Her Theology
Women & The Church: Beyond Complementarian vs Egalitarian with Michelle Lee-Barnewell
Send us Fan Mail What if the debate over women in the church is starting with the wrong questions? For decades, the conversation has largely been framed around two positions: complementarianism and egalitarianism. Who has authority? Who can lead? Can women preach? Are men and women equal in role as well as value? But what if Scripture gives us a bigger framework? In the first interview of our Women and the Church series (and before we head into the views themselves), I’m joined by biblical scholar Michelle Lee-Barnewall, author of Neither Complementarian nor Egalitarian: A Kingdom Corrective to the Evangelical Gender Debate . Michelle challenges us to step back from our usual categories of authority, leadership, equality and rights and consider some of the larger themes running through Scripture: kingdom, unity, love, sacrifice and reversal. We unpack Ephesians 5 and what Paul means when he calls the husband the “head”, 1 Corinthians 12 and the body of Christ, why Jesus completely transforms our understanding of leadership, and what it means that “the last will be first”. We also explore why the gender debate has become so polarised, how feminism and wider cultural movements have influenced the questions Christians ask, and whether our focus on winning the argument has caused us to forget that we are already one body in Christ. This isn't an episode that gives you a simple list of what women can and cannot do. Instead, Michelle asks us to consider whether there is a deeper biblical framework that should shape the entire conversation before we reach those conclusions. Follow @hertheology on Instagram & YouTube. Head to hertheology.com to find out more.
