Men
6 12 14 20 24 25
The new Christian ethic that arises out of a text focused on equality and oneness.
by Mimi HaddadSpeaker Highlight: Michelle T. Sanchez Awareness and courage are key to achieving color-courageous biblical equality.
Workshop Preview: Resolving Five Complementarian Protests to Priscilla the Pastor-Teacher
We cannot dismiss Priscilla’s significant leadership roles in the early church.
by Terran WilliamsSpeakers Highlight: Beth Birmingham and Eeva Sallinen Simard
We need to elevate women into more leadership roles in the NGO sector.
Workshop Preview: “Male, Female, Slave, and Free in the Context of a Pandemic: In the Thought of Katharine Bushnell”
Katharine Bushnell’s ministry among women trapped in sexual slavery has much to teach us.
by Boaz JohnsonWorkshop Preview: Faith and Unity in Diversity: For the Good of Girls Worldwide Christianity’s historical focus on diversity and inclusion has been good for girls from the start.
by Kimberly Dickson
Mutuality is published quarterly by CBE International, 122 W Franklin Ave, Suite 218; Minneapolis, MN 55404-2451.
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3 From the Editor Christ’s Permission Above All Else
22 Giving Opportunites
30 Ministry News
30 Praise and Prayer
Editor: Sarabeth Ng
Graphic Designer: Margaret Lawrence
Publisher/President: Mimi Haddad
Mutuality vol. 29 no. 2, Summer 2022
Cover design by Margaret Lawrence
Mutuality (ISSN: 1533-2470) offers articles from diverse writers who share egalitarian theology and explore its intersection with everyday life.
My husband and I have been looking for a new church since we got married a few months ago. We decided to leave the complementarian church where I had been a member since before we met. We wanted to nd a church closer to our home that also wholly a rms women. It hasn’t been a clean or easy break—the old church feels like home, and I still return once in a while to play bass for the worship team. We celebrated Easter and Mother’s Day at my parents’ complementarian church. And I’ll never forget the Sunday in April when we accidentally found ourselves in a complementarian church because we hadn’t looked at their website close enough beforehand. In all this back and forth, I’m becoming hyperaware of the di erences between egalitarian and complementarian churches and their teachings.
ere seems to be an aura of hesitancy in complementarian churches where gender—rather than gi ing—determines how people can serve. Women have learned not to ask to do certain things, like serve communion, deliver the Gospel reading during worship, stand behind the pulpit, or lead a congregational adult Bible study. At the same time there are also places men hesitate to enter—the nursery, the kitchen, the altar guild. Where women’s roles have been limited, many of us have responded by creating women’sonly spaces. We can’t preach, so we brand ourselves as the best nursery attendants. We commandeer every funeral luncheon, fundraiser, and community dinner. Women nd special fellowship in our safe spaces, where no one side-eyes us for “stepping out of line.”
I praise God for the many ways women have found to serve God and people joyfully and faithfully within the con nes of complementarian theology. But what if those con nes are not what God wants? What if God is calling women to full service within the church, and we’ve hesitated because we’re waiting for permission om the church—namely, the men in charge there? e articles in this issue of Mutuality help us see that the far-reaching implications of freedom within Galatians 3 mean we don’t need man’s permission to use the gi s God has given us. Our character and gi s—not our physical embodiment—are what qualify us for ministry.
Yet many of my complementarian friends insist that Galatians 3:28 strictly addresses the soteriological—that is, salvation. ey believe that God, through this passage, o ers redemption for all people, full stop. Christ has justi ed everyone equally through his work on the cross.
Being a free, Jewish male no longer makes you “more saved” than a Gentile slave woman. Yes, it is clear that Galatians 3, including verse 28, teaches us how Christ has freed every one of his followers—including women of any class and race—to embrace the fact that they are children of God, declared righteous by faith in Christ Jesus. All Christians are now equally forgiven.
But we cannot leave our interpretation of the text here. We must embrace Galatians 3 as a part of the larger narrative of Scripture. Knowing that Galatians 3:28 is speaking to our redemption regardless of gender, race, or class makes me ask, does this change who can approach God on behalf of the people? Before Christ, the only ones allowed to approach God were the supreme religious leaders: the high priests (men from a speci c Jewish tribe). On the Day of Atonement, the high priest would pass through the curtain into the Holy of Holies, to stand before God on his throne. ere, the high priest would make reconciliation for his own sins and the sins of all the people (Lev. 16).
But now? Now Jesus is our great high priest (Heb. 4:14–16). e curtain is torn, God the Spirit indwells all of us, and our atonement is complete. Jesus has obliterated the divisions in the temple. Access to God comes through Christ, not through a Jewish-male priesthood with its ritual taboos and temple practices that excluded Gentiles, slaves, and women. ese societal divisions died in Christ on the cross at Calvary. But there is more.
Galatians 3:28 is not only applicable to our spiritual renewal before God. Our great high priest, having made us equal in standing before God, now also calls us equally into his work, regardless of our physical nature. Being baptized into Christ and clothing ourselves in Christ ends a dualism that wrongly separates our spiritual status and calling based on our physical, embodied nature.
I beg all Christians then, and especially my complementarian brothers and sisters, to stop creating false divisions between our spiritual standing and our vocational calling. e curtain has been torn. We all may now freely approach the throne of God and minister there. We are the priesthood of all believers. Perhaps it’s time that we stop focusing on whether we are allowed to do something in our church body and instead start focusing on proclaiming the redemption freely given by God through faith in Jesus Christ—in any way God is calling us.
“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
A while back, a complementarian and I had an exchange on how to best interpret Galatians 3:28.1 Whereas egalitarians o en cite Galatians 3:28 as support for mutuality between women and men, my complementarian colleague found no evidence for social or economic equality in this text. In fact, he believes egalitarian notions obscure the deeper meaning of Galatians 3:28. Since Paul does not cite the Greek term for equality or equity (isotēs) in this text, he insists that Paul is teaching oneness in Christ, not race, gender, or socio-economic equality. is oneness in Christ is for him a far deeper, richer vision of unity that egalitarians thin, compromise, or even dismiss when advocating for race, class, or gender equality among believers.
What is more, he suggested that egalitarians attribute to Scripture ideas arising from secular documents like the US Declaration of Independence’s “All men are created equal . . .” For him, egalitarian views of individual privilege lead to “sameness,” which tragically “ attens” God’s intended diversity, especially between women and men since not all are hands or eyes or ears (1 Cor. 12:14–26). Like other complementarians, at the heart of his critique of the egalitarian view of Galatians 3:28 is a modern misrepresentation of a rst-century Christian value: oneness within Christ’s body versus equality.
