Sons and Daughters
Hearing Women’s Voices at the Stamford Church of Christ
Where I worship God I hear women’s
voices. I hear them read Scripture, sometimes with an interpretive passion
I’ve rarely heard from men. I hear them pray in ways that stir my soul and
awaken places in my heart that were dormant and undiscovered. I hear them
bring a woman’s sensibility to their reflections on the suffering of Christ as
we commune together at the Lord’s Table. I hear announcements that make sense because
they are directly given by those most familiar with the real needs of our
church family. And I have sat in, and greatly benefited from, classes taught
by female social workers or Bible scholars. In fact, where I worship God we
understand that distinctions of roles, privileges, rights and status on the
basis of birth (that is, on the basis of race, gender and class) are ended in
Christ. We base this understanding on ten years of careful and exhaustive
study of Scripture. The following is the story of how this came to be at the
Stamford Church of Christ—of how it is that here in this place the Spirit of
God is poured out on both our sons and daughters.
A Place in Time and Tradition
Traditionally
Churches of Christ have held until recently to an understanding of 1
Corinthians 14:33-35 and 1 Timothy 2:11-15 that does not examine historical
context and that strangely even denies the relevance of historical context, a
relevance widely accepted on other texts and issues. On that basis, they have
generally prohibited women from exercising “leadership roles” in
their public worship. This prohibition amounted, in most congregations, to the
almost complete silencing of women in central worship services.
This traditional position has
always carried with it irregularities (facts that do not quite fit or questions
that resist easy answers). In what way are we to understand the Pentecost
announcement that God's Spirit would be poured out on both men and women, and
both would prophesy (Acts 2:17-21)? In what sense did women pray and prophesy
in the early church (1 Corinthians 11:5)? And what did Paul mean by there
being neither male nor female in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:26-28)?
These first-century anomalies
were paralleled by our own. A woman could express her faith in writing, and we
would put music to it and sing it, or we would read an article she composed,
but she was forbidden from simply saying the same things in public worship.
There were also large and now well-known inconsistencies in our interpretation
of Scripture, how it is, for instance, that we could insist on silencing women
but not insist on washing one another’s feet. And if these ironies escaped us,
they were not escaping the generations coming after us.
Moreover, for the first time in
history, women in our culture had become as educated as men, and as trained for
responsible leadership in society. This marked a monumental cultural
divide—what no culture expected of women before this shift, all cultures,
certainly all developed Western cultures, will expect hereafter. Consequently,
traditional churches are increasingly viewed as the last cultural bastions of
exclusively male leadership.
Naturally there were consequences
for us in Stamford, Connecticut. Some members had been lost for specifically
gender-related reasons starting in the late 1980s. And reports from the front
lines of evangelism became more and more disturbing. Visitors increasingly
commented on the male-only nature of our worship, and some of those most active
in sharing our faith reported that our public stance on these matters was what
it had never been before—a hindrance to the acceptance of the gospel!
Starting to Wonder
It was in this context—the
recognition that the solid phalanx of male worship leaders was probably already
a barrier to gospel proclamation—that our church family turned its attention to
these matters. At a congregational retreat at Channel 3 Country Camp in
September 1987, our elders then—Bob Bohannon, J.G. Pinkerton and Bob
Speer—agreed that it would be important for their ministers to lead them, and
possibly later the congregation, in a study of women’s roles in the church.
They realized that in our communities, largely Fairfield and Westchester towns
and cities within the orbit of New York City, this issue was not going to go
away.
I led the first such exploratory study December 5, 1987 at the Bohannon
home with the elders and Ken Durham, Curt Marshall and Eric Hancock present.
By that time, I had studied the subject for six or seven years, at first
only to defend the way things were. I had tried hard to make sense of
the time-honored traditional view of things, looking only for more contemporary
ways to restate old convictions, but in the end, there were just too many
things that didn’t fit and there were too many inconsistencies in our
own practice. All this became clear in our earliest deliberations together,
especially as we held up our understandings in the headlights of context
and consistency. We quickly realized, for instance, that we could not
keep picking and choosing—sometimes from the very same text—what
we would understand in a letter-of-the-law way and what we wouldn’t. That
first study was followed by another later that winter led by Ken Durham.
On March 31, 1991, again at their request, I led the elders at that time—Bruce
Evans, John Grady, Ken McAdams and J.G. Pinkerton—in a similar study.
In the meantime, on their own initiative, the Tuesday morning Ladies
Class, led by Kathryn Koczanski and Elinor Gates, devoted the spring of
1989 to studying these matters as well. This same material was repeated
during the fall and winter of 1992-93 as part of a Friday evening group
at the residence of Kim Bohannon, so that those unable to attend mornings
would also have an opportunity to study.
It may be important to know that
the Stamford Church of Christ has over the years been blessed by a membership
that is diverse racially, economically and geographically. Those raised in the
Churches of Christ in Texas and Tennessee worship alongside those brought up
Catholic in the Northeast. Moreover, our numbers have always included men and
women transferred into our area by corporations, and their life experiences
have tended to equip them with an openness to constructive change.
Furthermore, in recognition that the church must address issues that are sometimes
controversial, we devoted Sunday morning classes in the fall of 1989 to
understanding “Freedom and Authority in the Church at First,” and in the
same setting during the spring, summer and fall of 1991 we studied “Conflict
in the Church at First,” a topic which I was later asked to address at
the 1993 ACU Lectureship. In these ways God, we believe, was working to
create in our gatherings a capacity for mature Christian discussion of
complicated but necessary topics.
