Mutuality | Blog + Magazine | Winter 2010
The print + digital magazine of CBE International
Mutuality offers articles from diverse writers who share egalitarian theology and explore its intersection with everyday life.
Blog + Magazine ArticlesThe opinions expressed in these articles are those of the authors. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of CBE International or its members.
Winter 2010
Volume: 17 | Number: 4
How I Changed My Mind About Women in Leadership
There are few things that encourage us at CBE more than learning how these people encountered biblical equality and were profoundly changed. This issue of Mutuality is full of their stories.
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I am excited to present this issue of Mutuality, full of stories of individuals who found biblical equality. I am confident that they will encourage and challenge you, and point you to the One who changes us, just as they did for me.
A few years after we married, it became apparent that a shift was occurring in our denomination. We began hearing from our leaders and teachers that Scripture prohibited women from leading in church or home, and that God wanted men to be the authority in all matters.
Growing up in the church, “I didn’t sense that women were oppressed,” author and seminary professor Cleophus J. LaRue admitted. The Baptist church he attended was made up of 75% women, and they served in many leadership positions.
This simple discovery—that the “biblical” phrase “man is the head of the household” wasn’t biblical at all—was enough to cause me to question most everything I had assumed I knew about the Bible.
Besides the inspiring story, what I appreciated most about The Blind Side is that a Christian woman is portrayed as something other than a meek and mild subordinate, glitzy sidekick, or an anemic “helper.”
At the age of six, I was known to climb on top of snow banks in Ontario, Canada and proclaim the gospel. Whenever people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, without hesitation I said, “A pastor.”
Do you find that people are as interested in your personal journey as an egalitarian as they are in your interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:11-12?
Alan Johnson, emeritus professor of New Testament and Christian ethics at Wheaton College (Illinois), has put together autobiographical accounts of twenty-seven evangelical leaders, both men and women, from many denominations.