Paul does not use the word “equality” (isotēs) in Galatians 3:28 precisely because there is indeed a deeper truth! Our oneness in Christ both redeems and challenges superiority and oppression due to race, class, and gender di erences. Clothed in Jesus, we are a new creation. rough the Spirit we can and should experience a new life that ultimately subdues not only death but also sin and prejudice (Rom. 6:1–23). Galatians 3:28 is shorthand for our new ethic. It is the best expression of the gospel in action and re ects Jesus’s life in us as individuals and as the church.
is is why the passage was carved on ancient baptismal pools, celebrating the Spirit’s power that moves us from death to life, and from sinful practices to holiness and justice! O en shaped like wombs, baptismal fonts welcomed Christians to enter and acknowledge death to sin and the false gods of this world. Rising out of the water—a second womb—ancient Christians acknowledged not sameness of esh (Jews, slaves, women) or body parts (hands, feet, ears, eyes) but that special unity that comes from an alignment with Christ in a new ethic. Being clothed in Jesus eradicates our human enslavement to sin! rough the Spirit’s power we celebrate a new life in harmony. e cross created a new race of people, born of the Spirit, committed to holiness and justice, without “divisions in the body, but with all its parts sharing equal concern for each other” (1 Cor. 12:25) regardless of cultural bias.
“If one (body) part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.” (1 Cor. 12 : 26)
“If one (body) part su ers, every part su ers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it” (1 Cor. 12:26). We say no to “hands only for hands,” “men only for men,” and the “powerful only for the powerful,” because we are made one in Jesus. For this reason, scholars like Gordon Fee assert that what Christ accomplished on Calvary in creating a new, united humanity becomes the work of the church in upending racial, economic, and gender barriers and hostilities.2
Some worry that equality attens human diversity, making the whole body an eye. Quite the opposite! e concern for an integration of hands, all ears, all feet in 1 Corinthians 12 is a call to welcome a diversity of gi s possessed by both women and men of all ethnic and class categories.
Exploring the spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12:14–26; Romans 12:5–8; and Ephesians 4:7, we perceive that they are indeed a call to oneness in Christ. The varied gifts necessary for healthy Christian communities work against human bias because they are embodied by a diverse humanity united in Christ.
These passages teach that in coming to faith believers receive God’s power—a super natural equipping for extraordinary service by women and men of many ethnicities and social classes. Not once do these texts align the Spirit’s empowering along gender, race, or class lines. Similar to Pentecost in Acts 2, Christians may receive a spiritual gift that proves unexpected and even challenging given human prejudice. Yet Scripture teaches us to fan into flame the gift God has given us (2 Tim. 1:6), suggesting that Christians are accountable to use their gifts. Consider how early
The varied gifts necessary for healthy Christian communities work against human bias because they are embodied by a diverse humanity united in Christ.
church leaders transcended racial, ethnic, gender, and class barriers in using their gifts to advance the gospel.3
While some fear egalitarians read Galatians 3:28 in ways that would o end ancient culture, that was Paul’s point! Newness of life in Christ is radically di erent because it challenges sinful human traditions and prejudices. For this reason, Galatians 3:28 is cited as one of the most feminist texts from antiquity.4 Oneness in Christ placed early Christian practices at odds with their cultural traditions (both Jew and Greek) because the eyes, ears, hands, and feet of the church included both women and men, slaves and free, Greeks and Jews. Even the disciples were disturbed by Christ’s welcome of outsiders: Samaritans, Gentiles, prostitutes, and tax collectors. Likewise, those under Roman law supported the rule of free over slave and male over female. Imagine their o ense in reading Paul’s letter to the church in Galatia.
To Christians in the Galatian church, Paul expressed his astonishment that they so quickly embraced a perverse gospel: one that pleases people but offends God (Gal. 1:1–10). So he reminds them that as an apostle, he received the gospel not through humans but revealed through the risen Christ himself (Gal. 1:12). Paul’s gospel promoted circumcision not of the flesh but of the heart (Rom. 2:29)! It did not divide people through food taboos but united them through agape meals where all were welcome at the table (Acts 2:42–47). Though born of Christ, the church at
Galatia experienced divisions based on race, class, and gender, which undermined their service and witness as the church.
The oneness Paul evokes among Christians in Galatia was not spiritual renewal because they were already believers! Paul is calling them to a functional and thus an ethical renewal. They were born again, but now they needed to grow up! For the sake of the church and its mission, the privileges of the Jew, the freed, and the male are now especially that of the Greek, the slave, and the female.
Consider Onesimus, Philemon’s slave. Paul calls masters to give their slaves “what is right and fair” (2 Cor. 8:13–14) just as he tells Philemon to receive Onesimus as a brother, a term that points to their oneness in Christ (Philem. 1:16). Onesimus and Philemon share a spiritual rebirth which calls them to a new ethic. Our renewal and baptism in Christ come with ethical and functional responsibilities.
What is the result of newness of life in Christ for the slave and master? Philemon releases Onesimus, and he becomes useful not only to Paul but to the entire church, eventually becoming bishop of Ephesus . In releasing Onesimus, the ethical realities of oneness, fairness, love, and justice triumph over cultural prejudice and sin’s domination.
Thus, egalitarians argue that it is not race, gender, or class that determines service but Christian character (Gal. 5:2–23).
We are committed to life and service without barriers due to human prejudice because we are a new creation made one in Christ. Indeed, equality is too thin a word compared to the oneness that results from our rebirth in Christ. And yet being clothed in Jesus as believers is also a call to a oneness of Christian ethic that dismantles racial, class, and gender barriers and hostilities within our church and world.
Consider the depth of oneness on display in Ephesians 5, not only between believers who mutually submit to one another (5:21), but also between fi st-century husbands and wives in Christian marriages. Notice that Paul appeals to those with the most cultural privilege to be the fi rst to love as Christ did, sacrificially. Husbands must be the fi rst to demonstrate their newness of life and oneness in Christ because of the cultural privilege assigned to men. Paul is asking husbands to live out a deeper Christian ethic—mutuality—because the gift of Christ upends sin’s curse (Rom. 5:15).
