A Wesleyan Biblical/Theological Argument for Women’s Leadership and Ordination

Photo by Benny Gibbons

Among Protestant traditions, the Wesleyan/Holiness/Pentecostal tradition has been most open to women’s leadership and ordination. Women were class leaders for groups with both men and women from very early on in the Methodist movement. Women found roles within the context of awakenings and the holiness movement because individual religious experience and entire consecration to God meant authority arose charismatically, rather than institutionally.

Sarah Crosby (1729-1804), Elizabeth Tonkin (1762-1825), and Mary Bosanquet (1739-1815) preached and often itinerated for the Methodists in England. The Second Great Awakening and holiness movement gave rise to widespread expectation of an experience of the second blessing, and subsequently women found their voices as preachers. Jareena Lee (1783-1864) was the first Methodist woman granted a church license to preach by the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Phoebe Palmer (1807-1874) wrote The Promise of the Father as an extended argument for God’s intention, by the power of the Spirit, for women to proclaim the gospel. Palmer’s influence on Catherine Booth, co-founder of the Salvation Army, led Booth to begin preaching. After the Civil War, the most important and well-known Methodist evangelists were women in the holiness movement: Maggie Van Cott (1830-1914) and Amanda Berry Smith (1837-1915). 

Public preaching and teaching is not unheard of in the wider communion. Priscilla is named as a teacher of the apostle Apollos (Acts 8:24-26), getting first billing before her husband. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), Catherine of Sienna (1347-1380), Theresa of Avila (1515-1582), and Therese of Lisieux (1873–1897) all hold the commendation “Doctor” for their teaching office in the Roman Catholic Church. These examples are not numerous, but their existence points, nonetheless, to a significant qualification of Paul’s injunction to "not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man" (1 Tim 2:12). Hildegard even went on preaching tours advocating church reform. 

The Issue of Ordination

None of these women were, however, ordained to oversee word, sacrament and order in God’s church. None were presbyters of the church. Teaching and preaching are not ordination. These women were gifted for and performed activities that correlated to a church office (prophet, pastor, teacher, or evangelist), but those are not orders (deacon or elder). 

Women deacons, though not recognized by Roman Catholics and some Protestants, have precedent in Scripture. Paul mentions Phoebe as a deacon (Romans 16:1). Tabitha (Acts 9:36-41) is generally considered to have been a deacon. And 1 Timothy 3:11 is often interpreted as referring to female deacons. The Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox (Coptic, Armenian, Syrian, etc.) churches all recognize women deacons, so female deacons are at least as old as married presbyters. But, again, deacons as servants of the church are not elders and do not have sacramental authority. Pre-Wesley charismatic movements like Quakers also have women ministers, but have no sacraments, thus no sacramental authority.

There is evidence of women performing sacraments prior to the holiness movement. Women deacons baptized other women in the early church. Ante-Nicene charismatic communities, like the new prophecy movement in North Africa, which was ultimately rejected by the mainstream, had women prophets and women even performed the sacraments. Tertullian mentions “the woman of pertness” presumably in North Africa, who claimed “Thecla’s example [a female apostle who traveled with Paul] as a license for teaching and baptizing.” Tertullian argued against women doing so, despite being connected to the new prophecy movement himself. Nonetheless his need to address it proves it happened.

The earliest bodies to ordain women as elders in large numbers were holiness churches out of the Wesleyan tradition. Pilgrim Holiness Churches, Wesleyan Churches, and the Salvation Army (though, again, without sacraments) all ordained women early. The Nazarene Church, established in 1894, specifically provided for the right of women to preach in its founding constitution. Early rolls indicate that nearly 20 percent of the clergy in the Nazarene Church were women. In the Pilgrim Holiness Church, it was close to 30 percent. As Pentecostalism emerged, women clergy were largely unquestioned in that movement, at least until recently.

Generally, churches that are more closely connected to the dominant culture, particularly the dominant political culture, have been most resistant to women in ministry. We see this primarily in traditions connected with imperial Rome (Catholicism and Orthodoxy) and the magisterial reformations (Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican) prior to the advent of Protestant liberalism. Liberalism’s openness to women’s roles was more a capitulation to changes in the dominant culture than to biblical or theological commitments. Historically, as more charismatic movements move into the mainstream, they tend to restrict women’s ordination.

All that to say, our tradition of ordaining women as elders is a minority voice within the broader ecumene. The question is, why does this practice persist in our Wesleyan/Holiness/Pentecostal stream of the Church’s experience? What in our biblical/theological DNA has made women’s ministry and ordination a continued theme?

Wesleyan/Holiness/Pentecostal openness to female leadership and ordination has never been an argument from secular rights or the pragmatic recognition of an individual's abilities. Such arguments (often used by liberal Protestants) have always struck me as insufficient. I am no liberal. Historically, though, our tradition has also been committed to biblical and theological warrants for faith and practice. Ours is a “scriptural holiness.” And while we have not perhaps done a good job of articulating those warrants, they are embedded in our understanding of the nature of sanctification. 

