The author, reflecting on a recent SBC vote barring churches that let women function as pastors, argues that this restriction is a recent development and not Baptist tradition. She contends it is driven by power as well as theology, with echoes of the SBC's pro-slavery past, and says it inconsistently allows women to lead on the mission field. She reads Scripture, especially Phoebe and Romans 16, as showing women in ministry, and calls the church to ask whom God has called and equipped. She presents the freedom of women in the kingdom as the way of Jesus.
Reviewed
Its text teaches none of the positions Doxa lists.
Healthy churches disperse power and let the Holy Spirit work through every believer, as at Pentecost.
- Rejects· Many SBC leaders
Baptists have always opposed women preaching, and changing this means bending to woke feminism.
Baptist women preached and were ordained long before feminism, and restriction on women is a recent shift from the SBC's conservative resurgence of the 1980s, which backtracked from earlier openness to women.
Baptists split over slavery, with the SBC being pro-slavery.
The SBC has not always opposed abortion. In the 1970s many of its leaders supported legal abortion in exceptional cases, which shows the current conservative position is not how it has always been.
Churches should not exclude congregations where women function in pastoral roles. The SBC's ambiguous wording could bar women from much of what they already do in their churches, and would even exclude churches that honor famous women missionaries.
Allowing a woman to lead only men of a different ethnicity or skin color, as some do for missionaries, reveals a hidden racism.
The male power that once sought to control Black men is now seeking to control women. SBC restrictions on women come from theology plus power, over who stays in charge and who decides who is in or out, and not from theology and Scripture alone.
Egalitarian scholars argue for mutuality in the kingdom of God, where there is no male or female, and not for one group to hold power over others.
Demanding a biblical "Pastor Phoebe" is the wrong test, because Scripture gives the title "pastor" to no specific man or woman. Paul uses terms like coworker and minister/deacon for both men and women.
Phoebe was a diakonos (deacon/minister) of the church at Cenchrea, though most English translations render it "servant" because she is female, and in Romans 16 Paul names seven women who minister or function as pastors.
The church should stop framing women in ministry as a question of power and who leads, and ask instead who God has called and equipped for a task, as with the custodial responsibility God gave Adam and Eve.
God has called and equipped women to preach and teach, and women should keep doing so even when parts of the church tell them they are sinning.
Jesus did not come to create barriers for some people. He was angry only when spiritual leaders kept others from entering the kingdom, and freedom and equality for women in the kingdom is coming.
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