The Women

by Eric Svendsen
The "women's issue" is a topic that we have been planning to write on for some time now, but, for various reasons, one that has been put on hold until now. One of the reasons for the delay is that this particular issue is one that is currently being fought out within evangelical circles. There exists already much literature on the subject, so we were hesitant to join in the fray. What good would it do, we thought, to replicate what so many others were already doing?

Then it occurred to us that virtually everyone writing on this topic from the house-church perspective was also writing from a feminist perspective. Book after book on the house-church almost without exception includes at least one section on the role of women in the church; and all of them (so far as we can tell) are poised against the traditional view of the topic. It is because of this seeming lack of balance in the house-church movement that we take up our pens and write.

Having said all that, it would be a mistake to assume that we are merely going to rehash standard arguments in favor of the traditional view of the role of women in the church. On the contrary, most of the standard arguments (on both sides of the issue) assume an institutional church framework; that is to say, many of the arguments to a large degree become meaningless when applied to a house-church setting. Let me illustrate.

Steve Atkerson and I have made our restoration pilgrimages both independently and jointly. Many of the beliefs to which we both now hold took seed before we were introduced to each other. One of those beliefs concerned the role of women in the church. We both came to the conclusion, based on independent study of the Scriptures, that women should be absolutely silent during church (we also felt that most churches were inconsistent in their application of this principle--even those churches that held to the traditional view of a woman's role in the church). This meant no women teaching adult Sunday School, and no women standing at the podium and addressing the church, whether for preaching, testimony, announcements, prayer or special music. I made some concessions for women singing solos, but Steve (arguing from Col 3:16 that singing is a form of teaching) called me to the carpet for my inconsistency. I in turn pointed out some inconsistencies in his own position (he made concessions for women singing in the choir). Just when it seemed we had our theology on this issue hammered out, something happened that threw it into a tailspin--we both left the institutional church.

Now we were confronted with new problems. I was the first to be involved in a house-church, so the problems hit closer to home with me than with Steve. Here we were, a group of eight people split right down the middle in terms of gender--four men and four women. At first we followed rigidly the rule that women should keep absolutely silent. The problem, of course, was that with such a small group of people, it was both awkward and unnatural to insist that the women keep silent throughout the entire meeting. This was especially true during the times we shared testimonies and prayer requests, as well as during the Lord's Supper, which consisted of an entire meal and which we ate on a weekly basis.

The solution that we came up with was that "the rule" (women keeping silent) only applied to the "official" teaching time, and that women could speak freely during the other times. However, this too seemed forced and artificial. Nevertheless, this was the policy we adopted for the church for approximately one year of its existence.

Meanwhile, Steve, having made several visits to our church (though still very much involved with the institutional church), suggested that the distinction we made between the teaching time and every other time was arbitrary, and that we should go back to our previous policy of "silent women." We heeded his suggestion--for exactly one day. It was more than obvious to us that that kind of silence was both impractical and incompatible with the kind of intimacy and informality that we were experiencing in the house-church. So we again adopted the practice of applying "the rule" to the teaching time only. We felt certain that Steve would come around to our way of thinking once he became involved with a house-church of his own (which, by the way, he did).

Then it dawned on us why we were having so much difficulty implementing the theology we had worked so hard hammering out--the theology we had hammered out was based on an institutional church framework. It had not occurred to us that all the minute details we had spent so much time debating--Sunday School teachers, announcements from the pulpit, choirs and musical solos--were meaningless when viewed from a house-church perspective. There was in the house-church no magisterial podium from which to speak, no "pastor's throne," no hushed multitudes awaiting the transcendent, authoritative messenger; only simplicity, informality and intimacy.

Needless to say, we have since revised our thinking along the lines of the "women's issue" (though not without a thorough reexamination of the relevant passages of Scripture). Abandoned are both the distinction between the teaching time and every other time, and the rule of women keeping absolutely silent. In fact, our journey into this way of thinking is not unlike many others who have made the same journey from the institutional church to the house-church. The transition from the institutional church to the house-church typically brings about a change in one's stance on certain issues. In most cases this change is good. But there does exist a danger.

Because of its emphasis on structured, professional and hierarchical leadership, there is a strong temptation when leaving the institutional church to abandon leadership models of every kind. There is, moreover, a tendency among those in the house-church movement to dissolve any kind of distinction of gender. Since there are no "leaders" per se, any one (including women) is invited to have charge over the group. Those in the house-church movement who take this view argue against other Christian feminists in the institutional church who insist on a woman's right to be ordained as a minister. The issue, it is argued, is not whether women should be ordained; the issue is whether any one should be ordained. All in the Body are ministers and there is no separate ministerial class.

The problem with this kind of argument is that someone such as I (who am not a Christian feminist) might be inclined to agree with it. It is certainly true that there is no separate ministerial class and that the real issue is whether any one should be ordained (in the institutional sense). However, it is not so clear (at least in my reading of the NT data) that there are no leaders whatever in the church. It is even less clear to me that the NT authorizes women to take these leadership positions.

I am all for the priesthood of all believers and the right of every believer to do his or her share in the edification of the Body. I would be the first to argue that both men and women (indeed, all men and women) in the church are to be allowed to contribute in the meeting. What I cannot do, however, is simply cover over all the statements made by Paul and the other apostles to the effect that women are to place themselves in submission to men in the church.

How all of this works out will be the focus of several upcoming issues of the newsletter. We will be working exegetically through all the pertinent passages, laying out both the traditional view and the feminist view, as well as our own view. No doubt some of our readers are going to be at odds with some of our conclusions--we fully expect this. There are many in the house-church movement who fall on either side of this issue. Our desire is that this particular issue not become a litmus test for fellowship. Our goal while writing these articles is to remain faithful to the Scriptures. Our concern is that we who are in the house-church movement, while rightly striving to rid ourselves of the excess baggage of the institutional church, do not inadvertently rid ourselves of apostolic mandates and cave-in to a twentieth-century relativism.