Living as Women in a Man's World

Living as Women in a Man’s World
JOSHUA 15:1- 17:11

I was talking to a student who was disillusioned with her denomination because of its attitude toward women’s ministry. Women had played a key ministerial role in the movement that issued in the denomination, but the denomination had been taken over by men and no longer allowed women to minister with the authority and freedom that they had at the beginning. A further sadness was that the student appreciated so many of the distinctive emphases of the movement and the denomination; if she totally abandoned it and joined another denomination, she would lose touch with those. Women do exercise leadership in her denomination, but they have to do so in subtle ways that avoid disturbing the modus vivendi that developed there. One can see the same story repeated in the early church, where women originally had an authority to minister that later disappeared, and one can see it in Israel in the person of someone such as Moses’ big sister. Women have to develop strategies for living in a male-dominated world without going under...