Women.

This is my actual blog post for today. The essay's more just for those who are really interested.

There's a pretty strong idea that women and religion don't go together too well. And in the course of history, that's certainly been true; events like witch burnings, the church condemning the latest fashions, as well as saying that a woman can't lead in the church, has caused a fair bit of controversy and bad feelings.

Unfortunately, there are still many Christians today who believe that women should not teach in the church; I had one of them as the speaker for my recent camp. Apparently, he's fine with them preaching to women only congregations, however. Guess that's better than nothing.

But I really don't think that's what God is wanting, or what the Bible is saying; several times, it says that men and women are equal. And that we have all been given gifts, and we should use them. To say that women can only teach other women - that, to me, seems to be restricting their God-given gifts. I don't think God would want that. God wants people to know about Him.

We have women doing the communion talks at our church fairly regularly; and now, the preacher's wife also does a sermon fairly often. That's how it's been for my whole life. And I certainly haven't been led astray by any of their teaching, if that's the fear. To the best of my knowledge, neither has anyone else.

If people are more interested in this topic, someone does a full argument on it here. Not totally agreeing with the conclusion they make - I'd hope that women teaching men would be better than just 'permissible' - but the argument they use is pretty good.

As an aside - does anyone know if those against women teaching men are also against female teachers in schools? Because if so, they have a pretty big darn fight on their hands...