The first congregation-wide teaching on women’s roles took the form of
a five-week presentation on the subject of “Women in the Church at First”
to a combined Sunday morning adult Bible class in December 1989 and January
1990. My approach to this subject was what it has always been to other
subjects: textual, with a primary focus on discovering, from both the
literary and historical context, the original intent of the inspired
writers (in this case, specifically Paul when he wrote 1 Corinthians 11:2-16
and 14:26-40; Gal. 3:26-29; and 1 Tim. 2:9-15). Historical context was
carefully examined, especially those aspects of contemporary culture in
Corinth or Ephesus that may have influenced and even necessitated Paul's
teaching. We understood from the very beginning that all communication
of any kind has the built-in assumption that it arises from a situation
of some kind and will be best understood in the light of that situation.
And it was clear that there is a circumstantial aspect to Paul's specific
instructions, that Paul was guiding his first readers in the male-dominant
setting in which they lived, but he was not validating their cultural
setting for all time (see “Neither
Male Nor Female”).[1]
This
study, covering exactly the same material, was repeated for our largest adult
Bible class on five Sunday mornings from March 21 through April 18, 1993. This
time it was preceded by a three-week investigation of “Slavery in the
Church at First,” so that our congregation might better understand what
the early church did with another dominant social convention of its time. It
was also noted that, one hundred and fifty years ago in America, the debates
within Christian circles over slavery parallel almost exactly the discussions
now being held over women’s roles in worship. The same kinds of arguments were
made, based on the same approaches to biblical interpretation. Perhaps no issue
illustrates better than slavery how imperative it is to distinguish between
what the New Testament says about new life in Christ (e.g. Gal. 3:28) and the
actual degree of implementation possible in the first-century church[2]
(e.g. 1 Cor. 7:17-24; Eph. 6:5-9; Col. 3:22-4:1; Titus 2:9-10; Philemon).
In
both the 1989-90 and the 1993 studies, we set down as guidelines for the class
that the five-week presentation would first be presented straight through so
that the study would not bog down in the quagmire of point-by-point debates.
It was important that everyone see the whole picture and the coherence of a
contextualized approach, although the elders and minister were available
throughout the entire process for personal conversation.
During
the second teaching, we opened the floor to four Sunday mornings (April 25 -
May 16, 1993) of unrestricted and free-ranging discussion of the issues. Those
who spoke and wrote (several submitted papers or letters) distinguished
themselves by their honesty, maturity, fair-mindedness and mental vigor, but
above all by their love and respect for their brothers and sisters. We can all
be thankful to God for what became evident in our midst: a deep passion for
standing before God justified; a respect for our religious heritage; a refusal
to polarize and reduce complex matters to simple either-ors; impressive
interpretative skills across the room; a sense of awe in examining sacred
matters of gender; patience with differing and maturing viewpoints; modesty,
vulnerability and the kind of discipline it takes to surrender personal rights
lovingly to the consciences of others; and the courage it takes to state your
convictions, to overcome that lump in your throat when you know others
disagree. There were many remarkable moments: disclosures that were
astonishingly frank, even life-long wounds that began to heal and be healed,
and powerful insights into scripture, God and gender. Perhaps most commendable
was the way almost everyone eventually brought the discussion back to
Scripture. And it was apparent that everyone in the room respected truth,
trusted truth, and knew that in open and free exchanges of ideas truth
triumphs.
As a result of all these studies the elders asked that I write a congregational
process paper titled “Faith
and Gender” in which we might, starting in 1993, keep track
of our thinking on this subject. We chose to write this in the form of
drafts, so that we might easily keep it updated. The first few drafts
were almost all inter-office memos. The first one widely circulated was
Draft 7 (dated March 1994), and the final one was Draft 9
which offered an account of where we were in our studies up through
June 1996. These papers also allowed visitors and new members to catch
up on the process without our needing to focus on women’s roles from the
pulpit or in our classrooms. It was always important to our leadership
that we not be a one-issue congregation, or stated another way, that our
one issue should always remain gospel and not gender.
Meanwhile we were incorporating
women into our quarterly planning sessions as ministry leaders (starting in
December 1990), and the congregation quickly recognized their gifts for service
and leadership. Also, we were blessed during this time by a woman who taught
Scripture at a very advanced level, Kathryn Koczanski, and without fanfare the
Tuesday morning class she taught became gender-inclusive. It was at that time
a class of ten or twelve meeting on Tuesdays, not on Sunday mornings, but
gradually the entire congregation came to understand that mixed classes taught
by a woman could be first-rate educational experiences. Other fine female
Bible teachers, Gayle Moore and then Ann Newton, followed Kathryn who left us
in 1995 because of her husband’s job transfer, and this class served as a constant
low-profile reminder of how much Bible knowledge men were missing if they
refused to be taught by women.
Generally as we had opportunities
for a woman’s voice to be heard because she was, say, the recognized authority
on the subject, we took them. From time to time women led Sunday evening book
discussions. Increasingly, when women came forward at Sunday morning services,
we gave them the option to express their own thoughts in their own words rather
than the minister representing them. This made immediate intuitive sense to
almost everyone; it was, after all, their hearts that needed to be heard
directly by their brothers and sisters. And when women were the experts on
particular ministries (e.g. the directors of Camp Shiloh, Buddy-Mentor, VBS or
Youth Rally programs—all women), they made the special announcements and led
the planning sessions pertaining to those ministries. Also during these years
there was the clear and tireless testimony of a dear, sweet African-American
sister Emma Beavers: for the last two years of her life when she was frequently
hospitalized (prior to her death in 1994), she never let me leave her bedside
without asking me, “Dale, what are you going to do about the women?” She
always hoped that change would come before she died.
