A recent article in the New York Times claims that even in more mainline denominations that ordain women as pastors, very few women are being called to pastor larger churches.
Women now make up 51 percent of the students in divinity school. But in the mainline Protestant churches that have been ordaining women for decades, women account for only a small percentage — about 3 percent, according to one survey by a professor at Duke University — of pastors who lead large congregations, those with average Sunday attendance over 350 (source).
So why is it that so few egalitarian/feminist churches actually employ women as lead pastors? Here’s my theory. God has embedded patriarchy into the very structure of the created order (a la complementarian readings of Genesis 2, 1 Corinthians 11, 1 Timothy 2). It’s not surprising to me, therefore, that even those who disavow biblical patriarchy in principle cannot get away from it in practice. It’s written on their conscience.
By the way, speaking of biblical patriarchy, Dr. Al Mohler did radio show on the Sunday school controversy in Watertown, New York. He interviews the pastor of the church that removed the female Sunday School teacher. Dr. Mohler also spars with Ben Witherington’s blog on the same topic.
One Comment
Kathy
Hello Denny,
‘So why is it that so few egalitarian/feminist churches actually employ women as lead pastors? Here’s my theory. God has embedded patriarchy into the very structure of the created order (a la complementarian readings of Genesis 2, 1 Corinthians 11, 1 Timothy 2). It’s not surprising to me, therefore, that even those who disavow biblical patriarchy in principle cannot get away from it in practice. It’s written on their conscience.’
How would you respond to Mark 10? Where did the fathers go?
28 Then Peter spoke up, “We have left everything to follow you!” 29 “Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel 30 will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. 31 But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”