Ordain women now! It's biblical, it's rational, it's time.

(Please note: this week’s essay will argue for the ordination of women. Next week’s will argue for the ordination of nonbinary and transgender persons.)

Churches should ordain all genders to leadership positions in the church. Patriarchy wastes the God-given talents of women. All genders should flourish within whatever vocation (calling) God has given them, including the vocation to pastoral ministry.

Regarding women specifically, the celebration of women’s gifts would be in keeping with the Bible, which deems both men and women to be made in the image of God, to love and be loved and celebrate love (Genesis 1:27). Although it was written during times of horrible misogyny and violence, the Bible still repeatedly records women’s leadership. Miriam was a prophet (Exodus 15:20) who led the exodus along with Moses and Aaron (Micah 6:4). God appointed the prophet Deborah as a judge, leader of the Israelites (Judges 4). When the priests Hilkiah, Ahikam, Achbor, Shaphan, and Asaiah needed help interpreting a newly discovered religious text, they consulted the prophet Huldah, wife of Shallum (2 Kings 22:14). Isaiah’s wife was likewise a prophet (Isaiah 8:3). And the prophet Joel predicted that the Holy Spirit would animate both men and women (Joel 2:28–29).

Recognizing the powerful women hailed by his tradition, Jesus chose to celebrate and empower women. The Gospel of Luke records that Anna the prophet praised Jesus’s arrival at the temple as a boy, making her the third person (after Mary and Simeon) to recognize him as the Messiah (Luke 2:36–38). Once Jesus began his ministry, he defied patriarchy by including women among his disciples; he included among his followers Mary Magdalene, Joanna (the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza), Susanna, and many other women who supported Jesus with their own funds (Luke 8:1–3).

In the ancient world, women were rarely considered suitable for education, but Jesus invited them to learn (Luke 10:38–42). Matthew records only female disciples being present at the crucifixion (Matthew 27:55–56). Luke recounts that women were the first to discover Jesus’s resurrection, but when they told the male disciples, none but Peter believed (Luke 24 –11). Women were Jesus’s most faithful disciples, perhaps because Jesus has no fragile male ego to defend.

The early church continued Jesus’s liberating praxis. Paul writes that, since all are one in Christ Jesus, there is no longer male and female (Galatians 3:28). He acknowledges that women can be prophets (1 Corinthians 11:5), an acknowledgement ratified in Acts, which deems Philip the evangelist to have four unmarried daughters with the gift of prophecy (Acts 21:8–9). Paul calls Phoebe a deacon of the church (Romans 16:1) and calls Junia an apostle (Romans 16 ). He refers to Euodia and Syntyche as his coworkers (Philippians 4:2–3), as well as Prisca, Mary, and Tryphosa (Romans 16:3–12).

One of the oldest Christian basilicas in Israel refers to “the Holy Mother Sophronia,” while its references to male and female deacons are almost equal in number. Scholars now call this basilica the “Church of the Deaconesses.”

Despite this evidence for the historical importance of women’s ministry, most churches do not ordain women. They give a variety of “reasons” for their refusal, but there are good reasons to ordain women, who can preach as well as men, perform sacraments as well as men, care for the sick as well as men, interpret the Bible as well as men, and lead as well as men. These “reasons” cannot justify the ongoing waste of talent and denial of call.

Tragically, people are so used to male priests and pastors that they have a hard time imagining otherwise. Given our unholy tendency to divinize the familiar and demonize the unfamiliar, the idea of women’s ordination offends many. Nevertheless, those denominations that ordain women generally attract more female than male pastors. The first church that my wife, Abby, and I pastored had a slew of female ministers before we came as co-pastors. When I gave my first sermon, a girl in the congregation exclaimed to her mother, “I didn’t know men could preach!”

That girl had never felt spiritually excluded, thank God. By ordaining women and using gender-balanced language for God, we assure girls that they, too, partake in divinity. We inform boys that girls are their spiritual equals and deserving of equally respectful treatment. We encourage women who have been marginalized by their spiritual traditions to feel centered. And we allow men, many of whom have or had emotionally distant relationships with their fathers, to have a closer relationship with their metaphorical Mother-God.

The Reign of Love, toward which the church works, celebrates all difference as a gift from God that enriches reality. For the church, the many genders provide the many perspectives through which we see into the Holy, together. (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 224-226)

For further reading, please see:

David, Ariel. “Byzantine Basilica with Graves of Female Ministers and Baffling Mass Burials Found in Israel.” Haaretz, Nov. 15, 2021. https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology.

Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth. In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins. London: SCM, 1995.