Evangelicals Love Romans. And Ignore It.

     A short reflection regurgitating stuff written by better scholars than myself, but I just feel the desire to get these thoughts down for myself.

    Evangelicals gorge on the book of Romans. The Protestant love affair with Romans began with Luther and the affection for this book has not diminished with the passing of time. I'll say no more here about that because I'm not a scholar. Less is more. People can finish this paragraph imagining all the great stuff I'm thinking about right now. It's probably better that we leave it at the imagination stage.

    Moving on, I just want to throw down some things I've noted that Evangelicals, in particular, love to not notice (or love) about this book. Now it must be noted that I'm being a bit harsh. My most recent source of choice information is from the latest edition of Christianity Today (CT), a bastion of evangelical thought. So it's with a broad brush (more like a crop duster) that I lay down this criticism. And that's not fair.

    But... in a lot of churches I attended and from my more conservative friends... I still see the "women in leadership" question being answered too often with either (a) the "that's a good question" dodge, or (b) a bad answer: "women shouldn't be there".

    Which I find awfully surprising, given the following from the first few verses of Romans 16. Here we go.

I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church in Cenchreae. 2 I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of his people and to give her any help she may need from you, for she has been the benefactor of many people, including me.

3 Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my co-workers in Christ Jesus. 4 They risked their lives for me. Not only I but all the churches of the Gentiles are grateful to them.

5 Greet also the church that meets at their house.

Greet my dear friend Epenetus, who was the first convert to Christ in the province of Asia.

6 Greet Mary, who worked very hard for you.

7 Greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Jews who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was.

    I'm just going to point out some stuff and be done. For openers, the opener is a reference to Phoebe, who (I credit CT for drawing my eyes to her) is a deacon, most likely the person who delivered Paul's letter, and therefore very likely the person who would answer any questions the church members might have about what Paul wrote.

    Let that sink in. No. Seriously. Let that sink in. We consider Romans to be a blockbuster theological treatise worthy of doctoral dissertations by the dozens. A woman was tasked with explaining it to the first people to ever hear it read aloud.

    Second, our old friends Priscilla and Aquila pop up. Again. And in this husband-wife team, Priscilla is mentioned first.

    Let that sink in.

    It also must be noted that half the awesome people noted by Paul here are women. I counted. If I can be forgiven for extrapolation (and we're in November, with election fever still running high), according to this exit poll, women held up half of the early church. If an awful communist regime figured out that much (Chairman Mao had women holding up half the sky), it doesn't seem too much to ask that the modern church to pile on to what St. Paul already knew.

    Finally, Paul refers to Junia as an apostle.

    Let that sink in.

    But give evangelicals a bit of credit for sheer head-in-the-sand obstinancy. Because too often it's not new thoughts sinking into heads, but rather heads sinking deeper into the sand. Examples? Two.

    First, even in my Bible before me, a footnote suggests that Phoebe might be a deaconess. Crediting CT again, I'd point out that there is no such word in the Greek. That word got invented so that women who were deaconesses could be given less authority than men bearing the same title. That's not in the Greek, folks. It's just a convenience invention for evangelicals of a different persuasion regarding the proper place of a woman in the church.

    Second, let's talk about this Junia, counted as outstanding among the apostles. If you can imagine people 2,000 years from now arguing that Tiffany "was sometimes a boy's name back then", you can guess where evangelicals have gone in their attempt to prevent a woman from being considered an apostle. Nuff said.

    In closing, I doff my cap to St. Paul, who in no way deserves the shade getting thrown on him by feminists who hate the Bible for its misogyny. Their frustrations should be directed toward some modern church movements. Jesus and Paul didn't get us into trouble with women. We did.