This is an interesting article on leadership in churches and how that leadership is primarily reserved for straight (or at least publicly so—that’s my snarky comment, not his) males. This article brings to light some things that I tend to dwell on when I think about churches objectively saying that one gender can lead and another cannot…the social implications are far larger than our denominations.
People of faith, we must to better than this. Christians, we need to take inventory of the times. Consider the opportunities we have to speak the truth of human dignity to the power of a culture that bullies gay kids to the point of suicide, that even now demonizes gay adults, that in secular and sacred realms says girls should understand their roles are defined by their organs. Consider the witness we have always struggled to bear and have often borne too late: the proclamation that if we were all dead in sin before our lives touched Christ’s, so too may we all live under his radical care and in his radical kingdom. So too are we equal before God, in whom there is no male nor female, Greek nor Jew, gay nor straight. Please, friends, help us get this right.
It’s one of my personal beliefs that sexual equality is our generation’s big battle. Have your beliefs about whatever you want them to be about, but as Christians, I truly believe we are called to treat people with a dignity that is kind of absurd in it’s overwhleming power, because that’s what Jesus was about.
Becca Kello 