“The church should define the culture, not the culture should define the church.”  I can’t tell you where I picked up that quote, but I throw it into my Sunday school lessons from time to time, just to stimulate conversation.  It may sound to some like a clarion call for conservative Christianity, but I am not sure.  Is the church being defined by today’s culture?  Is that a bad thing?  Is that a good thing? 

Some may say that the church needs to strive to be relevant, which seems to support the idea that culture needs to define the church.  Why cling to a First Century point of view, with all its outdated ideas?  Others say that those ideas are not outdated.  They are God’s ideas expressed in His Holy Book.  They are timeless.  They are truth for all ages. 

What is the solution to the problem?  We can’t ignore passages that don’t seem current, like First Corinthians 14: 34-35 and First Timothy 2: 11.  If you aren’t familiar with those, these are the Scriptures that call women to be silent in the church.  First Timothy says that women should not have anyone under them [as a teacher or preacher].  It is wrong for women to have authority over men.  [Is this saying that women are not as important as men?]  It seems the big question is this attitude disrespectful toward women?  If we view the Scripture from a 2024 perspective, the answer would be yes.  But in the First Century the prevailing, accepted normal attitude was to discount the role of women in church.  To have any other view was not socially appropriate.

As I wrote previously [a January 27^th post entitled “The Bible and Women”] one of the best pastors I have ever had in my life was a woman.  I look around in churches: the women are leaders in ministry, education and administration.  Some churches would have to close their doors if women decided to leave. 

Yet what are we to do with First Corinthians and First Timothy?  The doxology uses the words “Praise Him all creatures here below” and closes with “Father Son and Holy Ghost.”  Even today, when a congregation sings songs like “Rise Up, O Men of God” how does a female feel like an equal participant?

Peter Gomes was confronted with this issue in his congregation* as he welcomed a Roman Catholic woman from Boston College to come to speak.  She presented her ideas and abruptly led a walkout in protest of the church’s anti-feminist point of view.  This plunged him into the issue of the role of women in the contemporary church and what the Scripture says about women, in essence the relationship between Scriptural tradition and unique contemporary cultural experience. 

Without going too far afield, Gomes brings up the issue that any generation that has read the words of the Old Testament and the words of the First Century in the New Testament has struggled to understand the context.  A twenty-first century spin on the Bible is bound to happen as readers read and visualize with contemporary minds.  Did that happen in the Eighteenth Century?  It did.  Did that happen in the Sixteenth Century?  It did.  Will a man read the Bible differently than a woman?  I would imagine that to be the case.  My wife leans toward feminism and she is galled by some patriarchal language that she encounters in Scripture.** But yet it is there.

Gomes comments:  “The roles of men and women in agrarian first-century society were prescribed by the circumstances of that society, where, with very rare exceptions, women were subordinate to men” [139].  That’s putting it lightly.

Did that influence Scripture?  Of course it did.

The foundation of this problem to put it simply resides in what a person believes about the authority of Scripture.  If all Scripture is authoritative, the stance of the Southern Baptist Association is correct: women should not be allowed to take leadership positions in church and men should never be subordinate to women.    

Are there those who look at Scripture as less authoritative?  Of course defenders of women write that the idea that women must take a submissive role is not binding.  First Century men were taught to be disrespectful to women and that is not relevant anymore.  Malcolm Tolbert writes “one of the most fundamental mistakes in the reading of Scripture, particularly of the New Testament, is to assume that the structures and the systems it describes are as sacred and authoritative as the principles it affirms.  Not only is that wrong, it is idolatrous, even blasphemous, to use the Word of God to affirm and maintain human privilege”  [Tolbert in Gomes, 143]

That is the very argument that Gomes has stated to attack the idea that chattel slavery was correct in the eyes of Southern Christian plantation owners.  He also argued that this same approach fueled discrimination and persecution against Jews as Christians singled them out as killers of Jesus and deserving of punishment. 

The battle for a prevailing contemporary viewpoint is ongoing as people continue to grapple with what to do with the stated male dominance of the Bible.  For now, Gomes does not actually side with one view or the other, even saying that he understands this issue but “for my part, I have been more willing to edit out offending passages in hymns than I have been to edit out offending passages in Scripture” 135].

For now, there is no definitive answer for this issue and he ends his chapter on “Women and the Bible” with the words “The most significant battle for the Bible since the debates over slavery [the battle about women] women have lead the way, and one would like to think that Lydia, Phoebe and Priscilla would be pleased” [143].  When we return to Gomes, he will have a chapter where he will weigh in on a problem that he feels he must address: the Bible and homosexuality. 

My guess is that he will not sit on the sidelines on that topic; we will know where he stands. 

Will his argument be effective?

We will see.

*Gomes was pastor to Harvard’s Memorial Church, admittedly more “liberal” than some congregations.

**Yes, she reads every post that I write so I am not trying to speak for her.