As this was happening in Stamford,
matters of faith and gender started being widely discussed throughout the
Churches of Christ. They were prominently featured at lectureships at Abilene
Christian University and Pepperdine University, as well as at various workshops
and seminars and in religious publications. Freed-Hardeman University
sponsored a forum on this subject in 1990, as did the Harding Graduate School
of Religion in 1993. Then in 1993 the first volume of Essays on Women in
Earliest Christianity, a landmark
collection of studies by some of the finest biblical scholars in the Churches
of Christ, was published.
Also during these years, I was able, in the course of my graduate studies
in medieval history at NYU, to devote considerable attention to—to
read thousands of pages on—the history of women in the Middle Ages.
As a historian I came to know some things more quickly than I would have
otherwise. I came, for instance, to realize that the church’s understandings
of male and female relationships owe a great deal more to Aristotle and
Greek-Roman gender roles than to the teachings of Jesus. I shared highlights
of my studies with those interested in a two-hour seminar on “Women in
the Middle Ages” the evening of January 12, 1993. This same material became
the basis of my essay in Volume 2 of Essays on Women in Earliest
Christianity[3] published in November 1995; a short summary
of this essay is available as “Faith
and Gender—in History.” I was also asked to address this same
topic in three lectures on “The Changing Roles of Women in the Church:
Why We're Where We Are” at the 1995 Pepperdine University Bible Lectures.
Taking Heat
Naturally we drew some criticism for our study over the years, specifically
for Draft 7 of “Faith
and Gender,” although in many ways the criticism was less than
we had anticipated. We made a point to mail this draft out to all area-wide
congregations and to various Church of Christ leaders nationwide, asking
for their response, corrections or suggestions. Many encouraged us in
our studies, and only one wrote back offering any challenge at all (and
it was simply criticism of one of the sources cited).
Then in early 1996, Draft 7 was criticized in a strongly personalized
way in reviews in the January and April issues of a quarterly called The
Spiritual Sword. Most of the substantive points raised in these reviews
had been considered at great length over the years in our congregational
study. And both reviews apparently missed the nature and limited scope
of “Faith and Gender,”
that it was a process paper for our own church family, a brief review
and synopsis of our own proceedings, and therefore not an exhaustive coverage
of the subject. “Faith and
Gender,” in an extensive bibliography, pointed to a number of
scholarly works that combine comprehensive scriptural exegesis with a
responsible acknowledgment of historical context, and that is where one
would need to go to examine these matters in a truly analytical and thorough
way. However, we always considered substantive criticism seriously, and
it became part of our congregational study and discussion when we next
took up the subject. Moreover, the many favorable and constructive responses
and inquiries we received after the criticisms in The Spiritual Sword,
from all regions of the country and from all age groups, reassured us
that the questions we were raising and the concerns we were expressing
had become mainstream Church of Christ questions and concerns.
As we continued to work together
toward answers that are beneficial and constructive (1 Cor. 10:23-24), it was
always important to us that we remember and not forget the sense of loving
brotherhood we enjoy with other Churches of Christ and the spiritual safe haven
we have traditionally provided for their members transferred into our area.
We sought always to preserve the sanctity of Christian consciences of our members,
though we took care to distinguish between genuine concerns of conscience and
comfort zones where some might have preferred that we stay. Also important to
us was the recognition that society itself is still struggling to define what
is appropriately male and female.
Throughout
these years, it was clear that the elders were involved and supportive of this
process, which at the very beginning meant primarily their insistence that the
subject be fully understood and discussed contextually. I took the lead in the
actual teaching; but throughout the process the elders and I, with our wives
and various resource people within the congregation—Curt Marshall, Scott
Johnson and Eddie Pleasant merit special mention—kept meeting and studying,
especially trying to explore the various implications that would follow from
increasing the role of women in public leadership (e.g. Were we suggesting that
one day there might be female elders?[4] What connection might there be
between this issue and the church’s views on homosexuality?[5] And
were we implying by gender equality that the natures of men and women are
essentially identical?[6]). In all these ways, over the years
our elders have distinguished themselves by their dedicated study of the
subject and by their increasingly articulate support of gender inclusiveness.
And when in 1996 The Spiritual Sword
made strongly worded and personal attacks on me in two issues, they rose in
spirited and unmistakably clear defense.
Waiting
As we
engaged the issue of hearing women’s voices in both our public worship and
congregational decision-making, we moved at a pace that could only be described
as judicious and deliberative. Even after it became clear to us that, based on
Scripture, the case for keeping women silenced in worship roles was no stronger
than the case for supporting slavery in contemporary America, we still moved
toward change very slowly, wishing to give everyone lots of time for study and
reflection. We knew that time-honored ways of doing things change slowly and
should change slowly. We also knew that gender matters strike at the primal
core of one’s identity. And of course we took God and Scripture very
seriously. We didn’t want to be in error. As studious sons and daughters of
the Churches of Christ (the large majority of our leadership was Church of
Christ born and raised), we wanted to do everything we could to eliminate all
possibility of being unscriptural. We wanted to cover every base. It was
absolutely imperative that any change in women’s roles in churches be
completely true to the spirit and original intent of Scripture. So we went
slowly in our thinking: probing, examining and reexamining every point and
counterpoint.
