Deborah's Leadership

A prominent example of a woman leading men with the direct approval of God can be found in the book of Judges, waiting to be acknowledged by all who seek to understand the Bible outside of the fallacious confines of tradition.  The fourth chapter, only two chapters after it is said that God himself empowered the judges (2:16-19), tells of a female judge, a woman named Deborah.  A prophetess and legal authority, she oversaw the Israelites with divine backing.

In an effort to deny the obvious ramifications of Judges 4, where she is introduced, some complementarians invent a fictitious explanation for why Deborah was permitted to lead.  Many of them will actually claim that God allowed a woman to lead because no men were willing to shoulder the role, and the most misandrist complementarians will even say that God did this to shame Israelite men.  Only a fool would pretend like Deborah was not leading at God's behest, and yet to honestly admit this undermines one of the key tenets of complementarianism: the bias against women who lead men, especially in a religious context.

Of course, the Bible never actually says that God settled for a female judge when no men proved willing to assume responsibility, nor does it condemn men who do not have a leader's strengths.  The idea is an extra-Biblical non sequitur that complementarians might appeal to when someone confronts them about Deborah's blatant leadership of men.  More specifically, some of the men she leads are male soldiers (though the Bible does not teach that soldiers should be men or that men should put themselves in harm's way while women wait on the sidelines, a notion which is very disrespectful towards men).

The Bible teaches nothing that denies the egalitarian nature of competent leadership.  A rational person respects a leader based on qualities like effectiveness, intelligence, and moral character.  The gender of a leader is irrelevant to all of these things, as a brief analysis reveals.  Men and women can be intelligent, just, and socially skilled; to assume that a person has certain talents or deficiencies simply because of their gender is blatantly illogical in any case.

No one is fit to lead simply by virtue of having certain genitalia or chromosomes.  It follows from this logical fact that no one is fit only for submission by virtue of being a man or a woman.  Deborah exemplifies these facts, contradicting the complementarian myth that the Bible opposes women who lead men in a military, ecclesial, or domestic setting.  Complementarians may distort or add to the story of Judges 4-5, but unrepentant misinterpretation proves nothing except their own stupidity.