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| Greek Orthodox priest |
Visit a Baptist Church in the South on a Sunday morning, before the main event of the preacher's message, and the Sunday school classes are often divided. Men and women usually meet separately, as they do in some other denominations. They have their own classes and conversations. There may be a couples group, but habitually there are special classes for men and for women.
Baptists emphasize local church autonomy. The division of the Southern Baptist Convention maintains that local control offers individual members, as well as the clergy, a way to develop close relationships and the ability to develop functions that correspond with the community needs. The emphasis in the local church is on cooperation that the church maintains builds trust. Cooperation, however, means some adjustment, as the roles are somewhat different in the church as opposed to the community. While women direct and manage men in the workplace in increasing numbers, in church their roles remain as second in relationship to men.
Many Protestant churches, and the Catholic church, offer ministry only to men. In the Southern Baptist churches women do not serve as elders but as helpmates of their husbands who hold offices in the church. They do not offer the principal message on a Sunday nor do they teach the classes dominated by men. Their role in the church is defined by what they believe is the way Christ desires men and women to relate in religious life.
The scriptural foundation for how women are to behave and function in church comes largely from the words of Paul in the New Testament. SBC (Southern Baptist) Voices declares its policy as governed by the words in the Bible. In a discussion on the matter of women pastors, one of the main voices in the forum said this, “If you are going to have a woman pastor in your church, why would you even want to be Southern Baptist? We do not believe that is biblical. We think it is wrong.”
The Biblical passages used to determine woman's role in the church are 1 Corinthians 14:34,35 and 1 Timothy 2:11,12 do seem to teach that women are prohibited from teaching and preaching. The respective passages read as follows:
Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak; but they are to be submissive, as the law also says. And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is shameful for women to speak in church.
Let a woman learn in silence with all submission.
And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence.
While the body of the Southern Baptist denomination utilizes these references to justify women being excluded from the role of pastor, a graduate student examined the issues and principles related to this, and after speaking with a Biblical expert, the following observation was made, as a way of clarifying the scripture. It may leave the question open for women, under some conditions, to occupy the role of leadership and potentially the role of pastor.
On a site called Gospel Answers the graduate student quotes Dr. Spiros Zodhiates, a native of Greece and a Biblical scholar. He explains the quotes like this: “Under no circumstances does the injunction of Paul in 1 Cor. 14:34 indicate that women should not utter a word at any time during the church service. Furthermore, the word gunaikes should not be translated “women” in its generic sense, but as “wives.” It is wives who should submit to their husbands. The whole argument is not the subjection of women to men in general, but of wives to their own husbands in the family unit as ordained by God.
The issue of women becoming pastors is being reviewed regularly, as women increase their leadership outside the church. Moderate Baptist churches have sprung up, out of the body of the Baptist tree that continues to have many branches, that have stepped away from the admonition against women becoming pastors and what is considered to be an outdated and incorrect way of looking at women's church roles. Jimmy Carter said he had regretfully left the Southern Baptist church because it has “adopted policies that violate the basic premises of my Christian faith,” including a denomination statement that prohibits women from being pastors and tells wives to be submissive to their husbands.”
Across the religious divide of Protestantism, other denominations outside of the Baptists have embraced women as pastors. Some of the fundamentalist Christian groups like the Pentecostals have advanced women as pastors. Aimee Semple Mcpherson is a case in point. She was a famous preacher whose brand of speech and dramatic persuasion that departed from fire and brimstone rhetoric and instead used the embrace of love from the pulpit brought her to the forefront of her faith. She was one of those women who preached to mixed audiences everywhere. The Episcopal Church has women priests. The Presbyterians promote women as ministers. Evangelical Quakers, not to be confused with the traditional groups, who have ministers, unlike the unprogrammed groups who don't, maintain both men and women as ministers. So there is some inclusion of women in the clergy in select religious communities.
Catholics maintain women in secondary roles, as teachers, nuns, layworkers, but not as priests. They indeed have never, and by church doctrine cannot be, the Pope.
Islam, although the progressive groups offer arguments of the faith's promotion of women's equality, nevertheless reserve the leadership role of mullah or imam to men. Women, including the more educated ones, are usually in the background at religious and community functions. Leadership roles are reserved principally for men. Buddhism and Hinduism by practice also preclude women from managing religious groups, as does Judaism.
Across the range of history religions of various kinds, including the Greeks gods, held men as the principal leaders of the communities of faith. Whether the leadership came from the Papacy of old or Thor of the dark world, men set the rules and gave the orders by which adherents were to conform.
Across the world, women may assert their equality in business, in social life, and in government. But in matters of faith they continue to be second to men and seldom attain the principal leadership positions in religious communities, even though in the secular world women's abilities are being lauded as worthy and equal to men.
