Hannah Swithinbank has a PhD in ancient history, a diploma in professional writing, and an inherited tendency

to read anything that comes to hand, including the back of the cereal box at breakfast. She is currently working as a research assistant, which goes well with her overdeveloped sense of curiosity.

The following column is her response to Steve Holmes’ blog and is posted with permission from her blog, burbling gently.

On International Women’s Day, I read this blog post by Steve Holmes. And then I saw it retweeted by some other men.

I shall declare upfront that I like Steve very much on twitter, and I like his blog, and I really really like this particular post, (and I really like the other men who I saw retweet it) but…

Oh, come on, of course there’s a “but,” if there wasn’t a “but” I wouldn’t be writing this post.

Now, listen, the argument is great (and well argued, not going to try and fight the rhetoric). He lists some amazing women who did amazing things, whose achievements really really should speak for themselves, and their right to be in ministry shouldn’t have to be defended by anyone. I really want to go with him all the way to the conclusion:

“But I’m not going to try to illuminate the sun.
And I’m not going to try to dampen the sea.
And I’m not, any longer, going to try to defend the ministry of women in the church.”

But I can’t.

I’ve spent a little while trying to work out why something about this declaration of the fact that women don’t need defending doesn’t quite sit right with me. I tried to get at it on Friday when I retweeted the post—but I don’t think I quite did. But it came to me yesterday morning: this blog post reminds me of Ainsley Hayes defending her belief that the USA doesn’t need an Equal Rights Amendment. Watch it here, particularly from 4:40.

I love Ainsley Hayes (and I love how Sorkin created the character as a woman I could both disagree with and engage with and admire all at the same time), and in her final speech on this subject she has me, she absolutely has me. Because she’s right: it is humiliating that women need an amendment to be considered equal to men before the law, and Article 14 should cover it. But she’s also wrong—because the same Article 14 doesn’t, in practice, cover it. Not every woman is Ainsley Hayes, they’re not all white, they don’t all come from a well-off family, and they can’t all go to law school just to make sure—nor can they all verbally defend themselves as articulately as she does. If we lived in an ideal world, Sam Seaborn wouldn’t need to try and safeguard the ERA for the women of America who aren’t Ainsley Hayes.

And in an ideal world, I’d be able to say, “You know, I don’t need a man to defend the right of women to be in leadership or in ministry.” But we don’t live in an ideal world.

Here’s the thing. I am a relatively well-educated woman, and a Christian, and in favor of women in leadership—and I had only heard of two of the women in that post. I need people to tell me about them, I need people to tell the world about them, and yes, I need people to hold them up as examples of the fact that God uses women in ministry—because we live in a world where that doesn’t happen as often as it should. And also, I need some of those people to be men. Because, unfortunately, a man has a voice that is more likely to be heard than mine is—or than that of most women is—even if a woman were to have the same public profile as him and be put on the same platform as him. I don’t believe this should be so—but it is so.

Honestly, a man says “I’m not going to try to defend the ministry of women…” and I start waving my arms going, “No, come back, we’re not there yet, we still need you…” We need you to defend us, and to promote us—because at the basest level, if it’s just us women doing it for ourselves, someone is going to say, “Well, of course you’d say that, you’re a woman.”

So, men, I need you to just deal with your feeling that you’re not worthy to defend women like Catherine Booth and Wendy Beech-Ward (women like them do stuff every day that the world tells them they’re not worthy of doing, and they deal with it, so you can) and not let yourselves go along with the feeling that the question of whether these women are permitted by God to lead and preach is such a stupid question that you can’t defend the “yes” position. Not yet. Because we’re not there yet—we won’t be until people stop asking that question. And until we are there, I need you to pull your weight on this, because in our deeply unbalanced world, you have more weight than me.

