Female Elders

Dear Church,

Isn’t it time to beat swords into plowshares?

What might it look like to pour energy and resources into the work of cultivating rows rather than defining battle lines?

Today I hear of your decision to continue to not formally recognise the wisdom of female elders among your people.

How long before you see that your conversation is not about what you think it is?

This conversation is not about who is permitted to teach behind a pulpit, or decide around a table, it is about what you refuse to lay down.

For some, you refuse to lay down your worship of written revelation. (Complementarianism is a perspective driven by the need to maintain a literal interpretation of Scripture where the ‘place of women in the church’ is used to uphold the evangelical construct of ‘biblical inerrancy’)

For some, you refuse to lay down the fight for your rights. (Egalitarianism is rooted in the understandable and just protest-response to inequality,  thereby often descending into an antagonistic spiral of debate - struggling to recognize the dispute as a metaphysical one, and not just one of biblical interpretation.)

For others, you refuse to lay down your sense of male superiority and it is time to face up to the harm you are causing. (Patriarchalism - often under the banner of complementarianism - holds a warped view of the concept of headship and must be illuminated as nothing short of abusive.)

This tiresome conversation needs to end - because as long as we hold onto that which must be laid down, we will always struggle to create space for imagination and wonder around the Edenic experience of the first humans.

Male and female. 

ENRICHING one another.

Maybe there’s a new language for us to learn - but first let us stop worshipping our ideas around scripture or ministry practice.

And men, let’s put an end to our misogyny.

Bring our swords to the fire, and hammer them into something that breaks new ground.