On Women in the Church

Jon and I recently completed a four-part series (hopefully one more!) on women in leadership for our podcast Theology Jam. In the series, we laid out our case for why a full egalitarian position is theologically and biblically responsible.

However, if you asked me for my elevator pitch on why women should be in leadership, I would say three words: "The Holy Spirit!" Not only is there an engaging conversation to be had about the Holy Spirit opening up feminine imagery for religious experience, I have yet to hear a convincing argument that the Holy Spirit only equips men for leadership. This is patently obvious for anyone who works with women. Simply put, there is a strange cruelty in the Holy Spirit equipping and calling women into leadership, only to have them submit those abilities and qualities to a man, simply because of their gender. Can this really be our theological position? Thankfully, there is more than enough historical and biblical evidence that women were critical leaders in the early church. There is also a strong critical argument to be made that a process of biblical redaction occurred in the pastoral epistles to correct Paul and the early church's radical inclusion of women as leaders.

I will leave that conversation for a future day.