On women and slavery (and patriarchy and oppression)

Pastoral Letters Series

The instructions about or to women and slaves in the pastoral letters are shocking to us, of course. To really understand them after our first blush, we have to realize these instructions were not written directly to us. We must understand that these instructions are given to a specific people in a specific time and place. Until we understand their cultural context, we cannot fully appreciate what the writer is saying. Unless we also understand our own, we cannot truly make an application for our community life today.

These letters are written to a Greek pastor in an ancient city of the Roman empire. In ancient Rome, women were property. Husbands were permitted to kill their wives, or sell them and their children into slavery. They were given no higher status than a slave.

Slaves were not considered full, mature persons. Those who owned slaves were seen as doing them a favour. It was believed that slaves were unable to make choices for themselves, including moral or ethical ones. Therefore, to even address or acknowledge a slave as a moral being who is able to understand and make a moral choice is itself already emancipation. To encourage a slave to do right is to acknowledge that slave is a sovereign person capable of understanding and choosing such a thing. In this way, their freedom in the Kingdom is affirmed.

Beyond this, we must then understand the differences between the oppression of the Roman empire and our own. We must ask ourselves what women or slaves are capable of accomplishing through resistance to oppression in our world today. We must consider how effective our churches may be in carrying the Good News of the Kingdom as we stand in solidarity with those who are oppressed. I believe that greater freedom and justice is available to people today through struggle than was available to the recipients of these letters in the first century. They resisted in their way. To follow their example, we will resist in our way, in our context. Faithfulness to scripture need not lead us to complicity in the oppression of women or immigrants or any other oppressed group among us. On the contrary, faithful practice of Jesus' message is to stand alongside them, or behind them, serving to enable them to live free as citizens of the Kingdom of God now.

I do not permit a woman to speak (and other really messed up things we have too easy a time reading in the Bible).

 I have friends who sincerely believe that only men can pastor or preach and teach. I even know women who believe this. And even though I disagree, I understand why they believe this. Every one of them that I know believes it from a desire to be faithful to their scriptural tradition.

I once had a radical feminist in my church who came from a church that didn't allow women to speak. Even she respected the people from her old faith tradition. Still, she wasn't there, and her radicalization was also partly due to her background.

After writing my last entry on 1 Timothy 2, I couldn't shake just how much the conversation upset me. I really feel like there are 1000 others we could be having that could do us (Christians) so much more good. Why do we lift this issue out of the Pastoral Letters as a focus when there are others (like slavery) we ignore? I offer what I wrote next as a more personal open letter, rather than notes on the passage. I desire unity, not division. I know we're all on a journey. Here's part of mine.

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Pastoral Letters Series

1 Timothy 2:11-15:

11 Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. 12  I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. 13  For Adam was formed first, then Eve; 14 and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. 15 Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.

Seriously, I hate this conversation. I hate that we still have it. It burns me so much inside that we can so casually talk about "the role of women in ministry" the way that we do in church.

I'm sick of feeling political and careful and . . . nice . . . every time it comes up. I hate that I feel reduced to passive-aggressively reposting humourous jabs about the issue online instead of just saying what I think.

The truth is, many of our churches are seriously (messed) up, and half the time we don't even know, never mind preach, the gospel, the GOOD news of Jesus.

Jesus said that he came to set the oppressed free. He said he was anointed to preach good news to the poor. He said people in prison would be released. This is the result of the gospel. The whole order changes.

The first Christians went to their graves at the hand of the violent Roman empire. We follow a man who was executed as an insurrectionist. Where did we get the idea that Christians were supposed to be "nice"? Jesus wasn't nice. He walked into a courtyard where bankers and business owners were taking advantage of people because of their religion, and he destroyed their property. He viciously chased them out. He replaced them with a crowd of the poor and dispossessed.

How do we go from that to polite conversations in air conditioned mall-like church buildings about whether or not women are allowed to serve in ministry or teaching positions? Forgive me, I know that the system has taught many that this is what God wants, and they do not want to rebel against God . . . The people who say these things are not bad people. But I can't keep excusing it on that basis alone. People can be sweetly, sincerely, and faithfully wrong. It's possible to be a good person who believes bad things.

I believe that our interpretations and assumptions about these passages reveal as much about us as they do about the scripture themselves.

My first assumption about these verses is not what it once was. I used to read "women should not have authority over men", and think it meant women should not speak in church. Since this did not match my experience (I was raised by a powerful woman, and the community of churches in which I was raised was co-founded by a fiery woman preacher), I just took it as probably culturally specific, disregarded it, and left it at that.

But my first assumption reveals how I've changed. I am so convinced of the gospel's radical message now. I see Jesus inviting people to leave the prison of the empires of this world and enter a Kingdom garden beyond its walls. I see mutuality and freedom and equality between every person.

So now when I read it, my very first thought is this:

   Women are oppressed in the systems of this world.
   The church is a place that gives everyone a voice, and an opportunity to give in community.
   In this context, people who have been oppressed in their former lives subject to the empire may, in their journey of freedom within themselves, respond to people with the oppression that they had learned.
   No one has an excuse to use their power over another in any way. Even if someone has experienced abuse, they are not excused or justified in abusing others.
   Therefore, just as no one is allowed to have corrupted authority over another as the empire once taught us, women are not permitted in their healing process to have that power either.
   We have one authority, and that is Jesus. We are all working out our stuff together. Let us not in our personal journeys from oppression allow anyone to become oppressors themselves.

