What CAN Women Do in the Church?

by

Christy Thomas

Special to United Methodist Insight | June 10, 2026

According to the surely never-wrong Al Mohler, no female should ever function in a pastoral/preaching role over a man. Yes, she can serve in the church, but she cannot have the title of pastor or exercise any spiritual authority over any male.

So, what follows here is something I wrote a long time ago as I wandered in the world Mohler espouses, while also going deep into biblical studies, including gaining expertise in Greek and Hebrew. I did leave out some relevant details to protect loved ones.

The Teaching Gift: Exposed Early

Part of our never-ending search for the perfect church was ensuring that whatever church we attended was doctrinally pure. This is a fascinating adventure, especially since we were the ones who defined doctrinal purity. For many reasons, we were heavily influenced by the doctrines set forth by Dallas Theological Seminary.

Here’s a link to their doctrinal statement: http://www.dts.edu/about/doctrinalstatement/.

Read it. See how little of it comes from the Old Testament, which is the vast majority of the inspired, inerrant writings, how little from the Gospels themselves, where women participate most fully in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and how much comes from the writings of Paul, who never knew Jesus in the flesh. Note the prooftexting, the attention to detail, and the exclusive male language [Note: since this piece was written, the framers of this statement have substituted the more generic “humanity” for the exclusive “man” used before—somewhere along the line, the powers that be decided the women could be considered fully human after all].

And although, at the very beginning, it affirms the inspiration of the Old Testament, most Old Testament teachings are effectively dismissed by dispensationalism. That stance is a fabulous way to get rid of things that make the theology less tight—they simply are not part of the current dispensation, and can safely be ignored when deciding how to live in obedience to God today.

This was our theological world, and I bought it, hook, line and sinker. I liked it very, very much. Neat, clean, ordered, separated, tight boxes. I knew my role—the silent, supportive partner with a well-defined sphere in the church where I could serve: children, kitchen and women’s Bible studies.

Now, there are a couple of problems. One, I’m not a good cook, and get little enjoyment out of kitchen activities.. Two, although I really, thoroughly enjoyed my own children, and did spend many years teaching children’s Sunday school, I’m truly not a gifted teacher for children. But I loved the church, and all I wanted was to serve it to the best of my ability.

And that’s where the real problems began to surface. It’s with my abilities. For a long time, I played Holly Homemaker. I made my own clothes, sewed my own curtains, baked all my own bread (yes, I could even make hamburger buns, English muffins, and some fabulous croissants), kept a fairly clean and quite neat house, and held on each day until I could have a few hours in the afternoons do what I really wanted: read theology, books on the Christian life, and especially, my Bible

I loved the Bible from the moment I first discovered it, when I was a junior at Rice University. It fascinated me, these words of people living out their faith. As an anthropology student, I had the privilege of gaining unique insights into the lives of biblical characters through my study of ancient cultures.

The Bible was, and is, very alive to me. It’s full of complexities and characters, great stories and odd scenes. I love reading it, reading about it, studying it, and, most of all, teaching it.

My gift, which emerged even in those crazy early days with Campus Crusade for Christ, is teaching adults. As I said, I taught children, but that was not where I belonged. They knew it, and so did I. I had and still have a gift. It is the gift of opening the words of Holy Scripture to an adult audience. There was one place, and only one place, where I wanted to exercise this gift: the church.

Now, why on earth would this be a problem?

Here’s why: we had this inerrant passage to set the parameters of who could teach whom, from 1 Timothy 2, starting with verse 8:

I desire, then, that in every place the men should pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or argument; also that the women should dress themselves modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with their hair braided, or with gold, pearls, or expensive clothes, but with good works, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God. Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.

Can’t teach men and need to dress modestly. OK, I can do that, although I often braided my submissively long hair and wore some really exquisite jewelry, both gold and pearl, that I enjoyed. But I, and other men and women of my biblically-sound acquaintances, attributed those commands as being culturally conditioned and no longer applicable today.

Now, we did have the problem that the men in our church most definitely did not pray with their hands in the air. However, that was what the less biblically literate charismatics did; we were not like them, after all. So, the men were just being doctrinally correct by not raising hands.

OK, clearly I couldn’t teach men. So, it must be OK to teach women. Except here’s where those never-ending questions permeating my mind would get me in so much trouble.

Because if the reason women can’t teach men is that women are deceived, then why is it OK to teach women or children? After all, do we want the women and children being taught by someone hopelessly lost in deception? Or do they just not matter?