Biblical Basis for Women Elders: The Created Order

The biblical basis for women's ordained eldership in the church is Genesis 1. In the beginning Scripture reveals God's perfect will for the created order. Male and female are created in the image of God and given joint dominion in creation (Gen 1:26-31). Men and women are ordered by God to be joint mediators of God's Word, God’s blessing, and God’s rule in creation (prophet, priest and king—the functions of ordination in the church). This picture is also God's perfect intention for male/female relations. 

But, of course, we do not live in God’s perfect intention for creation. We live in a fallen world. Genesis 2-3 reveals the curse of sin, which is the breakdown of God's perfect order. This collapse of what God willed for creation in Genesis 1 resulted in domination (which is different from dominion) and the division/enmity between men and women, as well as between humanity and creation (Gen 3:14-19). Sin caused a radical deviation from God’s intention, overturning God’s intended role for humans (male and female) in their prophetic, priestly, dominion for the benefit of creation. Sin resulted in a hierarchy not apparent in Genesis 1. 

Yet even as “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 Jn 5:19), scripture testifies to God's perfect intention through the grace given in the Old Covenant. There are female prophets like Hulda (1 Kgs 22:14-20; Chron 34:22-28) and female judges like Deborah (Jdgs 4:4): word and order. The examples are rare, but their presence points toward God’s perfect will and the promise to come. The limits under the Old Covenant are no limit to what is possible under the new. “Truly I say to you, among those born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist! Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he” (Mt 11:11). 

Theological Basis for Women Clergy: The New Creation

The curse of sin dominated creation and male/female roles, but the curse was broken through the ministry of the second Adam born of the second Eve. When He suffered unjust punishment for sin, “a full perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world,” he purchased our sanctification “once for all” (Heb 10:10), the restoration of creation, the new creation, the eschaton presently experienced in the Church. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Cor 5:17). Now, of course, the new age is both now and not yet (to be fully restored at Christ's second advent). Peter’s preaching on the day of Pentecost, where he takes a text from the prophet Joel, much of which clearly points to the age to come and applies it in our age (Acts 2:17-21), is an example of this. And the presence of that new creation now, makes possible what was impossible.

So, how far does Christ's victory restore God's intention in our post-Pentecost, pre-second-coming era? Does God, through His Church, make visible the perfection Isaac Watts articulated?

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found

The Wesleyan/Holiness/Pentecostal stream’s answer, with its optimism about grace’s capacity to overcome the world, the flesh, and the devil, is “yes.” 

The intersection of this age and the age to come, when God’s Spirit is poured out, is perceivable by those in this age to win obedience from the Gentiles “by word and deed, in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the Spirit” (Rom 15:18-19). God intends for the children to have “the assurance of things hoped for, the [evidence] of things not seen” (Heb 11:1). They become part of the new creation through faith in the death and resurrection of God’s Word made flesh and the indwelling of God’s Spirit now, in the not yet. Our Wesleyan/holiness/charismatic perspective is that God's grace is power over sin in this life. We are pessimistic about humanity apart from grace, but optimistic about the power of grace. By grace we are convicted, justified, regenerated, sanctified, even entirely sanctified (1 Thes 5:23). It is no surprise that those churches that emphasize sanctifying grace also affirm the ordination of women.

As men and women yield to and abide in Christ, they can experience God's perfect love casting out fear and begin to love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love their neighbors as themselves. Men and women can even love their enemies. This restoration of humanity’s divine image is the purpose of God’s outpouring of His Spirit, His love, and His grace, which are just different names for the same thing. This is that for which all creation waits “in eager anticipation” (Rom 8:19). God pours out Himself to restore the sin-broken relationship between men and women and (at least to some degree) their joint commission as mediators of grace to creation.

The Wesleyan/Holiness/Pentecostal tradition’s argument is that God, post-Pentecost, gives His creation glimpses of his full restoration, here and now. Individuals can expect, by grace, to be made perfect in love in this life. The Church can expect God to heal diseases; give gifts of prophecy and words of knowledge, speaking in languages of men and angels; even raise the dead. By extension, the Church can expect God to restore the ordained relationship of men and women as overseers of creation. These are signs of the coming perfect age, the new creation, while yet in this age.

Conclusion

Our understanding of entire sanctification means the restoration of men and women to their pre-fallen state (able to stand but liable to fall), and freedom from the curse on Adam and Eve which instituted subordination of women. Our tradition has thus been more open to women elders due to our expectation that God will manifest the restored position of women, relations between women and men, and women's and men's joint ordained role as mediators of God's blessing. That restoration will not be universal until Christ comes in final victory. In God’s Church (the new age community called out from this age in this age) we can expect God's will for creation to manifest as a witness to unredeemed creation, currently trapped in sin. There must be a witness to what can be and what will be.

Our tradition of women presbyters is certainly a minority voice within the larger Church of God, but perhaps that is our role. Christian perfection has profound implications for how we read scripture, think theologically, and order our communities. The possibility of women presbyters is simply one more aspect of the “grand depositum of Methodism, that for which we were chiefly raised up.”

Scott T. Kisker is Professor of the History of Christianity and Associate Dean for Master’s Programs at United Theological Seminary. He serves on Firebrand’s editorial board.