Our sameness of spiritual rebirth imparts a new Christian ethic, including service without prejudicial barriers. Our material or bodily differences remain part of the rich diversity God intended for humanity. They are the foundation of a strong and vital church. Unfortunately, they have too oft en resulted in divisions, marginalization, and oppression—as seen in the church at Galatia. In response, Paul elevates our union in Christ and our unity as Christians as the basis of our ultimate identity and ethical destiny—shaped not by our physical birth but by a Spirit-led rebirth.
Our newness of life in Christ is an invisible, eternal reality that forms a new human ethic—one that sin destroyed (Gen. 3:16b). Thus, egalitarians argue that it is not race, gender, or class that determines service but Christian character (Gal. 5:2–23). We appeal to a new ethic that is the fruit of oneness in Christ. The sameness egalitarians celebrate is not androgyny but a sameness of spiritual rebirth that results in holiness, justice, and the fruit of the Spirit.
We are committed to life and service without barriers due to human prejudice because we are a new creation made one in Christ. Indeed, equality is too thin a word compared to the oneness that results from our rebirth in Christ. And yet being clothed in Jesus as believers is also a call to a oneness of Christian ethic that dismantles racial, class, and gender barriers and hostilities within our church and world.
Mimi Haddad is president and CEO of CBE International. She is a graduate of the University of Colorado and Gordon Cornwell Theological Seminary (summa cum laude). She holds a PhD in historical theology from University of Durham, England. Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University awarded Mimi an honorary doctorate of divinity in 2013.
1. My response to Andrew Wilson was published by Missio Alliance in 2017 at https://www.missioalliance.org/biblical-equality/.
2. Gordon Fee, Listening to the Spirit in the Text (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 58ff.
3. Mark Reasoner, “Chapter 16 in Paul’s Letters to the Romans: Dispensable Tagalong or Valuable Envelope?” Priscilla Papers 20, no. 4 (2006): 11–16, https://www.cbeinternational.org/resource/article/priscilla-papers-academic-journal/chapter-16-pauls-letter-romans-dispensable.
4. Daniel Boyarin, “Paul and the Genealogy of Gender,” Representations , no. 41 (1993): 1–33, https://melc.berkeley.edu/Web_Boyarin/ BoyarinArticles/67%20Paul%20and%20the%20Genealogy%20of%20Gender%20(1993).pdf.
Due to the declining biblical literacy among Christians and the consequent lack of awareness of women in Scripture and missions, CBE created weekly Christian radio spots that highlight these women. Their stories provide the church with a window into how women are an integral part of God's work in our world. Our goal is to show that women were created in God's image as a strong rescue, and through the power of the Holy Spirit they prophesy, heal, preach, teach, create, lead, fight, nurture, protect, and disciple others.
We are grateful for our partnership with Salem Media Atlanta* to increase our reach and tell the stories of women in Scripture and mission through radio. Listeners are told to visit radiowomen.org for more information, which redirects them to CBE’s “Women in Scripture and Mission” web page at cbe.today/womenscripture. So far, we have seen an increase in traffic to the website within eight minutes of our thirty-second radio spots. *104.7
For the past seven years I have served as the national discipleship leader for the Evangelical Covenant Church denomination—a job I was created to do! Prior to this role I served as a discipleship pastor at a local Covenant church in the Boston area.
Just by virtue of who I am and the ministry I do, God has blessed me with a unique perspective. I’m an ordained female pastor serving as a senior leader of an evangelical institution. I’m also African American and serving in a denomination that has been pioneering racial discipleship ministry for many years.
What all this means is that I’ve had the opportunity to think a lot about discipleship, gender, and race—as well as the intersections of all three. And I do believe that I have wisdom to share.
ere are two key things that I would love to cover—awareness and courage. First, whether we like it or not, race impacts everything. We need a greater awareness of this. Racial inequity impacts everything, even in communities that have the best of intentions and are already doing very good work in other spheres. is is also true, of course, with feminist movements. In recent years more and more people have come to understand that in both secular and evangelical feminism, women of color have not been adequately represented.
Second, in order to make a di erence and move toward racial equity, we need courage! Advancing racial equity is risky for everyone in di erent ways. So we need to learn to access the courage that our Lord Jesus Christ has given us through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Many people think of “womanism” as a niche category with relevance only for some people—namely, Black women. In reality, though, there is profound wisdom that a womanist perspective can o er to the church.
Why is that? Because Black women have typically been the most disadvantaged in our society by nearly every measure. But Jesus says that it is the “poor in spirit” who are blessed, and it is the last who will be fi rst. So, in my opinion, Black women in particular have many riches to offer the larger church. Galatians 3:28 is, for me, a “womanist” Scripture! Here the Apostle Paul names the categories of ethnicity, gender, and class, saying we need to be mindful of all three of these categories and understand their significance—as well as their insignificance, in a way. We need to have that dual kind of awareness in the kingdom of God.
I love CBE’s focus on gender. But there is still a way that a kind of intersectional awareness would be so beneficial for CBE’s mission. Womanist wisdom can help contribute to that.
I’ll just say this: one of the things I struggled with for many years, and especially in seminary, was wrestling with the Lord about my identity as a low- to middle-class Black female called to work within a predominantly White evangelical church. Sometimes it seemed like the Lord had put me in the wrong body. But in seminary I remember reflecting a lot on Galatians 3:28—I even wrote an entire paper on it. And it brought me so much hope! The Lord knows who I am, and he understands those who tend to be marginalized in each category—race, gender, and class. He sees each one—and he gives great gifts. Galatians 3:28 has encouraged me to not be ashamed of who I am, but to understand I’ve been designed exactly as God intended. He sees all these categories that I am a part of; he understands their implications. And he doesn’t have any intention for them to stop me from offering great riches to the body of Christ.
Sure—I am excited about the possibility of seeing more evangelical womanist thought leaders rise up in CBE’s ministry. So come on out to this year’s conference, and let’s get started!
Michelle T. Sanchez (MDiv, ThM) is executive minister of Make and Deepen Disciples for the Evangelical Covenant Church of America.
In my upcoming lecture, “Why Pastor Priscilla Ends Christian Patriarchy,” at CBE's 2022 International Conference, I will present a new line of biblical argumentation to support what I deem to be the near-certain conclusion that Priscilla was not only a doctrinal teacher, but also— and somehow most egalitarian literature has missed this—a pastor/elder.
You will have to attend the conference to hear this new approach to harmonizing the biblical data. For now, I will share the five pushbacks that I suspect complementarians will offer in attempt to refute my conclusion
that Priscilla was a pastor/elder— not just a doctrinal teacher.
