The Ridiculous Attack on Women in Ministry

From one Kentucky-based seminary president to another... I have to note that this whole conversation is, like so much in our world today, ridiculous.

Those like Al Mohler wish to drag us into a debate about “what does scripture say” and then claim that their interpretation is somehow infallible (yes, we all interpret scripture, it doesn’t arrive uninterpreted). But I’m going to avoid that particular path.

Part of it is because I’m at the beach right now, and supposed to be on a break. But part of it is because I believe scripture tells the story of a people on a journey to relate to God and others, and is not a box in which God has to exist.

Anyway, back to the ridiculous part... the notion that a person’s gender has anything to do with their value, intelligence, wisdom or capabilities is laughable. Do you really think that’s how God thinks — that some of God’s beloved are innately superior to others? Seriously?

That’s precisely what is being argued by Al and those who support this lunacy within the SBC.

To say it louder for those in the back, God can call literally whomever God wishes to do God’s work — and it is utterly, breathtakingly arrogant to claim this is not the case. Scripture and history are full of examples of God doing just that.

Hagar, an enslaved Egyptian woman cast into the wilderness, becomes the only person in the Hebrew Bible to name God—El Roi, "the God who sees me." That a foreign slave woman is granted this theological first is not incidental; it's a statement.

Rahab, a Canaanite prostitute, and Ruth, a Moabite widow, both land in the genealogy of David and therefore of Jesus — Matthew goes out of his way to name them, foreigners and women, in a lineage that conventionally would have erased them.

Julian of Norwich, an anchoress, trapped in a cell, writing the first book in English we know to be authored by a woman, with a theology of divine love startling in its generosity.

Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, formerly enslaved women whose faith was inseparable from their liberating work. Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?" is as much theology as oratory.

Those in power, such as old white men like myself and Al, have the choice to either create some ridiculous argument for why we are better, smarter, more chosen... or maybe we could take a seat for one damn minute and listen to the incredible voices all around us today: women whom God has called, prepared, empowered, and sent.

P.S. SBC, stop distracting from dealing with real and sinful sexual abuse.

David Cassady
President
BSK Theological Seminary
bsk.edu