However, I have noticed a growing trend among some within the male hierarchist camp to go beyond making biblical arguments for their view to instead playing the self-appointed role of evangelical “gatekeepers.” Instead of simply debating various interpretations of Scripture, they insist that egalitarian interpretations are dangerous and therefore should not be tolerated within the evangelical camp. The argument—that, for lack of a better term, we’ll call the “slippery slope argument” (or SSA for short)—goes something like this:

(SSA)     Egalitarianism (or “feminism”) is the first step onto the slippery slope that leads directly to dangerous and unacceptable “liberalism.” After all, look at all the liberal churches out there; they all support women in ministry! Many of them used to be within the evangelical fold, but they have all strayed away. You start with an egalitarian interpretation of Scripture and, next thing you know, you’re denying the authority of Scripture and straying from the evangelical faith.

If you’ve spent any time among evangelicals and raised the issue of gender, I suspect you’ve heard something like SSA. I also suspect that this argument has convinced a number of evangelicals to steer clear of egalitarian interpretations of Scripture altogether. And, to be honest, at face value SSA has some plausibility. After all, we probably all have friends who jumped on the bandwagon for some social cause or another and ended up riding the bandwagon straight out of the church.

Still, if we step back from anecdotal evidence for a moment—after all, people leave the church for all kinds of reasons—and subject SSA to a bit of logical scrutiny, I think we’ll find that it is not as persuasive as it may at first appear. As I see it, there are at least three (and probably more) problems with SSA.

First, SSA focuses only on the evidence that supports its conclusion and downplays all contrary evidence. So, while it points to liberal churches that support women in ministry, it downplays the ample evidence of all of the evangelical churches that also support women in ministry. The divide between churches who do and churches who don’t support women in ministry does not cut between “evangelical” and “liberal.” There are a number of evangelical traditions that have long supported women in ministry, including (but not limited to) many churches within the Wesleyan-holiness and Pentecostal streams as well as a number of traditional black churches. If such churches were allowed to count as evidence alongside so-called liberal churches, the argument would be significantly weakened.

Second, SSA assumes that, because liberal churches also support women in ministry, egalitarianism must have been the cause of their liberalism. But this certainly doesn’t follow. A lot of times, two things might be related to each other without one being the cause of the other. For example, I recall learning in a college sociology class about a study that demonstrated that in New York City the consumption of ice cream directly correlates to the city’s murder rate. When ice cream sales go up, so does the murder rate. When ice cream sales go down, the murder rate does too. But, even given these findings, one would be hard pressed to convince anyone that ice cream consumption is a cause of homicide! Rather, there is a “lurking variable”—presumably, the temperature—that serves as an underlying factor for both. In hot summer months, people consume more ice cream, but more people are also out of the confines of their homes and on the city streets, where murders may take place. So, though there is no causal connection between eating ice cream and the tendency to murder, there is a strong correlation.

Finally, SSA assumes, well, that there is a slippery slope! But as we all learned in beginner logic courses, the slippery slope is an informal logical fallacy, not a valid form of reasoning. In other words, unless there is some kind of necessary link between view A and view B, it is a fallacy to argue that A “inevitably” leads to B. But, since we’ve already seen that there are a number of evangelical egalitarians who haven’t become “liberal,” we must conclude that there is no necessary connection between these two views. Sure, some egalitarians leave evangelicalism for mainline churches, just as some hierarchists leave evangelicalism for, say, Catholicism. But these contingencies say nothing about the relative value of egalitarian or hierarchist views. In short, the slope from egalitarianism to liberalism is not as slippery as the argument assumes.

Once we account for the numerous flaws in the reasoning behind SSA, it seems to me that the argument crumbles apart. This, of course, doesn’t mean that egalitarianism is automatically true. It just means that we evangelicals from all sides of the gender debates can get back to doing what we do best: opening up our Bibles and reasoning together.

This essay is adapted from the article, “Assessing Hierarchist Logic: Is Egalitarianism Really on a Slippery Slope?,” Priscilla Papers 27.2 (2013): 5-9. You can read the full article here and purchase your copy of the entire issue here!

Steve Holmes is a Baptist minister, currently teaching theology at St Mary’s College, St Andrews, Scotland. He blogs about theology and culture from an Evangelical perspective at Shored Fragments.

 The following column is posted with permission from his blog.

I have defended the ministry of women in the church in public for a while now, including on my blog. I don’t think I can do it any longer. Not because of any lack of calling or gifting in their ministry, but because of a lack in mine.

