their earliest women students (who outnumbered male students two to one)… The truncation of women students in Bible institutes and leadership was the result of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy. Simply stated, modernists challenged both the inspiration of Scripture and the very miracles of Scripture and created uncertainty surrounding the fundamentals of the Christian faith, like the Virgin birth and the resurrection of Christ. They did so using higher critical methods. In response, some Bible institutes, wishing not to appear sympathetic with Modernists, reshaped their curriculum, omitting classes in Greek and Hebrew, and leaning towards the ‘plain reading of the texts.’ This opened the way to a plain reading of 1 Timothy in isolation to the other places in the New Testament where Paul clearly affirms the authority and leadership of women like Junia, Priscilla, Phoebe, Chloe, etc. Thus, the gains made both biblical and socially by the early evangelicals were stymied and linked to a liberal reading of Scripture. Christians for Biblical Equality has had to pick up the biblical scholarship left off by early evangelicals like A.J. Gordon, Katharine Bushnell, Frances Willard and Catherine Booth. Thankfully, the work begun by the early evangelicals has grown so quickly in the last twenty years that CBE is having a difficult time keeping track of the many Christian groups around the world exploring biblical equality both from a popular and scholarly viewpoint.

‘If a man has recently married, he must not be sent to war or have any other duty placed on him. For one year he is to be free to stay at home and bring happiness to the wife he has married.’ (Deuteronomy 24:5)

This was actually the second instance of Scripture I noticed in my reading of Deuteronomy where allowance was made for the priority of marriage over the duties of a soldier (cf. Deuteronomy 20:7).

But, what strikes me particularly about this verse is the latter half. In a completely patriarchal society, one would expect for the exhortation to be ’so that his wife can bring him happiness’ - but instead, the opposite is being commanded. Why do you think this is the case?

To me, it reveals that the idea of marriage being created for the enjoyment of both husband and wife is not a new man-made (or ‘woman’-made) idea. I think the tendency in that society was for the men to live like it was all about them (If we read all the stories about the patriarchs/men of the Bible, it would seem that they made all the decisions - wise ones for their families and also not-so-wise-ones to save their own neck or to satisfy their desires and make themselves happy - even to take more than one woman (slave/concubine), even though that wasn’t how God wanted things.), so, in light of that, perhaps God needed to spell it out plainly that it was important to him that the husbands sought after bringing happiness to their own wives.

What do you think?

Several places in the New Testament, had ‘headship’ been God’s intention, it would have been stated and described. Rather, in those places we find no such direct statement and, in fact, other descriptions of marriage indicating full equality.

Two such places are as follow. In 1 Corinthians 7:3-4, when Paul states that the husband’s body belongs to his wife and and wife’s to her husband, no distinction is made between the two parties, in spite of the fact that the word ‘authority’ is used.

The second, 1 Corinthians 7:32-35, concerns itself with the value of staying single in the culture of the time. It talks about a married man being ‘anxious about the affairs of the world and how to please his wife’ (NRSV), and then the same words are used for a married woman wanting to please her husband, therefore being divided in interest rather than single-mindedly serving God. Paul states ‘I say this for your own benefit, not to put any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and unhindered devotion to the Lord.’

Surely these two sets of verses would have been ideal opportunities to state roles of husbands and wives if that had been Paul’s intention and belief. However, instead of even a hint of hierarchy, there is instead total mutuality and consideration.

David Gushee, professor of ethics at Mercer University, has offered a gentle challenge to complementarians with regard to how they live out their convictions in practical terms. To read the challenge, click here. In his own words:

Much like how the pacifist John Howard Yoder long ago wrote a book intended to keep just-war advocates true to the stated commitments of their own theory, as an egalitarian I want to render a similar service to complementarians. I want to ask you some questions aimed to help you keep the application of your approach as biblical as possible.

Here are his questions. Be sure to read the linked article for the rationale behind them.

1. Are you successfully communicating to young men the conviction that a complementarian perspective must elevate rather than diminish the dignity of women, and therefore inculcating a moral commitment on their part to act accordingly?

2. Are you absolutely clear on which positions of Christian service (you believe) are barred to women?

3. Once you have determined what positions of Christian service are barred to women, you have therefore also determined which positions are permitted. Are you active in encouraging women to pursue the positions that are permitted?

4. When women occupy positions of church leadership that parallel those of men, are their positions named equally and are the individuals involved treated equally?

What do you think?

Lately there has been here quite a bit of reporting of statements from other blog sites, referring to roles and responsibilities for wives and husbands, women and men. The verses being quoted to support such claims have seemed, at best, verses fraught with interpretation or translation issues, and not as clear as some would have us believe.

Meanwhile, there are countless places within Scripture where our responsibilities towards one another within the body of Christ are encouraged, and there can be no argument against those plain statements. For example, in Galatians 5:13-14 we have the words ‘For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love, become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment,”You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”‘ (NRSV)

Jesus himself said ‘In everything do to others as you would have them do to you, for this is the law and the prophets’ (Matthew 7:12, NRSV) – in such a simple yet profound statement about our innate equality and responsibility towards others. Also in Scripture, there is a long list of ‘one anothers’ which cover all aspects of relationships within the Christian family, and we would do well to live by them and then discover that there is no need for anyone to be responsible for, or over, any other person. If we all esteem others better than ourselves, we can’t go wrong.

It is interesting that Jesus is not recorded as having said anything which even remotely suggested differing roles for women or men. All people are called to sacrifice, servanthood, submission, and holiness… the list goes on and on. Jesus’ last words were ‘Go therefore and make disciples of nations… and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.’ (Matthew 28:19-20 NRSV) You will notice that there is not a word about the difference between male and female followers or their responsibilities.