There is,
however, a certain inexorable flow to history, easily seen in hindsight if not
foresight. We came to understand that it is, in fact, inevitable that in time,
likely sooner than many imagine, churches everywhere will have come to the
recognition that it was never the original intent of Scripture to silence
women’s voices in churches for all time. The spiritual challenge was, and is,
to arrive at that point of consensus with a minimum of bloodletting, to conduct
ourselves in ways that are worthy of Jesus, that is, with kindness, mercy,
respect, truthfulness and love. The slogan with which we ended our discussions
in the spring of 1993 was that, in matters this deep and complex, we be
“cautious in application and generous in thought.”
We also knew that there were few
patterns or precedents for what we were doing as a church family. In most
religious organizations, councils or conferences meet. Often a power struggle
is fought for the soul of the church. Then, in one way or another, the word, a
policy, comes down from the top. Hearts may or may not be changed. No one at
the local level has to take a stand or assume responsibility of any kind. You
can agree or disagree, accept or reject, stay or leave. For instance, hundreds
of millions of Catholics worldwide wait on a decision from the Vatican. Within
our own fellowship in larger cities that have a number of congregations, church
leaders make their decision and dissatisfied members migrate to the next
congregation. You vote with your feet, but your mind is largely spared. It
was our conviction, however, that Churches of Christ are really meant to be
different, that the Bible belongs to each of us, and that we are each meant to
take responsibility, read it, eventually master its interpretation, and
lovingly create a consensus built on honesty, courage, the surrendering of
rights, and commitment to the centrality of the gospel.
As a consequence, in January 1994 as part of Draft 4 of “Faith
and Gender” our elders encouraged all of our members to take
responsibility for further reflections on these matters, asking “for
each believer’s assistance as we work together toward the creation of
a loving Christian consensus here and elsewhere.”[7] We felt
the process was just as important as the conclusions we might reach—that
for disciples of Christ, the process is the truth: conquering fear, fixing
our eyes on Jesus, trusting that one day the facts will be clear, turning
the other cheek, not being angry with our fellow disciples, extending
mercy, practicing forgiveness, and always acting in love for one another.
Conducting ourselves in these ways is, we knew, a central part of the
truth we offer the world.
After the congregational studies in early 1990 and in spring 1993, people knew
that they had time to freely and openly reflect on the subject. Slowly a
consensus built that change must happen, but the consensus came from the
bottom up, not the top down. During these years, I did not specifically
preach from the pulpit on the subject of women’s roles in church except
for two occasions when the subject came up naturally in series of sermons
on 1Timothy and 1 Peter. I often told the congregation that I would never
force the issue; I would teach and educate, but “I was only their servant,”
and any change would be up to them. Meanwhile, drafts of “
Faith
and Gender” were always available to members and anyone else interested.
And in 1995-96 one of our elders, Bill Cochran, hosted various small-group
discussions on “
Faith and Gender”
in his home. Tapes from my presentations at the 1995 Pepperdine University
Bible Lectures on “The Changing Roles of Women in the Church” were also
available. Several times over the course of these years (1993-1998) we offered
forums for discussing the subject on Sunday evenings. And the attacks in
the
Spiritual Sword actually crystallized thought and moved the process
along by drawing increased attention to the topic. Slowly a consensus for
change grew, and increasingly the burden of proof shifted to those who still
resisted change. It should be noted that early in the process, I had
developed seven questions to which I was seeking answers. I published these
questions even in the earliest drafts of “
Faith
and Gender” . These questions were sharpened over the years and
are now available in the leaflet “
SEVEN
QUESTIONS on Faith, Gender and the Church.” As early as 1994 I
circulated these questions to all the congregations in Connecticut and to
various church leaders around the country, still very open to correction
and a shift in perspective if responsibly corrective answers were forthcoming.
But no one offered such a response, then or ever. And so over the years
those who resisted change within our congregation (as well as outside detractors)
knew that in order to be persuasive they would need to make some response
to these questions. In hindsight, I believe it was important—and
essential to our eventually peaceful transition—that while our teaching
in the church became gender-inclusive, we still did not force change. The
result was that the emerging question became, “Why aren’t we changing?”
rather than “Why are we changing?”
On the
personal front, by the mid-90s I had spent thousands of hours and read
thousands of pages on every aspect of this subject that I could
imagine—textual, theological, spiritual, historical, cultural and
psychological. Moreover, by circulating our questions to the finest scholars I
knew in the Churches of Christ, I had come to realize that many of them saw exactly
what I saw though some could freely state this and others had to be more
circumspect. Still I waited. I don’t welcome controversy. I don’t like people
being angry with me. The sentence I remember most from my childhood is “What
will people think!” and it still haunts me. So I kept studying and reflecting,
hoping perhaps that this change would just happen without my sticking my neck
out too far.
But my conscience would not let me rest. As a court advocate for victims of
domestic violence, I was haunted by one woman, huddled like a frightened
rabbit in the corner of a small windowless room in the basement of the
courthouse, telling of being subjected to a weekend-long binge of abuse
while the man said over and over, “I can do this because I’m the boss.”
Another day, a Christian mother, the mother of two young girls, told me
in my office that, even as committed as she was to our church and its
good intentions, she pondered worshipping elsewhere so her daughters would
no longer experience discrimination on the basis of gender. Another time
when I personally had grown weary of the whole subject, an elder’s wife
from California visiting in our area asked me over coffee at a local bookstore
what our plans were with regard to women. When I showed insufficient enthusiasm,
she challenged me with, “If you, knowing what you know, do nothing, what
hope is there for any of us?” And of course there was always the gentle
witness of my wife, Debbie, drawing from her many years of experience
as a social worker, and the sometimes more spirited observations of my
adult sons, Marcus and Lucas, who could never envision a future, in church
or out, when women would be considered or treated as inferior to men.
