Stephen
Terry, Director
Husbands
and Wives: Together at the Cross
Commentary
for the September 2, 2023, Sabbath School Lesson
"All of you, clothe yourselves with
humility toward one another, because 'God opposes the proud but shows favor to
the humble.'" 1 Peter 5:5, NIV, Cf. Proverbs 3:34
For decades, controversy has
roiled within the Seventh-day Adventist Church over whether women could be
ordained as pastors with some even wanting to forbid women to be local elders
or have any opportunity to speak up front during church. Ironically, there
seems to be little opposition to women serving as Sabbath School Superintendents
which implies that Sabbath School is not really church,
so women leading out is allowed.
Those who take such a stand
often appeal to the fifth chapter of Ephesians where women are told to submit
themselves to their husbands.[i]
However, in doing so, they overlook the verse just before which commands us all
to submit ourselves to one another.[ii] Some
would go even further and ban women from speaking at all in church per Paul's
advice to the Corinthian Church.[iii]
However, that cow has already left the barn for we have not only had women
Sabbath School Superintendents, we have had women Sabbath School Teachers for
as long as I can remember. So, to allow these but set a blockade about the pulpit
based on gender seems hypocritical unless we deny that Sabbath School has
anything to do with church, even though they are in the same building and often
even in the same main sanctuary.
One of the first ceremonies I
participated in when I began attending the Seventh-day Adventist Church over
fifty years ago was called the Ordinance of Humility, a ceremony emulating
Christ washing the Disciples' feet. It is not compulsory, and many do not
participate. But those who do understand it is a metaphor for our willingness
to humbly serve one another, subjecting ourselves to the role of a servant for
our fellow parishioners.
When I first began participating
in this ceremony, men and women observed the ordinance separately. Over time, another
room for the washing was added where husbands and wives could wash one another's
feet, and eventually families could enjoy the ceremony together. There are
still separate rooms for men and women for those who wish such segregation, but
it is mostly the older generation that utilizes those rooms. That there are
several options may serve to illustrate the breadth of humble service more than
segregation by gender alone can offer. It is good to see such willingness to
submit humbly to one another in a church that not only continues to struggle
with issues of gender, but also has not entirely come to grips with issues of
race.
I read recently of a mixed-race
couple who had accepted a call to pastoral ministry in our denomination. When I
graduated from one of our colleges in the late seventies, there was a
mixed-race couple, and the husband graduated when I did. They were discouraged
from continuing his studies while he was an undergraduate because the theology
staff knew he would not get a call. True to prediction, not one conference extended
a call to them after graduation, and they left discouraged. Although my heart
breaks for their experience, I am pleased to see that the denomination has
grown since then. It gives me hope that issues of gender and the pastoral ministry
will ultimately be resolved. This can only happen if we learn to submit
ourselves to one another as Paul counseled.
Much of the opposition to equality
of opportunity within the body of Christ is not biblical but cultural. Many if
not most of the cultures on earth are patriarchal. Men run those societies and
women are relegated to second class status, sometimes being seen as only
property and not as fellow human beings. Such an interpretation of gender is
akin to slavery. Sadly, even the United States has not been that long from seeing
women as chattel. Those who joke about the Women's Liberation Movement do not
understand that their position was not much different from that of the racial
minorities in the United States.
Some feel that because of the
Fall in Genesis, chapter three, women are to be dominated by men as a judgment
for being the first to taste the forbidden fruit. But by that logic, those who
experience the pain of childbirth as predicted in that same chapter should not
have any relief from that painful consequence of disobedience. Nonetheless, we
make every effort to make childbirth as painless as possible. It makes no sense
to relieve the suffering of childbirth but make no effort to relieve the burden
of male dominance since both were foretold by God in Eden. Why do we feel it is
acceptable to relieve suffering in one instance and not the other. Could it be
because one does not affect our patriarchal pride and the other does?
