Pursuing Partnership: New Light on Timeless Texts – Week 3

The Historical Research of Dr Sandra Glahn

By Wendy Wilson, Missio Nexus, Mission Advisor for Development of Women

This article is part of the series Pursuing Partnership: Men and Women in Ministry.

Church History: What Do We Learn about Women in Public Ministry?

A note from Wendy Wilson, MissioNexus, Mission Advisor for Development of Women:

We often assume in modern evangelical circles that women in public ministry and/or leadership is a capitulation to worldly culture, specifically the feminist movement of the 1960s. While we all want to be the distinct People of God that show the world who God is, every era needs to revisit how our own cultural values have perhaps influenced us more than we realized – where we’ve come and why . . . which is exactly what Sandra pursues in this article.

The link to the article is below . . .but here are a few excerpts from “Church History: What Do We Learn about Women in Public Ministry?”:

“When I took some doctoral courses in history, I read numerous primary documents which revealed that the question about women in public ministry in the church has been burning since long before the U.S. Women’s Movement. So, I set out to determine when it actually started.

Back, back, back I went. And each century sent me to an earlier one to find when it started. Eventually, I concluded that evidence for orthodox Christians affirming women in public ministry started on the day of Pentecost.  And it will be fully realized in the eschaton (Joel 2, Acts 2). So what happened [in between]? What led to the changes?”

Read the whole article –

“Church History: What Do We Learn about Women in Public Ministry?”  

Dr. Sandra Glahn is Professor of Media Arts and Worship at Dallas Theological Seminary. She is an author, co-author, or general editor of more than twenty books including Vindicating the Vixens: Revisiting Sexualized, Vilified, and Marginalized Women of the Bible. Learn more about her at her website: aspire2.com.

This article is submitted by Wendy Wilson of Missio Nexus and of Women’s Development Track.  Women’s Development Track is a Missio Nexus member.  Member organizations can provide content to the Missio Nexus website. See how by clicking here.