Take Phoebe Palmer. She began to be involved in leading a Bible study in New York around 1830. She soon received invitations to preach across the USA and in the UK. Something like 25,000 people were converted by her ministry. 25,000 people. Converted. Does that need defense? Really?

She visited prisons regularly, ran a society helping poor people in need of medical attention, and was involved in an ambitious project to challenge the new problem of urban poverty through the provision of low-cost housing, free schooling, and employment. She had a particular concern for orphans throughout her life. Challenging injustice on a grand scale. Do you want me to defend that?

In The Promise of the Father, and 20-odd other books, she stressed the idea that God could and would give the blessing of holiness in an instant to a believer, and taught that holiness would be gained by faith. This teaching gave rise to the Holiness Movement, which by 1900 had changed the beliefs and practices of almost every evangelical church in America and Britain. Her ideas shaped the early Pentecostal movement, and the modern charismatic movement.

She formed the spirituality that formed me. She changed the world. Who am I to even think of defending her? By any standards, she was one of the most powerful preachers, and most influential leaders, of nineteenth-century American evangelicalism. For me to try to defend her ministry would be as ridiculous as a worm trying to defend a lion.

She did not often encounter criticism for presuming to preach as a woman, but eventually she wrote a defense of the ministry of women, The Promise of the Father (1859). She argued that it was a clear mark that the gift of the Holy Spirit had come that women as well as men could “prophesy,” which to her meant preach powerfully and evangelistically to spread the gospel.

In the face of so evident a work of the Spirit as was seen in her life, who am I to even consider the question of whether God had called her to preach? It would be offensive, presumptuous—approaching blasphemous—to even accept that the question can be asked.

And then there’s Catherine Booth. And Mary Dyer. And Catherine of Sienna. And Mother Julian. And Rose Clapham, all-but forgotten, whose first sermon, preached when she was 18, saw 700 miners converted to Christ. Defend that? Why?

There’s a thousand stories like it that I know. Ten thousand times ten thousand that have gone untold, no doubt.

And I think of women who I have the privilege to know, who I sit in awe of, some of whom graciously allow me to call them friends. If I could preach one tenth as powerfully or effectively as Ness Wilson, or Bev Murrill, or Miriam Swaffield, or if I had a tiny portion of the vision and capacity to inspire change of Cathy Madavan or Natalie Collins, or if I had some little echo of the pastoral wisdom and visible holiness of Pat Took or Ruth Goldbourne, or if I could even once in my life make something happen the way Wendy Beech-Ward or Ann Holt do every day—then I might think the question of whether these women are permitted by God to lead and preach was worth thinking about.

As it is, no. I can’t defend their ministries. I am not worthy to.

I will continue to fight sexism and bad teaching wherever I see it. I will continue to explain, as well as I can, the truth of Scripture, that it is a crucial mark of the Kingdom that God calls women and men indifferently to every ministry. I want to give more time in coming months and years to tracing the real harm that bad theologies of gender do. I might even write my big book on a theology of gender one of these years. (The story roughly runs: Augustine meets Judith Butler and they get on surprisingly well…)

But I’m not going to try to illuminate the sun. And I’m not going to try to dampen the sea. And I’m not, any longer, going to try to defend the ministry of women in the church.

Do you agree? Disagree?

THIS ARTICLE IS REPRINTED FROM CBE’S WEEKLY ARISE COLUMN.

YOU CAN READ IT ANYTIME BY CLICKING THE ICON ON THE RIGHTHAND SIDE OF THE SCROLL HOME PAGE.

BUT….what about the way women berate men? Who hasn’t heard a woman talk as though all men are stupid, over-sexed oafs who can’t appreciate the finer things in life. Groups of women can get together for girls nights out and attend shows where they ogle at men’s bodies in the same way some men do with women.

Even among groups of Christians we hear derogatory comments about men, see raised eyebrows and talk of ‘domestic blindness’ when it comes to finding things in the house. From the pulpit we hear jokes about either gender in regard to so-called typical behaviour. Then of course the TV sitcoms perpetuate expectations of poor behaviour and attitudes towards both women and men.