Pushback One: 1 Timothy 2:12, written by Paul, debars a woman from teaching and leading men, and therefore it is impossible that women taught or led in any church that existed under his auspices.
Perhaps the single greatest aw in the complementarian armor is its “certainty” that 1 Timothy 2:12 constitutes a universal ban on women in senior teaching or leadership roles in churches. Without going into the speci c situation in the Ephesian church that Paul is addressing, or the line of thought in 2:11–15, or
the numerous word studies that lead to di erent interpretations, we have the hermeneutical principle of Scripture being the nal interpreter of Scripture. In other words, when we can interpret a di cult passage in several possible ways, we should prefer those ways of interpreting it that harmonize with the teaching of other clear passages.
So nothing casts doubt on the complementarian interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:12 like nding a woman in the early church who is a pastor-teacher. As we witness Priscilla in full ight as a pastorteacher, we must conclude that either she is sinfully disobeying God’s alleged complementarian preference
In ancient patriarchal literature it is rare to even mention the wife at all, and even more rare to mention a wife’s name first . Some claim this is merely a coincidence. But the fact that both Paul and Luke name her ��rst in their respective writings and the fact that they do so four (not merely one or two) out of six times tells us this is noteworthy.
or, far more likely, she is completely unaware of any divine rule that states a woman should not spiritually teach or lead a man.
Complementarians deem the meaning of “teach” in 1 and 2 Timothy to be doctrinal teaching by those in pastoral authority. In that case Priscilla may be the best biblical example of the principle of 2 Timothy 2:2. Paul, who has taught Timothy, tells him now to teach other people, who in turn will teach other people. It makes sense, then, that in Acts 18 we learn that Priscilla, having been taught doctrine by Paul, teaches it to Apollos, who goes on to be one of the greatest teachers in the early church. In my lecture I will explain further how Priscilla’s role as pastor-teacher to an adult man, Apollos, is in fact the clear teaching of Scripture, and therefore it should be decisive in interpreting
the cloudy 1 Timothy 2 passage, which should then be deemed to be Paul’s situation-speci c counsel.
Pushback Two: Aquila, Priscilla’s husband, was the pastor-teacher, while Priscilla merely supported him.
In complementarian circles today, it is common to speak of “ministry couples.” As wonderful as this term seems, what they mean is that the husband is the leader, and the wife is his able helper (in line with John Piper’s claim that Eve was Adam’s “loyal and suitable assistant”1). Without the husband’s leadership gi s opening the door for the couple, the wife has little chance of ever exercising her own leadership gi s. In this instance, then, Aquila was the pastor while Priscilla was merely his helper.
But the leader-helper model is extremely unlikely in the case of
Priscilla and Aquila. Of the six times Paul and Luke name the pair in the Bible, they name Priscilla first four of those times.2 To modern ears that might not mean much, but in ancient patriarchal literature it is rare to even mention the wife at all, and even more rare to mention a wife’s name first. Some claim this is merely a coincidence. But the fact that both Paul and Luke name her first in their respective writings and the fact that they do so four (not merely one or two) out of six times tells us this is noteworthy.
So if it’s more than coincidence, what does it mean? Some scholars say that this merely shows that Priscilla had social prominence. Perhaps she was highborn and Aquila was lowborn, or she was a Roman citizen and he was not. But this sidesteps the more obvious meaning. Whenever the New Testament writers consistently
name someone rst, it is usually a testament to their ministry prominence (which, in turn, relates to their speci c gi ing). is is why Luke and the other gospel writers always name Peter rst in the list of the apostles’ names. It is why Luke in Acts names Barnabas before Paul when referencing their ministry partnership in the church of Antioch, but when they hit the missionary road and Paul’s preaching and miraculous ministry goes to another level, from then on Luke names Paul rst.
To further explore this, I reviewed all the named married couples in the Bible. I found that in only three other couples is the wife named before the husband: the judge Deborah before Lappidoth, the prophetess Huldah before Shallum, and Mary before Joseph. In all those places, mentioning
the women rst emphasizes their more prominent ministry. So why would this not lead us to conclude the same about Priscilla?
Pushback Three: “Elder” and “pastor” are masculine words, and therefore, no matter how gifted and honored Priscilla was, the one thing she could not be was a man and thus, an elder.
is objection misunderstands that ancient Greek was androcentric and therefore centered on the male. In that language, people-nouns are either masculine or feminine, without a neuter option. e only times a feminine form is used is when it refers only to a woman or to a group of women. When referring only to a man or men or to a mixed group of men and women the male noun form is used.
When Peter addresses the thousands of men and women in the crowd at Pentecost, he calls them by the male nouns “brothers” and “men.” Similarly, when referring to “disciples” in the book of Acts, even where females are clearly present, the male form is nonetheless used. is androcentric use of language was so common that sometimes even a solitary woman in a leadership o ce could be described with the male noun—for example, Phoebe, though female, is called a deacon not deaconess in Romans 16:1.
This means that when we read that Paul “appointed elders in each church” (Acts 14:23) there may have been women in the batch, or at the very least the use of the word “elder” is not in and of itself a sign that Paul did not appoint female elders. Of course in the highly patriarchal culture of the time, it would be
When Peter addresses the thousands of men and women in the crowd at Pentecost, he calls them by the male nouns “brothers” and “men.” Similarly, when referring to “disciples” in the book of Acts, even where females are clearly present, the male form is nonetheless used. This androcentric use of language was so common that sometimes even a solitary woman in a leadership o���ce could be described with the male noun—for example, Phoebe, though female, is called a deacon not deaconess in Romans 16:1.
quite likely that many churches would have an all-male team. Yet this was not necessarily always the case, especially if Priscilla was in the church at that time.
Pushback Four: The original Jerusalem church—something of a prototype church—was led only by males.
It’s true that the male apostles led the Jerusalem church (Acts 1–5), and then they appointed seven men to help them lead (Acts 6–8), but neither fact serves as a universal template for all churches. e symbolic importance of the Twelve being male aside, we must remember that, like every church, the Jerusalem church was shaped by its local situation. In Acts 6 for example, the church, not the apostles, selected seven men to deal with the major con icts between the vulnerable, widowed women who were Grecian Jews and those who were Hebrew Jews. In that Palestinian culture, it was expected that marginalized women who needed someone to protect and advocate for them would choose free men (not other women and not slaves) to do so.
