I Support Female Pastors. Have I Surrendered to the Culture?

Our "culture" is hardly egalitarian

This week, thousands of Southern Baptists will gather in Orlando for their annual meeting, and the hot topic is Al Mohler’s proposed amendment to the SBC’s constitution, stating that a church in friendly cooperation with the SBC:

does not act to affirm, appoint, or endorse a woman serving in the office or function of a pastor/elder/overseer, specifically preaching to the assembled congregation.

This is the latest installment in the SBC’s recent campaign to build stronger boundaries around the issue of women in ministry.

As Mohler has preached:

Liberal Protestantism [changed] to encourage women to be pastors… Those changes were made largely without much extensive theological or biblical consideration¹, but rather a surrender to the culture.

Is Mohler right? Is egalitarianism “a surrender to the culture”?

If “preaching to the assembled congregation” is capitulation to culture, we should expect to see a “culture” that empowers female voices.

Is that the case?

Does “culture” listen to male and female voices equally?

You’ve likely seen photos and videos of ecstatic young women screaming for Elvis, the Beatles, NSYNC, or Justin Bieber. But have you ever seen a crowd of enthusiastic men lined up to see Ella Fitzgerald, Aretha Franklin, Madonna, or Britney Spears?

Drake and Noah Kahan concerts are filled with men and women. But who makes up Taylor Swift's or Beyoncé’s fanbase?

Mohler says female preaching comes from the “culture,” so we have to ask: do men in our “culture” listen to women?

A study found that among the top 100 podcasts, 64.1% of hosts are men. Guests on those podcasts are male 72.8% of the time. In other words, the most popular podcasts — the podcasts our “culture” listens to — are dominated by male voices.

In The Authority Gap, UK journalist Mary Ann Sieghart leans on extensive research to claim:

We are still more likely to follow and retweet men than women on Twitter. We are still more likely — when we walk up to a man and woman standing together — to address the man first. Men are still inclined to ignore books written by women, though women lap up books written by men (p. 5).

David Bamman conducted a study of the New York Times’s “By the Book” column, where he looked at:

which books authors said they had on their bedside tables … Male interviewees recommended four books by men for every one book by a woman, whereas women were extremely even-handed, recommending 51 per cent men and 49 per cent women. Half the male interviewees mentioned no women writers at all (Sieghart, p. 154).

Cultural resistance to female voices isn’t confined to music, podcasts, or books.

Women currently make up 28% of the House and 26% of the Senate, and we’ve still yet to elect a single female president to lead and publicly address our country. Does our country elect men at far greater rates than women because of supposed biblical values, or because we have a cultural bias towards male authority?

Complementarian churches generally allow women to teach women and children, but restrict them from teaching adult men. Is this a biblical value or a cultural one? Well, just 37% of full college professors are female, while 60% of high school teachers, 72% of middle school teachers, and 89% of elementary school teachers are female. A Southern Baptist boy’s Sunday School and elementary school teachers will likely be female, and his college professors and adult Sunday school teachers will likely be male. As he ages, his teachers at church and in school will become male. Is that a coincidence?

What about on screen?

Does the Bible restrict women from hosting late-night TV, or is this a cultural bias? Photo: Sam Jones, 9/14/15, Vanity Fair

Major TV networks exclusively hire male comedians to host their late-night shows. Men and women watch Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel. Colbert’s show was loved by men and women alike.

On the other hand, who watches The View? Who watches Kelly Clarkson and Drew Barrymore? Who watched Ellen and Oprah?

Christopher Hitchens — the late atheist apologist who certainly didn’t care what the Bible says about men and women — wrote about the “superior funniness of men” and “the inferior funniness of women.”

Men, regardless of religion, generally prefer to listen to other men.

Sieghart cites a study that says “men tend to feel that women are dominating a discussion when they talk for only 30 per cent of the time” (p. 16), and another that says “women are much more likely to be interrupted than men” (p. 61). Men do not prioritize listening to women, and if women talk even half as often as men, they are seen as stepping out of line with our cultural expectations.

It’s not even safe for women to speak online. “Women are twenty-seven times more likely to be abused online than men” (Sieghart, p. 265). When the Guardian analyzed their online comment threads to see which journalists received the most abuse, eight of the top ten were women, and the last two were men of color (Sieghart, p. 266).

Men prefer to listen to other men, and when women speak out of turn, they are often punished, as evidenced by the SBC’s treatment of abuse survivors like Christa Brown.

Men prefer listening to other men, so of course Christian men want their preachers to be men. But let’s be clear: this is a cultural preference.

So I have to ask:

Who, exactly, is surrendering to culture?

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Postscript: Is egalitarianism just “liberalism”?

Mohler claims “liberal Protestantism” is behind female ordination. Is it true that egalitarian churches support women because they are progressive?²

Mohler is right that progressive Protestants do support women in ministry. But, while all liberal Protestants ordain women, not all Protestants who ordain women are liberal. All PB&Js are sandwiches, but not all sandwiches are PB&Js. Mohler makes a categorical mistake here.

We should note how many conservative denominations ordain women: conservative Wesleyan denominations such as the Salvation Army, the Church of the Nazarene, and the Global Methodist Church; conservative Presbyterian denominations like the EPC and ECO; and conservative Pentecostal denominations like the Assemblies of God and Foursquare Church. There is even a conservative Baptist denomination of over 300,000 members — Converge, formerly the Baptist General Conference — that leaves the question of female ordination up to autonomous local churches. These denominations do not rely on liberalism to ordain women, nor has ordaining women ever become a slippery slope causing a slide into liberalism.

Wesleyan denominations trace their roots to John Wesley’s theological conviction³ that women could be ordained as early as the 1770s, two decades before Mary Wollstonecraft pioneered the women’s rights movement with her 1792 publication, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Wesley’s biblical support of women in ministry predates any notion of secular or cultural feminism. No wonder the Salvation Army and the Church of the Nazarene have both supported female ordination since their beginnings in 1865 and 1908, respectively. Decades before women had the right to vote, these denominations were empowering female preachers.

Many denominations were ordaining women before “liberal culture” supported women’s rights at all! It is simply not true that egalitarian denominations ordain women because they’ve surrendered to either liberalism or culture.

1. It is preposterous to claim there is not “extensive theological or biblical consideration” underlying support of female pastors. Brilliant theologians, biblical scholars, pastors, and laypeople all over the world map out the strong biblical support for women in ministry.

2. While “liberal” can have many meanings, I believe Mohler meant it in the sense of “progressive” or “leftist.”

3. John Wesley didn’t do anything without “extensive theological or biblical consideration,” despite Mohler’s accusation.