So, slowly,
each of us in church leadership roles started preparing to take whatever risks
or sacrifices were necessary to be honest to the truths we knew. And to do it
in good time—time that mattered—not after our witness would no longer really be
needed. We came to see the trouble we would face if we did not change.
Churches of Christ, custodians of marvelous gospel truths about personal
rebirth and responsibility, would find their ethical and evangelistic witness
crippled by being among the last to stand for a principle of justice that one
day all will see. That all will one day see the justice of gender
inclusiveness was not, and is not, in question; it is the witness of Churches
of Christ that is at stake.
Taking
Action
The
change toward including women’s voices in church worship and leadership came,
when it came, with a speed that surprised most of us, certainly me. From my
studies as a historian, I had come to realize that this change would happen
here and everywhere sooner or later. I knew it really was all a matter of
time, and being a historian gave me a certain measure of patience. As a
minister, I had come to understand my job was to help prepare people
spiritually for the inevitable. By 1998 I had become so certain that this
change would happen—not just here but everywhere—that it perhaps mattered less
to me than to some just when it would happen.
Then in July 1998 we conducted a
poll of our church family asking simply for their comfort or discomfort if a
woman were to do each of the following: give announcements, lead singing, read
Scripture, serve at the table, or lead prayer. This survey was worded very
informally. It had a relaxed tone so as to surface any of various levels of
resistance (one of our elders, J.G. Pinkerton, has great skill at wording
questions). Responses could be unsigned, but copies were mailed individually
to everyone, so as not to get multiple responses from any one person. The
results actually surprised us. Out of a congregation of around 130,
eighty-eight responded. Only eight were uncomfortable with women doing
anything publicly, and several of these were uncomfortable not on their own
behalf but on behalf of others whom they supposed would have problems.
Fifty-nine were comfortable with women taking on any of the public roles
listed. And twenty were comfortable with women doing some things, but not
others. The remaining one said the elders should just make a decision and act
on it and didn’t otherwise fill out the questionnaire. It was this
unanticipated support for change that began the course of events that led to
full gender-inclusiveness four months later.
On Sunday, October 18, 1998, the elders—Bill Cochran, Ken McAdams,
Jim Moore, and J.G. Pinkerton—and minister issued a position paper
entitled “One in Christ Jesus”,
which stated that it is their teaching position that “in Christ Jesus
there is neither male nor female (Galatians 3: 28).” It went on to say,
“We understand this to mean that distinctions of roles, privileges, rights
and status on the basis of birth are ended in Christ.”
This was
followed by a twenty-four-hour fast and prayer vigil from Saturday, November 7,
at 9 AM until Sunday, November 8, at 9 AM. Different people signed up for
half-hour slots around the clock to pray in our chapel to seek God’s guidance
concerning whether or how we should implement change. This was an unbelievably
energizing weekend, and from it, it became clear that we would move forward
toward not just teaching gender-inclusiveness, but practicing it. Our elders,
as part of the morning announcements on Sunday, November 15, read this
statement to the congregation:
“As a result of reflections from
last weekend’s prayer vigil, it is the elder’s decision that women will now be
incorporated in regular worship roles. A worship committee consisting of Eddie
Pleasant, Scott and Julia Johnson and Karin Fallon has been established. Their
task is to find ways for the voices, gifts, and spirit of both men and women to
be used in our assemblies. If any of you desire to take an active role in our
assemblies, feel free to contact a member of the committee.”
Our elders felt it was important
that no one be surprised or caught off guard when changes were finally made.
For this same reason, I preached two sermons (available on tape) to keynote
the change—“In the image of God” (Gen. 1:27, 2:3) and “He will rule
over you” (Gen. 3:1-24)—on Sundays, November 22 and 29; these sermons,
briefly stated, focused on man and woman in God’s original intent and
located female subordination in the Fall, the effects of which are to
be undone by the new creation in Christ. Two principles were highlighted.
First, based on male and female both being created in the image of God,
women everywhere are to be treated with the same respect that is given
men as their natural due. Second, hierarchy and chains of command are
primarily necessary where trust has been broken, as in a fallen world.
Where love and harmony reign, as in the new humanity redeemed by Jesus,
human patterns of domination and subordination are ended. Female subordination,
for instance, is a directly stated result of the Fall, and is itself a
consequence of sin.
Then on Sunday, Dec. 6, 1998 in a group reading from the pulpit men and
women participated equally. Over the next four months, women’s roles expanded
to fill everything but preaching. The church is at peace with the notion
of a woman preaching, but has waited for someone with the calling, message
and gift to do it.
When seven new deacons were appointed on January 28, 2001, two of them—Sylvia
Smith and Lisa Jinkins—were women, which ironically only restores
the role of female deacons so prevalent in the church of the first four
centuries.
Also early in 1999 we began printing in our Sunday morning worship program
a brief description of the
church here that included our being “gender-inclusive” and offering some
context for understanding this. We did this largely for the sake of Church
of Christ visitors passing through or newly moved into our area.
The Stamford Church of Christ is a multi-racial, gender-inclusive Church of Christ. We honor as our spiritual heritage those attempts that began in America early in the 19th century to restore the life and spirit of Christianity as envisioned by Jesus and his apostles. So we are a community of believers - disciples of Jesus - who have confessed their faith in him and have been baptized into him. And we take seriously His teachings and their implications for the world in which we live.
