Blog­gers like me look to things like site stats and com­ments as indexes of what nerves we are strik­ing in the blo­gos­phere. After hun­dreds of posts over the last five years I can tell you that there are three top­ics that con­sis­tently spike my blog’s traffic:

• cussing Chris­tians
• the debate about eter­nal damna­tion and hell
• the so-​​called con­tro­versy of women teach­ing, lead­ing and being in posi­tions of power within the pul­pit and pew of the con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can church

It is the third cat­e­gory that is most inter­est­ing to me, and also to my read­ers. Most of my read­er­ship are dis­en­chanted Chris­tians who are sort­ing out what’s really real to them in their faith and what’s dog­matic con­di­tion­ing from reli­gious rhetoric and tra­di­tion­al­ism. The per­spec­tive of women in the church by their men, and par­tic­u­larly the per­spec­tive of women of them­selves is still in the grip of an archaic, hier­ar­chi­cal mind­set that keeps women qui­etly busy serv­ing in the kitchen or the nurs­ery. But not the pul­pit or the lecterns where only men can teach the faith­ful. It is unfath­omable to the peo­ple I know here in Port­land who are not Christ fol­low­ers when they learn of the gen­der inequity that is alive and well in the halls of Chris­ten­dom. “Really?” they ask,   “In this day and age?”

  My last post about a recent Barna poll com­mis­sioned by my friend Jim Hen­der­son has many com­ing out of the wood­work to tell their story. Jim is writ­ing a book about atti­tudes in the church towards women. The poll he com­mis­sioned paints a pic­ture that doesn’t match what many of us know as real­ity. My last post took a look at those stats.

A few other blog­gers also took it up includ­ing Kathy Esco­bar and Sonja who goes by the blog­ger moniker, Calacirian.   But it’s Jim’s site itself that has a TON of sto­ries pour­ing through.  Like this one from a com­menter named Jes­sica who wrote:

I’m one of the women that’s already left the build­ing. I grew up in a mixed denom­i­na­tion, but very evan­gel­i­cal church on the mis­sion­field. I can remem­ber specif­i­cally a ser­mon series preached on the require­ments to be an elder and the empha­sis that to be an elder you had to be male. I remem­ber hushed, judg­men­tal com­ments when the local state church received a new pas­tor: a female. More evi­dence that the state church was way too lib­eral to really be Christian.

My good friend Denie of Boise, Idaho told Jim some of her story leav­ing this com­ment at his site:

In most churches I have been involved with or mem­ber of I did not find that women have the same equal­ity as the men. Women were thought of as helpers or help mates for the men. Posi­tions of author­ity were only for men, women were to help with chil­dren, clean­ing, plan­ning of parties..etc and always under the direc­tion of the men and only if given approval by the male lead­er­ship first.

Sev­eral years ago I walked away from the church (not God, but the church) this is were I found free­dom, free­dom to become who I was called to be. Out­side of the church is were I could hear is His voice and His call­ing on my life, away from the insti­tu­tion that was telling me what a good Chris­t­ian woman should be doing. 

I now run a min­istry to those on the streets and have been for almost three years now. A min­istry run by a woman and vol­un­teers that are mostly women. I have had sev­eral Pas­tors want to get involved, each telling me that I should let them take over that a man should be run­ning it. That a man should have author­ity over it and that I should be a helper, that woman’s posi­tion was to be a ser­vant to help with a min­istry and not run it. In say­ing no, stand­ing my ground and stay­ing true to what God as called me to do, I have found myself reject from some churches, called some things I will not repeat here and have even had a Pas­tor tell the con­gre­ga­tion that they were not allowed to par­tic­i­pate in the outreach.

This is a small sam­pling of just two of dozens of sto­ries and com­ments left at Jim’s site from women who are telling him and Barna, No, the stats of your data do not tell the real truth of what is really going on with women. (if you missed Jim’s post it is worth a read and study of the “find­ings” of that Barna poll of his. He is also ask­ing read­ers if the stats match their expe­ri­ence. I encour­age you to add your per­spec­tive to his site as this will help fur­ther his research as well as ben­e­fit the hun­dreds of read­ers  who come through Jim’s site every week.

It is a hot topic. Which is really absurd if you think about it. Women and men are not meant to be ranked against one another. In the king­dom of God the only rank is that of King and there is only one King whom the rest of us serve. Jesus came to lib­er­ate; not inspire the Chris­tian­iza­tion of sub­ju­gat­ing women within the spir­i­tual com­mu­nity of churches. Power is not meant to be hoarded by men, nor women. But shared. Given away. Entrusted towards.

A few years ago  I was sit­ting in a con­ser­v­a­tive church in Port­land. Many sem­i­nary grad­u­ates were a part of this con­gre­ga­tion. The lead­ers were all male and the women were just fine with that. For a time I attended a women’s bible study led by one of the pastor’s wives. She decided to facil­i­tate on the topic of women. “What does the bible say about women?” she asked.

I sat through that study for weeks. I didn’t actu­ally want to be there and felt tricked. I had a new friend who said she would go if I did. I showed up. She didn’t. By the third week of the study I felt as if the Holy Spirit was say­ing, “Be here and be humble.”

Each week women would share dur­ing the big cir­cle dis­cus­sion about their study that week. The facil­i­ta­tor gave us a hand­out each week with ques­tions that required some bible study time. Her ques­tions led to things like sub­mis­sion and women being the weaker sex. Each week I dili­gently stud­ied, pulling out my books about women and lead­er­ship, pour­ing over com­men­taries and look­ing up verses and pas­sages. I knew I was going upstream from just about every other woman at that study. I wouldn’t shy back, I deter­mined, but I also knew I had to “go in low,” or, in other words, with humil­ity and def­er­ence for her lead­er­ship of the study. I would not debate, I vowed.

