The Woman Who Proclaimed that We Should Not Let Her Speak

The Woman Who Proclaimed that

We Should Not Let Her Speak

She was not unlike most folk, for all of us, on some level, are unaware of the contradictions that make up our lives.  She had never married, and from what I have heard, she never even dated.  When I first met her she was in her late sixties and was living with her sister who was also unmarried.  She considered sexual purity the highest of virtues.  Though she was a member of our church, she longed to be a member of a more perfect church – one that upheld the highest Biblical standards where women were forbidden to utter a word in the house of worship.

Our church was attempting to update its constitution by replacing all male language with inclusive language which would allow the church to call a pastor or elect a deacon that was female.  There were already women deacons, so the church was not seeking to change anything other than the constitutional language.  In the short time I had been pastor, neither she nor her sister had ever attended a business meeting. But on the night we were to approve the changes, they showed up with the most sacred of tasks – to keep their church from what they believed was heresy.

She stood to speak, and her text was that women should not speak in church.  I was almost in tears, for the irony was killing me.  I could not laugh aloud, for she was serious, but I struggled to control my giggle reflex.  I looked away and thought how my father used to flip my ears when I got tickled inappropriately at church. My ears began to sting, and I did not embarrass this lady who spoke with such conviction that we should not allow her to speak.  She and her sister later left our church to join in the establishment of a new church that would never allow women to speak unless they rose to prevent women from speaking.

Years later I was at the hospital visiting her brother when I encountered her again.  Once more she brought me to tears as I strove to hold back laughter.  She told me that a Bible scholar whom she greatly respected said that women could only be saved through childbearing and giving pleasure to men.  She appeared to agree wholeheartedly. This from a lady who had never borne children and would have been mortified if anyone ever thought that she had pleasured a man!

This woman was, in many ways, a fine person. She could have found much help in scripture if she had had the courage to read it for herself. My first impulse is to laugh at the irony of this woman’s religion versus her lifestyle, but after further thought, tears of sorrow for her plight are most appropriate.  What a shame that she always saw herself as a second-class citizen in God’s Kingdom.

I believe that women are fully human, capable of great good and great evil.  I know that God calls women into His service, for I have read the text and have witnessed God working through them.  I believe that the woman in this story and many others like her have lived their lives limited by a foolishness within the church that puts limits on God and women.

I also believe that societies where women are treated as less than equal are the most evil places in the world.  Religions which teach that God sees women as inferior frighten me, for in the name of God they limit all of humanity.

These things I find to be true as I read the text of the Bible and as I strive to live faithfully in the community of Christ’s church.