The CBE Scroll

How many of us come from traditions where we have been told that women cannot serve in positions of leadership because Jesus was male? And, as denominations consider where women may hold positions of service, inevitably the gender of Jesus becomes a consideration. Previous generations of Christians have also asked important questions about the gender of Jesus. Here is one example:

Gregory of Nazianzus, who lived at the end of the fourth century stated, “To gar aprosleptom atherapeuton,” which in English means, “What is not assumed is not redeemed.” His words remind us that Christ came to represent all of humanity on the Cross. Thus, if we absolutize one aspect of Christ, such as his gender, ethnicity, or class, we run the risk of excluding people without those characteristics from Christ’s atoning work on Calvary. Because Scripture teaches that Christ is the Savior of the whole world (John 4:42), we diminish Christ’s atoning work when speaking of his gender as paramount. Perhaps that is one reason why Scripture speaks most often of Christ as the “Son of anthropos,” or humanity, rather than “Son of aner,” or male. He was a sacrifice of humanity, for humanity. Indeed, Christ’s sacrifice was for everyone, as the Scriptures note. Because of this, the whole church may take the whole Gospel to the whole world.

Baptism in Christ: Giving Words Their Full Meaning

Recently a friend of mine received a very distinguished award from her denomination for her long-term leadership in promoting the “maximum baptismal role of women in the Church.” As I pondered our baptismal role, I remembered that many baptismal fonts from the early church had Galatians 3:26-28 inscribed on them. Why? Baptism, rather than circumcision, became the public expression of our covenantal relationship with God, attained through our union with Christ. Just as Christ rose victoriously over sin, we too rise out of the waters of baptism, symbolizing our rising victorious with Christ over sin. United to Christ in baptism, God does not look upon our sins, but sees that we are clothed in Christ, a reality that Paul summarizes in Galatians 3:27-29: “You are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

To be united to Christ completely redefines our identity and status with respect to God. It also redefines our relationship to one another. In the same way Christ established satisfaction or peace between sinners and God, so too Christ builds peace between the members of his body—the Church. Because of this, theologians suggest that our christology (what we understand about Christ and our salvation in him) directs our ecclesiology (what we understand about the Church). Just as there is an intimacy or a union between Christ and each redeemed soul, there is also unity or mutuality between those who are redeemed by Christ. To be in Christ is never simply a statement solely about one’s redemptive status. For our redemption also directly influences our status in relationship to one another, as members of Christ’s body.

Paul boldly suggests in Galatians 3 that Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, males and females are all one in Christ. He wrote these words to a world in which nearly half of the population were slaves. How radical Galatians 3:28 must have sounded to first century ears! How radical our baptism remains today! Be clear about this! Our relationship with Jesus changes everything! That is the true meaning of baptism. Our significance and influence is not defined by our earthly parents but through our relationship to God from whom we receive our ultimate inheritance. And our sisters and brothers receive the same inheritance and gifts from God’s Spirit. These gifts never come in pink or blue, yellow, black, or white. Through the power of the Cross, expressed in Christian baptism, we no longer ascribe value, dignity, and worth according to social status, ethnicity, gender, or class. Hallelujah.

As I write this, my sister is in labor, giving birth to a daughter. This child, whom none of her expectant family have yet laid eyes upon, has already showered us with an abundance of joy—not least because my sister had nearly given up hope of conceiving a child.

When I see lived before me what the promise of a little girl can offer to a family, I shudder to remember the countless baby daughters who have been sacrificed because of their gender, left in the rubbish heaps of previous centuries to die of exposure in exchange for the “greater blessing” a brother would offer. I (unsuccessfully) try not to stand in judgment, because I cannot understand the grinding poverty and insurmountable social structures that drove past (and, dreadfully, still drives some present) parents to accept this way of life and death. I thank God for his promise to someday right all injustices in holy judgment! And as I grow older, I am increasingly grateful for the multitude of remarkable women over the centuries who survived their cultures’ high cost of womanhood and who looked to Christ, instead of patriarchs, for their true identities and authority.

Many gifted daughters of God have found their strength and value in the one in whom “we live and move and have our being.” With gratitude for his mercy, these women devoted themselves to every realm of kingdom service: some in constant prayer, some in care for the sick and destitute, some in the teaching of his Word, some in the oversight of monastic communities. Every era of Christian history has been shepherded by faithful women laboring alone or alongside their believing brothers.

Take Macrina (324-379), for example. Following the deaths of her father and her fiancé (the latter of whom died when she was 12), she took on the leadership of a religious community at her family estate in Cappadocia. By instruction and example, she had such a profound influence on her younger brothers Basil and Gregory—future leading bishops of the Eastern Church who respectfully referred to her as “the Teacher”—that the three of them became known to history as the “Great Cappadocians.”

Or Clare of Assisi (1194-1253). A devout Italian teenager, she refused to accept an arranged marriage to a wealthy noble and instead took vows of poverty and chastity, choosing to spend her days in prayer, manual labor, and the spiritual guidance of the many women who subsequently joined her—eventually including her own sister and mother.

Or Fidelia Fiske (1816-1864). Her family thought her unmarried status and recent battle with typhoid rendered her unfit for the mission field. But seminary-trained and persuaded of her call, she left New England for what is now Iran. There she convinced fathers who had decided they could only afford to feed their sons to give her their daughters instead of forcing them into prostitution. She became mother, nurse, and teacher, training dozens of girls to minister in the name of Christ to other outcasts of their society.

