Christian Post: The Ministry of Listening

This post was cut from a draft of a review of Jimmy Carter’s Our Endangered Values. (I usually don’t revise drafts of book reviews, but the former President provides much food for thought in that book.) It’s not exclusively for Christians, any more than Carter’s book was. It’s about the social roles and relationships people choose, in church and elsewhere...

Carter expresses disappointment with “the docile acceptance by so many strong Christian women of their subjugation and restricted role” in church. He’s by no means the first, last, or only writer to have done this. When they’re talking about the misogynist rules some churches used to have, positively requiring discrimination against women, I agree with them. When they’re denouncing sexual abuse and exploitation of women by male superordinates, I wonder why they’re not louder and angrier than most of them are. When they’re talking about women ministers’ demands for equal pay and promotion, as if being a pastor or elder or choir leader were merely a job like being a cashier or a coal miner, they put me off, but that is where paying salaries to male ministers has inevitably led.

Because his discussion is so bland and tactful, I’m not sure exactly what Carter is talking about in that passage. I might be able to explain the phenomenon to those who share his consternation; I might be, as the expression goes, singing from a different music score altogether. In any case he is talking about churches that "so many women" still attend, so I'd guess that he's talking about the churches that consider only male candidates for the preacher's job.

First we should all remember C.S. Lewis’s famous comment that if Christian marriage sets crowns on the heads of husbands, one of those crowns is made of paper and the other of thorns. Within marriage, the Bible does not lay down laws about any divinely appointed roles for men and women as such. The marriage is between two individuals; call them Jack and Jill. These individuals are more likely to stay together if they don’t haggle about making sure that each does an equal share of everything, but work out their own arrangements of what each one can do for both. Maybe Jill, being shorter, doesn’t have enough leverage to start the lawn mower easily; Jack mows the lawn. Maybe Jack, having a back or knee injury, finds it painful to push the lawn mower; Jill mows the lawn. Maybe they hire someone to mow the lawn, or make it a teenager’s weekly chore. Maybe they go Green and encourage native plants, which are more effective air filters, to form the barrier strip between their house and garden and the polluted public road, in which case there is no lawn. That is their business.

Then, many churches have been guilty of exploiting women in “restricted roles” of ministry. A church might list both male and female ministers on its staff, but only the males were ever listed as “senior pastor.” Or only males could officiate in certain services. Or male and female ministers did similar things all week, but males received more money since the husband was supposed to be the breadwinner, under some state laws that were actually spawned by French Socialism and had nothing to do with Christianity. I even heard of churches that reserved leadership roles for women, for widows; the idea of course was to give the leadership positions to the older women, but the idea of any special benefits being reserved for widows ought to have been a non-starter if discrimination against women  had not dictated that religious and community groups provide food and shelter for widows. Americans could do more in the direction of compassion for widows, like recognizing that we can do competent work without looking happy, securing our inheritances, and protecting us from discrimination against the unmarried. Americans could also do more in the direction of courtesy toward widows, like recognizing that asking questions about our sex lives or remarriage is a shameful thing, such that no choice we could possibly make should be considered as scandalous as anyone’s gossip about us is. But there is no need to place a bounty on husbands.

It was hard for me, in my churchgoing years, to support the idea of women lobbying for equal pay for their Christian ministry in the way we were lobbying for equal pay in office jobs. It is hard to respect a minister whose concerns are for promotion and pay raises. Judaism did not, and Christianity did not necessarily, have the “hireling ministers” Charles Spurgeon denounced, at all. In ancient Israel the Levites, the tribe from whom the priests were selected, were allowed to earn money for themselves, rent home, work, and trade, but there’s no mention of their receiving stipends and they were positively forbidden to own land; their high status seems to have been offset by laws that kept them in a low-status lifestyle. Jewish scholars historically did their studying in the evenings at the end of their day’s work. The apostles plied their trades like other people. People did not join the early Christian church to get rich.

As for women’s “right” to preach...I went to a Seventh-Day Adventist college. They were organized for the purpose of training missionaries. They may take their time getting around to teaching college freshmen the amount of algebra, biology, or history that Virginia high schools used to cover in grade nine, but they set right in to the job of preparing every freshman to meet any emergency need for a preacher that may ever arise. If you went to an Adventist school, at least in the 1980s, you were taught how to “chain-reference” your cheap carry-around Bible to explain various Adventist doctrinal positions handily, how to write and preach a sermon, how to do fundraising appeals, how to lead group prayers, and, if at all possible, how to lead group singing.

Two female classmates of mine wanted to be full-time ministers. They were my friends. Didn’t I want them to have what they wanted, including recognition of their devotion and their talents? I did; though I came to feel that a church as anti-introvert as the Adventist church was didn’t deserve their talents, or anyone else’s either. And “shouldn’t that mean being paid as much as a man would be paid, if he had earned the same degrees and was doing the same work?” As if most male ministers could do what Hyveth Williams was doing, even as a 39-year-old undergraduate, if we want to “speak as fools” about such things.

But somehow, y’know...the Bible never mentions any disputes about whether St. Barnabas had some sort of precedence over St. Martha, because of gender, or vice versa, because of age or length of acquaintance with Jesus. One gets the impression that both of them did their mundane jobs with a better will and put every penny they could spare into the funds the church used to feed all those poor people who’d been disowned by their families for confessing faith in Jesus.

Preachers eat about as much food, and wear out clothes and shoes about as fast, as other people do. Church buildings need about as much maintenance as school buildings, theatres, and concert halls do. In practice there are good practical reasons why Christians should give money to churches. But I feel more respect for churches that put collection boxes on walls outside the sanctuary rather than fundraising during services, and for ministers whose homes, clothes, vehicles, and lifestyle generally set a good example of frugality and generosity. I think a church should have nice snug windowpanes that admit light and exclude wind, and if church members work in stained glass and want to donate a beautiful window, blessed may they be; I don’t think a church should pay for stained glass or other luxury kinds of windows.

I once sat in a church where a preacher explained to a lot of comfortable upper-middle-class types that he drove an expensive sports car, a Porsche, because someone had given it to him. The upper-middle-class types had questioned this choice but seemed to accept his explanation. The town was, at the time, full of laid-off coal miners living on unemployment funds. Somehow this preacher didn’t seem to be reaching any of those families.

And then I always come back to the fact that my father, who always described himself as a small farmer who did odd jobs, had earned two degrees, neither of which he ever used to get a job. He had a B.S. in engineering and a Th.D. in theology. He was an ordained minister. He explained that to me as something Mother had pushed him to do, back in the 1960s; he’d served honorably in the Army before they were married, and was not desperate enough to buy credentials from the Universal Life Church, but had earned credit for his knowledge of the Bible from a real, though small, church in Southern California whose main requirement for its ministers was that they continue to support their main mission, which was an orphanage. Dad never preached a service, even a wedding or funeral service, in his life. Apparently he did send some money to the orphanage. “Who am I to tell anyone else what to believe? If they practice what the other holy books of other religions teach, the world will be a better place. If they want to know what the Bible teaches, I can help them with that. But who am I to take money for explaining what’s in the Bible?” Well, he was not without talent for it; he had a fine clear tenor speaking voice, a beautiful oldfashioned Virginia accent, and the gift of always being able to find words. His main shortcoming as a teacher was his tendency to go on too long, too far, and too fast.

Still, other ministers did send him free copies of news magazines, and their own contributions to the body of Christian literature, to get his comments, as long as he was able to read the documents and write comments. Most days our mailbox contained magazines, manuscripts, leaflets, tracts, and books colleagues sent and Dad “marked up” for them. But “Who am I, who is this correspondent, or Fulton Sheen or Billy Graham, to treat teaching the Bible as a job like splitting a load of wood? What makes my comments any better than any other person’s, if they take the time to read the Bible and think about it?” I’ve never found an answer to that question that would have made Dad any richer.

I went to college in order to work in my hometown library. That was the only “career job” that ever had a strong appeal for me, and there the appeal consisted entirely of its being close to home—I did not particularly want to work in any other library. Adventists, being what they were, didn’t think that could be very much of a missionary ministry. I learned where to find all the most popular Bible texts, how to construct a sermon or small-group study that links those texts together. I gave my required share of chapel talks; people talked about the message, rather than complaining about the timing, of the one that took twice as long as it ought to have taken. Perhaps if I’d been a seventeen-year-old boy I would have heard the call to become a full-time pastor coming from Adventists. Being a girl, I heard calls to become a college English teacher or maybe a radio show hostess. (I was already earning a little money as a singer; it was assumed that (a) I’d continue that and (b) it wouldn’t be a “career job.” I was also earning money as a typist, which I expected would be my “career job”; Adventists thought that would be a waste of an education.)

As a believer in the priesthood of all Christians I feel qualified to debate points of scholarship with...whoever may move into Billy Graham’s place, if anyone ever can. In Christ there is neither male nor female. In human terms the authority to debate Bible scholarship comes from the amount of time people have spent studying the Bible; compare with me, male preachers, if you can. I also feel that competition for some sort of "right to preach" is sacrilegious.

I never felt the kind of passionate response that Dr. Williams or the other would-be female pastor had felt when they’d told someone they’d joined the church and that someone had said, “You ought to be a preacher!” I can give a sermon, or a lecture, if no one else is available. It will meet requirements for references to primary texts, calls for participation that keep people awake, clear diction, a coherent outline, a credible presentation. People will stay awake. If they want to learn something, people will learn something. I used to be known for keeping audiences rapt in silence, and you may have the secret of that free of charge. It consists of speaking softly so that people have to shut up and listen. I can do that as competently as I’ve done other odd jobs for all these years.

That’s my point. It’s not that I’m paralyzed by stage fright, or was kept from learning what a preacher ought to know, or believe that women-as-a-group are spiritually inferior to men-as-a-group. It’s that preaching a sermon or leading a Bible study is teaching. That’s work. That is not, therefore, Rest and Worship.

“In Paul’s time,” Dad often said, “you might well ask, ‘How shall they hear, without a preacher?’ Most people couldn’t read, couldn’t have their own Bibles, and couldn’t understand the language if they were able to get a copy. Things are different now. Most people can read the Bible.” Jesus asked the rich young ruler, who He knew had the Bible and could read it, ‘What is written in the law? How readest thou?’ It might be better for most churchgoers if they were asked to explain what they have read and understood for themselves. At least, if preaching or counselling still seemed to be necessary, a minister would have some idea where to begin. Certainly in most church groups today the justification for paying anyone to be a full-time pastor can no longer be that he (or she) has learned so much more than the others ought to have learned, already, for themselves.

Likewise in the situations with which non-Christians, if they’ve borne with this much of this post, are more familiar. Teachers are, of course, at least supposed to have read more than their students have. If they haven’t the students should demand refunds. And it is possible for a really gifted teacher, like C.S. Lewis or some of the other authors of the Oxford guides to English Literature, to have synthesized enough reading to compose lectures or introductory texts that add value to the original texts. Most people employed as teachers are not adding value to what’s printed in the book, or books. Most students go to most of their classes because someone else has determined, based largely on financial considerations, that in order to qualify for jobs or for other classes they need to pay an amount of money, X, to some senior member of the teaching group, and spend an amount of time, Y, warming a seat that faces that senior member as he or she lectures.

So a strategy favored at some of the top universities does, in fact, ask of each student, “What is written in the books you have studied on your own? How readest thou?” The course becomes a seminar where each student gives a share of the lectures. A cynical assessment is that it must be profitable for the school to make the same students pay for a course and teach parts of the course; but having to do their own research and lecture on what they’ve learned may teach the students more than passively dozing through the teacher’s lectures would teach them. The teacher’s job then becomes evaluating the students’ lectures...a ministry of listening.

Ancient monarchs were authorized to make some decisions for their whole nation. However, like the executives in large businesses today, their range of choices was restricted by common sense. About most things they were bound by the same cultural rules as other people. They had the authority to decide about only some things, usually choosing among two or three alternatives that appealed to some of their followers. So even the earliest records show the monarch seeking counsel from his or her council. These advisers were people the monarchs recognized as peers, often their older relatives, in larger countries the subordinate leaders of cities and districts beyond the capital city. They were experts in specific fields of knowledge and/or representatives of the people in different places. They were paid to speak in the royal council about what they knew. What they knew was what they had learned by listening.

The Bible does not actually say that it’s a disgrace for any woman ever to speak in the church. Paul’s advice to the early Christian churches mentions women who came to church to learn—who had not been formally educated before, and were disrupting meetings by chattering and shouting out questions, as students do today. In the same epistle Paul also addresses women who came to teach, who were not to “usurp authority” that God hadn’t given them and were to dress and behave in ways appropriate to such authority as they had.

Early Christian women (and men) were advised to observe the same etiquette other people did. People of any social status belonged to families. Most people were married, by their parents, before they were considered adults or at the time of passage into adulthood. Families were supposed to function as coherent units, led by the husband and father while he was alive. Privately wives might make the decisions, but in public, if husbands had any status or property whatsoever, wives called them things that meant “milord.” (Jewish husbands, at least, returned the favor with a title that meant “lady of the house.”) Different cultural customs prescribed special styles women wore to show what their husbands could afford to give them, so, as in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, a married woman’s hair and headdress were badges of social status conferred on her by her voluntary (at least ritual) subordination to her husband. Etiquette generally prescribed that families would discuss their positions on issues privately, and wives could then say with modest pride that their husbands spoke for them.

Older women generally acquired more wealth and status. Wives of influential men who managed the family’s business, and widows of rich men, moved into the “head” positions in their households, spoke for the family, traded, and made decisions for the younger generation. The Bible records the names of several of these church ladies. They “prayed and prophesied” in church meetings. By “prophesied” the Bible writers meant that they reminded people of the appropriate Old Testament texts, which they had learned from hours of study. In their studies they had undoubtedly learned that the authority of the Torah rests on the seal of approval of a woman, Huldah, the leading scholar of her time. The early Christians tried to follow Jesus’ example, and invited women, including Mother Mary (for how many years we are not told), to speak—on the authority those women had gained by, previously, listening.

So why do women outnumber men at those churches that “restrict women to subordinate roles” by not hiring women preachers?

As a writer I suspect I may now be speaking for many women, and men, whose talents may be for other things than words. I have done a lot of listening, a lot of reading and studying. I am prepared to “prophesy” or “counsel” people who want the benefit of what I’ve learned. I can almost always find words—if not my own, then those I’ve studied. I can write a short book on almost any subject, to order, in a week; it won’t aspire to greatness but it will be a useful summary of available information and a reasonably informative, interesting read. I've written some about the Bible.

But I’m also blessed with the right to let others go first. As a woman, speaking just for myself, I like to listen to a nice resonant baritone voice reminding everyone of the Scriptures we should all know. As a citizen, even during the week, I want very much to hear evidence that young men are studying the relevant material that has already been written. If writing or teaching are what I do during the work week, at least on my day of rest I want to sit back and listen and learn.

I thought of this recently, reflecting on what happened when I had what’s become the rare luxury of a full ten-hour work day online. Interactive work! Communication with other people! I spent, perhaps, one hour out of ten actually writing original content—mostly replies to other people—and half an hour posting and mailing content I’d written at home, and half an hour in unavoidable wastes of time, computer “updates” and so on. I spent eight hours out of ten reading other people’s material. That felt right to me. I could put out, and had put out, my own words at home. The time I spent in virtual “speaking” felt like doing chores. What was special was the eight precious hours spent scanning, downloading, and reading other people’s words. I don’t see much evidence that other people approach their Internet activity in this way, but I relish the online time I spend in virtual “listening.”

Subordinate role? Not necessarily. When we listen to people telling us things that are completely unfamiliar to us, about which they know much more than we know, we feel like students—people in a subordinate role. When we listen to people adding updates or personal variations to a body of knowledge that is familiar to us, about which we know as much as they know, we feel like teachers, or at least colleagues—not at all a subordinate role. Even if they didn’t pay the pastor a prescribed monthly check, congregations have always employed their pastors. Listeners are learners; they are also encouragers, and they are also critics.

I think it may well be that many of those church ladies who listen silently to younger men's sermons every week don't see their role as subordinate, though they may see it as divinely appointed. They are the elders, the mothers and grandmothers, and in many cases the retired school teachers. It would be hard for them not to see themselves as going to church to encourage, and correct, the dear boys.

I don’t know how many church ladies (and church gentlemen) prefer to leave the pulpit to others, rather than resenting that the pulpit was not offered to us twenty, forty, or sixty years ago. (That might be material for a thesis in sociology.) I know that many do. This one does.