Can Women Be Pastors? Part Two.

Question:

How can a woman be a pastor if women are explicitly forbidden to speak in church in 1 Corinthians 14:34-35?

Answer:

As with the 1 Timothy passage, the translation on this one is usually flawed just enough to make it seem absolute, when Paul had no intention of making it as extreme as our translations often imply. Again, I will bold the translation problems. For the sake of context, I have includee verse 33 as well.

For God is not a God of disorder but of peace--as in all the congregations of the Lord's people. As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. (1 Corinthians 14:33-35)

This passage has very similar translational issues as the 1 Timothy passage, so some of this has already been addressed.

The first thing we should note is that this passage is set in the context of verse 33, which shows that the issue facing the churches was of disorder and chaos during the meetings. Apparently, some of the women were causing some disruption in the service, and the issue had to be addressed.

As with “teaching” in the 1 Timothy passage above, "speaking" here means “continuously speaking.” It is not a prohibition against ever speaking, but against disruptive, continuous speaking. Further, the Greek word translated “speak” (λαλεω – laleo) is more accurately “converse, discuss, extended conversation.” What is disgraceful is for the wives to be disrupting the services by constantly asking their husbands questions, and engaging in ongoing conversations when they should be paying attention to the service. Again, the construction here indicates that women did speak in church, but they were not supposed to abuse that to the point of becoming a disruption. 

I have already addressed the translation issue with "submission," and the context here is the same. Women need to be respectful and reverent in a church service, which is a fairly obvious issue. 

Further, no denomination in any century has ever taught that women must literally remain silent in Church, as that would prohibit them from singing, prophesying or praying, which is something they clearly did. In fact, Paul gives instructions, in this very same letter, that in a Greek culture, the married women needed to cover their heads when they spoke out in a church service (Jewish culture was the exact opposite, with the men covering their heads during religious ceremonies, and the women leaving their heads uncovered, showing that the whole "head covering" issue is cultural). 

Every man who prays or prophesies with something on his head dishonors his head, and every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, which is the same as having her head shaved. (1Co 11:4-5)

Now clearly, if women were not allowed to pray or prophesy in church, there would be no need for a rule about keeping their heads covered while they spoke out in a church service. No such instructions would be necessary if women literally kept silent in church. 

Further, if we take this literally, it also means it only applies to married women, as single women had no husbands to ask questions of at home.

Occasionally paraphrase translations, because they can be freer in their phraseology, manage to capture the force of the Greek passage even better than word for word translations. This is one of those verses where a popular paraphrase, The Message, catches the force of this paragraph in 1 Corinthians 14 as concisely as I have seen anywhere.

Wives must not disrupt worship, talking when they should be listening, asking questions that could more appropriately be asked of their husbands at home. God's Book of the law guides our manners and customs here. Wives have no license to use the time of worship for unwarranted speaking.

All difficult passages in scripture should always be interpreted in light of clearer verses elsewhere in the Bible. It is my contention that we should likewise do the same with the these passages, particularly since so much of the New Testament indicates that women were NOT silent in Church, and that they did hold positions of authority (I will address this in Part Three).

These passages should not be taken as absolute warnings about how women are prone to abuse their authority, but should be understood as what they are: isolated circumstances addressing unique problems within a specific cultural setting. The real principle at work here is that, just as Priscila and Aquila operated as a team in ministry (and jointly taught Apollos about Christianity, Acts chapter 18), so husbands and wives should work together in harmony within the body of Christ.

When judging how God views the issue of women in ministry, or in positions of authority within the church, we should always keep this verse in mind: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28). 

When Paul wrote these words to the Galatians, this was the very first time any person in human history made this statement, in ANY context, claiming all people were equal, regardless of ethnicity, status or sex. Paul, and Christianity, were on the cutting edge of human rights in the first century, and unfortunately, the church lost most of that momentum in later centuries.

The bottom-line is that in Christianity, all sincere believers are given equal access to the gospel, to ministry, and to any position of authority. Many believers in the 1850's used Galatians 3:28, among others, in stating that all believers, of all races, whether black or white, slave or free, are equal in the eyes of God. Just as so many of them had the courage to stand up to slavery when it was the law of the land, many of them eventually embraced the whole verse when they granted women the right to be ordained as pastors. Despite how controversial this issue seems to be, the vast majority of protestant denominations now ordain women, as illustrated in this Wikipedia article (it's a long list, but not complete, as the Free Methodist Church, which is where I serve as pastor, ordains women and is not listed):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordination_of_women_in_Protestant_churches

In America, the average person no longer has a problem with a woman holding a position of authority in the government, yet many believers would forbid a sincere, Christian woman who had just proven her leadership ability as the President of the United States or the Governor of a state from serving as the pastor of a church. This disconnect should not be. Long before any society granted full and complete equal rights to all people, regardless of race, economic status or sex, Christianity was on the cutting edge of civilization by doing exactly that. Our Lord and Savior makes no distinction between races, economic status or sexes, and neither should we.