Or Pandita Ramabai (1858-1922). Raised in India by a Brahmin father who lost his job for educating his wife and daughter, after her conversion to Christianity she became a Bible translator and social reformer. She wrote against the devastating traditional practices of child marriage, polygamy, and sati (in which a widow, considered part of her husband’s body, is burned to death with his corpse), and founded a still-existing mission to provide refuge for young widows.

Today, in the spirit of these foremothers, Baby Jovie begins her own journey. What a legacy of wise female leadership our Christian tradition offers my newborn niece! My prayer is that she will receive this gift with joy and humility, and leave her mark on all the baby girls (and boys)—of infinite value to Jesus—who follow her in the worship and service of our Holy God.

(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.

Founded by the forward thinking Mary Lyon (1797-1849), Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, Massachusetts (today known as Mount Holyoke College) was not her first educational venture. Lyon taught for several years along the Massachusetts countryside in smaller, elementary schools (often paid far less than the men in the area for the same amount of work). From 1817 to 1821, she attended Sanderson Academy and later taught there, as well as at the Adams Female Seminary in New Hampshire and Ipswich Female Seminary. Mount Holyoke opened in South Hadley in 1837 with eighty students, and it is Fidelia Fiske (1816-1864) who became its first graduate to enter into international missions.

Fiske was said to be a precocious young girl, reading Cotton Mather’s Magnali Christi Americana and Timothy Dwight’s Theology by age eight. She came to Mount Holyoke in 1839, but her education was interrupted when she contracted typhoid fever. Forty students contracted typhoid fever at the same time and nine died. It was thought that she, as one not known for good health, would be on that list. Her father, sister, and mother helped her pull through, though her father and sister also picked up typhoid fever and died in the process. Her mother, Hannah, did not want her to drift too far away after her near-death experience, so for a short while Fidelia taught at the local schools. Once she had recovered, her mentor and good friend, Mary Lyon, encouraged her to return to school and finish her education. After completing her degree, she was overwhelmingly approved by the trustees to be a full time instructor at Mount Holyoke.

As is often the case, life changes quickly. A missionary on furlough named Justin Perkins wrote a book called Eight Year’s Residence in Persia. Fidelia read it with eagerness. The book described the world of Persia (modern day Iran) and the needs of the people in such detail (including full color artwork) that she wondered if she would be better serving Christ in that world.

Within little time, word came that Perkins was nearing the end of his stay in America and had not located someone to replace Judith Grant, a missionary in Persia who had started a day school for girls, but passed away a few years earlier. Mary Lyon called all the instructors and students of Mount Holyoke together for an emergency meeting, informing them of the need. Those interested were told to drop a note in a box. While Fidelia and others were certainly academically qualified, it was later recalled by Perkins that Fidelia’s note was the only one that said, ‘If I am found worthy, I would like to go.’ The others regaled the missionary with their curriculum vitas, but because Fiske saw it as a spiritual engagement, she became their first and natural choice.

With little time to work, she immediately sent out a letter to her mother asking for her blessing. She also sent out letters to other family members, asking for their opinions. All of them told her that she was not healthy enough to enter into a mission field. Some pointed out that she could be leaving her family for good if she did such a thing. With good intentions, they reminded her that she was not the type of person to go off on adventures (clearly ignoring the fact that her interest seemed to indicate otherwise). There was also the added point, being a single missionary woman in the field was nearly scandalous – a sentiment still living on in some circles today.

Heeding their concerns, Fidelia turned down the offer and tried to move on. The position was offered to another woman, whose family told her the same thing. It was then that Mary Lyon came back to Fidelia and asked her to reconsider. Fidelia asked to sleep on it – something she was not able to do easily. Very early in the morning she knocked on Lyon’s door. She was willing to go to Persia, but on one condition: Lyon had to help her convince her mother. On that snowy winter day, she took a sled ride with Lyon to her mother’s home and spent the weekend discussing the issue. By Sunday evening, her mother gave her blessing.

It was a decision that changed her life. She boarded a ship with Perkins and his family and journeyed off to Oroomiah, arriving in June of 1843. There she made the school of Grant into an effective boarding school modeled after Mount Holyoke. She entered into a hostile culture that found no value in women and saw no reason to educate their daughters. Given such a world, one of the first phrases she learned in their language was ‘give me your daughters.’

Fidelia spent fifteen years in Persia declaring the value of women. She convinced families to let her educate their young daughters instead of abandoning them or selling them into slavery. She became a mother and a teacher to these girls.

By 1858, her struggle with sickness got the better of her and she returned to America. During that time she toured New England, raising awareness of the work still needed to be done in international missions. She returned to teaching at Mount Holyoke for a while and later published several books, including a biography on Mary Lyon. She died in 1864.

Under the guidance of Mary Lyon, Fidelia was encouraged to get a quality education and had her individual gifts nurtured. She did not allow herself (or the girls she ministered to in Iran) to be pigeonholed based solely on their gender. Each of us could serve as a Mary Lyon to someone who needs nurturing. Organizations like CBE and its members call Christians to minister by giftedness, not by gender.

How do you do the same in your local congregation?

For more information on Fidelia Fiske, see Faith Working by Love here.