The Feminization of the Church

Christians live under the same laws as everyone else, and we are often exposed to the same media and schools. Secular ideologies often make their way into the church, especially when churches are more interested in being ‘hip and relevant’ than adhering to the teachings of scripture. One can even make the case that the church promoted the rise of feminism: in the 19th and 20th centuries, some Christian denominations began pushing for female pastors, and female pastors started becoming normative around the 1970s. In the 1980s, two Christian groups formed in response to the changing climate: the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood took a stand against the feminization of the church while the Christians for Biblical Equality argued for women pastors and against male headship in the home. The feminization of the church, it must be noted, didn’t come about due to a serious rethinking of scripture; it isn’t as if serious biblical scholars plunged into the Bible and discovered that we’ve been getting it wrong for the last two thousand years. No, the feminization of the church came about due to the church being infected by secularism’s ideas. A church can take two approaches to its relationship with culture and scripture: it can either interpret scripture in light of culture or interpret culture in light of scripture. The feminization of the church has taken place because many churches took the first route, making culture’s milieu of ideas authoritative and seeking to validate secularism by a reinterpretation of scripture and a demolishing of traditional biblical teaching. While proponents of the feminist church like to act like scripture supports feminism, the truth is that it emphatically does not, and those who say otherwise are misinformed at best or liars at worse. 

Modern churches can take three approaches to feminism and its relationship to scripture. These are modern approaches with modern names; up until the 19th century, there was only Patriarchy, the idea that men and women are created differently and have different roles in the home, in society, and in the church. Those who have let their theology be infected with feminism have either a mild case with complementarianism or a severe case with egalitarianism. Egalitarians believe that men and women are virtually the same and thus interchangeable, and that biblical gender roles are reflections not of a created order but of societal norms and expectations of the ancient world. Complementarians are basically egalitarian, in that they believe that men and women are virtually the same, but they add the caveat that within the household, biblical gender roles are still binding: men are to lead their wives, women are to submit to their husbands, and so on and so forth (though many complementarians will add another caveat in that men, as head of their households, aren’t really authoritative, and that gender roles aren’t present because they’re inherent to the created order but in order for Christian marriages to act as a metaphor for Christ and the church). 

Many churches shy away from addressing the ‘hot button’ issues that feminism attacks, such as male headship in the home, the roles and responsibilities of husbands and wives, and the God-ordained differences between men and women. While many conservative pastors may hold traditional, biblical views on these subjects, they’re often fearful of going against the grain of society and incurring the wrath not only of liberal feminists but of congregants unwittingly steeped in feminist ideas. This has resulted in a failure of ‘orthodoxy’ (or right teaching), so that there’s a disconnect between what many Christians believe and what scripture teaches. Many Christians unknowingly buy into feminist ideas because they’re so prevalent in culture and there’s no bulwark to oppose them. The western church has thus undergone a feminization, and this is seen most prominently in three particular ways:

The Rejection of Women’s Roles. Many women in the church, especially those of younger generations who’re more influenced by feminist thought in politics, social media, and culture writ large, are rejecting the bearing and raising of children and homemaking in favor of pursuing careers outside the home. Feminism, remember, is the idea that a woman is free when serving an employer but a slave when serving her family; culture teaches women that rejecting homemaking in order to pursue a career is the right thing to do, and the church has failed to stand against this rejection of biblical teaching. It’s a testament to the ‘spirit of the age’ infecting the church that most youth pastors shy away from addressing gender roles and the biblical calling for men and women; day in and day out, our youth are being taught that gender is relative (if existent at all!) and that there’s no significant difference between boys and girls, and when they gather on Sundays or Wednesdays with fellow Christians, if there’s no voice opposing this blasphemous teaching, they’ll have no reason to question it. As young women reject the biblical calling to become wives and mothers and homemakers, men are left in the lurch: many single men who want to lead families and build a household lament the lack of single women interested in bearing children and keeping a home. It takes two to tango, and the feminization of the church has come at the expense of men desiring to fulfill their biblical calling. Many men want to have children and build a family, and they don’t find women who act like men appealing.

The Acceptance – and even Promotion – of Homosexuality. Because young Christians receive little criticism of culture’s propaganda, it isn’t surprising that those who reject biblical manhood and womanhood are also beginning to reject gender distinctions. This leads, inexorably, to questioning the bible’s teaching on homosexuality and the twisting of passages condemning it. It’s not surprising in the least that the church’s refusal to address feminism has led not only to it being infected by feminism but also by it coming to embrace homosexuality. Many Christian denominations have swallowed culture’s worship of egalitarianism, and in the process they’ve had to rewrite the bible so that it’s palatable to their congregants. In this way many churches have not only given a thumbs-up to homosexual activity but have also promoted the hiring of openly gay and practicing homosexuals. In order to do this, they need to reinterpret scripture and hope that no one of sense catches on to what they’re doing (when their interpretations are questioned, they respond not with logical rebuttals or airtight defenses of their interpretations but with ad hominem attack, labeling their detractors as bigoted or lacking Christian love and charity). Just as the feminization of the church has logically led to the acceptance and even promotion of homosexuality, it will in time lead to the acceptance of all kinds of sexual deviance, from incest to bestiality and pedophilia. This may seem like a shocking idea – and, to be honest, I refused to believe it possible for a long time – but it’s the only reasonable outcome when you consider two factors at play: first, the rejection of gender roles inexorably leads to confusion over gendered morality and sexual ethics, and second, the church’s rejection of biblical manhood and womanhood has not come from a ‘rethinking’ of scripture but of an acquiescence to popular secular morality. As secularism goes, so goes the church – and secularism is undeniably trending towards an acceptance of all sexual deviance in the name of libertine freedom. Already there are those who advocate decriminalizing incest, bestiality, and pedophilia; such a move isn’t an aberration but a logical outcome of secular thought. Unless the church is willing to fight the hard fight and be hated by culture by standing for biblical truth, then the church will, in time, just become another arm of secularism’s propaganda machine. 

