Most clergy and laypeople alike would agree that Christ,
not the apostle Paul, is the source of all church authority and
power. So what do we find Jesus saying about women? How did He deal
with them?
In the presence of the multitude, He drew from Martha the
same testimony He required of His apostles, and she publicly replied,
almost in Peter’s very words, “Yea, Lord: I believe that Thou art the
Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world” (John 11:27,
KJV).
He declared His commission to the woman at the well of Samaria,
with an emphasis and a particularity hardly equalled in any of His
public addresses, and the testimony she gave to her fellow Samaritans
bore much fruit. What pastor would not rejoice to hear what the
converts said to the woman: “Now we believe, not because of thy saying:
for we have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the
Christ, the Saviour of the world” (4:42).
Some object that Jesus did not call any women to be
apostles. True, He did not designate women as His followers; they came
without a call. No utterance of His marks women as ineligible for any
position in the church He came to found; rather, His gracious words and
deeds, His impartation of His purposes and plans to women, His stern
reproofs to men who did them wrong, His chosen companionships, and the
tenor of His whole life and teaching, all point out precisely the
opposite conclusion.
Indeed, Luke explicitly declares that “He went throughout
every city and village, preaching and shewing the glad tidings of the
kingdom of God: and the twelve were with Him, and certain women,” among
whom were “Joanna the wife of Chuza Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and
many others, which ministered unto Him of their substance” (Luke 8:1-3,
emphasis added).
What a spectacle that must have been for the scribes and
Pharisees, whom Jesus called hypocrites! What loss of caste came to
those fearless women, who, breaking away from the customs of society
and traditions of religion, dared to follow the greatest of iconoclasts
from city to village with a persistence nothing less than outrageous to
the conservatives of that day!
Only Christ’s commission is authoritative. To whom did He
give it after His resurrection, when the new dispensation was ushered
in?
If we are to accept specific statements as conclusive of
a question involving half the human race, let us take our stand on our
Lord’s final words and deeds. Luke 24:33-34 states that the two
disciples to whom Christ appeared on the way to Emmaus “returned to
Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were
with them, saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to
Simon.” Be it understood that women were among “them that were with
them.”
While they were thus assembled and talking of the
wonderful experience of that day, Jesus appeared again, saying, “Peace
be unto you.” In John 20:19-23, we have an account of this appearance
of Christ to His disciples, for it says explictly (after stating that
Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord):
“Then the same day at evening … came Jesus and stood in the midst, and
saith unto them, Peace be unto you … as My Father hath sent Me, even so
send I you. And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and saith
unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whosesoever sins ye remit, they
are remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are
retained.”
These are the words He spoke to the 11 and “them that
were with them.” He then “opened their understanding that they might
understand the Scriptures” and declared that “repentance and remission
of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning at
Jerusalem,” and declared, “ye are witnesses of these things. And
behold, I send the promise of My Father upon you, but tarry ye in
Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high. And He led them
out as far as to Bethany, and He lifted up His hands, and blessed them.
And it came to pass, while He blessed them, He was parted from them,
and carried up into heaven. And they worshipped Him, and returned to
Jerusalem with great joy” (Luke 24:48-52, emphasis added).
In reading this account, does any reasonable person
suppose that Jesus’ mother and the other Marys were not there? Or the
great company of women who had ministered to Him?
But we are not left in doubt. Turn to Acts 1:12-14: “Then
returned they unto Jerusalem…and when they were come in, they went up
into an upper room, where abode both Peter, and James, and
John….These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication,
with the women, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and with His brethren”
(emphasis added).
The account goes on: “And when the day of Pentecost was
fully come, they were all with one accord in one place….And they were
all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues,
as the Spirit gave them utterance” (2:1-4, emphasis added).
Then Peter said: “This is that which was spoken by the
prophet Joel; And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I
will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your
daughters shall prophesy … and on My servants and on My handmaidens I
will pour out in those days of My Spirit; and they shall prophesy” (vv.
16-18, emphasis added). Paul proves that prophesying may be considered
preaching when he says, “But he that prophesieth speaketh unto men to
edification and exhortation, and comfort” (1 Cor. 14:3).