We can learn more about the apparent male-centricity of the Jerusalem church. New theological realities,
unleashed by the resurrection of Jesus and the gi of the Spirit, nevertheless take some years to soak into the edgling rst-century church. As we read the book of Acts from beginning to end, we notice some progression in practices. At the risk of being oversimplistic, we can divide the “early church” era in the New Testament into two phases. For the rst decade, the church is a primarily Jewish sect in Jerusalem. en it rapidly spreads beyond its Jewish base into Asia Minor and Europe, where it becomes a primarily Gentile community. ere is a clear movement from Jewish only to Jewish and Gentile leadership, a process that takes time even though from the outset, theologically speaking, “there is neither Jew nor Gentile” (Gal. 3:28). Well, something similar can be speculated about the slow progress the church makes in fully deploying women, even though from the outset, theologically speaking, “nor is there male and female” (Gal. 3:28).
Which of these two phases in the New Testament church is most resonant with contemporary churches? Although we may draw inspiration from the Jerusalem church of 35 AD, we would probably be better guided by the Ephesian church of 52 AD, as it was planted and led by Priscilla
and Aquila, and the Roman church of 57 AD—no longer a Jewish sect (the big idea of Rom. 1–15), and no longer male-dominated (the big idea of Rom. 16, where Paul pours accolades on more women than men for their ministry roles).
Pushback Five: In Paul’s lists of quali��cations for spiritual oversight, he says that an elder/ overseer needs to be a one-wife man (Titus 1:6; 1 Tim. 3:2).
is is the only evidence in these lists that Paul may only have men in mind. By using the word “whoever,” Paul in 1 Timothy 3:1 invites women, also, to desire the noble task of pastoring. en there is not a single masculine pronoun in either of the lists of 1 Timothy 3 and Titus. Compare that with our English translations of the list about overseers in 1 Timothy 3:1–7: “his . . . He . . . his . . . his . . . him . . . he . . . his . . . he . . . He . . . he . . . He . . . he . . .” Our English translations unfortunately force us to visualize a male in almost every line in a way the original readers would not have.
In fact, the phrase “one-wife man” is the only part of the lists that, on a surface reading, implies maleness. Yet it is actually a phrase that can be used for any generic person, male
. . . we must remember that, like every church, the Jerusalem church was shaped by its local situation. . . . New theological realities, unleashed by the resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Spirit, nevertheless take some years to soak into the ��edgling ��rst-century church.
or female. Paul, like any ancient androcentric Greek writer, used the male form of a phrase when both genders were included in a group. Jesus does something similar when he quotes the androcentrically stated law about not coveting “your neighbor’s wife,” a law that surely also applies to wives who should not covet their neighbor’s husband.
Even if Paul did mean married men who oversaw a well-ordered household, including two or more well-behaved and believing children, these circumstantial factors should be treated as generally appropriate cultural assumptions not universal legislation. Surely, we are not meant to think that single, poor, and childless men like Paul and Jesus should not be allowed to lead a church. Th is is why even a leading
complementarian scholar like Tom Schreiner writes, “The requirements for elders in 1 Timothy 3:1–7 and Titus 1:6–9, including the statement that they are to be one-woman men, does not in and of itself preclude women from serving as elders . . .”3
With these fi ve objections addressed, we have every reason to believe, and no good reason not to, that Priscilla was a full-blown pastor, teacher, and elder in her tenure at the Ephesian church, and quite plausibly also in the Corinthian church (before) and Roman church (aft er).
Now think what this means. In Priscilla we fi nd a woman who, by God’s blessing, is doing in a highly patriarchal world the very thing
complementarians say women should not do in our increasingly egalitarian one. How much more, then, should we be ready to release suitably called and gift ed women into the highest levels of contribution in the local church today?
Terran Williams from Cape Town, South Africa, is an author, church leader, dad of ve, and avid surfer. He was the long-time lead teacher of a megachurch that prided itself on its doctrinal accuracy. When tasked with researching and writing a better defense for its complementarian theology, Terran made a shocking discovery. This led to him writing the comprehensive yet accessible How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy, which Michael Bird of Evangelical Theology describes as a “meticulous case for the unity of men and women,” and Craig Keener prizes for being written with “an insider knowledge of both positions.” See terranwilliams.com for more.
into the highest levels of contribution in the local church today?
2. Priscilla and Aquila are named in Acts 18:2–3; Acts 18:18; Acts 18:26; Romans 16:3; 1 Corinthians 16:19; and 2 Timothy 4:19. Aquila is named first only in Acts 18:2–3 and 1 Corinthians 16:19.
3. Thomas R. Schreiner, “Philip Payne on Familiar Ground: A Review of Philip B. Payne, Man and Woman, One in Christ ,” Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood 15, no. 1 (2010): 35.
In Priscilla we ��nd a woman who, by God’s blessing, is doing in a highly patriarchal world the very thing complementarians say women should not do in our increasingly egalitarian one. How much more, then, should we be ready to release suitably called and gifted women1. John Piper and Wayne Grudem, eds., Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 1991), 79.
Eeva Sallinen Simard: I’m currently a project director with World Relief. My project works in international development in maternal and child health, and Covid in six countries. I’ve been in the nonpro t sector my whole career—whether in university, church, or nonpro t settings. Faith-based nonpro ts, mainly. I’m originally from Finland. I immigrated to the US about twenty years ago. I’m a mom to two teenagers. Our family lives in Baltimore.
Beth Birmingham: I spent twenty-two years at Eastern University in a school that focused on leadership development with the missional and non-government organization sector, mainly on other continents. So rather than students and leaders from the NGO world coming to us in Philadelphia, we took our graduate programs in leadership and international development to them on the eld.
I decided to leave that world in 2015 to go work for a child development NGO for a few years, and then Eeva and I started a consulting business o ering leadership development, strategic projects, and research and evaluation for the NGO space. For both of us, our entire careers have been about serving and equipping those who serve in the faith-based NGO sector. It’s a calling.
Eeva: I was working on some strategic initiatives, maybe ten years ago, and Beth at the time at Eastern was doing these leadership training consultancies with di erent NGOs. We needed leadership training at World Relief. We met rst over a phone call, and from there it just snowballed. We pulled together this awesome initiative and trained ve or six cohorts of young leaders in the organization. A er that initiative we became friends and kept in touch. Eventually we started dreaming up things, including the book that we just wrote together.
Beth: is book was actually born from a CBE conference, which is what’s bringing us back to CBE—it’s kind of a lovely, uid symmetry. We both spoke at the 2019 conference in Texas and did workshops on similar topics around women’s equality in the workplace. InterVarsity was in the audience and said, “Would you turn that topic into a book?” We agreed that we wanted to do it together. Our book will come out October 18th, 2022.