I kept that stan­dard the entire time. I often spoke up, but only when called on. I did not inter­rupt other women even when they said things that were out­ra­geous for me to hear. Like one woman who insisted that Amer­ica is going down in flames because women are tak­ing lead­er­ship away from men and men are let­ting it hap­pen. She got on her soap­box and ranted about the state of the nation being boiled down to women and sub­mis­sion to author­ity of their men.

I am not exag­ger­at­ing this story. And this is just the beginning.

Another woman, who had beau­ti­ful long hair down to her waist, revealed that she did not cut her hair out of belief that a verse in the New Tes­ta­ment indi­cated she must not. She also divulged that when she heard women pray out loud in mixed com­pany of men and their hus­bands, she would qui­etly pray for them ask­ing God “to help them be quiet so their hus­bands can pray instead.”

I brought up all kinds of things each week. “If God doesn’t want women to lead over men then what can we say about Deb­o­rah the Judge in the Old Tes­ta­ment or Priscilla whom Paul respected in the New Tes­ta­ment, or Miriam the Prophet­ess, sis­ter of Moses who had spir­i­tual lead­er­ship in Israel?” One woman guf­fawed when I fin­ished my ques­tion. “Ha! What a cop out! Peo­ple always use those verses to try and squirm their way out of sub­mis­sion!”  I chose (to my credit) to ignore her.

This study had dis­cus­sion every week and some­times the dis­cus­sion would become vul­ner­a­ble as some women would drop their Sun­day mask and reveal their true thoughts and feel­ings. “I just feel like a door­mat some­times,” said one young mother who began to cry as she let that admis­sion escape from secrecy into the light of trans­parency, “I know I’m wrong, but some­times I feel as if the church and God treat women like door­mats.”  Other women around the room nod­ded their heads in agree­ment and sympathy.

“Can I ask the group a ques­tion?” I said to the facil­i­ta­tor.  “Sure Pam,” she smiled, “just keep it simple.”

“If there were two polit­i­cal can­di­dates who were neck to neck on all the issues but one can­di­date was a woman, would that make a dif­fer­ence in how you would vote?”

Absolutely said about half the women in the study. Women are meant to be help­mates; men are meant to lead.

“We don’t really under­stand what bib­li­cal sub­mis­sion means,” said the study’s leader, “if we did we wouldn’t be so upset by it. We’d just be doing it.”   She later told us that she was plan­ning to request of her pas­tor hus­band to teach on sub­mis­sion to the whole church. Inwardly I groaned as a wave of anx­i­ety curled up inside me.  Are you seri­ous? I thought.

There were sev­eral moments through­out the two-​​month study that I was allowed to say my piece. I’d quote Gala­tians 3:28 about there being no male or female as we are all one in Christ; I’d point out the exam­ples of women in author­ity through­out scrip­ture, and I won­dered out loud in my most diplo­matic tone if per­haps women really were made in the image of God just the same as men. What if we are meant to serve and lead along side one another? I asked. What if sub­mis­sion is meant to be mutual rather than sin­gu­lar? What if?

When the study was all over I gave the bible study leader a copy of Loren Cunningham’s book, Why Not Women?  a great schol­arly book that fea­tures some of the best bib­li­cal schol­ar­ship in laymen’s terms for the dis­man­tling of the defense for keep­ing women in the back of the bus. I told her, “If you read it I’ll take you out to lunch and then we can talk about it. I’d love to hear your thoughts.”

She never called.

Over the next sev­eral months after the study fin­ished sev­eral dif­fer­ent women came up to me and pri­vately told me that they appre­ci­ated my voice so much at the women’s bible study. “I’m too scared to stand up against the leader, but you did a great job!” said one woman. I was sur­prised.  “I wasn’t try­ing to chal­lenge her, ” I explained. “I just wanted to tell my point of view based on years of study and reflec­tion. There is another way to see things.”

“I was so glad you were there,” said one woman whom I knew to be well-​​educated. She rarely spoke up at the study itself but in pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion with me she made plain that she whole­heart­edly rejected the idea of women being helpers and men lead­ers. It was clear to her as it was to me that bib­li­cally defended inequal­ity is entrenched with tra­di­tion­al­ism. But she never once said a word dur­ing the entire eight weeks.

If women do not speak up, who will then?  There are some men who may cham­pion for equity between the sexes in the Church, but if we wait we may be wait­ing for a long, long time. I am com­ing more to a place of activism that per­ceives that women remain sub­ju­gated in the mod­ern evan­gel­i­cal and post-​​evangelical move­ment sim­ply because we allow it to be. We are part of the prob­lem. I am. You are, too, if you have ever kept quiet out of shame or fear or confusion.

I made a deci­sion sev­eral years ago to never be quiet again. I will speak up when I see or hear inequity against my sis­ters or myself in the Church that I love and respect. She is too gor­geous of an expres­sion of the life of Jesus to be mud­died up with some­thing like sex­ism. It is wrong. Wrong to tell women that they can’t pas­tor or teach or be elders or the­olo­gians sim­ply because they are female. It is wrong and unjust.

I hope that the day will come when this issue will no longer be a con­tro­versy up for debate, that blog stats will not shift nor web­site indexes spike beause some­one wrote about women being the teach­ers and lead­ers and voices they are meant to be along side their broth­ers. But that day is not today. Today my blog traf­fic will go up. Because women are too hot to han­dle when faith puts on a dress.