Out in Western Kansas where I grew up, the men worked hard and women were tough as nails.  At least that was my perception, and it mostly was true.  Some men were lazy, and some women were weak.  But in the church where I was reared, the men did work hard, and the women worked even harder.  The women loved God as much as the men did and often studied the Bible more. 

Still, the men always were the principal leaders.  They led from the front, saying the prayers, giving the talks, preaching the sermons and chairing the committees.

As a teen-ager, this intrigued me.  In high school I had a woman who was a terrific, biblically-savvy Sunday school teacher. Behind the scenes, much of the work of the church was done by the hard-working women. 

When I studied for the ministry, the best student in my Greek class was a woman.  My first cousin attended the college, and she gave a senior thesis in critical introduction to the New Testament that wowed the professor.  “The best I’ve ever seen,” he said.

In the 1980s as a young campus minister I read book after book about women in leadership, wondering if a woman could be an ordained pastor.  I wondered for months about the I Corinthians passage of the man being the head of a woman. Did head mean “authority” or “source?”

I read church fathers, many of whom said women were intellectually and even morally inferior to men.  To quote Chrysostom, bishop of Constantinople (A.D. 398-404) casting the guilt of Eden upon women:  “You are the devil’s gateway; you are the unsealer of that tree; you are the first forsaker of the divine law….”  So much for church tradition, I thought.

As a campus minister, I officiated at lots of weddings where I had opportunity to speak on the mystery of marriage from Ephesians 5. I never said much about submission other than mutual submission.  Looking couples squarely in the face, I said, “The husband and wife participate together in a dynamic upward spiral of lifting each other up instead of putting each other down.”

A young professor from Azusa Pacific University has penned a great new book called “Men and Women in the Church.” (IVP, 2003).  In the early 1990s, Sarah Sumner was the first women ever receive her Ph.D. in systematic theology from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School near Chicago. 

Sumner now has woven her own story of growing up in Texas with a father who thought his four daughters could do anything with her fascinating theological journey.  Sumner tells of often being one of two or three women in many of her theological classes, and she brilliantly challenges the views of John Piper and Wayne Grudem, two of my favorite theologians.

If there is a divinely given injunction based on the order of creation that women cannot be pastors and elders in the church, Sumner does not see it.   Grudem was one her favorite professors at Trinity, but she says he and Piper are just inconsistent in their positions. She is kind to them, but never backs down.

The heart of the debate for Sumner is not a particular Bible passage.  Rather, for Sumner the debate centers on the fundamental mystery of what it means to be a man or a women.  To Sumner, the mystery of being male and female ranks right up there with mystery of the Trinity (Is God one or three?), the nature of Jesus (Is he divine or human?) and the nature of humans (Are we predestined or free?).

One of the issues along the fault line for today’s churches is the continuing debate on men and women in the church.  At varying levels, most theologians promote women’s equality.  Most also say that men and women are distinct.  But the words equal and distinct mean different things to different people.  The fault line forms as equality and distinction are over or under emphasized.

            On the men and women fault line, Sumner argues that men are equal to women and yet distinct from women.  Said differently, women are equal to men and yet distinct from men. It’s a paradox.  Men and women always are both totally equal and completely distinct.  Both truths on the fault line must be kept intact.  It’s an untidy mystery.    

            As the 21^st century begins, Sumner urges the Church to approach this controversial issue by embracing it as a mystery, accepting the built-in balance of paradoxical truth.