Beth: We have poured our professional experiences and research we have conducted over the years into this book. It’s about if we want to change the system of inequality, and women’s inequality really is a systemic problem in faith-based NGOs, we need to address it with a systems approach. Now, people aren’t going to be happy to hear that because they want easy answers. ey want a quick x. And this is not a quick x. Organizational culture is a priority for NGOs . . . until the next big issue knocks it o the leadership agenda. And those happen weekly. Our NGO world has been heavily exclusive, leaving women out of the signi cant decision-making. But we don’t blame men. We are caught in historical practices and systemic challenges. We need to communicate and educate people to the reality that getting the culture right is not just a “nice to have.” It is a strategic necessity for the future, for your organization. Younger generations of leaders won’t settle for work cultures that exclude women and women of color, so the war for talent is only going to get tougher for those organizations that still marginalize women when it comes to positions of in uence.
Far too much leadership is lived out in such a way that it doesn’t welcome anything but hypermasculine, hypercompetitive growth at all costs. And that is not a sustainable venture, nor is it godly. So let’s bring the Jesus that we all claim to want to serve back into the center of our organizations.
Eeva: e more diverse our leadership tables, the more the bene t, the more innovative the decision-making, the better the business outcomes, the richer the conversation, the richer the recognition of even the right questions to ask in our very complex world. e cost of ignoring women is losing all those bene ts. Some of the research shows that organizations that are identifying and recognizing that women are needed are immediately witnessing better pro t margins and better decision-making. Another very important aspect is how not including women o en gets businesses and organizations into trouble. Many cases of sexual exploitation and abuse, misconduct, and the MeToo
in en leads to human fl ourish y. We n e together now to let our sisters in Christ eated and gifted them to lead lo en are empowered to exercise their gifts as God intends, ima do for the church and the world.
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movement are a testament to the fact that power has been concentrated in the hands of very few powerful men, and we are missing checks and balances inside our organizations. ere is not enough diversity, let alone distribution of power into the hands of many in a way that decisions and the balance of power would result in safe and healthy organizations. So the inclusion of women, and diversity in leadership in general, is also a way for organizations to create guardrails and to create conditions where more people and more diverse people are heard and consulted. Organizations simply cannot a ord to continue to ignore women and ignore minorities.
Beth: I think what Galatians does is challenge the human-created power structure.
Eeva: at’s right. It’s a key verse that we also quote and expand from a lot in the book. But for me, personally, I began to see it in this light of the structures that ruled when Jesus came. He tore down those old patriarchal structures that still stand. To be part of that kingdom creation work that Jesus started, it is our calling to keep tearing down those patriarchal structures. ere can be no kingdom where those things exist—where there are these divisions between women and men. Or divisions between people of di erent races or cultures.
What’s really important is this emphasis on shared leadership. We are all called in an equal way, and that’s been, for me, very transformative. I’ve been able to see myself as an equal minister, equally called, rather than as someone’s sidekick, or the a erthought, or the other. I think that is a very healing thing to women when we reach that point in our discipleship.
Beth: Christ’s arrival moved us from being people of the law to people that were free through Christ’s work on the cross. And he didn’t just bring freedom for those that were already in positions of power and leadership. His presence brought freedom to all those who had been marginalized previously, and that was unheard of. I think that’s why it was so hard for people to embrace him. As soon as you start to preach a message of a Christ that comes to break down the barriers between man and woman and slave and free and this race and that race, people start to perceive the notion of equality as somebody’s going to have to lose, and it’s going to be those who previously had power. Dr. Christena Cleveland, a social psychologist, speaks about this reality—when you are a person who has had the privilege, as soon as you start to experience what true equality looks like, you believe now that you are oppressed. And that is what we’re challenging here.
e Galatians passage is critical to the work that we’re doing because it’s Jesus breaking past the barriers that men made back then, and men have continued to make today.
Beth: We’re just so excited to be coming back to CBE. It’s such an energizing environment. I don’t think people fully understand the impact that it has on women who have been told their entire lives that they are less-than and that God intended for them to be second. And CBE has been declaring for as long as I can remember that that is not true.
Eeva: I echo what Beth just said. We appreciate the opportunity to be back and nally spend time with everyone a er two long years apart. We’re really looking forward to it.
By Boaz Johnson
I teach at a Christian university in Chicago, Illinois, called North Park University. My students are the face of Chicago—many of them, mostly women, are secondgeneration kids of immigrants from Central and South America, India, Pakistan, China, Korea, Bosnia— really from all over the world. I try to find role models for them. Katharine Bushnell is among my favorites.
Katharine Bushnell was born in Peru, Illinois, on February 5, 1855—not too far from Chicago. She came to Northwestern University in 1873, where she was mentored by Frances Willard, who was the Dean of Women. In 1879 she went as a medical missionary to China. There she witnessed the sexual slavery of lowerlevel Chinese girls at the hands of the British and high society men. Back in the US, in 1886, she witnessed the sexual slavery of girls in the lumber camps of Wisconsin. She travelled to India in 1889, where she investigated the sexual slavery of low-caste girls at the hands of the British soldiers and the Indian high-caste men.
Bushnell was devastated by what she saw in China, the US, and India. In response she co-wrote two crucial books, The Queen’s Daughters in India (1899) and Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers (1907).
All this was happening to girls right in the middle of brutal famines and the bubonic plague. This was soon to be followed by the 1918 influenza pandemic. Millions of lives were lost. Yet the ones who suffered most were girls and women. Bushnell concluded that
girls and women were enslaved on the pretext of the famines, bubonic plague, and the pandemic.
Following her experiences in China, the US, and India, Bushnell wrote her magnum opus, God’s Word to Women (1923). She had in mind the sexually enslaved women as she studied the Bible. She struggled with the question of what it means to be “male, female, slave, and free in the context of a pandemic.”
At CBE’s 2022 International Conference, I will underline the answers found in Bushnell’s works.
Growing up in the slums of New Delhi, Boaz Johnson’s search for the meaning of life began early. When he walked to Hindu grammar school, Johnson faced a dilemma. “I encountered two di erent realities,” he says. “One was the reality of poverty, injustice, and the sexual enslavement of low-caste/outcaste girls and boys. The other was that of high-caste Hindu learning at high school.” He wrestled with this dichotomy and expanded his spiritual search. This led him to the writings of Pandita Ramabai, an amazing woman, who rescued widows and girls from the clutches of English soldiers and high-caste men. She did all this during the last pandemic and bubonic plague (1889–1918). She provided shelter for them, and educated them, so that no one would take advantage of them again. She did all this because of an encounter she had with Jesus, who did all this for the Marys of his time.