Another small step along the way to true gender equality which is pleasing to God would be for us all to not succumb to the pressure to join in the laughter or complaints but contribute something positive such as saying…..’not all men are like that’ or ‘I know many women who are just the same.’ Usually when that is said, people pull back a bit and say that of course that is true. So….why is it so typical of conversations, even in Christian company? Habit, peer pressure, embarrassment, or……??

The blogosphere is buzzing with backlash about recent articles that are advocating for “young marriage.” Apparently, the millennials (18-29 yr olds), my generation, have a low marriage rate at 21 percent in the U.S., compared to other generations during this age range.

I posed a question on my Facebook status to my unmarried or later-married friends:

Why are YOU delaying marriage? (Besides not knowing anyone you WANT to marry.) I chose to get married instead of waiting, so I’m curious about other people’s choices. 

The responses included:

·         Wanting independence

·         Needing time to mature and figure out life

·         Focusing on career or graduate school

·         Same-sex marriage isn’t legal

·         Hoping to avoid divorce

·         Not interested in marriage

This conversation is fascinating to me. I got engaged at 23, just 3 months after college graduation. It was a decision that took many by surprise—myself included.

You see, I was an outspoken advocate AGAINST the “ring by spring” culture on my Christian university campus.

Although I dated some in college, I was single for most of it and I was confident in my singleness. I had no expectations of getting engaged by graduation. In fact, by the time senior year came around, I was intent NOT to enter a serious relationship. I wanted a clear path to career exploration and time to seek God’s call on my life.

But, funnily enough, I did meet someone senior year who totally confused me. I won’t say I “fell” in love, because that connotes something more accidental or unconscious. I was aware of what was happening. But I surprised myself with my willingness to love him, in spite of my feminist declarations of the glory of independence.

I struggled a lot with the statement I would be making as an outspoken feminist getting engaged shortly after graduation.

Would all my convictions about the hurt of single-shaming and the value of independence, the worth of choosing a spouse carefully, etc. be wasted if I got married right away? Would I be throwing away an opportunity to embrace my freedom in a 21st century world to pursue a fast paced career?

And yet… I realized I was fighting a false dichotomy. What I discovered—and decided—was that my decision to get married, even if it lined up with some stereotypes at my Christian university, was NOT the opposite of being a strong, independent woman. I could pursue my dreams WITH my husband. And I wasn’t losing my identity by choosing marriage nor was I going back on my belief that singlehood could be a gift and a calling.

Sometimes I fight so hard against stereotypes that I forget to be myself.

This, my friends, is not healthy. God has created us each with unique, beautiful qualities. Be who you are and be obedient to God’s leading—even if that means a more traditional road. There is no shame in that.

We who are Christian advocates for giftedness above gender, proclaimers of freedom from boxes that bind, and celebrators of mutuality in marriage must resist the temptation to limit ourselves—or others—by our convictions. What a shame if we are stepping from one form of legalism to another.

Whether or not you get married and the timing of that union should not be prescribed by others around you.  Be free, Christian men and women. Be who God has made you.

Even the Apostle Paul dealt with this struggle about marriage. 1 Corinthians 7 is deep and somewhat confusing, but I think the point Paul was trying to make is that both marriage and singleness are good. (Paul was biased towards singleness, but did not expect everyone to be just like him.)

I think this sentence—smack in the middle of Paul’s exploration of marriage and singleness and divorce—sums it up pretty well:  “…let each of you lead the life that the Lord has assigned, to which God called you.” – 1 Corinthians 7: 17

Everyone’s story is different. As it should be. Let’s reserve judgment of others—and ourselves—and focus instead on where God is leading us as uniquely created people in uniquely lived circumstances.

Naomi Krueger is a Sunday School curriculum developer and freelance writer in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Her passion for mutuality in marriage and ministry was honed when she interned for CBE in 2009. She’s proud to be married to her thoughtful husband Tim, the new editor of Mutuality Magazine.

Just thinking of one small way to see things from a more biblical perspective is to check ourselves in what we think and then it will help us to act and speak in more healing/life-changing ways. What does this look like ?