I feel that in the North
American Division and Australia, we are finally coming to understand that
setting the captives free means freeing those held captive by the bonds of
gender exclusion. There are those who would fasten those binds tighter instead
of freeing the opposite gender to truly have the freedom to follow the Holy
Spirit's calling. This is not surprising since in certain dark and backward
places there are also those who would still enslave racial minorities if they
were ever allowed the power to do so. But as Christ has liberated us, we should
strive to liberate others and give them full equality before the throne of
grace.
When we deny this, we are like
the person who walks up to a handicapped person and kicks their crutches. We despise
them for their weakness and assert our superiority over them through the abuse.
Men are NOT superior to women. We all have sinned. We all are on Death Row
awaiting the executioner. When we find freedom through the grace of God, instead
of working to prevent others from enjoying that same freedom, we should bring
them to Christ so the same freedom we have received will be theirs. Our joy
should be their joy. Our opportunity should be their opportunity. Our ministry
should be their ministry.
So why did Paul take such a
harsh line about women speaking in church when he wrote his first letter to the
Corinthians? It seems there was something unique going on there. Paul had met
Aquila and his wife Priscilla in Corinth, and they were evangelizing just as
Paul was. They had so much in common that Paul worked with them as a tentmaker
to support himself and those traveling with him. Priscilla was perhaps more of
an evangelist after Paul's own heart than Aquila. This may be the reason Paul
always referred to them as Priscilla and Aquila, not Aquila and Priscilla. He
gave her first place in referring to the couple in every instance but one. That
exception was in his first letter to the Corinthian Church. This could be because
the Corinthian Church was unwilling to part with the city's patriarchal
culture, and rather than split the church over the matter, he acquiesced to
their bias. It may have been wisdom inspired by the Holy Spirit for the Corinthian
Church was already suffering division with some following Paul and others following
Apollos.[iv]
As Seventh-day Adventists, we
often state that the two-horned beast that arose from the earth in Revelation,
chapter 13,[v] is
the United States, no doubt heavily influenced by Uriah Smith's book, "Daniel
and the Revelation."[vi] Since the denomination
arose in the United States, this has special significance for us. But while we
are a denomination founded on the principles of democracy, we forget the
symbolism Smith attributes to the beast's two horns, that they represent civil
and religious liberty. He wrote that as though it were a good thing that would
be abandoned by those who would follow the first beast and receive its mark. But
as an Adventist founder, if he saw it as a good thing, why do we so readily abandon
civil and religious liberty when it comes to race and gender? If, as he says, the
United States becomes the dragon denying such liberties, then we should be the
remaining bastion of civil liberties, even when the entire world abandons them
and turns against us. How did we lose our way regarding such important matters?
The death of Ellen White may be the reason.
Only a few years after Ellen's
death, following a Bible conference in 1919, a wave of fundamentalism swept
into the Seventh-day Adventist Church that continues to reverberate a century
later. Consequently, we accepted the fundamentalist creed of a literal and
inerrant Bible, and since she often is cited as interpretive of the Bible, an
inerrant Ellen White as well. Subsequent discoveries about Ellen White and her
writings have shaken the idea of her prophetic inerrancy. This is not
surprising, since she never claimed inerrancy and would likely be shocked to
see people using her writings in that manner.
As various challenges arose pointing
out the unbiblical nature of fundamentalism, instead of re-examining their position
and progressing as Ellen advised we should, several administrations have "circled
the wagons" and expanded fundamentalist belief into a creed that has currently
expanded to twenty-eight different points the General Conference considers
unassailable. They make no pretense that these are anything different than fundamentalism
repackaged with an Adventist label, for they are officially called "Fundamental
Beliefs."
Fundamentalism and not the Bible
is the source of our gender discrimination. While Ellen White remained alive,
several women, including her, held ministerial credentials. Within a few years
of that 1919 conference, none did. We refuse to grasp the hand of apostate
Protestantism over the seventh-day Sabbath. Why do we then unite with their fundamentalism
in their discrimination toward women? Our strange theological bed fellows have
produced in us an even stranger fruit that causes us to figuratively destroy
the ministerial potential of over half of the denomination. We shamelessly treat
Adventist women too much like the Walrus and the Carpenter in Lewis Carroll's
poem treated the young oysters.[vii]
It's time it stopped.