We Must Cease Being Male-Dominated. . .

WHAT MUST THE CHURCH OF CHURCH
DO TO BE SAVED? (9)

If the Church of Christ is to have an effective witness going into the 21st century, it must make some changes in reference to the place of women in the church. These changes need not be what most of its members would consider radical changes, such as having women as elders or pulpit ministers, but they must be substantial enough to reflect a change in attitude and practice. If there is a concise way to say it it would be the Church of Christ must cease being male-dominated. Corporate worship is male-dominated, structures are male-dominated, teaching is male-dominated, decision-making is male-dominated. The over-all attitude is male-dominated.

It is not evident that we really believe, “In Christ there is neither male nor female,” as Gal. 3:28 urges upon us. If that truth means anything it means that in the Body of Christ gender is not to be an issue. The Church of Christ must take steps to demonstrate that it really believes that oneness in Christ transcends gender. It means that when a member functions as part of the Body it will not matter what sex that member is, just as it will not matter what race the member is.

I submit a list of suggestions of what can be done immediately to help correct what might well be our most besetting sin, the way we treat our sisters in Christ. These are small steps to take, but they will prove liberating, and they are things we can do at once. Not a one of them would violate any Scripture, and they call only for an end to some of our traditions that have no validity. They are not necessarily listed in order of importance.

I. Let the women make some of the announcements and share in welcoming the visitors. This is an important part of the service in all our congregations, especially on Lord’s day morning, but it is always done by men. In doing this they should stand before the congregation, behind the pulpit if need be, just as the men do. In my 60 years in the Church of Christ I have never seen a woman make the announcements or express a welcome. This is a simple matter. We can start next Sunday. This one change might do wonders, one being the congregation might better listen to the announcements! And visitors might feel more welcome!

2 Let our sisters be used in the “Call to Worship,” which many of our churches are now having, or “start the service” in those that do not use that terminology. This part of our Sunday morning service could be greatly enriched, and our women would do it beautifully.

3. Let the women read the Scriptures as part of public worship. This too is hardly ever done in a Church of Christ, but it is a step that could easily be taken, next Sunday. It could be the beginning of our taking the public reading of Scripture more seriously. Through the centuries the church catholic has taken seriously the public reading of the Bible, usually from both Testaments and at every service. Over and over again the NT urges upon us the public reading of the word of God. When we read the Bible at all it is rather poorly done and is not taken seriously. We would do well to follow “the church year” of selected passages, and thus join other churches in what is being read around the world in all the churches. It would be greatly enhanced if much of this were done by the women, who would be encouraged to prepare the week before for the Sunday readings.

4. Let the sisters be part of those who lead the public prayers. Only those who are gifted in this ministry should be used and not “just anybody as long as its a male,” which is our present practice. Our prayers are often dull, repetitious, sterile, humdrum, and so often they are the same old thing sprinkled with Church of Christ cliches, such as “guide, guard, and direct,” “ready recollection,” and “if we have been found faithful.” For the most part we are uncreative and unimaginative in our prayers. The one who leads seldom praises God and almost never lays bare the soul of the congregation before God. In short, we know almost nothing about leading God’s people in prayer. We should have a prayer committee that meets through the week for prayer about leading prayer the next Sunday. Careful preparation should be made. Taking a congregation before the throne of God should be done with great reverence and seriousness. Let’s start improving along these lines by turning some of it over to our sisters. Let a woman chair the prayer committee, and watch our prayers take on new life! Those who would deny a woman a part in “the prayers of the church” need to explain why it is that when we assemble in God’s house and address Him as our heavenly Father that only His sons may address Him. We gather at His board and around His hearth but only the boys can talk to Him!

5. Let us use the sisters in the serving of the Supper. And while we are at it we need to scrutinize the tasteless way we do Communion. In our larger churches this part of our service begins with those who serve “lining up down front,” usually by marching in from either side or down the aisles. There they stand, all men or boys, gazing at the rest of us and we gaze back. It is an awkward way to enter into an experience so sacred as the Lord’s supper. Again, we need a worship committee to search out more appropriate ways to do Communion, and let an innovative-thinking sister and brother serve as co-chairpersons. We could start by visiting the Presbyterians and Episcopalians and see how they do it. The Episcopalians, for instance, have kneelers, and they break bread on their knees! A Jewish-Christian congregation I attended did not use matso crackers (Lord, forgive us!), but a loaf of bread that was broken and passed (no plate) among the believers. We mistakenly presume that the Scriptures prescribe unleavened bread. They do not. The record says, “Jesus took bread. ..” He took the bread common to his culture. If it was unleavened it was because that was all there was in the house since it was the Jewish passover. He did not choose unleavened bread, and he did not prescribe such. If we do as he did, we would “take bread” common to our culture. When I was in Thailand we “took rice,” caked like bread. I would suggest a large, handsome French loaf, for it beautifully represents the one Body of Christ. Let the sisters in on it. They’ll find edifying ways to do the Supper.

