8. Must all music and worship leaders in the Church be men, since to lead implies being in authority? If you are in a church with a female song leader and she tells everyone to stand to sing, what do you do? Stay seated? Walk out?

So writes, a guest on the blog of the internet monk.

Well, I don’t think disagreeing with a practice mandates acting like a jerk in the presence of this practice. So walking out or staying seated are out of the question. But, for the record, it seems to me that woman leadership in church worship is far more problematic than a woman teacher outside a church context.

(As an aside, most of the other issues on the list of the internet monk’s site just seem strange to me. Of course women may teach and write books. The mother of Lemuel teaches not just her son (Proverbs 31.2-9; or to 31), but all of us who read the word of God and submit to it as God’s word acknowledge that women can teach men. So the issue is context. I think it is clear that while there were women prophetesses, women helpers in the sanctuary, women political rulers, businesswomen, etc, there were never authorized women priests. The one representing God to the congregation is being a husband to a bride. Male pastors are mandated for the same reason we are to address God as Father. But it doesn’t mean that Deborah or Huldah of James’ daughters were taking a man’s role.)

Addendum: I should point out that the list is in response to a pretty radical version of “complementarianism.”

But we have a developed a strange idea about worship leadership in our day. The pastor is really just a lecturer and worship leadership is considered a job for anyone. I just don’t think that makes much sense.

Back when I was in seminary I signed up for a class on Augustine that was canceled because the instructor happened to be female. This seemed senseless to me, and still does. Seminary is not church and a woman with a Ph.D. in philosophy who has studied Augustine is well equipped to teach about Augustine to others. I simply don’t see Paul claiming that a woman with expertise can’t pass that on to men. But even if I am wrong about this, it should seem worth a second thought or three that the same denomination where a seminary course gets canceled because it it controversial for a woman to teach philosophy is also a place where churches can give women liturgical leadership.

I should make it clear that I don’t think the seminary did anything wrong. It was just hard trying to figure out the mind of the denomination on what was acceptable.

Frankly, to the extent that lecturing is identified as the essence of worship, the men-only rule is going to look like a statement about women’s intelligence. Women can sing and lead music but they can’t talk about God or the Bible, just doesn’t quite look Biblical. I’d rather say that women can do both these things but within the symbolic ritual of Church worship, God wants to be portrayed as a husband.