The Lonely Pentecostals and Other Conservative Christians Who Support Women Pastors

by guest contributor Brian F. Marks

“Women pastors are the first step to thinking homosexuality and all things LGBTQ are wonderful,” many voices in the church declare. “Case in point,” they say, “Look at what happened to the mainline denominations that have done just that and are now apostate.” 

The greatest concern that many of these Christians have in allowing women to hold certain leadership offices in the church is that it will pave the way toward eroding biblical standards, specifically that it will result in promoting a distorted – indeed blasphemous – theology of marriage and human sexuality. 

And it’s women, as a group, they claim, that are the main cause of this. Women, they claim, are designed by God to be more naturally empathetic, and they will wield that empathy manipulatively, given enough time, in support of morally illicit causes, like all the sexual sin and gender confusion under the rainbow flag. Women’s empathy is a liability that leaves them vulnerable to gross deception. Therefore, only men, who are less prone to toxic, pathological empathy, can be pastors and hold teaching offices in the church because that willl safeguard a vital doctrine that is essential for the theologically orthodox proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

Such was Joe Rigney’s basic argument in a recent essay in The American Reformer, which was published two days after my guest post here about Female Pastors and the LGBTQ Apostasy Connection. Rigney maintains that the fight over women pastors, which is expected to come to yet another head at this year’s annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, is a “watershed” issue. The battle lines have been drawn in the largest Protestant denomination in the country, and tempers are flaring. 

In all my years of being a follower of Jesus, this topic is easily in the top three issues that divide Christians, and the division is extremely bitter. It brings out the absolute worst in people, the anger that surrounds it is volcanic, and there are so many mitigating factors and complicated layers. 

I have no magic solution to this ugly contentiousness, which has been going on for years and is becoming pronounced in light of current developments in the SBC, and to a lesser degree, in segments on the Anglican Communion and other non-denominational churches. 

Put simply, the Christians known as complementarians believe that there are certain restrictions on leadership offices in the church that are reserved for males only. On the other side of this debate, the egalitarians argue that the verses used to justify those restrictions are decontextualized and isolated and that no blanket restrictions exist for all of time. And in both camps, there are differences of opinion and degrees of nuance. 

But I want to zero in on something in Rigney’s essay, specifically a certain trajectory he claims unfolds in the lives of those who reject restrictions of women as pastors. 

He wrote that the process of rejecting the complementarian theological system inevitably follows several steps: 

“Stop 1: “I’m Not That Kind of Complementarian.” 

Stop 2: “I’m Neither Complementarian Nor Egalitarian.” 

Stop 3: “I’m Egalitarian.” 

Stop 4: “Sodomy Is Cool.”

Curiously missing from the essay was a group of theologically egalitarians who are among the boldest Christian voices resisting LGBTQ ideology in the church: Pentecostals. 

And guess what else? Unlike the Southern Baptists who are digging their heels in and declining in number, Pentecostals are growing. Not only are they zealous for the Gospel, when it comes to LGBTQ issues, they – and their charismatic counterparts in other denominations – are among the most active in ministries that not only adhere to historic biblical standards on sexual ethics but actually pastor people and families through these particular struggles and issues. They do so with passion and belief that God can and does bring transformation to these messy areas. I’m convinced they do this so well because they are known for being keenly aware of the presence of the Holy Spirit, and they’ve personally tasted His goodness and encountered God’s supernatural power. 

To be sure, as a group, they have their problems too. What tribe doesn’t? But it’s curious to me that in mentioning the trajectory of endorsing women pastors inexorably leads to thinking that “sodomy is cool”, Rigney left them out. If I told the average Pentecostal that because they have women as pastors that means same-sex marriages are going to be happening in their churches and that one day in the not-too-distant future that their pastors are going to preach that homosexual practice is peachy, they’d look at you like you have four heads. They find such an accusation completely specious.

Perhaps this is because Pentecostals aren’t out there on the front lines in the public policy world, contributing to the chattering class. The most visible and prominent Pentecostal in public life that I can remember was John Ashcroft, the first Attorney General under President George W. Bush. Pentecostals are also not known for being thought leaders, political commentators, academic intellectual types. But they are some of the most passionately dedicated and theologically conservative Christians in the world.

And they have the unique experience of being despised by both the cultural left, for all the usual reasons conservative Christians are despised, and certain rightwing segments of the evangelical church for their belief in women leaders and in the continuation and active practice of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. 

If you ask Pentecostals for scholarly support of their views in support of women pastors, the well-read ones will highlight the work of New Testament scholar Dr. Ben Witherington of Asbury Theological Seminary; Dr. Craig Keener, whose work on miracles is second to none; and Dr. Philip Barton Payne, who is one of the most meticulous researchers on this issue alive today. All three of these men, and this is crucial, adhere to biblical sexual ethics and say so publicly.

The Reformed theobros and others who think allowing women to be pastors is a spiritual disaster might begrudgingly admit that these men are faithful Christians. They will also likely say that the only reason that they are committed to biblical sexual ethics before supporting women as pastors. Women pastors are still greasing the skids for acceptance of all kinds of sexual aberrations, they maintain. 

And the theobros, as I mentioned in my previous blog, are not entirely wrong. They decry the sexual perversion being mainstreamed, to varying degrees, in evangelical churches. Oftentimes, that mainstreaming is happening very slyly and subtly at the hands of wily women. They are seeing real things happen, right before their very eyes – emotion-laden arguments about being kind when the real goal of these women is to normalize sexual sin, and it drives the bros crazy, and rightly so. Rigney astutely detects this insidious, manipulative dynamic and he’s correct to point out that men often struggle knowing how to confront truly wicked women who wield a distorted empathy for evil purposes. But Rigney believes that women are unique in this way, as though all women have this sinful distortion permanently ingrained in their personhood to the point that they must never be trusted in spiritual authority over men, and that Scripture unequivocally bolsters this position.

These men also think it’s not a coincidence that the mainstreaming of homosexuality in Western culture has happened, in considerable part, through women. Consider the TV shows that served to normalize sexual immorality very gradually and then overtly over the decades. Think The Golden Girls or Sex and the City. Those female characters pushed foul sexual debauchery, including LGBTQ madness. When men promote sexual hedonism, they usually come across as gross, pervy pigs. When women do it, it’s funny and seemingly naughty but hilarious, and not so destructive, when in truth it’s a deceptive Jezebelic strategy and it’s deeply wicked. 

All this to say, many conservative Christians have come to the conclusion that women can be leaders in the church and that historic Christians sexual ethics are a Gospel imperative, and that compromising on sexuality is to compromise the entire message of the Bible. These same believers know that the rainbow alphabet soup of sexual deviance and “gender identity” insanity unleashes social chaos, that it’s an antichrist movement, and that it’s morally bankrupt. It’s completely at odds with the Gospel and contrary to Scripture. 

Sincere Christians who believe like our Pentecostal brothers and sisters are awfully tired of being ignored and regarded as unfaithful because of this reason alone. They don’t know how many times they have to say that they are resolute in their belief in the biblical definition of marriage but they aren’t believed and regarded with suspicion. They are equally as frustrated with the antics of some egalitarian women who do indeed appear to be doing exactly what the theobros suspect. Those wily women and their ilk who promote sexual sin drive them crazy, too. 

I have no idea how this thorny issue will morph in the coming years. I am mindful that Jesus is coming back for a pure and spotless bride (Eph 5:27), not a Body that is tearing itself to shreds – and that’s what’s happening over this issue. 

May God supernaturally resolve this bitter, brutal battle and mend this divide as only He can.