From their beginnings, Churches of Christ have been "locally owned and operated". We have no denominational organization or headquarters. So there are things we do that other Churches of Christ may not, and things that other Churches of Christ may do that we do not. As the result of much study of scripture, for instance, we do not restrict roles or assign privilege or status on the basis of birth. We believe that God judges all people everywhere not by the categories of their physical births but by the maturity of their spiritual births.
It is
noteworthy that when the time for change finally came we did not phase in
public roles for women. We simply ended all distinctions in Christ except on
the basis of spiritual rebirth, gifts and calling. Phased-in change, we felt,
runs the risk of pleasing no one; traditionalists are annoyed by any female
presence up front, and egalitarians are frustrated by any restrictions.
Moreover, this approach reopens the debate as every change is phased in, only
prolonging the pains inevitable in change. We found it better to make
extensive preparation and then really become “one in Christ Jesus.”
Consequences
The
inclusion of women in public roles in our worship happened quite smoothly. I
would suppose that most of us, naturally and quite predictably, felt some
discomfort at first. Certainly I did; I was especially concerned over how
others would respond. For the first several months, I was quite conscious of
anything a woman did up front. Then, seemingly all at once, I essentially quit
noticing. Now—to be candid—it seems unusual to worship where only men’s voices
are heard.
In the
transition, we did lose a few members, but far fewer than we might have
expected and fewer than other congregations making similar changes have. Out
of around 130 members, we lost six people; none of those who left us had chosen
to participate in any of the study process we had been through. On the other
hand, several people who at first were quite resistant eventually became
enthusiastic supporters of the change. One who had voted No to everything on
the survey was transferred out of our area a year later and in leaving
described this as “the best church in America.”
So
we were blessed by amazingly little dissension when the changes finally
happened. In fact, the changes happened so naturally that a group of us
recently had a hard time recalling which exact Sunday the change occurred.
Once the leadership was committed to implementing change, it did so in a calm
and confident way, assured that this really was, as best we could ascertain,
God’s will for our time and place; consequently, they felt no need to create
“grand opening occasions.”
While very
little conflict occurred within the church, more was generated statewide, but
even there we were pleasantly surprised by the collegiality and graciousness of
most of our sister Churches of Christ in Connecticut. There was, at first, a
small cadre of alarmed dissent that sought to prevent Stamford members from
serving in any capacity at a local Christian camp, but several senior statesmen
around the state rose to the occasion and insisted on congregational autonomy
being respected. So although many congregations in Connecticut are quite
conservative, they have (with one or two exceptions) treated us fraternally.
Attendance at our annual youth rally declined, but I am treated very kindly at
the statewide preachers meetings. Incidentally, it is our policy when hosting
area events to pay attention to and honor the scruples of whatever sister
congregations are involved.
I further
note that since we made the change, I have made more deliberate efforts to
attend statewide preachers meetings though they are held some seventy miles
away. It has also been important, I think, to reassure others that our
decisions do not mean for us a repudiation of our heritage, and my experience
is that this is reassuring to many people. It is also my intuitive hunch that,
one by one, people are beginning to wonder if we might not be right. They are
observing us with great interest, some with genuine good will. The conclusions
they will draw will depend as much as anything on whether or not they see in us
the spirit of Christ.
Most importantly, we have gained families from the community that do not have
Church of Christ backgrounds; at least two have made it clear that they
would not have stayed with us had we still been gender-restrictive. Another
young man from a conservative Church of Christ background chose to resettle
in our area because ours was a church to which he could envision bringing
his Cornell-educated bride. The full results obviously are not in yet.
For whatever reasons, we have had a real upsurge in visitors from our
communities.
On the
other hand, we have had very few members of Churches of Christ transfer in
since the transition. Corporate transfers seem down in general, but I do know
of a few members living in our immediate area who are choosing to drive
elsewhere because of our being gender-inclusive. But even this picture is not
complete without noting that some months prior to the change a couple with a
Church of Christ background came our way but were troubled by the male
dominance of the church. They stayed with us (until they were transferred out)
because they could see that, at least, we had a process in place, and of course
they were ardent supporters of the change.
Personal Reflections
So
finally we came to the end of a long and, I believe, loving process of
reflection and study. But, of course, it was not the end of anything but
actually the beginning. I must still wake up each morning, steady my soul, and
center it back again on trusting God to see me through, past whatever
disappointments and challenges come our way. It causes me pain when others are
angry with me. It causes me great pain when anyone with whom I have worshipped
God will—with great deliberateness—no longer worship with me. And I am often
perplexed by how to respond to some letters I receive. Which ones are honest
requests for information? Which are spiritual letter bombs? How do I respond
to highly personalized attacks? What do you say to a person when every
intuition you have tells you that they will always put the worst possible
construction on everything you say? I often don’t know. I can only pray to
God each morning that I will respond in love and trust, and not in fear and
anger, and that I will use the time He gives me wisely.
Like most who champion a place for women’s voices in our worship of
God, I always make every effort to state my case in as reasoned and respectful
a way as I possibly can, no matter how difficult the person is with whom
I’m dealing or how inconsistently they are using Scripture. Sometimes
this represents a large spiritual struggle. Challenging the traditional
view on these matters, from the standpoint of common sense and reason,
is no great challenge at all. As one writer has observed, “The emperor
has no clothes and hasn’t had them for a long time.”[8] Privately we know this, but publicly
we will hardly ever say it. Now, however, the time has come to speak out.
And time matters now. I am reminded of William Faulkner’s challenge to
racial discrimination in 1955, “We speak now against the day when our
Southern people who will resist to the last these inevitable changes in
social relations, will, when they have been forced to accept what they
at one time might have accepted with dignity and good will, will say,
“Why didn’t someone tell us this before? Tell us this in time?’”[9] Why, indeed?
