Women in Church and the Power Paradigm

This week my sermon is titled "Does Christianity Oppress Women," a sermon that is meant to address the contention of The Da Vinci Code that it does.  I'll be using some material from my previous posts on the issue which you can find here, here and here.

My plan is to contend that Christianity does have a kind of hierarchical view of the role relationships between men and women in the church and home, but that this hierarchical view does not imply that women are oppressed in Christianity.

Being heavily under the influence of Tim Keller, I have decided to take it a different way than we might normally take it.  Those who follow Keller will be familiar with his contention that Christians need to tell the world that there are three ways to live, not two.  What he means by this is that, typically, we in the church will tell people that there are two ways to live, God's way and man's way.  Keller contends that when we tell the world about "God's way," they see or hear, "the way of religion."  So I think Keller would theoretically concede that there is God's way and man's way, but that we need to see that "man's way" takes two different forms - the religious way and the irreligious way.   So, for Keller, this means we need to spell it all out into three ways of living - the irreligious way, the religious way, and the gospel way.  The Bible presents the gospel as the antidote to irreligion and religion.

I think this paradigm can help us in understanding the issue of the relationship between men and women.

The irreligious view on Christianity's oppression of women would be that it does indeed oppress women and women need to be liberated so that they can at least share power in the church with men.

A religionist view would be that the Bible spells out a hierarchy of male and female, that God has ordained men be leaders in the church and that those who disagree simply need to submit to the Word of God and deal with it.

I should also point out that the egalitarians of the church believe, like the irreligious, that women and men should share power in the church, but they do so for very different reasons.  Thus, I don't want this to come across as if I am lumping egalitarians in with the irreligious. 

In any case we have two opposing views which will inevitably lead to an impasse.  The religionists, those who are more theologically conservative will hive off to their male lead churches and will tend to be satisfied in their orthodoxy and will send prayer and polemics out to those they disagree with.

Similarly, the irreligious will use this as one more reason to avoid Christianity and the church altogether - this will be one more evidence of the backwardness and/or oppressive nature of Christianity and the church.

The egalitarians will also tend to congregate in their own churches, will feel that the conservatives have misinterpreted the Scripture and will send prayer and polemics to the conservatives.

In saying that there is a third way, a gospel way, I don't want to suggest that there is some kind of Hegelian synthesis to be had.  But I do think the gospel can speak to people on both sides of the divide.

First of all, the gospel challenges the power paradigm which may underlie the whole thing.  In many ways, the dispute here is over the distribution of power, with one side demanding and equal distribution of power and one side demanding a hierarchical view of power.

Yet, the gospel challenges the notion that God moves through the exercise of (human) power.  God's greatest move, in securing our redemption, involved an emptying of power, a humiliation, an act of obedience, a submssion to oppression - see Philippians 2.  The cross displayed God's glory through Jesus' sacrifice.

So, the irreligionist ought to be challenged to see that they are expecting Christianity to be guided by cultural ideas of power which are foreign to the faith.

At the same time, the religionist ought to be challenged regarding his understanding of what leadership is, what hierarchy means.  I know there are those who disagree with me here, but I am going to operate in this post on my own belief that the Bible does give us a hierarchy in male-female relationships.

The religionist will be tempted to say "the Bible says hierarchy, that settles it, now deal with it."  But the gospel tells the religionist that Christian leadership is founded on sacrifice.  Ephesians 5:25 tells husbands how they are to lead their wives.  But it is interesting that this passage, and the rest of the Bible, doesn't give a whole lot of practical instruction on how a husband is to direct, guide and control.  But it gives many words on how he is to love, serve and sacrifice for his wife.

Thus, when the religionists asserts male headship he ought to be challenged by the gospel as to what he thinks this headship entails.  Does he think that Biblical headship is all about giving him the responsibility to call the shots, or does he understand that Biblical headship is all about sacrifice and service?

It is true that leadership implies calling the shots, but I bring all of this up to point out that leaders are only worthy to "call the shots" if they understand their position is one of service and sacrifice.  Indeed, this is what Philippians 2 is all about as it shows us Jesus as model.  We lead like Christ led when we see others as better than ourselves and consider their needs to be more important than our own.

So, a gospel orientation would lead us to see the church as a place where women are called to submit to male leaders who are called to be their servants (as well as everyone else's servants). 

This won't answer all the objections of the irreligious, but it could at least help bust up their cultural ideas of leadership as power leading to oppression mindset.

Similarly, the gospel orientation would speak to religious folks who have an authority fixation and who don't understand the sacrificial character of leadership.

Scotty Smith says that pastors are to be the leaders in weakness, humility and repentance.  All male leaders could then examine their own hearts and repent where they have been motivated more by a desire to give direction than to render service.

The gospel paradigm would call religionist male leaders to do the hard work that would enable them to send "yes messages" to the women of the church, rather than "no messages."  What I mean is that when the culture pushes against the church, we tend to send a series of "no messages" focusing on what women can't do rather than what they can do.

While a defense of the Biblical position will necessitate saying "no" to other views, this can't be the whole substance of our message.  We have to find more and more ways to say "yes," to the women of the congregation.

This gospel orientation will cause male leaders to be less defensive about their roles.  In other words, the male leaders might realize that a good deal of the cultural pushback against conservatives in this is because of our own failures to lead in a godly, sacrificial, servant manner.  Again, this would give us an opportunity to be the lead repenters.

Finally a gospel orientation will remind men and women that our significance and joy are not dependent on what we do, even in a realm as good and important as ministry.  It reminds us that we are who we are because of who Christ is and what He has done. 

I realize that there are thousands of particular situations where this would have to be fleshed out and it won't get fleshed out neatly and cleanly.  Nor does this answer every question raised by parties on all sides of the issue.  But hopefully this can at least spur some thinking about the true nature of power and leadership and how the gospel impacts them both.