Misreading the Bible

I’m not really surprised. In fact, if I had thought about it, I would have seen it coming. It was predictable.

This past week, the Southern Baptist Convention – the national body of Southern Baptist churches – overwhelmingly adopted a position statement that excluded women from preaching or from serving as pastors. In their reading of the Bible, only men are qualified to serve in these leadership roles. In this same decision-making meeting, they voted to “withdraw fellowship” from (i.e., not live in a cooperative relationship with) churches that went against this policy and ordained women to serve as pastors.

As you might imagine, I am deeply saddened by this news. In my opinion, this decision goes against Southern Baptist polity, theology, and the teaching of scripture. (In case you don’t know or it slipped your mind, I grew up in a Southern Baptist church, identified God’s call on my life in that church, and was educated – three theological degrees – in Southern Baptist schools. I served as a pastor of three different Southern Baptist congregations before moving into The UMC. In my mind, this history qualifies me to speak to the issue even though I no longer identify as a Southern Baptist.)

The decision to exclude women from the ministry of preaching goes against their own polity. In Southern Baptist life, each local church is autonomous. That is, no governing body or person (bishop) can dictate to them what to believe or how to function. They are self-governing, including selecting their own pastors. This decision by the national body violates the autonomy of every local Southern Baptist church.

The decision to exclude women from the ministry of preaching goes against their own theology. One of the beliefs that is foundational in Baptist history is known as “the priesthood of every believer.” The autonomy of each local church is built upon this theological understanding. The priesthood of every believer asserts that every believer can relate directly to God through the priesthood of Jesus (the book of Hebrews). A human priest is not needed as a go-between with God. A corollary is every believer is capable, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, of understanding spiritual truth found in scripture. In other words, understanding the Bible is not dependent on a specially trained scholar. (I would hasten to add that a trained scholar can help us better understand the Bible. Without the benefit of education and training in how to read/study the Bible, we are prone to misread the Bible.)

Which brings me to my third observation: the decision to exclude women from the ministry of preaching goes against the teachings of scripture. The New Testament has numerous references to women who preached and served as pastors. The first to proclaim the good news of Jesus’s resurrection were women. Mary Magdalene was the apostle to the apostles. Philip the evangelist had four daughters “who prophesied,” i.e., preached, Acts 21:9. The apostle Paul commended Phoebe the deacon and urged the churches of Rome to aid her in her ministry, Romans 16:1. Part of her role was to read and interpret Paul’s letter to those churches. In other words, she was to teach and preach on Paul’s behalf. Paul also greeted Prisca or Priscilla, Romans 16:3. She is listed before her husband Aquila because she was the pastor of the church that met in their home, Romans 16:5. She also instructed Apollos as he began his ministry, Acts 18:24-28. In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul taught about the gifts of the Spirit. The gift of prophecy or preaching was one of the spiritual gifts he identified. Nowhere in the chapter does he suggest that some gifts were for men and others were for women. Rather, he said the Spirit “allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses,” 1 Corinthians 12:11. In a patriarchal culture, women were a part of Jesus’s disciples along with the twelve, Luke 8:1-3.

At the beginning of this blog, I said the decision by Southern Baptists to exclude women from the ministry of preaching was predictable. It is the natural outcome of decisions made in the late 1970’s and 1980’s. During that period of Southern Baptist history, a group of conservative leaders (I call them fundamentalists) orchestrated and implemented a plan to gain control over all Southern Baptist schools and institutions. Their efforts were motivated by the belief that seminary professors had become too liberal in their thinking. The intent of their efforts was to weed out those liberal professors and restore what they considered to be orthodox teaching. That orthodox teaching was grounded in the belief that the Bible is inerrant and infallible. It was intended to be read and understood literally.

Reading the Bible literally, viewing it as infallible and inerrant, almost always results in misreading of the Bible. That approach allows us to read our understanding into scripture, using the Bible to support what we already think. (When we use the Bible to support what we already think, we resist the Spirit-guided “renewing of the mind” that is foundational to spiritual growth, Romans 12:2. We create God in our own image.) This approach treats every verse with equal authority although the Bible itself clearly states that the Hebrew Scriptures (what we call the Old Testament) only provides incomplete, partial glimpses of God and the ways of God, Hebrews 1:1-3. (The original that is translated as “in many and various ways,” Hebrews 1:1 carries the idea of “in bits and pieces.”) The New Testament states that Jesus is the fullest, clearest revelation of God, Hebrews 1:3, John 1:14, 16; 14:8-9. Consequently, we are to read and interpret the Bible through the lens of Jesus’s life, ministry, and teachings.

A literal, non-scholarly reading and interpretation of scripture produced the decision to exclude women from the ministry of preaching and/or being a pastor. The decision is the result of reading scripture through the lens of a patriarchal culture rather than through the lens of biblical scholarship. In my opinion, the decision is the result of misreading the Bible.

While the decision by Southern Baptists may seem to be irrelevant to many who read this blog, I would hasten to remind you that the same dynamics have been at play in The UMC. A literal reading of scripture, viewing it as infallible and inerrant and thus rejecting the teachings of trained biblical scholars, has led to the judgment and exclusion of LGBTQ+ people in United Methodist life.