The Legitimacy Of Female Pastors

One of the most blatant manifestations of evangelical sexism against women is the hostility towards female pastors, despite the fact that this hostility hinges upon a distortion of the Bible and a denial of reason.  The Old Testament, even when completely isolated from the New Testament (more specifically, isolated from 1 Timothy 2), refutes the idea that Christianity demands that women be barred from preaching to both men and women.  In place of Biblical egalitarianism, mainstream Christianity accepts arbitrary restrictions on female leadership in church, sometimes allowing them to address men as long as they are not "teaching" them.

All such arbitrary opposition to female pastors is rooted in a misunderstanding of Paul's comment in 1 Timothy 2 (or cultural or personal biases), not in an accurate understanding of the Bible.  Since God directly and blatantly appointed a woman to preside militarily over Israelite men (Judges 2:16-17 and 4:4-7), it cannot be the case that God condemns women who teach or lead men, as God cannot instruct anyone to sin (James 1:13).  Paul's prohibition of female pastors has no legitimacy outside of the church he addressed 1 Timothy to, and, even then, that context would not apply after whatever circumstances led to that command changed.

And yet the majority of church history has been supportive of this nonsense!  Restricting an entire gender from preaching to the other gender accomplishes nothing except for hindering the promotion of sound theology.  If only men are permitted to theologically educate others, the church's capacity for engaging with theology is significantly diminished.  Those who want this to be the state of the modern church endorse something that is ultimately counterproductive to the goals of the church.  Unsurprisingly, allegiance to myths and fallacies prevents many from recognizing this.

Men and women are free to disregard cultural norms as they please, especially if those norms demand that they suppress their natural talents, thereby discouraging them from using those talents in the ways that take the largest advantage of them.  In defending the illogical and contra-Biblical doctrine of complementarianism, evangelicals are upholding a destructive legalism that contradicts the actual commands of the Bible to not regard extra-Biblical moral beliefs as valid (Deuteronomy 4:2).

May the day arrive soon when it is common for Christians to despise misogynistic ideas about ecclesiology as much as they should despise racist ecclesiological stances.  If someone opposed the ordination of non-white pastors, the only Biblical response would be to denounce this racism as the wicked discrimination that it is, for all humans bear God's image (Genesis 1:26-27).  The only difference between opposing the ordination of non-whites and the ordination of women is that opposing the latter is more destructive, given that there are more women excluded from the pulpit in America than there are other ethnicities to exclude.  Evangelical hostility towards female pastors is nothing but selective indulgence in illicit discrimination.