We could blame ‘human nature’ (as it has been damaged since the garden of Eden) or our cultural conditioning, but whatever  the reason, we can assume things about people by their appearance and particularly their gender. Sometimes these thoughts flash through our minds, so can we do anything about it ? Immediately think of the person as an unique creation and purposely decide to not make presumptions about how they might think or act. Attribute to the person the right to be themselves and decide to observe their behaviour or speech as coming from them personally, not as just ‘a man’ or  just ‘a woman’. Think of the child or adult as God sees them…….from the inside out.

When we consciously make this seemingly small change in our thinking, it will enlarge our way of looking at people and the whole subject of biblical equality which of course applies to race, class, social standing and all the distinctions we humans put on each other. It needs to be a practised skill but starts with the first step.

Maybe there are other small steps to change ourselves and promote a better approach to seeing people more like God sees them.

At this time in my church, I’m teaching a series on essential beliefs of the Christian faith. They are actually a little more than the basics because I am including the things we need to know and understand something of in order to grow and mature into the full person of God we each are meant to become. So, the basics are centered around who the Trinity is; who Christ the Messiah is and what He did for us; who the Holy Spirit is and what He does for all of us. This entails a huge amount of information including redemption, sanctification, repentance, forgiveness, the infilling of the Holy Spirit and so forth. We are called by Christ and the apostles to BE the Body of Christ, to each other and the world. Throughout all of this is a particular trust in God first and foremost in every aspect of one’s life.

To my knowledge there are no Scriptures that tell anyone to put strong faith and trust in Christian leaders, even if they are good, godly, faithful believers. God almighty is to get our full allegiance, and to others we are to give our support, honor, respect and love. This is because we are all human and thus fallible. Even Paul praised the Bereans BECAUSE they did not just accept what he said, but chose to research the Scriptures to see if what Paul said was correct. Because Paul was correct in what he told them, his words were made stronger when the Jews read these truths in Scripture, and therefore, many, thousands, came to believe in Jesus as the promised Messiah.

Our job as hearers of those called to lead, preach and teach is to be willing to be persuaded by their words and their lives, and then to search the Scriptures asking God what to do. (Heb. 13) Unfortunately, today there is a stream of preachers and teachers who are teaching that everyone should be obeying leaders first and that in doing so we are obeying God. This creates a kind of spiritual insanity for the person who tries to do that. We cannot help but see that there are leaders who teach incorrectly on some things. Even Calvin, Luther, Wesley and other famous Christians were badly in error on some issues. So, how does one recognize the incorrect teachers and focus only on what is of God and produces absolute faith in God first and foremost, and godly love of others?

Because this incorrect allegiance to human leaders is part of the foundational teachings of patriarchal hierarchy and male dominance, it has a very strong hold on many. So, how can we get the message out to the Christian world that only God (not God AND male leaders) is to get our full faith, allegiance, trust, devotion and obedience?

The new issue of

Recently, a fellow blogger wrote a great piece about the problems with modesty rules in Christian culture. She rightly pointed out how these rules unfairly shame women into particular behavior patterns, often resulting in lasting emotional and psychological damage. It was an honest, personal story of one woman’s struggle to reconcile her freedom in Christ with the rigid behavioral codes often handed down to women from the pulpit or from Christian culture in general.

It was a fantastic piece. And then there were the comments.

The basic premise that many of the commenters were defending, was that women have a responsibility to dress modestly in order to keep men from sinning through lustful thinking. Most commenters were pretty forceful in driving this point home.

But here’s the problem as I see it:  If, as many of the commenters suggest, men (even, or perhaps especially, Christian men) are incapable of looking at a woman who isn’t covered from head to toe without wanting to rape her (or at least mentally rape her), then this is decidedly not a problem that women can or should feel obligated to solve. Perhaps that bears repeating, and in simpler terms:

If men are perverse, then that’s decidedly an issue for men to address.

Shifting the responsibility to women simply enables men to think and act like sexual predators, rather than demand that they do the hard work of being transformed by the renewing of their minds (Rom. 12:2). Men, we shouldn’t be saying, “Her skinny jeans and V-neck are making me lust.” No, you’re lusting because your God-given capacity for sexual attraction has morphed into a distorted view of women as objects that you need to control.

