Churches who don’t allow women to be elders

[TheBeautifulMoors]

We’ve recently joined a new church and my main niggle initially was that it’s not really diverse.

Then I found out that people who haven’t yet been baptised cannot take communion.

However, my biggest concern now is that women are not allowed to be elders.
Apparently, this is what the “New Testament” teaches us”. I grew up in a Methodist church and my mum was one of the elders. I probably shouldn’t be surprised but I really am.

Their children/youth programme is very good and they guide the children well. There are also quite a lot of children, which isn’t that common in many churches today.

Do you attend a church with this belief? Or would this out you off?

I prayed about the communion bit and was ready to let that go because DC can have communion at home but I don’t know if I want DD growing up in a church where women can’t be elders, even though I have no intention at all of becoming one.

Is it because women are seen as lesser? Or that men and women have.different roles?

This is interchangeable. In most religions a women’s defined “role” is more frequently than not a “lesser” role. Subservient, obedient, meek, dutiful in relation to the man. This is what’s expected of women because a book written by men for men I.e bible “says so”. It’s very sad

They categorically do not have "different" roles though, do they?

Men can do everything a woman is permitted to do and more!

If Paul's writing is to be interpreted as you say then it should apply to all walks of life. Where do you draw the line? Should women not teach or run a business or have a supervisory/managerial position in any sphere?

Imagine if your employer applied this rule? Men can be CEO, women can only rise to office manager, because... you're not LESSER you just have different roles to play in this organisation.

I am not saying anything, just asking. I still don't see how the Bible says that women are worth less than men.

By saying things like they can't hold certain offices , they must be obedient etc

Trying not to repeat myself here but this is a topic I feel quite passionately about:

But the Bible doesn't actually state that on any outright, meaningful, or obvious way. It's interpreted that way based on one or two verses that could have multiple meanings when read in the original Greek.

There are far, far more examples of women holding various offices and positions of authority and examples of Jesus himself affirming women who wished to study for such roles.

I find it really odd that you would take communion before even being baptised!

It would bother me and I would find somewhere else.

I don't. I can understand a deep felt yearning to take communion but if you weren't baptised as a child that wouldn't be allowed in a lot of churches. If you weren't confirmed you wouldn't be able to take part either in a lot of churches. The yearning wouldn't necessarily disappear but there would be extra hoops to jump through in order to be allowed. You would have to wait. Yet if a church allowed you to take communion and you really wanted to why wouldn't you?

I think being brought up within a church can bring with it a certain type of privilege. Less hoops to join in with shared worship. It would be easy to forget that for some not familiar with church from childhood that joining in with something new can be quite daunting.

I grew up in the Baptist church and was baptised as an adult at 18 (no infant baptism in the baptist church). I took communion for years before that. In many baptist and (I think) Methodist churches, pastors leave it up to the parents to decide if it's appropriate for their child to take communion - how much understanding they have of it, and so on. Personally I think that's a good way to do it.
I now go to a CofE church and haven't been confirmed, but take communion. The vicar doesn't have an issue with it, and generally invites anyone who wants to to come up and share communion.

Tbh OP this isn't a surprise to me. I've done a bit of church-hopping in my time and always found these misogynist attitudes in "progressive" churches which attract loads of professionals/young people/families.

I have no clue why, as I imagine, if challenged, none of these people would tolerate this sexism in any other area of life.

Corinthians 14:34-35, Paul wrote: “As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says.

OP why don't you go to a methodist church, or other one that doesn't have these issues.
sounds like a consumer choice; going there to get youth groups etc., despite the cost of your conscience.
other churches have varied youth programmes.

If you think about it, the men who wrote the gospels were products of their time. Attitudes towards women were very different then.

If Jesus was to come to earth today I think the resulting "New Testament" would read very differently.

I think you need another church OP.

I'm not religious, but this type of behaviour reinforces for me why I'm not religious - change church before your family are indoctrinated into this nonsense

Then how can 'C' mean they're equal if women can't be in authority? That's inequitable!

But it's followed with this: 'If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.'

Paul was writing saying women shoudn't interrupt the service if there was something they didn't understand, but should wait until they get home and ask their husband. Given that women were rarely educated back then, it was a fairly reasonable thing to write, and in the context of good order in worship (all the previous verses), makes sense. I don't think Paul's telling women never to speak in church (meaning teaching / leading), just that they don't interrupt.

TBH that makes it even worse.god could have said " educate your girls"

The context of this is probably that the Church in Corinth had written to Paul saying that a new, large group of women had begun attending meetings and were over excited and didn't know the etiquette.

Have you been to any church at all ever that has required women to be totally silent throughout? Thought not. So where has anyone got the idea that it means women can't preach?

The word for "speak" there actually is more akin to "chatter". As in "women should be quiet and respectful and not chatter their way through the service but learn and pay attention".

He did.

There's a story about two sister who had Jesus over for dinner. Martha ran around like a headless chicken cleaning and cooking and generally being an impeccable host.

Her sister Mary sat at Jesus's feet and listened to him teach.

Martha got cross and told Jesus that Mary should know her place and get to helping her.

Jesus said Mary had chosen the better thing. Why? Because "at the master's feet" is where a student sat to learn. It was the equivalent of being sat at a desk in his classroom. Traditionally she didn't belong there but Jesus encouraged and affirmed her.

The fact women were allowed in the church at all at the time Paul wrote the letter to the Corinthians is radical. He's not "a product of his time" as someone else described him. He was revolutionary. He wrote to Timothy that "women should learn in tranquility".

Don't take one verse that is repeatedly used out of context to make sweeping generalisations about the entire Bible!

I'm very much of the Egalitarian camp and believe women should be represented in all positions within the church. However, we currently attend a church that does not yet allow women to be elders. It does however have amazing women in v senior leadership positions who regularly preach. Thry also have a woman who is chair of the Board.

I have been in churches that say they are Egalitarian and yet have no women in senior leadership positions, unless it's the pastor's wife. And the women only ever speak on mother's day! This annoys me far more! And it can be far harder to see tangible change in those churches because they think all they need to do is give verbal assent to egalitarianism.

So I would maybe think about how visible women are in church life as a whole. If they're 'only' doing kids work or making the coffee then it says more about that church's culture than whether they have women elders. Though I really believe all churches should.

Even if the new testament implies that women shouldn't be leaders, surely it completely contradicts the modern world where women are (should be) treated as equals. I presume other areas of the church have modernised. I just could never get on board with it. Anyone who accepts it is completely indoctrinated by the patriarchy. The comments above about it being fine because the meetings are long or women still do the job just without the title, make me feel quite sad.

No idea what an elder is. You haven’t told us what denomination it is OP. Is this in America by any chance?
Just join another church which is more aligned to your views.

Might be a Baptist church. Most UK Baptist churches have a vicar/pastor, then two or three elders (often male) who will lead services, preach, might give out communion (depending on the individual church). They're a bit like a deputy vicar, but not trained / ordained, and are voluntary (usually).
The role is mentioned a lot in the NT - Acts, in particular.

Then there's usually a bunch of deacons (who can be women), who will look after specific things for the church. So one will be the treasurer, one might oversee children/youth stuff, one might look after the repair and upkeep of the building, and so on.

I suppose it's a bit like Readers and PCC in a CofE church.