No room for Mama

In this conflict of whether or not women can preach, those who believe that pastors can only be men, gives credit to their wife and tell me they respect ‘her’ ministry and all she does.  That is a gloss-over of what they are really saying. 

What they are really saying is this:

Wife, it’s too bad that God doesn’t allow you to preach.  But the way I see it is that you’ve got one choice:  You can grin and like it and support me, but you can’t stand up and speak up or question our translation of Paul’s words.

Wife, my only choice is to stand up and speak up and tell everybody, you my dear wife included, that God found favor in men and commissioned men to pastor a church.  Neither you nor anybody else can ever hope to find anything different because Paul said so, and I believe it, and that settles it.

Wife, this is what we will do.  You keep your mouth shut, and I’ll keep mine mouth open in protest against any woman who thinks that God might have called her to pastor.

Now, you know that a pastor would never tell his beloved wife that, nor would he tell the women in his congregation that.  Well, not in so many words, that is. But that is exactly what he tells his wife and the women in his congregation.   When he promotes the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, he tells all women that.  When he supports the complementarian restrictionist view of male headship, he tells all women that.  When he writes on blogs and quotes his favorite scriptures and uses language that prohibits women from being a pastor or deacon, he tells all women that.

When he reads only certain scriptures and deliberately chooses to ignore how Jesus commissioned women to preach, he tells all women that.

“She is invaluable. She brings so much to table.” But she will never be at the head of the table.

These pastors are fighting for their lives.  They visually ‘see’ a swarm of women outside their door clamoring to take over their pulpits.  I’ve got news for male pastors.  Women feel a call to pastor from God, and not all women want to get behind a pulpit.

All most women want to do is to be able to walk into their church and not feel that their church holds it against them that they are women. Will you join me and others who are working toward equality for Christian women?

*wish I could give credit to the person who drew the Batman cartoon, but I don’t know who it was.  I lifted it from another website.