Now, before we go any further, I should say that yes, I believe modesty is a quality  all Christians should strive for (and yes men, that includes you), but Christians often reduce modesty to a dress code for women. The fundamental question many Christians are not asking is, “Why is this notion of modesty, and the moral obligations derived from it, so lopsided?” And, “Why do we make countless proscriptions on the behavior of women, but essentially ignore the behavior of men?  To me, the answer is as simple as it is disturbing. Call it what you want: misogyny, patriarchy, institutionalized sexism. I call it rape culture.

It’s the same culture in which college orientations teach freshmen women tips for not getting raped instead of teaching freshmen men not to rape.

It’s the same culture that blames and shames victims of sexual assault into silence, instead of bringing the perpetrators to justice.

It’s the same culture that sees women’s bodies as objects to be controlled as means to men’s ends.

In the end, it’s about control. It’s about maintaining male privilege and perpetuating patriarchy. As the mostly male commenters approached this issue of modesty on my friend’s post, little space was given for the man’s responsibility in this cycle, and when it was mentioned, it was an afterthought. “Oh, sure, men should be modest too, and they’re responsible for their own actions, but women shouldn’t cause them to stumble.”

I may be wrong, but I think this might be one of those speck/plank scenarios that Jesus was talking about (Matt. 7:4-5). Perhaps instead of focusing on the culturally ambiguous standard of “modest dress” for women, we should worry more about our attitudes toward, and our objectification of, women. Maybe instead of trying to place the blame on women for our own shortcomings, we should do the hard work of re-wiring our brains in order to remove the influences that continue to perpetuate our distorted view of women. Maybe instead of writing off rape culture in the church as “living in a fallen world,” we should recall that Christians live in the fallen world, but are not of it. Christians, even those raised in a culture of rape, can be conformed to the image of their creator (Col 3:10). We should focus on what it means for men to partner with God in bringing the kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. I suspect the kingdom of God doesn’t include rape culture.

What do you think? How do you define modesty? How do we balance our freedom in Christ with our responsibility to our brothers and sisters in a way that doesn’t embrace institutional inequality? Do you think that rape culture informs church culture, or have I gone too far, too fast with this argument?

He asked “What’s this you are discussing so intently as you walk along ?”  They just stood there, long faced, like they had lost their best friend. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, asked “Are you the only one in Jerusalem who hasn’t heard what’s happened during the last few days?” He said. “What has happened?”

They said “The things that happened to Jesus the Nazarene. He was a man of God, a prophet, dynamic in work and word, blessed by both God and all the people. Then our high priests and leaders betrayed him, got him sentenced to death and crucified him. And we had our hopes up that he was the One, the One about to deliver Israel. And it is now the third day since it happened.

But some of our women have completely confused us. Early this morning they were at the tomb and couldn’t find his body. They came back with the story that they had seen a vision of angels who said he was alive. Some of our friends went off to the tomb to check and found it empty just as the women said, but they didn’t see Jesus.

Then he said to them “So thick-headed! So slow-hearted!  Why can’t you simply believe all that the prophets said? Don’t you see that these things had to happen, that the Messiah had to suffer and only then to enter into his glory?” The he started at the beginning with the Books of Moses, and went on through all the Prophets, pointing out everything in the scriptures that referred to him.

They came to the edge of the village where they were headed. He acted as if he was going on but they pressed him. “Stay and have supper with us. It’s nearly evening: the day is done.” So he went in with them and here’s what happened.

Jesus sat down at the table with them. Taking the bread, he blessed it, broke it and gave it to them. At that moment, open-eyed and wide-eyed, they recognised him. And then he disappeared! Back and forth they talked. “Didn’t we feel on fire as he conversed with us on the road, as he opened up the Scriptures to us?”

They didn’t waste a minute. They were up and on their way back to Jerusalem. They found the Eleven and their friends gathered together, talking away. “It’s really happened! The Mater has been raised up – Simon saw him!” Then the two went over everything that happened on the road and how they recognised him when he broke the bread.

This account is reproduced from the 24th chapter of Luke’s gospel in “The Message” version.