6. Let the big girls serve as greeters and ushers and let the little girls take up and pass out the cards. Do you realize that a little girl in a Church of Christ grows up among us and never does a single thing? Little boys can pass out the cards but not the little girls. It only shows that we start male-domination early. A girl soon realizes that lines are drawn because “I’m not a boy,” even among people who are supposed to believe that in Jesus Christ gender does not matter.

7. We must overcome the mentality that says a woman cannot teach a man. If we hold to this tradition by quoting Scripture, we must realize that the Bible can be quoted both ways on that point. We live in a world where women rule nations, govern states, serve in Congress, preside over large corporations and universities, and work as professors and teachers. They are engineers, judges, doctors, surgeons, architects, jet pilots, and TV news anchors. But in a Church of Christ a woman who serves as a professor of English at the local university cannot teach a class made up of men and women. She can’t even teach a class with a 12-year old boy in it if he happens to have been baptized! We don’t deserve to be saved if we do not shrug off such nonsense as that!

8. Let our women share in the decision-making process, including the hiring and firing of all church personnel. This can be done through the makeup of committees where women should serve as chairpersons as well as men. An advisory committee, a sizable one in our larger congregations, could serve the elders in studying problems and recommending solutions. The elders, both out of wisdom and for their own protection, should take seriously the advice of such an advisory council. I can see co-chairpersons of such a committee, one a man and one a woman, reporting to the elders “the mind of the congregation,” to use a Quaker expression, on some issue before the church. Wise elders would be slow to act against the advice of such a group, half of whom should be women. This would distribute decision-making throughout the congregation, which is the way it should be in a democratic society, and it would draw upon the wisdom of our women. When there are congregational business meetings women should lead and be heard from as much as men.

9. We can start now in including women in the diaconate. Numerous references in the NT make it evident that women served as deacons (not deaconesses, no such term in the NT) in the earliest churches. There are encouraging signs that Churches of Christ have begun to consider the role of women as deacons, one being a book published in 1989 by Stephen Sandifer of the Southwest Central Church of Christ in Houston on Deacons: Male and Female? with the subtitle “A Study for Churches of Christ. “ This book not only finds support for female deacons in the NT and early church fathers but from our own pioneers in the Restoration Movement as well. The author concludes that eventually the Churches of Christ might well have some congregations with no deacons at all, some with only male deacons, and some with deacons male and female, and all the options will have support in the NT and in the history of the church.

These are things we can do now, and we must begin liberating ourselves on this issue or we’ll be left behind. One might argue that my position would call for women as public preachers and elders as well as these other ministries. Perhaps so, but we have to be realistic. Let’s cross the bridges as we get to them. These are things that we can and must do now. Women elders and evangelists are bridges far down the road, bridges we may never come to.

It is like the Roman Catholic theologian I read lately who insists that the pope in Rome will one day be a woman. There is no doubt about it, he insists. It may be a long time in coming but it will come, he says. Well, the Churches of Christ may one day have women as elders and preachers, but it may be about the same time the Roman Catholics have a woman pope! The Roman Catholics, who have long been male-dominated in their services, have already begun to do a number of the things listed above, including women readers. We too can begin to change, now!

It is not my intention in this installment to deal at length with those passages in Paul that restrict the ministry of women, which are partly the cause of our male-domination, along with hearty doses of tradition and male chauvinism. All through the years we have quoted “Let the women keep silent in the churches,” but we have made little effort to harmonize that with “Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.” which comes out of our favorite chapter, Acts 2. We quote “I suffer not a woman to teach or to usurp authority over a man, but to be in silence,” but neglect those verses by the same apostle that allows a woman to speak and prophesy so long as she has her head covered.

Along the way we have made little effort to relate such divergence by an appeal to the key passage: “In Christ there is neither male nor female.” We have a way of picking and choosing what we want from Scripture, based as much upon our prejudices as our passion for truth.

I have no interest in “explaining away” those verses where Paul orders women to be silent in church. As we say of other things, “He said what he meant and meant what he said.” Those to whom he was writing should have heeded what he wrote as an apostle of Christ. The question for us is whether he would say the same thing to the churches of the 20th and 21st centuries. The NT makes no claim to be a detailed guide for all succeeding generations, certainly not on secondary issues. It is generally conceded that changing cultural conditions may effect the way a passage is to be applied.

