Equality Junction

Women will have to decide

 

   Few women want to be deacons or pastors. But when you deny that privilege to any one woman, you have denied it to every woman in your church. You have told every woman that her husband and any other male member of her family, and all those men inside the church where she worships, are superior to her. By your actions, you have told your daughter that her brother is superior to her.

 

   Stop and think about this, because this is what you are saying by your actions. Is this really how you feel? If you do not feel that your sons are better than your daughters, then it is time to step up and say so. Husbands, if you do not feel that you, along with all the boys and men in your church, are superior to your wives, then it is time for you to stand up and say so.

 

   Women, will you be the voices for our daughters and granddaughters? Daughters need our voices. Young women today have never been denied the right to vote or serve on a jury. They have not been denied a credit card based on their gender. They do not know of a time when married women could not purchase a car or buy a house in their own name, simply because they were married and married women were not allowed to enter into certain contractual agreements. Many young women in Texas do not know that it wasn’t until 1972 that a married woman attorney could sign a client’s bond, and married women physicians actually had the right by law to perform various procedures required by their medical practices.  They do not remember when women were limited to certain jobs and certain fields of education. In contrast to those times, women can now be educated in any field they choose, and they have legal rights to practice their profession under the law.

 

   Women still do not have full Constitutional equality with men, but, in 1964, the Civil Rights Act gave all women, both black and white, many of the same rights that men already had. The church should have been the first! But they did not stand up for full equality for women in the secular world then, and most will not stand up for women in the church now.

 

   Churches have continually denied capable spiritual women equality before God within their congregations. Women are denied equality by an inaccurate interpretation of the Scriptures, by the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, and by The Danvers Statement. Women are denied equality by seminaries that teach male headship. Women are denied ministry equality by many denominations that teach only males can be the pastors, preachers, or priests. And, most shameful of all, women are denied by other women in their congregations who prevent them from pastoring churches and from becoming deacons.

 

   It is imperative that concerned Christians speak out for women because the seminaries that do train women for ministry cannot force churches to hire them. They can teach and bestow theological degrees upon women, but until local churches are willing to hire women as pastors and ministerial staff, these seminary trained women will not experience freedom to follow God’s call. And even though they would be advocating for their own employment, these women cannot speak out because what little chance they have of serving a congregation would be diminished if they are seen as being activists.

 

   Those of us who attend church on Sundays, who vote on the by-laws that limit women, must take action and insist that women and men be given equal treatment in our churches.