Are Women "Oppressed"?

When I mentioned the oppression of women in Churches of Christ to one of my friends from the same faith tradition in a recent conversation, he stopped me to ask whether “oppression” wasn’t too strong of a word to describe the situation of women in many of our churches. This post certainly isn’t directed at him; rather, it’s meant to help me define for myself and anyone else why I said what I said.

In my limited experience living within two major church bodies, I have, in fact, come to believe that women in Churches of Christ are oppressed. It’s important for me to note that I’ve arrived at this conclusion without making any decisions for myself about what I do believe the defined role of women in our churches should be—in other words, I believe that women are oppressed regardless of whether I Timothy 2:11-15 should be obeyed literally. I’ll identify three reasons I make this claim: first, because we have far exceeded even the most conservative prohibitions against women; second, because we place inconsistent prohibitions on women; and third, because we have not handled the problem of scriptural re-interpretation with the urgency it requires.

First, the traditions of the Church of Christ have prohibited women from roles that even a strictly literal reading of the text (and a belief that our church traditions ought to be determined by a strictly literal reading of the text) would allow. If I Corinthians 14 and I Timothy 2 are our guide for determining traditions, it is understandable why women would be prohibited from preaching, leading prayers, etc. in the public assembly. But there are plenty of other roles and duties from which women are prohibited that have nothing to do with authority or leadership. I am talking here about duties like the passing of trays for the distribution of the elements of the Lord’s Supper.* These are roles which may not even be associated with a particular gifting of the Spirit.

If scripture does not prohibit women from serving in these roles, then we can no longer claim that our sole motivation for excluding women is scriptural fidelity. We have to examine why else we would exclude women from certain duties when the Bible does not—why do we speak a strict “no” where the Bible is silent? I believe we avoid this uncomfortable task of honest self-examination because of its potential to reveal a toxic sexism that has turned church life into a boys’ club with no girls allowed. And if that sexism is present at all, we may go a step further to wonder whether our interpretation of I Corinthians and I Timothy is the cause—or, God have mercy, the result—of it.

Second, the necessities of church life have often forced us to require more of women than we “officially”—and by that I mean doctrinally, or traditionally—allow, placing women in a distressing situation in which we affirm and benefit from their gifts while claiming that they should not be allowed to express them.

My good friend Shannon Williamson wrote a very honest post on her blog about the “Mental Gymnastics” that we put women through. Here is the beginning of a lengthy paragraph that demonstrates the confusion experienced by a woman who has received gifts from the Spirit:

“My whole life I've been learning how to perfect the mental gymnastics of being a woman in the church of Christ. I should pray fervently. In fact, to be a real woman of God is to be a prayer warrior, and pray for those who are broken hearted, sick or hurting. But I just can't do it out loud when there's a baptized man around. Unless it's before a meal and the people I'm with are really close to me or kind of progressive. And I can pray in front of the men I'm closest to who are my spiritual brothers when were in the library or at my house or a coffee shop. Just not during a church service….”

In all but the most traditional Churches of Christ, this seems to be the situation. People readily recognize and sheepishly admit the spiritual gifts of the women in the congregation, but they only ask the women to express those gifts in very specific circumstances: either when a man is not present to do the job, or under slightly different conditions, or with the expectation that there will be negative feedback. The problem is that each of these circumstances trivializes the woman and dishonors the Spirit's working through her. In the first case, the woman (and her gift) is essentially presented as an understudy or a substitute for the man, who would have been given preferential opportunity to serve regardless of his own giftedness. In the second case, the presence of different conditions (such as allowing a woman to speak as long as she does not use a podium, or allowing her to sing without a microphone) completely invalidates the legitimacy of the gift and the ability of the woman. In the third case, the situation becomes more about the issue and people’s opinions of it than a celebration of the Spirit.

And in any of these cases, the problem is inconsistency. We’re discovering that it doesn’t always work to silence women, but we’re afraid to discern whether their role can be officially expanded. We’re telling women that God gives them gifts in other areas, but then we’re affirming their suspicions that maybe God has gifted them in traditionally male roles, too. And we’re putting women in the wearisome position of having to wonder (because of what they’ve been taught) whether the service they do (because the church asked them to) is dishonoring God. It's inconsistent, it's disingenuous, and it's unjust.

Third, we have not given nearly enough weight and urgency to the question of whether we need to change the roles our tradition has designated for women. John Wesley, an 18th century theologian, suggested that theological reflection has four sources: scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. In the Church of Christ, we have typically relied upon scripture as our only source of authority. Nevertheless, when reason and experience seem to argue strongly for a greater role for women in church life (reason, because of the equality which women theoretically find outside of the church building, and experience, because of the increasing number of women who are willing to admit that they feel called to certain types of service), we at least need to re-examine how we are using scripture.

Notice that I am not suggesting we remove our priority on scripture; I am only suggesting that we reassess our interpretation of scripture in light of our present crisis. Jamey Walters, a graduate from the ACU Graduate School of Theology, recently wrote an excellent post about how we should and should not use scripture, ultimately suggesting something very uncomfortable: "We must fundamentally alter our understanding of what Scripture is and how it functions in the life of the Church." Again, I want to stress that I fully endorse the superiority we assign scripture; but I am concerned that there are certain ways of reading and using the text—such as strict, literal obedience to particular passages—that may demonstrate greater concern for tradition than for actual biblical truth. As before, I ask whether our treatment of women is controlled by or is controlling our interpretation of the text.

I Corinthians 12:7-11 teaches that we are given gifts for the “common good,” and this means that if we are going to silence someone who believes she has received a particular gift from the Spirit, we had better be very sure that we ought to silence her. On the other hand, this means that if someone has received a gift from the Spirit, her duty to use that gift for the body of Christ does not depend on her desire to use it; rather, in full submission to the body, she must allow her gift to be expressed. I am afraid that we have either relied too heavily on authority ("Someone smarter than me decided that women shouldn't participate, and they were probably right") or fear ("We might be wrong to give women a greater role, so why risk it?") as support for continuing our current practices without question.

To conclude, I will call more of my terminology into question, this one coming from a previous paragraph: is the situation of women in Churches of Christ really a “crisis”? If our current practices communicate undue inferiority to women, exclude them from fully participating in the body of Christ, and silence certain gifts of the Spirit, then I believe we are experiencing the very definition of a crisis in the body of Christ.


*Though I’m unsure of the source—I believe it was a story told by Jeanene Reese—I’ll never forget the poignant statement of a woman who, having been raised in a particularly patriarchal Church of Christ, commented that women were expected to prepare and serve every meal during the week except the communion feast of Jesus.