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Chapter 19

Clear Conclusions

The truth is that the ministry of Christ is open to Jews and Greeks, bond men and free men, males and females. All have the equal responsibility and task of teaching and preaching the redeeming power of Jesus Christ.

Women prayed, sang, prophesied, spoke in tongues, interpreted tongues, evangelized, witnessed, and taught in the total life of the church in New Testament days. They were deaconesses and fellow workers in the gospel with the apostles. They ministered.

Today, women in worship services and in public classes sing, teach, exhort, encourage, read (at least responsively), say "Amen", pass communion, pass collection trays, make announcements, confess faith, confess fault, greet visitors, greet members, etc.

No one suggests that any of the above is a violation of the silent (keeping one's peace) argument in I Corinthians 14, or the quiet rule of I Timothy 2. How, then, is it possible for us to conclude that such exceptions are permissible and that others are not? The truth is, we have simply "reasoned" that they are all right, primarily because tradition has passed those exceptions down to us, and not because God has revealed these exceptions to us. Every so-called scriptural exception, including a confession of faith, could be done outside the regular church services in order to obey the silent rule. Based upon Paul's command that women are to be silent when the whole church comes together, they could do none of the speaking acts above. No one believes that women are to be silent. No one demands that they be silent. So, why don't we just honestly admit it? The only possible answer is that we are prisoners of our genes, family backgrounds, traditions, cultures, prejudices, and ignorance.

We have decided that certain activities are men's jobs and that women are not in subjection if they do them. This is purely human reasoning and has nothing to do with what the Bible teaches. An example is waiting on the table during the Lord's Supper. What authority is exercised in "waiting on the table" or in "passing out the trays?" There is none. Rather, it is a sign of servitude, not dominion.

What authority is there in passing the collection trays or picking up attendance cards? There is none! In fact, these also are acts of servitude and not dominion!

What makes wording a prayer an act of dominion? If a brother is asked to lead a prayer, that is not an act of dominion, but an act of service. The song director serves the assembly, but that is not an act of dominion. Rather, it is an act of submission to the elders who ask him to serve. Preachers are also in submission as they preach. A church made up of women could hire and fire a male preacher. Service in worship is not dominion! A wife may lead a husband to Christ and still be under his dominion. If a twelve-year-old boy leads prayer or waits on the Lord's table, he is not exercising dominion over the elders, deacons, and preachers, nor over his mother and father. Serving in worship roles doesn't mean the exercise of authority over anyone. Why then would a woman be exercising authority over anyone if she served the church in these roles with her talent? She doesn't when she serves bread and drink at home. Why does it suddenly change at an assembly?

If men really wanted to keep women in their "place," as tradition had dictated their "place" to be, women should serve the men in all the above capacities. If a man or a group of men in the church permits a woman to serve in any capacity, that is not exercising dominion, nor is it the usurpation of authority. Those who have authority may delegate it to anyone. The truth is that if a woman who is qualified to serve is asked to and refuses, that would be insubordination.

But we have already shown that there is clear textual evidence to support women participating in the public worship of the church. It should also be pointed out that the "silence rule" in I Corinthians 14:34 had to do with the services where the brethren were exercising spiritual gifts. Thus, if one wanted to be an absolutist, he would argue that the instruction on silence had to do only with the exercise of spiritual gifts in a particular service, and not in other regular services of the church. Since most of us believe that the miraculous gifts of the spirit, such as tongues and special revelations, are past, then the instructions on silence would no longer apply as we have traditionally interpreted this passage in I Corinthians 14. The rule would not apply to any other services of the church where spiritual gifts were not being exercised. C.R. Nichols would have been right in his book, God's Woman. Again, we must emphasize that women in the early church had those spiritual gifts and certainly exercised them in worship, as much as some now wish they hadn't. We simply try to conform to our traditional interpretation of I Corinthians 14:34-35 and I Timothy 2, while we deny or reject overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

We have pointed out that most of us allow women to praise, pray, exhort, teach, and admonish men privately and publicly in song. Why, then, would anyone still contend that it would be unscriptural for them to do so without music? They can sing scriptures to men and they can read scriptures to men privately and publicly, individually or in unison.

They can make announcements from the pew and even ask questions from the pew. What kind of logic or scripture would prohibit them from doing so from the pulpit? God does not say, "Doing so sitting down is permissible, but standing up front would be wrong." Such an activity has nothing to do with scripture, or dominion, or servitude, or logic, but it has everything to do with tradition!

If women can enjoy an exception to the silence rule by singing, they can enjoy an exception to the rule by reading, or praying, or prophesying, or teaching, or waiting on the Lord's table.