So...

Why isn't that our first assumption when we read the passage?

I'm not saying this interpretation is correct. It likely isn't. In a document this old, written so many cultural degrees separated from me, I have doubts that it could fit my worldview so perfectly.

But this I know: I will do more than "permit a woman to speak". I will actively seek opportunities to let them do so. And then I'll listen, and hear the words of Holy Spirit as she speaks through those women.

Because that is how I understand the gospel. I don't fully understand these verses. I do understand that in practice, they don't look like Jesus to me. When I'm in doubt, I'll go with trying to look more like Jesus.

The early church did the same. Outside of these and other similar scriptural instructions, we see in the history of the early church a community that radically departed from the patriarchal systems in which it lived, enabling and encouraging women and foreigners and slaves to live as free citizens. In resistance to empire, these early churches would gather with all labels left at the door, giving every member equal voice. Women who were seen as property by the empire were given full status in the community, even being allowed to own land, and keep their own identities into their marriages.

So there is that.

The church should be less like a cog and more like a monkey wrench.

I long for the day that we stop squabbling in church over these issues that make us look just like the oppressive systems in which our churches live. I long for the day that the church looks so radically different from the world that we no longer fit within it. I long for a church that looks like a movement that truly changes the world.

A Controversial Passage and a Plea For Unity - 1 Timothy 2

Read 1 Timothy 2
After writing this entry, I wrote this more personal response about women in ministry.

1 Timothy 2:5-6 (ESV)
5 For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 6  who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.

After encouraging Timothy to preach the good news of Jesus boldly, especially that our acceptance by God is by grace, and excludes no one, Paul turns to prayer. He begins by instructing Timothy to teach everyone to pray for those in authority. This is a challenging thought when one considers that the authorities of Rome were at this time persecuting both Christians and Jews alike, even to death.

Paul reminds Timothy that invitation to the Kingdom is offered to everyone. It is not necessary for us to support or agree with the government in order to pray for them. Certainly Paul and Timothy would have disagreed with the Roman government that they should persecute Jews and Christians, or that they should continue their colonization through violence and oppression. Paul says that Jesus came so that everyone, everywhere can be rescued from empire. Jesus taught us to love our enemies, and pray for those that persecute us. Just as God's love for us is the same when we act contrary to Kingdom justice, our prayers can be with our government even as we resist its corruption.

Paul's reminder that we have one God and one mediator is in opposition to Rome, who would call Caesar a God and demand worship of local idols to gain favour for the region. That mediator is available to Caesar as much as to us. For Caesar to leave the empire and join the Kingdom of love and justice would be a great victory indeed.

Prayer keeps us in unity, since we humbly remember our position before God as we pray. We cannot judge or quarrel with one another when we remember that we all are equally loved by the same creator.

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(my comments on equality of men and women in ministry here are brief. Please see this longer article from Sojourners about Supporting Women in All Levels of Ministry. I find this article to be scholarly, thoughtful, and gracious.)
 
1 Timothy 2:11-15 (ESV)
 Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. 12  I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. 13  For Adam was formed first, then Eve; 14 and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. 15 Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.

This passage and the verses preceding it are difficult for those of us who seek to practice the equality of the gospel in Kingdom communities. The New Testament is an ever expanding story of walls between people dismantled, and radical mutuality across all lines, especially ethnic, religious, and social class. Yet here in Timothy, Paul seems to contradict this central gospel principle by demanding a marked difference in faith practice between people based on gender alone.

The argument against women in ministry is called complementarianism, indicating that women and men are not unequal, but different, complementing one another in their differences. In this case, complementarians would say that men's special role in the church can include teaching and authority, but women's cannot. To their credit, they do point out that Paul clearly does point to ancient scripture (men were created first), making the argument sound universal. Paul is not appealing to culture, and therefore they would argue that this is not a culturally specific instruction.

However, this is only as gracious as I can be to the position. I would argue that if a complementarian is so willing to withhold the opportunity to teach from half the population based on this passage, they have to also be willing to interpret the entire thing, including the part about being saved through childbirth. Paul has already made it clear in several different ways that salvation comes from Jesus alone. He has also shown that it is distributed universally. Certainly women are not "saved" through childbirth. Many have tried to interpret what this means, but most agree that it is one of those dark passages for which we simply do not have a clear answer.

I submit that this entire controversial passage is very difficult to understand, and that our practice of freedom or restriction to teaching should be based on more clear passages than this one. Jesus' practice was to elevate the role of women throughout his entire ministry. Paul himself honours women by name in many of his epistles. Paul's good friends Priscilla and Aquila are named as ministers together, with the wife being named first. Scripture has many examples in the old and new testaments of women acting in teaching roles or having authority, without condemning them. Finally, the message of the gospel is one of freedom from all oppression, and that certainly includes freedom from patriarchy.

Paul says in this very chapter that we are to seek unity, and pray to avoid quarrels. I do not seek to quarrel or promote disunity with complementarians. But in the case of this difficult to understand passage, I must speak from what I know of the gospel, and that gospel is freedom and justice, and submission to God's will. If God gives the gift of teaching and preaching to a woman, and I believe he does, I will gladly submit to God's word in her mouth.

After writing this entry, I wrote this more personal response about women in ministry.

Read my notes about Jesus' treatment of women in the book of Luke
10 Reasons Why Men Should Not Lead or Teach In Church (Humour)
See all of my entries labelled "Gender Equality"

Read 1 Timothy 2