Today Johnson teaches at North Park University in Chicago and leads a PhD program at SHUATS University, Prayagraj, India. He does this to carry on the teachings of Pandita Ramabai of India.
“Male,
My family’s interracial, international adoption journey presents us with many lessons learned and the opportunity to move closer to the fullness of Galatians 3:28. I’m looking forward to sharing those lessons in Atlanta at CBE’s 2022 International Conference during my workshop, “Parenting Toward Galatians 3:28: Lessons Learned Th rough Interracial, International Adoption.” For now, I offer a preview that begins, expectedly, in Galatians.
At the end of Galatians 3, Paul presents a baptismal creed that mixes metaphors of family with Jewish election to create a new reality for believers in Christ. Jesus’s bodily representation of the religious elect—male, free, and Jewish— overturned exclusive election to now include the woman, the slave, and the Gentile.1 Beyond just becoming part of the religious elect, their unique identities were elevated as equal parts of the family, Abraham’s offspring (Gal. 3:29).
“So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.” (Gal. 3:26)
Paul spent a lot of time talking about the family of faith, speci cally encouraging and praising its diversity and unique gi ings. In another metaphor he teaches that our baptism into the Holy Spirit makes us one body, but it is our di erences—and here he references nationality and class—that make us a functional body (1 Cor. 12:12–27). We, the family and body of God, ourish best when all our di erences are honored.
As a woman, I intuitively understand that when women are excluded or limited, the church—the family of God— su ers. I understand why women from my generation are leaving the church in higher numbers than any other demographic: we have been hurt by the exclusion.2 Yet perhaps the experience that best helped me understand women’s global exclusion was my summer college internship in rural North India.
India has one of the lowest ratios of girls to boys in the world.3 Sex-based abortions, though illegal, are regularly performed to kill baby girls. Girls born alive are killed or neglected in the hopes they’ll die. I witnessed and heard doctors’ heartbroken testimonies of husbands who allowed their ill pregnant wives to die rather than allowing simple healthcare interventions. When I was interning in the hospital, I watched mothers sob at the birth of a baby girl, while others celebrated the birth of a boy.
Pandita Ramabai, a famous Hindu religious scholar in the late 1800s, attributed the severe discrimination against girls to the Hindu belief system that excludes females from moksha , or salvation.4 Ramabai converted to Christianity
because she was convinced that Jesus was good news for women. As she said, “For some years a er my baptism, I was comparatively happy to think that I had found a religion which gave its privileges equally to men and women; there was no distinction of caste, colour, or sex made in it.” 5 Like Ramabai, the Indian context revealed to me just how radical Jesus’s good news is for women. Paul’s inclusion of women in Galatians 3:28 only con rms this good news.
When my husband and I married, rather than having children through the usual route, we decided to adopt. By then I had earned my master’s in public health and devoted three more years of my life to working in rural North India. Part of my responsibilities had included overseeing adolescent girls’ clubs and literacy classes. Time and time again I would meet a brilliant young girl who had been deprived of education and thought it radical to dream that she could learn to read. I mourned not only for her and her lost opportunities, but for me and our world. What had we missed in scienti c breakthroughs, inventions, new ideas, and spiritual nurture when as a world we turned our back on these girls? It was in these rural Indian villages that I knew if a low-caste birth mother made the courageous decision to save her daughter’s life and get her to an orphanage, I wanted to join in that loving act and give her daughter a chance.
Meanwhile, the one-child policy was still in e ect in China. e brutality of this law pushed parents to abort or kill additional children. Child abandonment was illegal. When forced to choose, families submitted to their underlying belief system which required a boy to carry on the family name and ancestral rights.6 But
As a woman, I intuitively understand that when women are excluded or limited, the church—the family of God—suffers. I understand why women from my generation are leaving the church in higher numbers than any other demographic: we have been hurt by the exclusion.
unlike in India, this resulted in a deluge of girls in their orphanages. is spoke to another truth—thousands and thousands of birth mothers had taken their lives in their hands, defying the law and strict penalties, to ensure their baby girls made it to orphanages. ough Moses’s mother is the rst recorded woman to courageously defy government edicts to save her baby’s life, her story rings true to mothers today. Again, my husband and I wanted to be on the side of these courageous mothers risking their lives in love to give their baby girls a hope and a future.
Naturally, we decided to adopt girls from China and India.
All that to say, I understood the power of Galatians 3:28’s inclusion of women. e deepest and most intimate parts of our faith compelled us to enter where we saw our faith most violated. And to the credit of our family of faith, we were just one part of a wave of Christian families around the world entering this broken situation, adopting these babies, and emptying the orphanages. Not only does this generation of adopted Asian daughters represent deadly sexism still alive and well in our world, but their adoptive families also indicate that, like the earliest Christians, they intuitively understand the counter-cultural value Jesus placed on females. Without complicated theological
arguments, the worldwide church family replicated Jesus’s values through adoption.
Despite that intuitive understanding, my husband and I have come to recognize that we have much to learn. While I can intimately identify with the implications of Galatians 3:28 for women, it has taken raising my girls to help me better understand how it rings true through not just gender, but also race and class. What I had not initially appreciated was the intersectionality and inseparability of their sex and their race. Of course, I understood that they were girls and that they were Chinese and Indian, meaning that their eyes, noses, and skin colors did not match the current American majority population. But I did not know how these di erences shaped their lived experiences.
My older daughter, at just ve years old, could see what I could not. When asked to draw a picture of herself, she drew a blonde-haired girl who looked a lot like me, her teacher, and her classmates. She did not see herself represented in her small world. For the rst time I began to notice what she saw, and my discomfort grew. My daughter’s artwork simply re ected our own at home and what she saw at church: white-washed Saint Nicholas (from Turkey), Jesus (from the Middle East), and Simon of Cyrene (from modern-day Libya in North Africa), to name just a few.
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The fact that [our] seminary is an institutional member of CBE sends a signal to the larger community about how we view women, in particular, in the life of our family.