And what about boy children? When do they become men so that a woman shouldn’t teach them? So, when, as the mother of all boys, should I cease from instructing them in the Christian life? After all, I was the one who spent the most time with them. When did I cross over the line from motherly instruction into real evil by teaching them the Bible?

There’s more, unfortunately. The church we were attending at the time was organized around what were called “mini-churches.” This is a really great concept in so many ways. On Sunday mornings, there was Sunday school for children only, and all adults were expected to be part of a mini-church that would meet several times a month at someone’s house for a meal or snacks, the building of relationships, and intensive Bible study.

At one point, the pastors of the church told the members of our mini-church that we should most effectively exercise our spiritual gifts within the mini-church context.

Our group had just done an exercise to help discern our spiritual gifts. Several of us were clearly identified as teachers of Scripture. And all those so identified in our mini-church were women. So I asked our pastor, who joined our group for one evening, “If this is the place to exercise our spiritual gifts, and since the gifted teachers in here are all women, then is it OK here for the women to teach the men during our mini-church evenings?” After a few moments of dead silence in the room, he said he’d get back with us on that one. He never did. And it was the beginning of a deep, festering conflict that infected both church and home.

I decided that I could rationalize teaching just women, although the concern about deception never really left me. For several years, I taught multiple Bible studies at church. I never developed a particularly large following—my tendency to be too intellectual and too demanding of decent scholarship worked against it.

Plus, I couldn’t do the “girlie” thing well. I’ve often said that I flunked “suburban housewifery.” I couldn’t play the game, never did care if my house was properly decorated, had little patience for shopping sprees, and found dress-up tea parties to be an endless bore.

Combined with this, my always-serious personality and the extent to which I kept my personal life in deep darkness meant that I didn’t make friends easily. As with many households with deep cracks beneath, ours was covered with a veneer of perfection. I dare not let anyone penetrate that veneer. So, a fair number of people were put off by me.

Despite my lack of a large following, a group of women enjoyed opening the scriptures with me, and I treasured those times. Of course, those never-ending questions came popping up again, this time asking, “What if what I’m teaching is wrong? What if I’m leading these women down a very wrong path?” I knew well the biblical admonition for teachers to be particularly careful, and I grew increasingly concerned about it.

By this time, the youngest of my three so very much loved sons was entering first grade. It was time for Mom to go back to school. There was only one logical place for me to begin serious, intensive study of the Bible: Dallas Theological Seminary. When I prepared to apply, I discovered that they had just opened their four-year, highly rigorous Master of Theology program to female students.

Before that time, women were permitted only in the two-year M.A. Programs and were not given the opportunity to study the two great languages in which most of the scriptures were originally written: Hebrew and Greek.

Clearly, God has opened this door for me! Or it could have been a simple financial decision by the school trustees. Either way, I was going to be given the opportunity to learn the tools that would open the gateway to truly understanding the Bible on my own, no longer merely regurgitating someone else’s study.

I was almost giddy with anticipation, imagining dozens of other eager women ready to leap into the deep end of biblical scholarship with me.

Well, I certainly got that one wrong. One three women in my entering class, leaving me the only woman in most courses. But more: the shipwreck of faith followed as I slowly learned how much lying permeates the Evangelical world. And how much talent it wastes in the process.

And that’s exactly the way the Al Mohlers and their many followers in the Southern Baptist Church and most independent Bible churches want it: Keep those women silent and submissive—otherwise, those emerging “Jezebels” (yes, I was given that label a few years later by a seminary official) will wreak havoc on their firm grip on power.

And never, ever forget this: it is this kind of theology that informs the people who want to repeal the 19th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. I’m sure Mohler would deny this accusation, but if he wants to keep women silent in the church, it is hardly a small leap to keep them quiet in the government. In truth, it actually makes sense after a while: men should be in control of the church, the government and women’s bodies.

So, once more, the battle lines are drawn. Once more, power and money are on the side of males who lack the ability to understand real partnership and the power of shared leadership. Once more, women will have to fight to be acknowledged as fully human, not “less than.” Once more, those on the side of Jesus, whose life and actions clearly affirm women in all their power and giftedness, will be expelled and silenced.

I grieve. And I will keep fighting. Who is with me? If so, please consider sharing this and leaving a comment below.

Author and columnist, the Rev. Dr. Christy Thomas is a retired clergy member of Horizon Texas (formerly North Texas) Conference of The United Methodist Church. This post is republished from her Substack blog, "Christy Thomas: Quiet Resistance for a Noisy Age."