CALLED TO LEAD.
UNITED TO SERVE.

Truth is often hard to hear. Perhaps this is why Jesus told His early disciples “it will set you free”. So here’s the truth…

The Truth

Every time Jesus spoke with a woman, He liberated her.

Yet generations of women have been convinced that the sin of Eve makes us complicit in a heritage of sin in which grace alone is insufficient to secure our spiritual legacy. We must also embrace silence, suffering, and sacrifice in a way unique only to women.

We use words like ‘different’, instead of ‘deficient’, to explain why women only do certain things. When a woman says she is called to preach or to teach, we ignore the example of Jesus with the woman at the well or His appearance to Mary after His resurrection, saying “Go tell my disciples…”, and say, “God doesn’t use women in that way”.

While the explanations vary depending on the preferred language of the time, the outcome, does not. Shame and guilt are used to undermine and restrict not just the individual woman, but God’s work through her in the world.

The Solution

It’s difficult to acknowledge these facts, much less give voice to the impact these powerful beliefs have had and continue to have on women of faith.  Yet if we are to walk in the freedom Jesus sacrificed to give us we must…

Rely not on authority for truth, but on truth for authority.
Lucretia Mott