We have no problem applying the label “Does Not Apply” to numerous things in the NT. The injunction to “Greet one another with a holy kiss” appears five times in the NT. A clear command, but we say that it does not apply to us as it stands. Culture, we say. Our Lord washed feet as an example to his followers, and accompanied it with a command to do likewise. Both an example and a command, but we do not take it at its face value, even though some Christians do. Culture, we say. The same is true of the woman’s head covering and long hair. Even the four “necessary things” decided on by the apostles and the Holy Spirit in Acts 15:28-29 we have no problem ignoring with a clear conscience. Custom, we say. The same with the communal plan in the Jerusalem church of owning everything in common (Acts 4:32). When it comes to “approved example” we pick and choose as we will.

It should not be considered strange, therefore, for one to conclude that the restrictions placed on women in the churches of the first century by the apostle Paul were influenced by social factors that might change in succeeding generations. Paul yielded to other social pressures, such as slavery and racial sensitivities, even though he knew Christ transcended such barriers.

Our key passage in Gal 3:28 not only says there is neither male nor female in Christ, but neither Jew nor Greek and neither slave nor free. And yet Paul instructed slaves to submit to their masters, and he returned a runaway slave to his owner. He also circumcised a half-Jew and shaved his own head and took temple vows in order to satisfy Jewish racial prejudices. And yet he knew that “in Christ” there were no such differences.

It is reasonable to conclude, therefore, that the apostle would enjoin things upon women that would serve to protect the church from undue criticism from outsiders. In Paul’s world women were hardly more than chattel property. Their word did not count in a court of law. They did not speak in public, and walked not beside but behind their menfolk. In her own home she did not eat at the same table with men. It was part of the synagogue service that a man would thank God for two things, that he was not a Gentile and he was not a woman.

Couple this with the likelihood that when some Christian women realized they were free in Christ they may well have become overly enthusiastic in expressing themselves in church. So Paul laid down some restrictions, but it is a mixed bag. He says “It is shameful for a woman to speak in church” (Shameful before God or in the eyes of the public?), and yet he allows her to both pray and prophesy so long as her head is covered (Would this temper criticism from without?).

To apply this mixed bag, which is unclear at best, to all succeeding generations irrespective of changing customs is a bit much. Paul also says that “nature” teaches that it is a shame for a man to have long hair, but again he must be referring to local prejudices, for throughout history “nature” has taught no such thing. Jesus probably had long hair, and one dear soul by the name of Absalom in the OT had hair so long that it got caught in the branches of a tree!

Again, we must begin and end this question with the apostle’s enduring principle, one that was revolutionary in its day: In Christ there is neither male nor female. Paul could not or would not fully implement this principle in his own situation, probably because of social pressures. The question for us in our day is whether we can and should fully implement it. In a world where women are increasingly gaining their civil rights and where they serve alongside men in all walks of life it is irresponsible for us to say to them that they can’t speak in church.

The final arbiter on such matters is our Lord Jesus Christ. Even the apostle Paul said he is to be followed only as he followed Christ. And we can believe that Paul’s “neither male nor female” principle came from Jesus Christ. Who can believe that Jesus, who scorned every social bias that separated people, is pleased with a male-dominated church? He talked openly to women when he wasn’t supposed to, socialized with them, accepted service from “many women” (Lk. 8:3) who traveled with him, and even referred to one as “a daughter of Abraham” (Lk. 13:16), an unheard of expression in the male-dominated Jewish world.

The only hint that Jesus, like Paul, might have subordinated woman to man is that he did not choose a woman to be an apostle. But neither did he select a Gentile. His mission was to the Jews first, and the number twelve, no more and no less, was probably because what that number meant to the Jews, the twelve patriarchs, twelve tribes, etc. He was creating a witnessing Jewish community that by circumstance excluded women from the inner apostolic circle. But they were very much a part of his ministry and of his life, private and public. Even prostitutes!

In every generation Scripture must be interpreted in keeping with the Spirit of Christ. If an interpretation relegates women to a subordinate and demeaning role in a world where women are being liberated that interpretation must be suspect, either of being misunderstood or being misapplied to our day and time, for it is contrary to the Spirit of Christ.

It is not too late for the Church of Christ to be saved. Its women will help save it. But they have to be given a chance.—the Editor

Let Us Hear From You

This series on what the Church of Christ must do to be saved will not be complete without hearing from those of you who read the series, for you are out there among the congregations and you have your own idea about how things are going. As you see it, what changes, if any, should we be making? If you had a chance to have your say, what would you say we must do to be saved, if anything? Or if you are witness to changes already taking place, share it with us, for it would be encouraging to others. What do you see as our greatest strength, our most serious weakness, our most pressing need? We will not quote you if you request it, but it is important that you let us know what you are thinking on this crucial issue.—the Editor