Listening
to a person who opposes women’s participation in worship and church leadership
today is like listening to a person who still defends the divine right of kings
or who still considers slavery to be God-ordained. It is the verdict of our
culture, and it is a firm, settled verdict from which there will be no going
back, that privileges, rights, status and opportunities cannot be restricted on
the basis of gender, and that anyone or any group that does so, in any arena of
life, is discriminatory.
The
truth is: Women now excel in every other area of life. And it is absurd to
suppose that the town mayor may be a woman, the state governor may be a woman,
the nation’s attorney general may be a woman, the president of your company may
be a woman, your dissertation director may be a woman, but no woman may lead a
prayer in your worship services. I know that those who still silence women in
worship are mistakenly afraid that to do otherwise will undermine Scriptural
authority, but what really undermines the authority of Scripture is for people
to see it used to defend absurd conclusions and discriminatory practices. If
churches insist on notions that unbelievers know from direct experience to be
wrong, the church will never be trusted when it comes to matters dealing with
invisible, transcendent mysteries of rebirth and eternal life. So change must
come, and come soon.
The greatest challenges are all
still in the future. For some of us, there is still much to study (nor would
my reflections be complete without honoring those who are yet to be convinced
fully but who know that love really is the more excellent way; you truly are my
heroes). For others, it may seem that the battle’s won when in fact, in this
place, only a declaration of independence has been written and the great
spiritual struggles lie ahead. The final outcome is inevitable, but the future
witness of the Stamford Church of Christ, and indeed all Churches of Christ, to
Jesus—to what is true and good and beautiful—is still to be determined.
To draw from the memorable words of Thomas Paine, these are still times
that try our souls. We are up against the weight of tradition, complacency
and spiritual inertia on the one hand and the seemingly irresistible pull
of commercial and secular values on the other. I came to realize early
on that many of the most vocal supporters for involving women were not
prepared themselves to make the sacrifices necessary. For them was a preference
not a commitment; it was something they would be in favor of gender justice,
all other life issues being even. So, some we had come to count on were
not here in our most difficult hours. And when some were transferred out,
and others continue to be, we cannot yet count on replacing them with
Church of Christ transfers in. While more and more churches around the
country are beginning to study this issue, some people moving into our
area still come from congregations that haven’t yet. They do not at first
understand what we have done, or the urgent reasons why we have done it.
Resistance to change always runs deep. There are too many all-too-human
reasons to oppose change, and almost everyone, for reasons both cultural
and emotional, opposes change when they first think about it. We all have
comfort zones we’d prefer not to have violated. For some men, male supremacy
is a critical component of their identity. For a few women of a certain
age, the thought that their life could have been structured differently
is enormously frustrating, so frustrating that it seems better not ever
to consider it. But even in this case, especially in this case, the anxiety
is driven by not considering the times, by failing to think contextually;
decisions made in the 1950s or the 1970s may have been the best decisions
possible then. Such women could well forgo regret and choose to be glad
that—for their daughters—things will be better. Still other
men and women have not yet studied Scripture long enough to see the necessity
of change. Whatever the case, the initial resistance will always be high,
so those who know to do better will need to do better. Seriously.
All the same, fearful people
sometimes judge us uncharitably. Sometimes they are those we most love, and we
will gasp at the things they will say to us or about us; fear is a powerful
energy field. With time, though, fear subsides and understanding prevails. But
it takes patience, courage and faith on our parts. Some congregations distance
themselves from us, and some of their members feel awkward around us, but that
too will change with time. Most seriously, Satan—the Great Accuser—will
continue his work of spreading fear, accusation and suspicion. And he will
test and tempt us in all our most vulnerable spots. From life experience and
the study of Scripture, I am convinced that it is exactly where and when the
gospel is on the edge of gloriously breaking out into our world again that
Satan most seeks to distract, divert and demoralize.
Of
course as we continue to occupy ourselves with whatever crisis, real or
imagined, within the church, the world keeps filling up with broken, hurting,
abused, starving, violated, oppressed and dying people who need to hear and see
that Jesus really is the way to life. Jesus came to save the world (John
3:17); that means, he came to rescue, deliver, heal, transform and redeem the
world. For this reason and in this cause, he tells us to love even our
enemies. He tells us to applaud those whose faith exceeds that of our own
recognized community of faith. He tells us to forgive those who sin against
us. He tells us to take seriously and not to reject the outcasts in our
society. He tells us to stand up to those who are perfectly scrupulous in
minor religious matters but who neglect the more important matters of justice,
mercy and integrity. He tells us that we must no longer, if we would be his followers, think in terms of domination, of who is
greatest, of who lords it over whom, of who exercises authority over whom. He
tells us that the one who would be greatest must be the servant of all. He
tells us that the power in life is in self-sacrificial love, in empowering
others, in giving up our power so that all may become empowered, and this he
unforgettably demonstrated by his own death. And then knowing us, knowing
that few of these things ever come naturally to us, he tells us we will have to
be born again; and he tells, and shows, us how. And this is the gospel that
can save all who trust it.
If we will do these things, one
day women will be treated everywhere with the same respect that is given men as
their natural due. One day everyone in our nation will be treated with the same
respect that has always been given those of European descent as their natural
due. One day the poor will be treated everywhere with the same respect given
the rich as their natural due. These patterns of abuse and discrimination will
end. One day all people everywhere will be judged not by the categories of
their physical birth but by the maturity of their spiritual rebirth. And the
earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord (Isaiah 11:9). One day those
who are in Christ’s church will again be the most ethical, humane and lovingly
involved people on earth, and their witness will be clear to all. We will live
radiant, transformed lives freed from sin, fear, lust and prejudice—freed, in
fact, from all that holds us back as children of God. And our light will
shine.
