Women in Church Leadership: Passages from the Gospels and Pauline Epistles

The other day I got a phone call from a woman who shares an ecumenical Bible study group with some of my parishioners. She is not from a tradition with women clergy, so she wanted to know how to address such a person.

I said the answer is simple: Ask her what she'd like to be called. This led to a great conversation and a request for more information about the biblical case for women's ordination. I enjoyed procrastinating on other work for the afternoon while I put together this primer for her. I welcome comments, corrections, and suggestions for improvement.

--

"Pyx with the Women at Christ's Tomb,"
ivory pyx, circa A.D. 500s,
Made in Eastern Mediterranean
(Metropolitan Museum of Art)

In all four gospels, the women are the first to hear the Good News. Mary Magdalene was “the apostle to the apostles.” In a patriarchal culture in which women could not give court testimony due to their supposed unreliability, this made no logical sense.

“If it weren’t for the women, the men still wouldn’t know Jesus is risen!” – The Most Rev. Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church

The home was a safe place for the early Jesus movement to meet. Since this was culturally women’s domain, that put women in a position to open up their homes and offer leadership to the nascent Church.

Lydia (Acts 16:11-15): When Paul arrived in Philippi, he didn’t go to the temple where he often began his work, but down to the riverside where the women gathered. As a dealer in expensive purple cloth, Lydia would have been in a financial position to fund Paul’s church plant.

Phoebe (Romans 16:1-2): “I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church at Cenchreae, so that you may welcome her in the Lord as is fitting for the saints, and help her in whatever way she may require from you, for she has been a benefactor of many and of myself as well.” Deacons were those charged with making sure that widows and orphans were well provided for (see also Acts 6). We often think of the threefold order of bishop, priest, and deacon. There were no priests/presbyters for some time to come, so deacons were the church’s local leaders.

Priscilla and her husband Aquila (Acts 18; Romans 16:3; 1 Cor. 16:19; 2 Tim. 4:19). They are mentioned by Luke (in Acts), Paul, and pseudo-Paul (in 2 Timothy). Paul usually refers to “Priscilla and Aquila,” not the other way around.

Junia (Rom. 16:7): “Greet Andronicus and Junia, my relatives who were in prison with me; they are prominent among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was.” Junia is the only woman referred to as an apostle in the New Testament. An early tradition assumes Junia was a man, a question dependent on the use (or not) of an accent mark in the Greek. Subsequent assumptions of Junia’s maleness ignore all evidence to the contrary. Most modern scholars agree Junia was female.

Chloe (1 Cor. 1:11): “For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters.” Chloe is clearly in charge of some aspect of the church in Corinth.

Euodia and Syntyche (Philippians 4:2-3): “I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you also, my loyal companion, help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel …” A later, strained tradition insisted that Euodia was a man and Syntyche his wife, but the Greek clearly does not support this. Apparently these two female leaders in the church in Philippi had had a disagreement.

Erasing distinctions (Gal. 3:28): “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” When setting the Galatians straight, Paul makes sure they understand that divisions of gender are irrelevant among followers of Jesus.

So why does Paul also seem to oppose women’s leadership?

Silent in church (1 Cor. 14:33-35): “As in all the churches of the saints, women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.” Scholars agree that Paul himself wrote 1 Corinthians.

However, earlier in the same letter Paul writes, “Any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled disgraces her head—it is one and the same thing as having her head shaved” (1 Cor. 11:5). Leaving aside the culturally bound reference to women’s head coverings, clearly Paul expects that women are prophesying, an activity done out loud in communal worship. And anyway, how could all the women already mentioned remain silent in the churches and still fulfill their obvious leadership duties?

Some early manuscripts place these verses after verse 40 instead of verse 32. This disagreement about placement makes clear that these verses were inserted by a later scribe, perhaps related to the 1 Timothy school of thought …

Submissiveness (1 Tim. 2:9-15):  “The women should dress themselves modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with their hair braided, or with gold, pearls, or expensive clothes, but with good works, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God. Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.”

Most scholars today agree that Paul did not write 1 or 2 Timothy or Titus, despite the fact that they are written in his name. In the ancient world, attributing a new composition to a revered, deceased person was a way of giving the work greater authority. This seems strange to us. But none of the letters original hearers would have thought it to be Pauline; they all knew Paul was dead.

Imagine, then, that a letter were to appear from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to the Black Lives Matter movement, encouraging its leaders to be steadfast and faithful to their cause. Nobody would believe Dr. King had written a letter from beyond the grave. But let the letter sit for a few centuries and we could understand why people might think it a dishonest fabrication.

From this we can deduce that a later tradition—the one behind the pastoral epistles—no longer valued women’s leadership, but had fallen back into a patriarchal mindset contrary to the Gospels and to the model of Paul’s earliest church plants.

Male Headship (Eph. 5:22-24): “Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Savior. Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands.”

Scholars are evenly split on whether Paul wrote this letter. If he didn’t write it, we can see this as yet another later tradition falling back into patriarchy.

In any event, since Paul apparently wasn’t married—and, indeed, was seemingly indifferent to marriage—it may be that he simply wasn’t a good person to advise anyone on this topic. Paul and many other early Christians thought the world would come to an end any day with Jesus’ return. They were wrong, but their theological assumptions caused them to arrange their priorities for the short-term, not the long haul.

The Nature of the Bible’s Authority

The fact that so many early Christians were wrong about the impending end of the world is another cue to us that we must not take everything in the Bible literally or as a divine proscription for our own behavior. This is another whole topic, but suffice it to say that I’d rather wrestle with the Bible faithfully than cower before its own time-bound and culture-bound assumptions.

In John’s gospel, Jesus tells his disciples, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come” (John 16:12-14). If the Holy Spirit is active and alive in the world, then the Bible is not a dead document, but a living one, and its effectiveness lies not in the ink on the page, but on its proclamation in community and the ways it causes us to rethink our priorities in light of the faith of our ancestors.

In other words, the question should not be, “Are you reading the Bible?,” but rather, “Are you letting the Bible read you?”