Should Women Be Deacons?
Thursday, July 30th, 2009
The question over whether or not women should serve as deacons has been hotly debated within the evangelical tradition. Because of the Scriptural priority of male headship, many evangelical traditions have felt that appointing women as deacons would in some way threaten the authority of men. Others refuse to appoint women to the office of deacon because they interpret Scripture as teaching directly against it.
Now to be perfectly honest, I believe there are a lot of passages in Scripture that are quite clear about those roles from which women are to abstain, but I’ve never understood this to be one of them. And that’s what has surprised me about evangelicalism. Many a church that defends the authority and inerrancy of Scripture, holding it up as one of the most foundational doctrines of the Christian faith, seems to run in contradiction with Scripture’s clear teaching on deacons. In Romans 16 Paul speaks of Phoebe, a deaconess he commends, describing her great work in the church. In a tradition that weighs every jot and tittle as being divinely inspired, the denial of women as deacons seemed like a gross evangelical oversight given that Paul himself worked with a female deacon.
This led me to engage some fellow believers on this issue, and I have since learned that there is a plethora of arguments explaining why Paul did not, in fact, permit women to be deacons, nor does the larger context of Scripture.
But interestingly enough, respected evangelical Tim Keller (Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian in New York) disagrees with many of these voices. In an essay defending the place of female deacons in the Church, Keller addresses the objections to appointing women as deacons by carefully examining the Scriptural defense of the practice. To read the whole essay, you can click here.
I won’t rehash all of Keller’s points, but there was one concluding remark that really stood out to me. After delving into all the ways in which Scripture supports the appointment of female deacons, Keller notes that many evangelical churches have nevertheless abstained from this practice for fear of the culture’s perception. There is a worry that in an effort to defend the authority of men in the church, a “perceived authority” related to the office of deacon could be problematic. In response to this concern, Keller writes,
“Many people have said to me over the years they thought that our practice of deaconesses did not flow from our reading of Scripture, but was a capitulation to the egalitarian culture around us. I have tried to show that our reasons are solidly biblical, but I continually try to examine my own heart regarding this. I would only ask our critics to recognize an opposite but equal error.
Many opponents of deaconesses today are operating out of a “decline narrative.” They claim that having deaconesses is the first step on the way to liberalism. But Jim Boice and John Piper, the RPCNA and the ARP, B.B. Warfield and John Calvin, believed in deaconing women or deaconesses. Are (or were) all these men or churches on the way to liberalism? I don’t think so. Nevertheless, one person put it to me like this recently: “Sure, the RPCNA has had women deacons for over a century. Sure, a biblical case can be made. But in our cultural climate, allowing deaconesses would be disastrous. It’s a slippery slope.”
In other words, the Bible probably allows it, but let’s not do it because of the culture. Isn’t that also responding to the culture rather than to the text?”
What an important point! We must always be wary of a practice that treats Scriptural teachings as though they are “not practical” in light of our present circumstances, as if the Spirit inspired Words of God did not anticipate the cultural tide of the centuries to come. When we do this, we reveal ourselves to be far more influenced by the culture than we have ever dared to admit, under the guise of prudence.
Today marks the 10 day count down until my WEDDING DAY (woot woot!) which means I will not be posting many new blogs in the next couple weeks (And none during my honeymoon…I hope you understand that I’ll be otherwise occupied). Til then, I’m going to re-post some of my older entries for those of you who missed them the first time. Enjoy!
Last week I wrote about Bishop Jefferts Schori of the Episcopal Church, and her denunciation of “personal relationships with Christ” at their General Conference. Though I only alluded to it in that post, there was a second controversial element to the conference, and that was the Church’s decision to ordain homosexuals into the priesthood.
You might remember this past Spring when the news broke about insurance heavy weight A.I.G. providing its employees with $165 million in bonuses. During any other year, no one would have even blinked at that amount, but not this year. Why? Because AIG had just been bailed out by the U.S. Government, receiving more than $170 billion of taxpayer money. To the watching world, these bonuses seemed ludicrous–why reward the very people who brought the company to the brink of collapse?
This week the Episcopal Church created yet another stir at its General Conference when the presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori denounced the idea of a personal relationship with God through Christ as heresy (that is, a contradiction with the truth of Scripture and belief of the Church). She explained,
It’s been a couple months now since the controversy surrounding Carrie Prejean first blew up. Since then Prejean abdicated her Miss California throne and has been touring the Christian speaking circuit supporting traditional marriage and Christian values. I just watched a video of her appearance at Liberty University, and in it she is considerably more composed and articulate than she has typically been portrayed. You can check it out for yourself
What is spiritual leadership?
May we celebrate our freedom to express faith in Christ, but may we never cling to that freedom more than Christ.