There are some debates, like whether Rakim is the greatest emcee known to hip hop, whether it’s LeBron or Michael, and whether sugar belongs on grits, I have prepared myself to be engaged in forever.
However, there are some debates, like whether women should be in the pastorate and proclaiming the gospel; I honestly can’t believe we are still discussing. I never expected that we would still be having this discussion.
For generations, the institutional church has excelled at a very specific, polite, and deeply performative kind of violence. Yes, I said violence. We gather in our modern sanctuaries, pull from a clumsy vocabulary of justice buzzwords, and offer patronizing pats on the back to the very people who keep our institutions alive.
We are more than comfortable celebrating Black women as the undisputed backbone of the church — carrying the logistical, emotional, and spiritual weight of the community on their shoulders. Yet, the moment a woman seeks to step into the fullness of her spiritual authority at the pulpit, the structural gates slam shut, guarded by a sudden and selective obsession with “biblical boundaries.”
This hypocrisy is a profound act of spiritual betrayal. For centuries, the church has functioned as a primary incubator of patriarchy, conditioning women to accept subjugation as a form of holy submission.
I have sat in pastoral counseling sessions where women excused horrific domestic abuse because they were taught from the pews that their bodies belonged entirely to their husbands. We cannot separate the physical subjugation of women in the home from the theological silencing of women in the church. When we teach that a woman must remain silent and “submissive” on Sunday morning, we are implicitly teaching men that they have an inherent right to dominate on Monday afternoon.
The argument that women are uncalled or unequipped to preach is rooted in an intentional misreading of Scripture and a severe case of biblical ignorance.
To understand the urgency of this moment, we must first unwrap the theological anxieties that keep the pulpit segregated by gender. Opponents of women’s ordination frequently retreat into a handful of isolated Pauline verses — most notably from 1 Timothy and 1 Corinthians — treating them as timeless, universal edicts.
But Scripture was never meant to be read in a cultural vacuum. When Paul directed silence in specific ancient assemblies, he was addressing localized chaos, false teachings, and the specific societal structures of the first-century Roman world. If we truly want to be biblical literalists, we must look at the totality of the text.
The narrative arc of Scripture does not restrict women; it unleashes them. It was Deborah who led Israel as a judge and prophetess. It was Huldah whose prophetic word sparked a national spiritual reformation. In the New Testament, Paul himself commends Phoebe as a deacon of the church at Cenchreae, and Junia as “outstanding among the apostles.”
Most profoundly, we must look to the morning of the Resurrection. When Jesus rose from the dead, he did not appear first to the 12 male disciples. He appeared to Mary Magdalene. He looked at a woman and gave her a divine mandate: Go and tell.
Mary Magdalene was, by Christ’s own appointment, the first preacher of the gospel. She was the apostle to the apostles. To argue that women cannot preach the gospel today is to argue that Jesus made a mistake on Easter Sunday.
Conservative denominational decrees that exclude women from pastoral roles are not delivering timeless biblical truths; they are protecting male power. They reduce the sweeping, radical narrative of a liberating God down to a handful of culturally specific, misunderstood instructions written to a first-century audience.
They completely ignore a thorough, accurate reading of Genesis, which shows God creating men and women simultaneously to share equal custody and stewardship over the earth.
They erase the historical reality of Jesus, who aggressively pushed back against his patriarchal society, explicitly calling women out of domestic confinement to serve as his primary ministry partners and the very first heralds of his resurrection.
The truth is, no bureaucratic council or denominational vote can halt what God has already ordained. God has never limited the anointing of the Holy Spirit by anatomy, and God will continue to use, release, and empower women to lead God’s kingdom whenever and wherever God sees fit.
If the church is to survive its own moral and ideological paralysis, it must actively tear down the very patriarchal systems it helped build. We must demand an environment where men are taught to share responsibility, relinquish power, and interact with women without a desperate need to dominate.
True faith requires a courageous alignment with justice, especially when it forces us to dismantle our own institutional privileges. It is time for the church to stop hiding its sexism behind the veil of tradition, repent of its duplicity, and clear the way for the women whom God has already called to lead us forward.
