I spent more time on this essay than nearly anything else I've ever done. If I could get a Master's in Gender and the Church, I would. (But not exactly a field full of jobs, so something else it is). This didn't make the best grade ever because I had a theologically conservative teacher and he refuted a lot of my points. 

In 2015, ten percent of senior pastors in Christian churches were women (Emmert 2). While this is not overly impressive, especially given the 37 million churches around the world (Kramer 6), it has generated quite a buzz as the number rises each year. When I told my brother that I was going to write a paper in defense of women ministers, he said in genuine bafflement, "It's 2019. Are people still having that conversation?" The fact that there are people in this world had no idea women pastors could even be an issue is not a sufficient argument. Yes, it is 2019, but that does not disguise the fact that a sizeable portion of Christians still stand by 1 Timothy 2:11-12 and consider the ordination of women strictly forbidden by God. However, when one delves into the historical and spiritual context of a few select verses, his or her understanding begins to change.

Let us start by looking at the verses that seem to prohibit women from leadership roles:

"A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet" (1 Timothy 2:11-12, NIV).

"Women should be silent during the church meetings. It is not proper for them to speak. They should be submissive, just as the law says. If they have any questions, they should ask their husbands at home, for it is improper for women to speak in church meetings" (1 Corinthians 13:34-35, NLT).

"But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God" (1 Corinthians 11:13, ESV).

Most people, including the official website for the United Methodist church, use Galatians 3:28 as a rebuttal. "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (NIV). However, the use of this verse is a weak argument. Within the context of Galatians 3, this speaks of equal salvation for all, and nothing of equal leadership rights. A reliable solution to this problem does not present itself clearly and immediately. To understand the validity of women preachers, one must dig into the context, something necessary for much of the Bible.

First, we were not meant to take everything in the Bible as literal. If women stayed silent in the church building, as 1 Corinthians 13:34 orders, they would not be able to sing, take part in liturgies, say the communion prayers, greet friends, offer encouraging words, or whisper to their children. Colossians and Ephesians—books written by Paul, who also penned these words about women—offer instructions on the keeping of slaves. Does this mean slavery is okay? If one is to take the Bible in the absolute literal sense, then everything looks crystal-clear. Slavery is allowed if regulated and women are forbidden from making a sound in church. Is it this easy?

It may be easier to take these things at face value, but it is wrong. Instead, we need to look at these scenarios in the manner of Stephen J. Lennox, author of the excellent God's Story Revealed, in which he writes, "For God to work in our present culture, He accommodates himself to our individualism and human-centeredness. But He loves people, so He works with them wherever He finds them" (Lennox 42). Much of the Bible makes little to no sense until a careful reader considers the history and circumstances surrounding the events. The seemingly ridiculous laws in the Old Testament were carefully crafted by God to keep the Israelites safe and to make them stand out as his chosen people. God knew the early church society was one steeped in a culture of slavery, and instead of immediately outlawing it, he instead regulated it. God, as Lennox points out, "moves slowly" (Lennox 18), not throwing significant changes onto a group of people all at once.

The same explanation goes for the orders for women to remain silent. The fact that women were even allowed in the services right alongside the men was revolutionary. In the time of Christ, the treatment of Jewish women was at an all-time low (Glaser 7). Men classified women with the unclean gentiles, children, slaves, and undesirables, and while allowed in the temple, they were confined to a separate women's court, had to remain heavily veiled like today's Muslim women, and could not pray out loud (Glaser 11). Furthermore, strict education laws left virtually all women illiterate, and the Jewish Talmud, a religious script, said, "It is foolishness to teach Torah to your daughter" (Sotah 20a).

In this environment, one can easily see why it would have been utterly shocking had women suddenly been commissioned to preach far and wide. In keeping with the culture of the day, they learned silently within the early churches—though, revolutionarily, alongside the men. Multiple scholars, including Suzanne Calulu, point out a history of confusion surrounding this verse; through the translations the meaning became muddled, and an original, ancient text included quotations around this verse as if there was supposed to be more information, perhaps a rebuttal (Calulu 21). Furthermore, women at the time who did not keep silent in virtually any public sphere were considered irreverent and immoral (Harper 10). In any case, we all should agree that this demand for silence was circumstantial and not to be applied literally in 21st-century churches.

This point leads us to the verse in 1 Timothy. This verse forbids the ordination of women to leadership or pastoral roles. Then why, when I conducted a poll, were 45.95% of respondents—almost half— in favor of female ministers? To answer this question, we must turn to the excellent research and evaluation conducted by multiple writers and the Wesleyan Holiness Clergy.

Author Adam Hamilton points out the inconsistencies in Paul's words to Timothy when compared with his writings elsewhere. In Romans 16, Paul heaps praise upon Priscilla, Mary, Tryphene, and Tryphosa, for their hard work in the early church, and noted another female, Junia, as an "apostle" (Romans 16:7). Elsewhere in the same chapter, Paul speaks of Phoebe as a "presiding officer and deacon," and commends her for her work (Romans 16:1). Our modern-day dictionary defines "preside" as "to be in the position of authority in a meeting or gathering" (Merriam-Webster's collegiate dictionary, 2003). This definition does not sound like a silent, submissive woman—in fact, it seems like a woman leading a church— yet Paul is praising her. How then, can we reconcile this with Paul's words in 1 Timothy?