A woman may baptize. The same command that tells her to teach includes the command for her to baptize. Our tradition might not allow it, but God's word does. What humbler, yet greater, service could one Christian render to another than assisting a convert in baptism? God did not make baptizing a man's work, nor does He put it under his dominion.

However, in many churches, it has been the dominion of the "clergy." In fact, some people postpone baptism until a certain preacher is available to assist. Others boast about the preacher who baptized them, as if it made any difference. Many members would be shocked if a woman took a man or another woman or a boy or girl into the baptistry to baptize them, privately or publicly. And, yet, there is no person who could reach such a conclusion from any scriptural text.

Women are allowed to read in the public Bible classes. They make comments in the public Bible class. In a quiet-spirited way, they argue for a particular truth in a public Bible class. They do it all the time. Men ought to also so argue in the same quiet spirit.

If they can read, comment, and argue, they can also lead a prayer. Nowhere in the New Testament does a single writer state, "Men only may lead in prayer," or, "only men may word prayers in public or private worship." Such teaching is foreign to the Bible. Our male-dominated churches and male-dominated clergies have established this tradition, not the scriptures. The idea of who may "lead" in prayer is not even suggested in any scripture.

May women preach in the public service of the church? They prayed and prophesied, spoke in tongues, interpreted tongues, gave revelations, read or sang psalms in the Corinthian services in the first century. What would prohibit them from doing it in the twentieth century? Nothing but tradition or expediency.

It seems a shame that we have taken a faulty translation and interpretation of three scriptures and have tried, with glaring multiplied inconsistencies, to force the rest of the Bible to fit that faulty translation and interpretation.

It is even a greater shame to recognize our glaring inconsistencies and then draw lines of fellowship over one of these inconsistencies. If some congregation allowed women to pass the communion up and down the aisles, many preachers and churches would accuse such a church of heresy. And, yet, such a practice has nothing to do with heresy.

I submit that it would be an even greater shame to recognize the truth and continue to keep women in the church in an inferior position where God had not placed them. I do not wish to get to the bar of judgment and be told by God that I discriminated against Jews or Greeks, slaves or free men, men or women.

Women did and do have places in the public teaching and worship of the church. I do not wish to be the one responsible for keeping them in bondage and in unscriptural subjection by not allowing them to exercise their God-given abilities.

There will be the shrill, strident voices against women taking their place and exercising their talents in the life of the church. There will be other shrill, strident voices which are just as extreme and sinful, which demand the right of women to rule over men, rather than understanding that in Biblical teaching wives are to be in submission to their own husbands and that all Christians are to be in submission to one another.

It is time for honesty, courage, and prudent action on the part of the church. To do nothing is to fail in our commitment to restore the New Testament church. To force congregations, before teaching them, to accept women's new roles could be factious and unloving. Most of our beliefs are based upon intellectual and emotional experiences over a lifetime. Change will not be easy. It will be easier to change intellectually than emotionally. But we can't skirt the challenges of new compelling arguments, nor can we, like Tevye in "Fiddler on the Roof," support the male-domination theory in the teaching and worship in the life of the church, simply because "we have always done it that way," or because we have falsely believed it should be done that way. What I have personally found hard to accept and admit is that the Bible itself does not make the exceptions to the silence or quietness rule. I was forced to admit that men have decided, through the process of reasoning and tradition, what our creed on the exceptions will be. Those exceptions vary from church to church, congregation to congregation, and country to country, based on men's opinions on where to draw the line. We decide the exceptions, and we should be honest and honorable enough to accept and admit that the Bible does not.

Serving and leading are not the same as dominion. Isaiah 11:6 says, "A child shall lead them," but this in no way suggests that a child shall have dominion over them. Enlightened and faithful Christians have a responsibility to prepare, teach, guide, and, in loving ways, assist churches to come to a greater knowledge of the truth, and to use the God-given talents of capable, blood-bought men and women in its work and worship. Truth demands it! Conscience demands it!

I thank God that our churches are autonomous and that each congregation may set its own pace and make its own strides in the restoration of the New Testament church on any subject of study, and, in particular, the use of women in Biblical roles in the life of the church.

I consider the failure to acknowledge or even to recognize our inconsistencies to be of greater eternal consequence than our stubborn refusal to allow women to participate, except in our traditionally approved ways. Why? Because that represents a basic flaw in character. Such failure deals with intellectual honesty, fairness and justice. We all know what the prophets of God have said about such. We are all inconsistent. However, when our inconsistencies are recognized, yet go unacknowledged or unadmitted, they become hypocrisies. It is precisely at this point that our inconsistencies become issues of Christian character.

