God, am I anywhere in here?
That’s the question that Lynn Cohick prayed through tears as she rode the train from Harrisburg to Philadelphia. At the time, Cohick was pursuing her PhD at the University of Pennsylvania. She often used her morning commute as devotional time. This particular day, Cohick found herself discouraged as she read only masculine pronouns in her Bible over and over again. She thought of the women in her classes at Penn who saw no place for themselves in the church, and she mourned how many of them had let go of faith as a result.
For herself, and for her classmates, Cohick needed to know what God really thought about women.
“Society norms everything toward male,” explained Cohick, director of Houston Theological Seminary and distinguished New Testament professor at Houston Christian University. “But in the biblical text, is that what the divine revelation is promoting? [The Bible] was written in a patriarchal society, so it’s going to have that [influence], but is that what God thinks?”
Versions of this question have inspired Christians to dig into the Bible, the story of the early church, and the history of global Christianity in search of clues about God’s perspective on how women can participate. While their conclusions are not all the same when it comes to issues like church leadership roles or how marriage should function, one thing is incredibly clear: the answer to Cohick’s question, “God, am I anywhere in here?” is a resounding yes.
And while there is still work to be done to declare that truth, great strides have been taken to tell the stories of faithful women who have done remarkable work to the glory of God.
Finding Women in the Biblical Text
A quick glance at something as simple as the Bible’s table of contents can leave a reader wondering how important women really are in the history of faith. Ruth and Esther almost feel hidden among the dozens of male names. But if Bible readers look just a bit deeper, they’ll find that the Scriptures are filled with accounts of women. Not only that, but those women are often described, commended, and honored by the male writers of Scripture.
Author and Northern Seminary professor Ingrid Faro looks to Tamar, who brought Judah back to his senses. She considers the women who challenged the Pharaoh’s authority by saving Moses. Faro looks to Hannah, whose diligence and prayer lead to the Lord granting her Samuel. All of these women and more were included in the Scriptures by divinely inspired male writers.
Author Mary DeMuth explores Phoebe’s life in works of both nonfiction and fiction. DeMuth notes that Phoebe likely memorized the letter to the Romans, both for the content itself and for Paul’s pauses and emphases, so that she could accurately articulate the letter to its audience.
Phoebe bringing Paul’s words to the Romans draws DeMuth’s mind to other stories in Scripture when a woman played an integral role in carrying out God’s plan—most prominently the role of Mary, the mother of Jesus, who carried Christ just as Phoebe likely carried the letter. Or take the Samaritan woman at the well, the one often labeled an adulterer.
“If you want to count words,” DeMuth says, “she has the longest theological discussion with Jesus of any human in the Bible.”
Pause with that for a moment. The average American evangelical sitting in a pew has repeatedly heard the story of the woman at the well. They’ve learned that she had been divorced many times and was living with a man who was not her husband. They’ve very likely been told that she was a wayward woman engaged in serial sexual affairs, which is at best not explicitly in the text and at worst a tremendous leap given the fact that women had very little agency for initiating divorce in the first century.
What the text does clearly reveal is Jesus’ willingness to engage in a substantive theological discussion with a woman. And it reveals a woman who, upon accepting the truth of the Christ, was listened to, respected, and believed when she took the message of the gospel back to her community.
Dallas Theological Seminary professor Sandra Glahn brought scholars together to take another look at biblical stories of women in Vindicating the Vixens: Revisiting Sexualized, Vilified, and Marginalized Women of the Bible. Surveying women throughout Scripture, Glahn and company offer a reexamination of biblical women, all the way from Eve to Junia.
Author and professor at Northern Seminary Nijay Gupta discusses Junia with great honor in Tell Her Story: How Women Led, Taught, and Ministered in the Early Church. “I think of Paul as the great hero of the second half of the first century,” he says, “but I think of Andronicus and Junia as Paul’s heroes.”
Gupta notes Paul’s mention of Junia in his letter to the Romans and wonders what Junia was doing to draw enough attention that she would be imprisoned. “She's being rounded up just like Paul, just like other apostles, for disturbing the peace with this new religion,” he says. “She must have gotten onto the radar of the Roman authorities for them to say, ‘This woman is a threat to the good order.’”