Our calling as Christ’s church is
global. Our task is to bring peace—proclaim peace—to those both far away and
near. We are expected to destroy dividing walls of hostility. We are finally
to understand how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and
then communicate that understanding to others. The goal of the universe as God
intends it is reconciliation, a bringing together of all things in heaven and
on earth under Christ (Eph. 1:10). The point of history, the point of the
cosmos, is a single gigantic pattern woven out of Christ. We must begin living
our lives, and if necessary restructuring our ministries, so as to contribute
to this meaningfully. I barely know how to begin. I only know that we must
begin. We must begin in humility, in rigorous honesty about ourselves, and in
gentleness and respect for others. And we must begin by trusting that truth
will triumph, that where there is grace and freedom—where love and trust
operate and not fear and anger—truth will triumph.
It
has always been God’s intent that there be people on earth, his people, who are
a light for the nations, who bring God’s salvation to the ends of the earth
(Isaiah 49:6). There is one human story: The God of the Exodus is continuously
calling people out of slavery. He proclaims freedom from all that enslaves.
He releases the oppressed (Luke 4:18-19). Now he calls us forward into his
future. If we take up this task, even parents and grandparents who may not
fully understand now will one day know and understand what we did and why we
did it; after all, we are only doing what they did in their time: answering the
questions of our age with compassion, common sense, and courage. And if we do
this, our sons and daughters, and our children’s children, will be with us.
To our Sister Congregations on the Front Lines
A
working committee of a high-profile Church of Christ once asked me what role
their high profile might play in making a decision concerning ending women’s
silence in public worship. At first, I resisted making any answer to this at
all, understanding as I do that each congregation alone knows its real
circumstances, the risks involved, and its readiness to accept those risks.
But eventually I thought better of it and I now make a provisional response.
High-profile
status is initially—measured over the perspective of the next three to four
years—a consideration in favor of moving slowly. Having said this,
high-profile status is also a reason to make whatever changes are necessary for
the proclamation of the gospel in our time. Avoiding risk and discomfort over
the next three to four years will likely sustain the numerical decline of
Churches of Christ as a historical movement over the next ten to twenty years.
I observe this as one who has spent a great deal of time training in the
discipline of historical thought over the past fourteen years. History has a
certain inevitable flow to it; when certain viewpoints reach critical mass
there is no turning back, and those institutions that don’t “get it” die. In
not too many years the vast majority of Americans will consider female
subordination in any institutionalized form no more moral than we consider
slavery today. And churches still institutionalizing female subordination
will have no more future than a church today still advocating or defending
slavery.
Nothing less than our ability to
communicate the gospel is at stake. Today many who visit churches that still
insist on traditional gender roles, who come to such churches seeking to find
God, visit a time or two, and then feel that they are already more ethical and
humane than the church. Increasingly it is our most evangelistic people, those
who regularly share their faith with others, who most strongly favor and indeed
insist on change. They know that the gender ceilings in churches now keep many
people from trusting God, and they know that if we continue to insist on such
ceilings we are shutting the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces.
Even closer to the hearts of mothers and fathers in Churches of Christ,
innumerable graduates of our Christian colleges are leaving our religious
heritage because, I would conjecture, they feel a disconnection between
what they experience in church and what they know to be decent, ethical
and humane. Something must be done, and it must be done soon. Meanwhile
many of those in their twenties, and those who are coming after them,
will be spiritually energized, awakened even, by the witness of churches
that courageously take risks to do what they believe to be right. They
will see by such examples that faith really matters and has worldwide
and historical implications. In the end the greatest contribution that
high-profile congregations may make to Churches of Christ, in a long history
of such contributions, may be that at just the right time they assured
(or if they do not wish to bear such a load, helped to assure) the survival
and renaissance of Churches of Christ by boldly insisting that women’s
voices be heard wherever people congregate.
I do not think that such courage
will go un-rewarded. I would anticipate that in many of the cities in Texas
and Tennessee with the largest concentrations of Churches of Christ, those
congregations that first take courageous stands on this matter will quickly
draw to themselves like-minded believers living lives of quiet desperation in
other congregations. They will soon gain far more than they initially lose.
What I think is perhaps most
important of all is that people be taught to see the big picture, that they see
that anything we are saying about gender is only a small part of something much
larger being done. In this spirit, for the past few years, I have tried to
keep the eyes of the Stamford church more closely focused on the plight of the
inner-city children in the greater New York City area. By getting our focus
off ourselves and centering it on at-risk children, more and more people came
to see that many things need to be changed for us to truly become disciples of
Christ charged with bringing light to the nations.
We
do what we do for the sake of the gospel; we cannot conduct ourselves in ways
that become or remain a barrier to millions of others seeking to trust God. We
must honor and use—and be seen to honor and use—the gifts and talents of every
child of God. We can no longer let the authority of Scripture be undermined by
people seeing it used to defend absurd conclusions and discriminatory
practices.
We
do what we do so that the world might be saved—so that the earth will be filled
with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Consequently, we
willingly surrender our own traditions and make whatever changes are necessary
to achieve this.
We
do what we do so that God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven. Surely
no one, on careful reflection, supposes that women will be a subordinate sex in
heaven.
And
we do what we do for the sake of our sons and our daughters, and their sons and
daughters.