Most scholars come to the natural conclusion that Paul's demand for silence from women was for a specific time and place and was never supposed to apply to all of Christianity. Scottish New Testament interpreter, William Barclay, wrote of 1 Timothy 2:11-12 back in 1975, "We must not read this passage as a barrier to all women's service within the Church, but in the light of its Jewish and its Greek background" (Barclay 69). Barclay further writes of not only the Jewish restrictions I already touched upon but also of the Greek. Prostitutes filled the Greek temples. A respectable Greek woman never appeared in public, did not even dine with her household, and was rarely seen by anyone besides her husband. Had the Greek Christian church been filled with women preaching and prophesying, the Greeks would have assumed it was a place of sin like the rest of the pagan temples, and this would have made it harder to convert the Greek people to Christ (Barclay 67). The early Christian women stayed quiet and submissive to appear respectful and legitimate—just as the first Jews followed the strict guidelines of Leviticus to stand out as God's people. Just as we do for the Israelite laws of Leviticus, we must consider the Christian women of 1 Timothy in light of their place in history.

But a proper rebuttal to the 1 Timothy passage goes even deeper than this, as is explored by Caleb Jenson, director of Word Center Ministries. Let us again look at 1 Timothy 2:12. "I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man...." (NIV). Here we must look at what happened to this verse during translation. The original Greek word used here was not the word for "woman" but was the word gynaiki, meaning "wife" (Jenson 14), and the word later replaced by "man," andros, really meant "husband" (Jenson 15). Other scholars believe that the words were used interchangeably for male/husband and female/wife and that during the Bible's translation into Latin, the translator chose to convert the words to men and women in general, taking them out of the context of marriage. Looking at this verse in the original Greek, we now have "I do not permit a wife to teach or assume authority over a husband," and a completely different scenario: one of Paul urging women to allow their husbands to lead the home, not attempting to dominate or control him. Jenson continues this train of thought by pointing out that in all of scripture, beginning with Adam and Eve, the submission of women to men is only spoken of in marriage situations, and is never a demand for all women beneath all men (Jenson 25).

Beth Cowles, a writer for the Wesleyan Holiness Clergy in Korea, offers the standard theological theory that this command in 1 Timothy 2:12, even about husbands and wives, was put into Paul's letter due to a specific situation happening at a particular church (Cowles 45). For the first time, women—uneducated, illiterate women—were teaching, praying, and prophesying side-by-side with men. Cowles offers evidence that some of these women in this church attempted to dominate the teachings of their husbands within the church, ultimately causing chaos and confusion (Cowles 46). There is, as both Cowles and Jenson point out, no reason at all to take this one passage out of context and put it into play in our twenty-first century, Western world, no more than we should take the verses regulating slavery and decide that, when handled correctly, the enslavement of human beings is allowed by God.

Today, we must decide to look at the Bible as a whole and think critically to determine what it means. The Holy Spirit in Acts poured out upon the church congregation as a whole, men, and women speaking in tongues together. "All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them" (Acts 2:4, NIV). Following the Holy Spirit came the spiritual gifts written in 1 Corinthians, again penned by Paul. "To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines" (1 Corinthians 12:8-11, NIV). Prophesy, knowledge, messages of wisdom, teaching, speaking—each doled out by the Spirit as he determines, with no mention of gender, no distinction between male and female. We are free in Christ and called, each of us, to evangelize, to make disciples. How unfortunate, then, that when Jerome translated the Greek Bible into the Latin Vulgate, he incorrectly changed husband and wife to male and female, forever causing division among Christians, forever holding women back from the full service they are called to by God.

References

Barclay, W. (1975). The Letters to the Corinthians. Edinburgh, Scotland: The Saint Andrew

Press

Calulu, S. (2013, April 22). What About "Women Be Silent in the Church"? Retrieved from

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nolongerquivering/2013/04/what-about-women-be-silent-in-the-church/

Cowles, B. (2012, January 28). In Praise of Women Preachers. Retrieved from

https://www.wesleyanholinesswomenclergy.org/in-praise-of-women-preachers/

Emmert, A. (2015, October 15). The State of Female Pastors. Retrieved from

https://www.christianitytoday.com/women-leaders/2015/october/state-of-female-

pastors.html

Glaser, Z. (1988, June 1). Jesus and the Role of Women. Retrieved from

https://jewsforjesus.org/publications/newsletter/newsletter-jun-1988/jesus-and-the-role-of-women/

Hamilton, A. (2014). Making Sense of the Bible. Broadway, New York: HarperCollins

Publishers

Harper, S. Commentary: The Ordination of Women. Retrieved from http://www.umc.org/what-

we-believe/commentary-the-ordination-of-women

Jensen, C. (2015). The 1 Timothy 2:12 "Mandate". Retrieved from

http://www.wordcenterministries.org/blogs--videos/zealous-for-his-glory/the-1-timothy-212-mandate.html

Kramer, H. (2017, August 27). How Many Churches and Denominations are there in America

and the World? Retrieved from http://thecompletepilgrim.com/many-churches-

denominations-america-world/

Lennox, S.J. (2009). God's Story Revealed. Indianapolis, Indiana: Wesleyan Publishing House.