The Promotion of Women Pastors. The bible teaches that men and women are equally created in God’s image (Gen 1.27) and that they have equal value to God and equal value to the church (Acts 2.17-18, Gal 3.28); these biblical truths have played right into feminism’s hands, for they seem to say that there are thus no distinctions between men and women. If this is all the bible had to say on the subject, then the church would in quite the jam; but there are other passages that show that while men and women are equal in value and worth, there are differences in their function and roles in the world. In 1 Timothy 2.11-14, Paul writes, “Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.” This text is a thorn in the side for those who promote women pastors, and for good reason: a simple reading makes it apparent that women are barred from teaching or exercising authority over men. They will argue that Paul’s rule for the churches has to do either with cultural sensitivity or with a situation limited to that of Ephesus. In the first case, they argue that Paul’s injunction was made not because this was something God wanted but because the promotion of women to authoritative roles would undermine the church’s evangelism of wider culture; however, there were plenty of religious cults with female leadership, so this doesn’t make sense. Another argument is that Paul prohibited women from authority over men because the women of that time were uneducated; however, there were plenty of well-educated women in the ancient world, and as Ephesus was a thriving cultural and commercial center, there would’ve been plenty of high-class women available. Some argue that Paul’s rule against women having authority in the church is due to the fact that the Ephesian women were spreading false teaching, and Paul was trying to curb this; however, there’s no indication in 1 Timothy that women were spreading false teachings. Why, then, did bar women from positions of authority over men? The answer is quite simple: it has to do with the created order. Patriarchy is built into creation and overflows into the household, society, and the church. What is true for one is true for the others; the created order permeates everything, and it is God’s good design that must not be merely tolerated but embraced. Paul writes that his rule comes from the fact that ‘Adam was formed first’ – referencing the created order – and then he adds that ‘Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.’ Thus we see that Paul’s rule doesn’t merely come from the standards of God’s created order but also from a sense of practicality: to put it simply, women are more easily deceived than men. As a rule, women are more prone to accepting false teachings and failing to stand against it; women are more prone than men to double-talk, gossip, and believing things absent tangible proof. It isn’t surprising that most of history’s false teachings – including today’s prosperity gospel, social gospel, and ‘feminist’ gospel – are promoted by women pastors and leaders. This isn’t to say, of course, that women have no role in the church: it simply means they have no role that has authority over men. The church needs women and wilts without women: it is women who spearhead most of the church’s charities, who play the vital role of childcare and caretaking, who bring the skills of the household into the church. Women can be and are called to ministry, such as counseling, women’s ministries, Christian education, children’s ministries, music and worship, campus ministries, evangelistic ministries, ministries to the poor, etc. In scripture we find women participating in the life of the church: Paul allows them to pray and prophesy in the church (1 Cor 11.5), and Priscilla and Aquilla taught Apollos together (Acts 18.26). Informal discussion of scripture and helping one another understand scripture is approved by the Bible regardless of gender – but when it comes to church teaching and governing, those roles are reserved for men. Even then, those roles aren’t for all men, but those who meet certain qualifications – thus some men are just as barred from church authority as women! 

The church’s fear of opposing culture’s love-child is why so many Christians have adopted leftist ideas and then defended them by twisting scripture to be more palatable to secularist ideals: for example, progressive Christians infected with secularist ideas teach that since God is loving, we must accept the behavior of all people (never mind, of course, that scripture tells us we should call them to repentance). The feminization of the church has been accurately summed up as a rebellion against historic Christian society and its authority structures, and the sad reality is that the church has embraced its enemy. Feminism isn’t just an enemy without but also an enemy within. While we may be tempted to put the blame for this sad state-of-affairs on women, the greatest blame must fall upon men who have failed to lead their wives and daughters. While women still deserve blame, men are ultimately responsible, for this is how God has ordered society. While both men and women have rebelled against God’s created order, it is the men who have allowed it by standing by and refusing to respond biblically. Christian fathers have allowed their daughters to go the way of the world rather than doing the hard and uncomfortable work of pointing them to scripture and training them to seek children and homemaking. Pastors bear additional guilt for refusing to address this sin in their congregation. Many pastors faithfully proclaim that Jesus died for our sins and was raised from the dead, but they stop short of addressing God’s demands for gender roles and sexuality. They are hesitant or even unwilling to preach against unlawful divorce, promiscuous dating culture, egalitarian marriage practices, effeminate male behavior, the idolatry of career and materialism over children, and homosexuality. They have failed to preach ‘the whole counsel of God’ and have thus failed to protect the flock from ravenous wolves, so that the flock has been consumed with a disease that’ll take hard work to eradicate.