Ordaining women to offices of minister, bishop, elder, pastor, etc.

[cooper]

And how do you explain the verses about keeping silence, asking their husbands at home, and not teaching?

I could give a verse-by-verse understanding of why the Scriptures you reference do not, in my mind, prohibit women from serving in ministry. But I believe that we each bring assumptions and frameworks for understanding Scripture. In my view, it is a hermeneutical approach that leads to different understandings of the relevant verses to women in ministry.

Testing our hermeneutics with Scripture would be a more interesting conversation for me. The challenge is that we often use hermeneutics without thinking about them so it can be difficult to articulate. I think these questions are important, but I am not sure this forum is the best place for this kind of conversation.

[JohnH]

I think preaching gained ground in the reformation because the reformers understood at some level their congregants needed to be converted. Anabaptism started from the other end, only congregating the converted so this wasn't as much a felt need but over time the draw toward dedicated buildings and hierarchical structures is pretty strong. Still one could imagine another form Anabaptist worship assembly could have taken.

The majority of plain Anabaptists don't meet in dedicated buildings.

Come to think of it, the majority don't really have strong hierarchical structures, either (with a flat deacon / minister ministry plus one bishop over a congregation, and no structure beyond that).

I wonder if the persistence of cell group type movements is evidence of a latent or hidden value of non hierarchical small group worship similar to Sunday school. When the Anabaptists borrowed Sunday school from the Presbyterians they changed the form from child catechism to small group, open format Bible study. One way to analyze that old order split might be the progressives adopting and adapting Sunday school were reaching to recover a lost value of participatory, non hierarchical worship and Bible study.

The majority of plain Anabaptists don't engage in Sunday school or Bible studies, either.

Now it seems impossible to imagine a worship gathering without men on elevated platforms speaking into microphones.

The more plain and more conservative Anabaptists don't have raised pulpits, and the more plain and most conservative don't use sound amplification.

The above changes are the hallmarks of Anabaptists who are acculturating to the world, that is, become more liberal / progressive.

[Ernie]

And how do you explain the verses about keeping silence, asking their husbands at home, and not teaching?

I could give a verse-by-verse understanding of why the Scriptures you reference do not, in my mind, prohibit women from serving in ministry. But I believe that we each bring assumptions and frameworks for understanding Scripture. In my view, it is a hermeneutical approach that leads to different understandings of the relevant verses to women in ministry.

Yes, I would like to hear your verse-by-verse... Particularly...

Are you saying that you don't think Paul was prohibiting women from serving as teachers and pastors and administrators in the church? or you don't think that this is prohibited for Christians today? Or both?
If the first, do you view Paul's teaching as cultural/situational and not a universal teaching?

And what about being silent and asking questions of their husbands at home? Was that for Paul's day? All eras? Both?

[joshuabgood]

Some might feel it is self evident that asking husbands at home represents a specific situation and context and not a universal. For one thing some women aren't married. Others are widows. Who should they ask? Also because in fact they met at Lydia's home. Whose home does she go back to? It wasn't at a *church.* So what should the Lydia's do? Further, it seems, a woman, Priscilla, was involved in teaching. And there is Junia...

Of course people find the above at various levels of compellingness.

[barnhart]

Some might feel it is self evident that asking husbands at home represents a specific situation and context and not a universal. For one thing some women aren't married. Others are widows. Who should they ask? Also because in fact they met at Lydia's home. Whose home does she go back to? It wasn't at a *church.* So what should the Lydia's do? Further, it seems, a woman, Priscilla, was involved in teaching. And there is Junia...

Of course people find the above at various levels of compellingness.

The Fundamentalist will say the surface reading of scripture is timeless, silent means silent. The progressive will say most of this was written for specific situations in the first century that no longer exist so it should be ignored. Those who feel discomfort with both of those readings will bumble along as best they can.

[JohnH]

The Fundamentalist will say the surface reading of scripture is timeless, silent means silent. The progressive will say most of this was written for specific situations in the first century that no longer exist so it should be ignored. Those who feel discomfort with both of those readings will bumble along as best they can.

Fundamentalism is a recent invention (and is part of modernism). So how would the Old Order person read the text, and how did they read it in the early 1800s and before?

[joshuabgood]

Some might feel it is self evident that asking husbands at home represents a specific situation and context and not a universal. For one thing some women aren't married. Others are widows. Who should they ask? Also because in fact they met at Lydia's home. Whose home does she go back to? It wasn't at a *church.* So what should the Lydia's do? Further, it seems, a woman, Priscilla, was involved in teaching. And there is Junia...

Of course people find the above at various levels of compellingness.

The Fundamentalist will say the surface reading of scripture is timeless, silent means silent. The progressive will say most of this was written for specific situations in the first century that no longer exist so it should be ignored. Those who feel discomfort with both of those readings will bumble along as best they can.

Very well put. Pretty much describes where I find myself. Though, there is a piece of me that would still say the fundamentalists still "interpret" silent in a loose constructionist sort of way, like Ernie does, so as to allow singing. The really hardcore ones are like Grebel...silent means silent. Singing is a form of speaking. There is no description of singing...so no singing either. If it doesn't say explicitly to do it, we must not.

[Ernie]

Some might feel it is self evident that asking husbands at home represents a specific situation and context and not a universal. For one thing some women aren't married. Others are widows. Who should they ask? Also because in fact they met at Lydia's home. Whose home does she go back to? It wasn't at a *church.* So what should the Lydia's do? Further, it seems, a woman, Priscilla, was involved in teaching. And there is Junia...

Of course people find the above at various levels of compellingness.

The Fundamentalist will say the surface reading of scripture is timeless, silent means silent. The progressive will say most of this was written for specific situations in the first century that no longer exist so it should be ignored. Those who feel discomfort with both of those readings will bumble along as best they can.

Very well put. Pretty much describes where I find myself. Though, there is a piece of me that would still say the fundamentalists still "interpret" silent in a loose constructionist sort of way, like Ernie does, so as to allow singing. The really hardcore ones are like Grebel...silent means silent. Singing is a form of speaking. There is no description of singing...so no singing either.

I think this is a fair assessment.

If it doesn't say explicitly to do it, we must not.

This is a different argument.
This is the regulative principle argument and not something I hear from many Fundamentalists, Old Order Anabaptists, nor Conservative Anabaptists.

The historical Anabaptist position has been,
"Whatever the New Testament upholds or teaches, that we should strive to do."

NOT
"If the New Testament doesn't tell us to do something, we should not do it."

[Signtist]

I think our church actually ordained the coue, not just the man. I'm almost certain I made a post here about it one time, soon after an ordination when my memory of the facts would have been clear. Now I can't find it.

[ken_sylvania]

I think our church actually ordained the coue, not just the man. I'm almost certain I made a post here about it one time, soon after an ordination when my memory of the facts would have been clear. Now I can't find it.

Yes, he was more than just a man, wasn't he. Hadn't realized he was ordained, but hey, whatever works...

Émile Coué de la Châtaigneraie was a French psychologist, pharmacist, and hypnotist who introduced a popular method of psychotherapy and self-improvement.