—Paul Chilcote, Ashland Seminary
My daughters’ lived experiences as females of color create perspectives that could never be the same as mine and, quite honestly, never should be. ough my daughters needed family, we needed all their unique di erences. Perhaps there is a divine reason that when Gentiles were added into the family of faith, they were not required to become cultural Jews. Instead, the faith stretched and grew to include and redeem the uniqueness of the Gentile populations, growing pains included.
Our family of faith has a history, starting with the earliest Christians, of taking discrimination seriously. When we are part of the dominant culture, it is hard to see, understand, and include people who are di erent from ourselves, and the Bible reveals that the early church struggled in much the same way we do. In Acts 6:1–6, Luke describes discrimination endemic in the new church that carried over from the majority Jewish culture, as depicted in the neglect of the Hellenized widows in favor of the Hebrews. e Hebrews were “people from Palestine who spoke the local Aramaic,” while the Hellenists were “Jews who were more at home in Hellenistic [Greek] culture and language than in Aramaic, and who therefore were regarded askance by all ‘good Jews.’” 7 When the discrimination against those not of the dominant Hebrew group was brought to the church leaders’ attention, they recognized the situation as serious, requiring practical changes in how things were done.
As part of an interracial family, I nd this account compelling. It describes the unjust neglect of women of di erent cultural and ethnic backgrounds. But it also describes church leaders of the majority culture being blind to this discrimination and needing to have it pointed out to them. eir response of appointing Stephen and other Hellenized Jews who could understand the discrimination to oversee a ministry that reached both the dominant and marginalized cultures is helpful and instructive.8
I distinctly remember the day my youngest daughter and I looked at a new school, transitioning from a large public school with a majority-white staff to a small Christian school where the principal was Puerto Rican with an accent. Together they peeked into the thirdgrade classroom to see her future classmates. In a class of only ten or eleven students, she saw a dark Latina girl, a Japanese-American boy, and a girl of unclear mixed
Despite that intuitive understanding, my husband and I have come to recognize that we have much to learn. While I can intimately identify with the implications of Galatians 3:28 for women, it has taken raising my girls to help me better understand how it rings true through not just gender, but also race and class. What I had not initially appreciated was the intersectionality and inseparability of their sex and their race.
race. Her body physically relaxed. I self-consciously tried to explain the importance of diversity, and the principal stopped me, nodding knowingly. Though the school was tiny with a majority-white student body, the school maintained a remarkably diverse staff, who were attuned to my daughter’s specific needs, making her feel safe and seen.
The Bible is full of sensitivity to the differences of people. It always exhorts God’s people to take the next step in honoring those differences and working toward a more vibrant community that integrates them. My daughters are teenagers now, just beginning to confront what it is to be Asian women in America. We all felt last year’s Atlanta shooting reverberate through our Asian friends and into our own conversations. The fact that a white man could direct his religious frustrations against the lives of Korean women, and whose actions were rationalized by a police officer whose sister was adopted from Asia, invaded the reality of our safe world. We were reminded that I was more like the Hebrew widows—vulnerable, but less so than my girls, who like the Hellenized widows would be
facing discrimination at the intersection of their sex and ethnicity. By seeing the world through my daughters’ eyes, including painful experiences, and through intentional learning and listening, I can more fully see why the Bible emphasizes unity in diversity.
Kimberly Dickson has studied and worked in the Middle East, East Africa, India, and in her home state of California. In these various contexts she has seen how the status of women practically a ects the health and wellbeing of families, communities, and nations. Further, she has seen the welfare of entire communities transform when those who are traditionally marginalized are brought into the center of community decision making. She embarked on her MA in theology at Fuller Theological Seminary to better understand the Judeo/Christian faith’s perspectives on women.
Kimberly is co-host of CBE International’s Mutuality Matters podcast segment, “Global Impact: Egalitarian Activism and Human Flourishing.” Based on her experience in the eld, she invites guests to re ect on the practical impacts of Christian theology, especially in regards to women, on their humanitarian work.
1. Kathryn Greene-McCreight, Feminist Reconstructions of Christian Doctrine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 107. Greene-McCreight makes the case that the biblical narrative requires Jesus to represent the specifi city of Jewish election as male, Jewish, and free to turn “the election on its head.”
2. Halee Gray Scott, Dare Mighty Things: Mapping the Challenge of Leadership for Christian Women (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), 164.
3. The Indian sex ratio is 943 females to 1,000 males, meaning fifty-seven girls are missing for every 1,000 males. Subodh Varma, “Christians have best sex ratio in India,” Times of India , last modified 24 December 2015, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/christians-have-best-sex-ratioin-india/articleshow/50312741.cms.
4. Parinitha Shetty, “Christianity, Reform, and the Reconstitution of Gender: The Case of Pandita Mary Ramabai,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 28, no.1 (2012): 28–31, https://doi.org/10.2979/jfemistudreli.28.1.25. See also Patricia Grimshaw and Pater Sherlock, “Women and Cultural Exchanges,” Missions and Empire , ed. Norman Etherington (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 190.
5. Shetty, “Christianity, Reform, and the Reconstitution of Gender,” 31.
6. B. Robey, “Sons and daughters in China,” Asian and Pacific Census Forum 12, no. 2 (1985):1–5.
7. Justo L. Gonzalez, Santa Biblia: The Bible Through Hispanic Eyes (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 37–38.
8. Justo Gonzalez in his book Santa Biblia fi rst brought to my attention this interplay between the dominant and marginalized cultures in the Acts 6 account.
The Bible is full of sensitivity to the differences of people. It always exhorts God’s people to take the next step in honoring those differences and working toward a more vibrant community that integrates them.
CBE is launching a new resource— eLearning courses! Pulling together multi-media content published by CBE, the courses will address topics ranging from introductory teaching on women’s equality to translation and interpretation of Scripture. The first one is FREE and already available on our website. It addresses the common questions many have about women and the church.
Learn more about the courses by visiting cbe.today/answers.
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• Scripture is our authoritative guide for faith, life, and practice.
• Patriarchy (male dominance) is not a biblical ideal but a result of sin.
• Patriarchy is an abuse of power, taking from females what God has given them: their dignity, and freedom, their leadership, and o en their very lives.
• While the Bible re ects patriarchal culture, the Bible does not teach patriarchy in human relationships.
• Christ’s redemptive work frees all people from patriarchy, calling women and men to share authority equally in service and leadership.
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• e unrestricted use of women’s gi s is integral to the work of the Holy Spirit and essential for the advancement of the gospel in the world.
• Followers of Christ are to oppose injustice and patriarchal teachings and practices that marginalize and abuse females and males.
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