Eric Carpenter has an interesting post this morning on women and the church. Eric's title pretty much lays it out: One Good Reason For Women To Speak. Eric states up front that he is not looking at the traditional restrictive passages but instead offers up his reason why women should speak during the church assembly:
The reason: women offer a different perspective than men do.
If we are honest we will all admit that men and women are very different. This is how God made us. These differences were apparent before the fall, thus ensuring that these differences are a good thing. God has designed men and women to complement one another, not to be carbon copies of each other. Frankly, life would be a lot duller if we were all the same.
A great reason for women to speak during church assembles is that they often provide differing perspectives than men do on all sorts of things. This might mean a somewhat different interpretation of a scripture passage. More often than that, it is the application of the passage that is different. Women are usually more nurturing than men, and therefore have important things to say about passages containing the "one anothers."
What do you think about that? God clearly made men and women differenly, with few exceptions we all agree on that. The question I have is this: can we discuss this issue without addressing the verses that traditionally have been interpreted to restrict women from speaking in the church gathering, whatever that looks like?
I have disabled comments on this post, please read Eric's post and comment over there. Little surprise I disagree with his assertion but I would be interested in seeing what others have to say.