C. Leonard Allen and Richard T. Hughes, in their book, Discovering our Roots: The Ancestry of the Churches of Christ, made a most significant statement on page 8: "If we assume that our roots are entirely sacred and not profane, entirely apostolic and not historical, entirely Biblical and not cultural, then we have elevated ourselves above the level of common humanity, and, in essence, made ourselves into gods."

We are not gods! However, we must continue to honestly seek Him and His ways. This honesty forces us to admit three truths that are central in this book:

1. We do not practice what we say the Bible teaches on women's role in the life and worship of the church. Our practices are riddled with contradictions, inconsistencies, and selective application of what we claim the Bible teaches.
2. The Bible does not teach what we have maintained it teaches. The man-woman translations can and should be translated husband-wife, in our three "proof texts," if we are ever to arrive at any consistency in what we practice and teach. It is the only way to reconcile the obvious contradictions between these three passages and a host of scriptures in both the Old and New Testaments, which clearly allow women to participate in the life and worship of God's Kingdom.
3. Our traditional views of these "proof texts" fly in the face of God's mission to save the world through teaching and preaching His word. The talents of women are being suppressed by our mistranslation and misapplication of those texts, in worship and in the fulfillment of the Great Commission.

No Christian community is free of its baggage of traditions, biases, prejudices, fears, local customs, flawed or misapplied hermeneutics, misinterpretations, and misapplied scriptures. In fact, some churches have been built upon a special single doctrine. The Seventh Day Adventist Fellowship is built around the keeping of the seventh day Sabbath. That is its most distinctive doctrine. But, for the most part, the Christian world rejects this doctrine. Why? Because it believes the Seventh Day Adventists are in error.

Every Christian community changes its doctrine or its practices for many reasons. Outsiders judge such changes to be either good or bad. Most racially segregated churches have changed both their practices and doctrinal stances on race since 1953. Yet, before that date, they often argued for segregation on scriptural grounds, i.e., Ham's so-called curse.

The same arguments against admitting blacks to white churches will be used against giving women their God-given places in the public life of the church. "It will cause division." "People will leave." "It will create tension." Thank God we rose above such crude and cowardly arguments and integrated most of our congregations because of truth. May it so be with our women. "His truth goes marching on."

The concept of restoring the New Testament Christianity on the basis of Biblical teaching is, in my view, valid and essential. There is no other basis for a united church in a divided world.

Those who believe in this restoration principle still have baggage. Otherwise, we would be united. But we are not. Every generation debates old and new issues. No one can speak ex cathedra. Some unofficially dare to.

The Restoration goes on. Christian integrity, intellectual honesty, academic freedom, and a humble spirit force all men of good will to reexamine positions, accept new truth, and move forward in building up the Lord's Church.

In preparation for this study, I read the New Testament through two times to try to find one thing which precluded women that Christ or the writers taught disciples to do to spread the Kingdom, encourage the weak, teach and preach the Gospel, comfort the troubled, exhort, admonish, minister to the needy, serve in worship, or supervise activities of the church. I found only one - those who qualify for the eldership.

I believe that when I Corinthians 11:2-16; 14:34-35, and I Timothy 2:8-15 are properly translated and interpreted, all other passages become fully consistent.

When we acknowledge the logic and scripturalness of this change we will no longer have the hobgoblins of our "inconsistency" staring us in the face, nor will we be forced to use highly questionable mental gymnastics, wrested scriptures and contorted practices to justify our present exceptions to the three proof texts.

We can maintain our moral integrity and our intellectual honesty and get on with doing God's will in giving women their proper place in God's Kingdom along with Greeks and slaves.

Otherwise, we will remain in our prison cells with the bars in place on the windows. We will live in a state of denial while we continue conducting seminars on "Why the world will not come to Christ" or "Why so many are leaving the church" and "Why we can't all see the Bible alike."

Informed, thoughtful, and courageous people will no longer take the pat, uninformed, contradictory and inconsistent answers given by the dominant male figures in the church on these hard questions.

Free men and women - freed by the blood of Christ - will no longer follow those in authority who put them in or keep them in shackles of intellectual and spiritual slavery. Serious, qualified leaders will respond to truth and positive change in the church.

Others, sadly, will die from an imposed slavery of the minds and souls of the membership. Many will resist Biblical change and further search for truth and remain shackled by the need for acceptance and the security of our traditions. Like children with their security blankets, some brethren will refuse to turn loose the baggage which both binds and blinds, because the comfort of assumed orthodoxy has become more important than their quest to more fully understand God's will. Some also need to dominate others, especially women. Many will continue to get their satisfaction and status from dominion, rather than shared service.

May it not be so among discerning Christians. May God give us the wisdom and courage to expand and enhance the restoration of God's Kingdom.