United Methodist Church - Women As Pastors

My last four posts may seem like I'm attacking the United Methodist Church. I'm not. Each of the problems I wrote about are not the result of United Methodist doctrine. United Methodist doctrine, as published in the Book of Discipline, is sound with only two exceptions that I've noticed... one of which I'll discuss in this article -- women as pastors.

The United Methodist Church allows the ordination of women as pastors. As we will see, although not prohibited by the Bible, there is a Biblical problem with this in some circumstances.

An article in the current issue of The Progressive Christian Magazine (a United Methodist related publication) discusses the topic of women as pastors. I'd like to use that article as the jumping off point for this discussion. There is a lot in the article and I'll talk about those other points in a future post.

The article is called "Blaming Our Ugliness on God" by The Rev. Scott Campbell. Concerning women as pastors he begins by stating:

"...even more distressing is the willingness of so many religious people to offload responsibility for the basest inclinations onto Scripture, canon law and books of church order, thus insulating themselves from the responsibility to be personally accountable for their decisions and actions."

This statement sounds like someone who is claiming Judges 21:25 as the way to live our lives -- "everyone did as he saw fit". Except in Judges everyone doing as they see fit, making their own decisions and actions independent of God, was not a good thing. Here Rev. Campbell is implying it is a good thing.

Rev. Campbell continues in the next paragraph by implying that not allowing women as pastors is something conservatives incorrectly blame on the Bible. He feels they should take personal responsibility for this:

"Bishops and others in authority would have to look candidates for ministry in the eye and declare, 'I judge you unfit for ministry because you are a woman. I hereby take full responsibility for denying your call.'""

In other words, Rev. Campbell is saying that the Bible does not prohibit women from being pastors, it is the men in some churches who are preventing women from being pastors. We'll look at scripture and see if this is true in a moment.

A few paragraphs later he states:

"We could go on to cite numerous all-too-familiar instances of the ways in which even the most conservative churches pick and choose which Biblical mandates they consider binding. Few 'Bible-believing' churches today, for example, insist on a literal adherence to Paul's injunction against women speaking in church. Suffice it to say that no sane person can claim to be an absolute biblical literalist."

He's stated two things: the Bible does not prohibit women from being pastors and although the Bible says women may not speak in church, no one follows this command. This implies that if the Bible did prohibit women from being pastors, we should ignore that prohibition. The reality is that his understanding of these teachings is 180 degrees un-Biblical in both cases.

Women Speaking In Church

So what does the Bible say? Here are the verses that talk about women not speaking in church:

1 Corinthians 14:34 says, "women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak..."

It seems straight-forward and clear... except that by quoting just this verse we are reading it totally out of context.

In 1 Corinthians 14, verses 26-40 Paul is talking about conducting worship services in an orderly manner. For example, people speaking in tongues or speaking prophecy are instructed to not do so all at once, but speak in an orderly manner so that it may strengthen the church.

How we interpret a verse must fit within the context of the surrounding verses as well as the entire Bible. In other parts of the Bible we read about women prophets and women deaconesses. These are positions that would result in women speaking in church. Also notice that in verse 26 Paul says "everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, or revelation, a tongue or interpretation." The term "everyone" includes men and women, so both men and women are speaking and worshipping in church.

If he is not telling women they can't speak in church, what is Paul talking about in verse 34? Notice that verse 35 goes on to say:

"If they [women] want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home..." The overall problem Paul is discussing is disorderly behavior in church. Apparently some women in the Corinthian church were behaving in a disorderly manner, speaking out of turn, questioning others and disrupting the church service. He is telling them to be quiet, don't disrupt the service. They should raise their inquires and objections at home, so they can be dealt with in a manner that is not disruptive.

This is why conservative churches do not take these verses to mean woman can not speak in church. That is not consistent with other Scripture and these verses do not say that. They say that women (and men) should not be speaking out in a disruptive manner in church.

Women as Pastors

The verse that is taken to say women can not be pastors is 1 Timothy 2:12. However, this verse does not say that. Here is what it says:

"I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man..."

Again we can not yank this verse out of it's context. We must understand it based on the immediate context of the verses around it, as well as in the context of the complete Bible.

This instruction is given in the context of Paul's instructions for worship (verses 1 through 15). In other places in the Bible women do have authority over men. For example, Deborah was a prophetess and a leader of Israel. She had authority over men. In the 1st Timothy context Paul is saying that women are not to have spiritual authority over men. They are not to be teachers of men in the context of spiritual teaching.

This means that a woman may be a pastor, if she is pasturing a church that only has women and children. Since part of a pastor's job is to teach and be a spiritual authority, a woman may not be a pastor of a church that has men as members.

For example, in a large church a woman might be the administrative head of the church, placing her in administrative authority over a male pastor. She may teach the pastor skills such as accounting or facility management. But she may not be in spiritual authority over the male pastor.

Paul makes it very easy for us to put this command in the context of the rest of Scripture. Paul goes to Genesis to back it up.

1 Timothy 2:12-14 says: "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner."