2011 February: Dr Elaine StorkeyPosted by Administrator on 23/04/2012 14:04:38 The Oliver Lyseight Annual Lecture
Dr Elaine Storkey – February 2011
New Testament Church of God, Leadership Training Centre
Challenges of Black Pentecostal Leadership in the 21st Century
Women in Leadership
Introduction
It is a great privilege to be asked to deliver the fourth Oliver Lyseight lecture. As an Anglican theologian I might have hesitated to accept, wondering what I could possibly teach the New Testament Church of God about the Christian faith and witness. But when I heard the subject you had given me, I knew I had to come, for this subject is very close to my heart, and one which I have worked on for many years. I never tire of sharing it with other people.
For this fourth lecture, you have chosen the topic of Women in Leadership. And, women in leadership ought to be a very straightforward and uncomplicated subject to talk about, unfortunately, it is not. For there has been more ferment, inside and outside the church about whether women should be leaders, what kind of leaders, and with what scope of leadership, than in almost any other area. Of course, the topic is neither novel nor radical since women have been in hereditary forms of leadership since history began. To my knowledge, no-one has ever questioned why Cleopatra should have been Supreme monarch of Egypt, nor challenged the right to authority of the Queen of Sheba. Women ruled then, and have done so before and since. However, most forms of leadership are not hereditary, and in other areas of power and authority a very different pattern has prevailed. Women’s leadership has been under contest. Right down the centuries, leadership in the clan, tribe, military, business, work, professions and religion has been predominantly male and, even in our own society, it is only over the last hundred years or so that we have seen substantial change. The change has often been brought about as a result of advocacy, which has triggered changes in attitude, social action, campaigns, and even civil disobedience. It has been reinforced by legislation. In many other countries these campaigns are still being fought. Last year in Egypt, women protested in front of the State Council Court in Cairo because twenty -five of them had applied to become judges and had been turned down. They were highly qualified legal women but the General Assembly voted to bar women from serving as judges in the court.
Things have changed, however, in the UK where, over the last forty years, gender divisions between men and women have narrowed substantially as women have moved into areas of work previously occupied only by men. Women now fill some of the highest posts in all the professions. Having overcome the prejudice which held them back from so many jobs, they are now consultant anaesthetists, airline pilots, emergency service supervisors, orthopaedic surgeons. We find their leadership in research, business, public life, and science. In fact, today, women head up universities, government select committees and police departments. They are editors of newspapers. They are controllers of radio and television. All this is evident for the shift has been taking place over decades. The college of which I am a member - Newnham College, Cambridge – one of the last all-women colleges at Oxford and Cambridge - can produce an impressive list of women alumnae who have made an outstanding contribution to the life of our country and beyond. They are now educating the next generation of women who expect to reach even higher to make their contribution to society, for there is little doubt that women have as much ability as men, to do almost any task required of them.
But you are fully aware of these things, and have not asked me here to state the obvious. My task is not to list for you all the gains women have made in leadership in these areas of work and society. For you and I all know that for Christians that is not the issue. The important questions are about who sets the agenda, and what agenda they set, and where we should look to women for leadership? For the Church of Jesus Christ does not and should not take our directions simply from what goes on in a secularised society. In fact, there are many areas where we part company from patterns and policies of contemporary culture; for we believe we have a prophetic ministry. We do not, for example, endorse the right to abortion on demand simply because this is now socially accepted and the right to abortion is protected by law. We do not neglect to discipline our children simply because legislation has given more rights to children and frowns upon too much parental exercise of authority. We do not discourage potential foster parents, just because some Local Authorities have barred a Christian couple who hold a traditional Christian position on sexuality morality. If we were to hold back on sharing our faith in the public arena, because people have been taken to court for offering to pray with people, or wearing a cross at work, we would be abnegating our responsibility. For sometimes our task is also to rebuke society.
So even though women are now admitted into the highest office in our secular society, it does not mean automatically that the church should follow suit. The key question for us is not whether the church must catch up on the progress made for women in the rest of our culture, but what a biblical theology has to say about leadership in the church and society. Can we be sure, theologically, that the leadership of women is endorsed by faithful Christian exegesis and that the opening up of higher offices in the Church to women is compatible with the Word of God? I believe that it is, but I acknowledge that there is a case to be made to convince others. The challenge, then, is not to ape those outside the church but to find justification for such changes in the New Testament or in the historical praxis of the church. Of course, when we look at the issue very carefully, we might reach the conclusion that in some areas of social practice, parts of our society have been more biblical than the church itself!
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