WHY I AM AN EGALITARIAN AS A PENTECOSTAL

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The Blog That Speaks: Why I Am An Egalitarian As A Pentecostal

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Thanks to FreePik for the above image

He had adhered to the belief that women were not to be ministers. To be fair, this is what his church had taught him. But when my parents had a pentecostal encounter with God prior to my birth, they began attending a pentecostal denomination, which credentials women. Thus, contra to my father’s upbringing, I grew up being taught through example about the normalcy of women preachers. I gained a sense of freedom to pursue ministry in this environment.

I was a teen when I learned that my father did not share my belief. I had been excited to hear a pentecostal male preacher explain the cultural background of Paul’s teachings that appeared to limit whether or not women were to minister in the church. The minister’s interpretation was liberating for today’s females. It explained a possible biblical setting for Paul’s hard-to-hear instructions for women who were called by God to minister in a contemporary era (for similar teaching, see Craig Keener’s blog Women in Ministry). I eagerly shared this new-to-me information with my father, only for it to be less than enthusiastically received. My dad informed me that he was familiar with said teaching, but he was not convinced of its validity. In that moment, I realized that my father’s general lack of support for women in ministry indicated that he did not champion my pursuit of ministry either. Nevertheless, I remained undeterred by becoming licensed and ordained in 1990 and 1992, respectively.

A few years later, I had just finished preaching on a Sunday evening as a church’s guest speaker. My dad had been in the audience. As a hard-working farmer, my dad often fell asleep in church. His previous pastors were well aware of their inability to keep him awake. While greeting various attendees, I approached my dad. I smiled as I asked, “Did you fall asleep?” He answered with a smile and the highest compliment I could have ever received from him: “You wouldn’t let me.” I knew in that moment that somehow his position had shifted. This was validated in his later years when he frequently watched preachers on television and one of his favorites was—you guessed it—a woman. 

Yet, my view of egalitarianism was limited. It was restricted to women in ministry, not to women in the home.

Like my dad, my church upbringing informed me that the man was the head of the house, and the woman was to submit to the man. The man’s requirement within a marriage was more stringent than the woman’s since he was to love his wife as Christ loved the church—that is, die for her (see Ephesians 5). Drawing from Scripture, a husband was viewed as a covering for his wife, an umbrella. If he was not listening to God concerning a particular situation but she continued to submit to him, God reprimanded the man, not the woman. She required no additional correction from God on the matter because she was living in obedience to God by remaining under the God-given umbrella of authority (her husband). This teaching came into play in our marriage only on two or three occasions. In each instance, I yielded to my husband’s authority, confident that I was honoring God’s ordained order between a husband and a wife.

But one day, we learned a new teaching and began to dance to a new song— a song of freedom . . . a song of equality

I was listening to a lecture for a class for my Master’s degree in which the professor was waxing eloquent on the theology and revelation of God. In the middle of his lecture, he nonchalantly made an unrelated comment about egalitarian relationships between husbands and wives. When I asked him to explain, he replied, “If men and women will be equal in the new heaven and the new earth, then should we not be living this out now as new creatures in Christ?”

Needless to say, the professor’s response altered how my husband and I viewed marriage and how I perceived myself. It gave me a new freedom as a woman. No longer did I carry the implicit understanding that I was less than my husband. Instead, I now saw myself as his equal. 

A new dance of freedom had commenced.

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So, you may wonder, how do I now view the wives-submit-to-your-husbands rule? 

When Paul is addressing the church in Ephesians 5, five participles are present: speaking, singing, making music, giving thanks, and submitting (vv. 19-21). These are actions that are to be evident in our relationships in Christ’s body, whether male or female. The Apostle then moves to specific relationships, such as husbands/wives, parents/children, and slaves/owners. The overall picture for the church, however, is that followers of Jesus Christ are to submit to each other. It is to be noted that in the most reliable and early manuscripts of the Greek text, the word submit is absent in verse 22. It is implied that wives are to submit to their husbands while being quite clear that husbands are to love their wives in such a way that they die—or submit—to their wives’ needs.

That is, both husbands and wives are to submit to one another, first as members of Christ’s body and then within the marriage.

Serving each other by dying to self is the Jesus model. In John 13, Jesus physically demonstrated to his disciples how he desired them to love each other when he washed his disciples’ feet. Paul is spelling out in Ephesians how this appears in another context: submit to each other. It is not about being a ruler of the household, such as ruling over the wife, children, and slaves. But as Craig Keener points out, the male is “to love his wife, serving her by offering his life for her (5:25), to avoid provoking his children (6:4), and to treat slaves as fellow servants of God (6:9).”^[1]

Is it easy to submit to each other? No. In fact, it may be simpler and easier to have the husband designated as the head of the house and the woman to be in submission to him. Hierarchy is uncomplicated. Legalism is not challenging, but practicing freedom in Christ is. Dying to each other is demanding. And yet, dying to the other is precisely what Jesus Christ has instructed us to do as believers, whether in a marriage or outside of a marriage.

Dying to each other is how we portray love. It is being Christlike. 

Contra to the call of Christ to die to others, our society wields death as a weapon. It is utilized to manipulate and threaten others. Like a pistol in a holster, we brandish it to force others to conform to our desires. It is a tool for control, becoming a strategy to exert power over the other. This is seen in many a marriage as the man says to the wife, “Submit wife!” (as a side note, if one is to fully employ the instructions of Ephesians 5, she could also say to him, “Die husband!”). But unlike our society, death in God’s kingdom is not used as a weapon of authoritarianism. Instead, dying demonstrates a power with and a power for the other.

Death, then, is not for wielding but for yielding. It is not for towering over but for being with and for the other as Christ is with and for us. 

From my perspective, the relationship of Adam and Eve had an absence of hierarchy prior to the Fall—they were equal. It was after the Fall that shame and blame entered their relationship. As such, a hierarchical relationship emerged as the man dominated the woman and the woman was enmeshed with the man. However, Scripture indicates that hierarchy will once again be absent in the new heaven and the new earth. As Paul writes, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female —for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28). If Christians are currently members of the new creation, which they are as followers of Jesus Christ (2 Cor 5:17), should we not also live out egalitarian relationships today, too?  That is, should we not also be dying to one another?

I conclude with words from the Apostle Paul, who writes in Philippians 2 that the church is not to be “motivated by selfish ambition,” but each one in the church is “to treat one another as more important than yourself.” Such behavior, as Paul states, is following the example of Jesus Christ:

 who though he existed in the form of God 
            did not regard equality with God 
            as something to be grasped,
but emptied himself 
            by taking on the form of a slave, 
            by looking like other men, 
            and by sharing in human nature.
He humbled himself, 
            by becoming obedient to the point of death 
            —even death on a cross!

May it be demonstrated as such in our marriages, in our churches, and in our love for the world.

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^[1] Craig Keener, “Mutual Submission—Ephesians 5:21,” Craig Keener website, under “Biblical Backgrounds,” May 26, 2016, https://craigkeener.com/mutual-submission-ephesians-521/.