The time has come when men in high places within the
church of Christ who seek to shut women out of the pastorate cannot do
so with impunity. Today they are taking on themselves a responsibility
in the presence of which they ought to tremble.
To an earnest, intelligent and devout element among their
brethren they seem to be absolutely frustrating the grace of God. They
cannot fail to see how many ministers neither draw men to the gospel
feast nor go out into the highways and hedges seeking them. They cannot
fail to see that, although the novelty of women’s speaking has worn
off, the people rally to hear them as to hear no others, save the most
celebrated men of the pulpit and platform; and that it is especially
true that the common people hear them gladly.
The plea urged by some theologians that woman is born to
one vocation, and one alone, is negatived by her magnificent success as
a teacher, a philanthropist, and a physician, by which means she takes
the part of foster-mother to myriads of children orphaned or worse than
motherless. Their fear that incompetent women may become pastors and
preachers should be put to flight by the survival of the church in
spite of centuries of the grossest incompetency of men set apart by the
laying-on of hands. Their anxiety lest too many women should crowd in
is met by the method of choosing a pastor, in which both clergy and
people must unite to attest the fitness and acceptability of every
candidate.
Some men say it will disrupt the home. They might as well
talk of driving back the tides of the sea. The mother-heart will never
change.
Woman enters the arena of literature, art, business;
becomes a teacher, a physician, a philanthropist; but she is a woman
first of all, and cannot deny herself. In all these great vocations she
has still been “true to the kindred points of heaven and home”; and
everybody knows that, beyond almost any other, the minister is one who
lives at home. The firesides of the people are his weekday sanctuary,
the pulpit is near his own door, and its publicity is so guarded by the
people’s reverence and sympathy as to make it of all others the place
least inharmonious with woman’s character and work.
When will blind eyes be opened to see the immeasurable
losses the church sustains by not claiming for her altars these loyal,
earnest-hearted daughters, who, rather than fighting the system, are
going into other lines of work or taking their commission from the
evangelistic department of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union? Or
are they willing that women should go to the lowly and forgotten, but
not to the affluent and powerful? Are they willing that women should
baptize and administer the sacrament in India, but not at the elegant
altars of Christendom?
The National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union has
departments of evangelistic work, of Bible readings, of gospel work for
railroad employees, soldiers, sailors and lumbermen; of prison, jail
and police-station work. Each of these departments is managed by a
woman called a national superintendent, who has an assistant in nearly
every state and territory, and she, in turn, in every local union.
These make an aggregate of several thousands of women who
are regularly studying and expounding God’s Word to the multitude and
who are engaged in church evangelism. Nearly all this “great host” who
now “publish the glad tidings” are quite beyond the watch-care of the
church, not because they wish to be so, but because she who has warmed
them into life and nurtured them into activity is afraid of her own
gentle, earnest-hearted daughters.
The spectacle is both anomalous and pitiful. It ought not
to continue. Let the church call in these banished ones and correlate
their sanctified activities with her own mighty work, giving them the
same official recognition it gives to men, and they will gladly take
their places under her supervision.
The time is hastening, the world grows smaller; we can
compass it a thousand-fold more readily than could any previous
generation.We are able to go around the globe more quickly and
comfortably than in any previous age.
Women can do this just as easily as men. Then, let us
send them forth full-panoplied; let us sound in their ears the command
to take authority, given by the church’s highest tribunal, that
untrammelled and free they may lift up the standard of Christ’s cross
on every shore, and fulfill the wonderful and blessed prophecy in Psalm
68:11: “The Lord giveth the word. The women that publish the tidings
are a great host” (ASV).
Frances Willard (1839-1898) was a well-known lecturer,
writer and educator. She became president of the National Woman’s
Christian Temperance Union in 1879. She was one of the most prominent
women of the 19th century. As president of the National Woman’s
Christian Temperance Union, she devoted much of her adult life to
promoting the prohibition of liquor in the United States. She was also
a powerful proponent of suffrage for women and women in ministry. This
article is reprinted from her book on the latter subject titled Woman in the Pulpit, published in 1889.
Bill Wiese 
Paul McGuire 
