Equality and Gender in Christianity

Overview

Recall questions on biblical grounds for equality, the texts used to limit women's roles, denominational differences, the progress of women's ordination and the arguments for and against it, and its relation to wider equality debates.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What biblical grounds do Christians give for human equality?

   Model answer

   The creation account states that humanity, male and female, is made in God's image, which is taken to give every person equal worth independent of status or usefulness. Paul writes that in Christ the divisions of ethnicity, social status and sex no longer determine standing before God. The gospels record Jesus teaching women, accepting their support for his work, conversing publicly with a Samaritan woman, and making women the first witnesses of the resurrection.

2. 2

   Which texts have been used to limit women's roles, and how are they handled?

   Model answer

   The household codes instructing wives to submit, the instruction that women keep silent in the assembly, and the argument in the letters to Timothy from the order of creation and from Eve's deception. Egalitarian readers treat these as addressing particular local problems in a patriarchal culture, and argue that the equality texts state the principle. Complementarian readers treat them as permanent apostolic teaching, and read the equality texts as concerning salvation rather than roles.

3. 3

   How do denominations differ in their emphasis on equality?

   Model answer

   Catholic teaching affirms the equal dignity of women and men while holding that they have distinct and complementary vocations, and recent papal writing has called for a renewed appreciation of women's particular gifts. Orthodoxy emphasises tradition and the honour given to the Mother of God. Reformed and evangelical churches divide between complementarian and egalitarian camps. Quakers have recognised women's ministry from the seventeenth century, and the Salvation Army commissioned women officers from its beginning.

4. 4

   Trace the progress of women's ordination in the churches.

   Model answer

   Congregational, Methodist and Baptist bodies admitted women to ministry across the twentieth century, followed by Lutheran churches and, in England, the ordination of women as priests in 1994 and the consecration of the first woman bishop in 2015, with arrangements made for those who could not accept it. The Catholic and Orthodox churches reserve priesthood to men, though Orthodoxy has discussed reviving an order of deaconesses. Pentecostal practice is mixed, with prominent women preachers early on and more restriction later.

5. 5

   Why do some churches hold that women cannot be ordained?

   Model answer

   That Jesus chose men as apostles and the Church has no authority to change what it received; that the priest at the altar acts in the person of Christ and so the sign requires a man; that unbroken tradition in the churches of East and West carries authority; that scripture assigns headship in home and church to men; and that unilateral change damages relations with Rome and Orthodoxy. Catholic teaching states formally that the Church lacks the authority to ordain women.

6. 6

   Why do some churches ordain women?

   Model answer

   That both sexes bear God's image and baptism admits both equally; that women were the first witnesses to the resurrection and were active as leaders, teachers and patrons in the earliest churches; that what needs to be shared with humanity is human nature, not male sex, so the argument from the priest representing Christ proves too much; that the calling and gifts of women are evident in practice; and that the tradition reflects the assumptions of patriarchal societies rather than revelation.

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