Book review - Growing Women Leaders
Review by the Revd Dr Kevin Giles
Every now and then you come across a book that really stands apart. Far too much has been written, especially in America, on the man-woman relationship, most of it tedious and repetitious. Rosie Ward is a mainstream English evangelical Anglican priest, obviously with considerable abilities to communicate and think clearly.
Behind the book lies the ongoing opposition to women in leadership by socially conservative, conservative evangelicals, based on appeal to the Bible, an appeal which is inclusive at best, and leads to the exclusion from leadership of the 60% of church members, the women who are often the most committed and ministry focused. The supposed ‘biblical’ position that some evangelicals appeal to is centered on the idea that in creation before the fall God set the man over the women. Not only does the explicit teaching of Genesis 1:27-28 directly contradict this claim, but also most modern commentators and the Papal Encyclical Mulieris Dignitatem reject this androcentric reading of Genesis 1-3, arguing that details such as woman was created second or sinned first do not teach the subordination of women in the created order.
Ward concludes that all appeals to the Bible to ‘prove’ that the subordination of women is the God-given ideal are special pleading and they demean women. This theology, it should be noted, dominates in the diocese of Sydney and is growing in influence in the Melbourne Diocese. Thus some clergy and vocal lay people continue to oppose the ordination of women, refuse to work under a woman and question the authority of Bishop Barbara Darling. In evangelical student ministry lead by the AFES this teaching means that Spirit-gifted young women are barred on principle from leading small mixed bible study groups.
Note carefully: what these evangelicals oppose is not so much the ordination of women but the leadership of women. They believe God has set men over women in the created order. ‘Headship’ – to use the jargon – is a male preserve. Because Rosie Ward clearly and unambiguously recognises this she does not write to argue for the ordination of women but against the permanent subordination of women predicated on appeal to the Bible. She begins by examining the texts quoted to prove the subordination of women and drawing on the best of exegetical work conclusively dismisses them. She does not go into any great detail in this section. She simply summarises the majority opinion and the best of scholarship.
Then follows a wonderful chapter introducing exceptional Christian women leaders mentioned in the Bible and numerous examples of such women in the last 2000 years of church history. The argument that women are not equipped by God to lead, or that God does not bless the leadership of women in evangelism, church planting or as pastors is on this basis shown to be absurd.
But what sets this book apart is what follows after the biblical and historical evidence is given in the first third of the book. Roughly the second third sums up the latest research on leadership and in particular on the leadership of women and applies this to the life of the church. Ward notes that research on the leadership of women has shown that women on average are more likely to lead collaboratively and non-hierarchically and this is the kind of leadership the Bible commends and endorses
The last third of the book deals with understanding the distinctive challenges women in leadership face, the ways that women can find encouragement and support for the leadership and what needs to change in the church if all its leaders, men and women, are to flourish in difficult times.
Every Christian women leader, and especially ordained women leaders, should buy and read this book. I know of no equal.
Because of the growing influence of those who continue to argue that women are subordinated to men in creation the Melbourne Chapter of Christians for Biblical Equality (CBE) have agreed to run the 22nd Christians for Biblical Equality International Conference in Melbourne, June 11-14th which will bring nearly forty speakers from overseas and around Australia to examine these issues.
Growing Women leaders: Nurturing women’s leadership in the Church, Rosie Ward, The Bible reading Fellowship, Abingdon, UK, 2008
This review first appeared in TMA and is reprinted here with kind permission.
Endorsement of CBE Conference
What does it mean to be a woman? What does it mean to be a man? Is being a male found in chest thumping? Is being a female found in subservience? If not, what defines us as men and women besides biology?
And as we think about the man-woman relationship we might ask, what might 'love one another as I have loved you' and 'bear one another's burdens' and 'to each has been given a ministry of the Holy Spirit' mean for the growth of the Body of Christ and the building of the kingdom of God? Be bold.
Ponder these issues in a biblically literate and conversational mode with Christians seeking to understand biblical equality at the June 2010 CBE Conference in Melbourne.
John Harrower
Bishop of Tasmania