In other words, Junia is one of the many women in Scripture who was wholly devoted to Jesus and whose story can inspire us to greater faith.
Old Stories for Modern Readers
Mimi Haddad, president and CEO of CBE International, describes her love for faithful women who have gone before her.
“Strange as it may seem, the women I’ve become acquainted with throughout Christian history have become very good friends,” she says. “I’ve learned from their challenges and seen Christ’s power in their struggles, making all of us sturdier in our faith. In this way, these women have been like pastors to me. Their words teach but even more so their lives model qualities that are contagious for those seeking holiness today.”
Like Haddad, Cheryl Brodersen, host of the Women Worth Knowing podcast, looks to women throughout Christian history for applications to today’s Christians. Alongside author Robin Jones Gunn, Brodersen shares weekly episodes with listeners about women in Christian history.
“I feel like these stories inspire us and tell us what we can be by the grace of God,” Brodersen says.
Authors Leanne M. Dzubinski and Anneke H. Stasson point out that these historical stories cast a vision for the roles women can play in the world. In their book, Women in the Mission of the Church, they hope to “challenge the idea that there’s only one way to be a good Christian woman today, the type that marries and has children, and sees her main role as caring for home and children. That is one vision of what a Christian woman can be. But it is by no means the only one. Women can be nuns. They can stay single and not be a nun. They can marry and not have children. They can marry and work outside the home. All of these are fine options for women. And history is replete with examples of all of these types of women.”
Author and professor Beth Felker Jones points to Susanna Wesley, known for being the mother of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. But, Jones says, Susanna was fierce in her own right. When Susanna’s pastor husband left his congregation in the care of an interim minister while he traveled, Susanna deemed the interim minister’s skills to be lackluster and decided to hold her own prayer meetings in her kitchen. Her husband caught wind of this and wrote to tell her to stop.
She wrote him back to say that if he would absolve her of responsibility for the souls he had left in the care of someone inept, she would gladly stop.
As we look to women throughout Christian history, we are, of course, discovering stories of flawed people. The goal of unearthing and telling their stories is not that we might create a roster of idols who call for our worship. Instead, these stories can remind us that ever since the fall of humankind, God has been working through sinful people.
In that spirit, Hunter Beless and Lauren Bowerman encourage listeners of their Journeywomen Ministries podcast to “consider these women in their humanity. They weren’t perfect and they probably didn’t desire the difficult set of circumstances they endured,” they say. “In fact, oftentimes we can see in their stories their struggles with fear, insecurity, and doubt. They point us to the greater hero, Jesus, who empowered them to do great things for God’s glory. By God’s grace, we can do the same by continually orienting ourselves to him as we go about the work he has set before us.”
Author Simonetta Carr looks to Argula von Grumbach, a Bavarian writer and noblewoman, who spoke publicly against the church in the early 1500s. Carr notes how female theologians have had a profound effect on male theologians throughout church history. Renée of France, for example, influenced John Calvin. By sharing her own theological questions and doubts, Elizabeth Bowes encouraged John Knox to face his uncertainties.
Similarly, podcaster Jasmine Alnutt highlights two women—Marcella and Paula—who were “instrumental in Jerome’s translation of the Latin Vulgate, so much so that he dedicated much of his work to Paula.”
When we only hear about Calvin, Knox, or Jerome, it’s easy to assume that they did not have female influences. In her book Buried Talents: Overcoming Gendered Socialization to Answer God’s Call, Susan Harris Howell explains that when people only hear stories or examples about men or in male terms, they pick up on an implicit message that women are not full participants.
One effective way to counteract that messaging? Find the stories.
Start with a podcast episode or a book. Get curious about the wives of theologians or writers like Martin Luther or George MacDonald, whose spouses’ stories have been explored and told. Let a Google search for “Christian women in the 13th century” take you down a rabbit trail until you find the woman whose story catches your eye. Visit the online Visual Museum of Women in Christianity, a collaborative project of Cohick, Glahn, and George Kalantzis to create a curated, permanent visual exhibit of women in the history, ministry, and piety of early, Byzantine, and medieval Christianity.
Whether on a podcast episode, the page of a book, or a screen, the woman whose story that will speak to your heart is out there. When you find her, as Gunn says, may you “feel like you found a treasure.”
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