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In Celebration of International Women’s Day: Women Excelling in Space and in Service
Today is International Women’s Day. Certainly the world benefits when women invest their talents. Similarly the church benefits when women serve fully in their area of gifting. NASA tested men to find the best candidates for the Mercury space program, but a privately funded program tested women to see how they measured up. Wally Funk was a member of this group of women later nicknamed the “Mercury 13.” The women excelled. Some of them lobbied to have women included in the space program in the sixties, but it wasn’t until 1983 that Sally Ride had the distinction of being the first U.S. female astronaut. Being a NASA astronaut wasn’t an…
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Resources for Revisiting the Question of Women in Public Ministry
For more than a decade, I’ve taught a course on gender in the church. And especially since #MeToo and #ChurchToo combined with Christian leaders saying women have to endure abuse to be biblical and also that women shouldn’t teach in seminaries, I’m seeing a shift in attitudes. Some of the more moderate folks are saying, “Stop already. That misrepresents us.” I’m hearing pastors get up and say, “I was wrong” in slut-shaming Bathsheba. I’ve been told by radio hosts, “If I had talked with you a year ago about this, I would not have heard you, but now. . . .” Something has changed. I’ve been inundated by requests from…
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1 Corinthians 14: Are Women Really Supposed to Be Silent in Church?
What does the apostle Paul mean when he says women are to keep silent in the churches? Many see this as a prohibition against females saying anything in the gathered assembly. But is that what Paul intended? We find his instruction about such silence in 1 Corinthians 14. Let’s begin by taking a look at the context: 1. Notice the topic is spiritual gifts. Paul’s readers, the church in Corinth, are to be eager for the gifts, especially that they might prophesy. Note there are no gender limits given on any gifts. And read his words in light of three chapters earlier, where Paul assumed women would pray and prophesy in…
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Can a Woman Be a Pastor? Looking at the New Testament
Recently someone raised this question: Were there any mentions in the New Testament of men/women who were actually titled “pastor”? I keep hearing arguments that there were no women pastors in the Bible, but I can’t find any men called “pastor” either. The observation that no one, male or female, is called “pastor” is absolutely correct. We don’t see “Pastor Paul” or “Pastor Mark” or “Pastor John” in the Bible. Or “Pastor Phoebe” for that matter. In the same way that no one person is ever referred to as the giver (imagine “Giver Aquila”), the exhorter (Exhorter Priscilla?), the evangelizer, the teacher, the mercy-shower…there is also no one in the New…
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Do Males “Image” God More Than Females?
Do male humans “image” God more than female humans image God? Both male and female were created in the image of God. Recall Genesis 1: “Then God said, ‘Let Us make adam in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule . . . God created adam in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (vv. 26–27). The image of God is male and female. One sex does not “image” God more than the other. And, in fact, male and female are interdependent. I once had a student who wept with joy when she learned this. She was…
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Who Were the Women with Shaved Heads (1 Cor. 11:5)?
The past fifty years at Pompeii have uncovered an enormous amount of social data that helps us understand New Testament backgrounds. Because the city was buried relatively instantly in A.D. 79, everything was preserved like a time capsule in the same era in which some of the New Testament was written. Interestingly, one of the places that yields data for us is the brothel. The house of ill repute in Pompeii depicts erotic scenes associated with certain rooms where sexual options appear in paintings with price lists. And this unlikely place actually sheds light on Paul’s meaning in 1 Corinthians 11:5. There he writes, “But any woman who prays or…
