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 antagonis...
