10-2-12 Women Silent In The Church

Chairman

Thank you. The second question that I have for Jacquie:

‘The first speaker did not dispute the value of women’s help in the church. But you did not answer the question as to why ‘women should keep silent in church’ —that question, if that does not apply? Please not your opinion, but a scriptural reason as to why the Scriptures say that ‘women should keep silence in the church.’ Surely our opinion does not really matter when it is in conflict to God’s word.”

Rev. Jacqueline Henry

First of all the letter that Paul wrote to the Corinthians. He was writing to a church that were really not very wellbehaved and all through his first letter to the Corinthians he is taking them to task for things they are doing wrong. He takes them to task over communion, he takes them to task over marriage and then he takes them to task over the way they conduct their services, and in 1 Corinthians 14 Just before the verses in question, we hear how people are prophesying at the same time and interrupting each other, and they are being rude, and the same with the women.

Until the Christian church came into being, in the Jewish worship the women would be in the gallery up at the back there, behind a screen, and I think this happens even today in some synagogues. Because the women can’t be seen they have a little chat when the service gets a bit boring, and now for the first time the women are in the worship together with the men.

Another problem is that while Greek was a language that everyone spoke. In some of the wilder places, the women didn’t speak Greek, they spoke their own local tribal language. I used to find this in Nigeria that I would be speaking in Hausa and the men would understand, but then someone would have to translate from my Hausa into the local tribal language for the women, because otherwise the women were nudging their husbands and saying. “What did she say? What was that word?” And it may well have been, that part of this talking in church was that the women were asking their husbands what was going on. That’s my understanding of that passage.

Chairman

Thank you. The next question says, “thank you both.” So you have pleased, both of you, the audience somebody in the audience, to some degree.

“Thank you both. What is Jacquie’s definition of ‘serving’ if different from preaching or teaching publicly?”

Rev. Jacqueline Henry

I think ‘service’ is what God calls to, and what is being needed. Stephen was the first deacon. He was elected as a deacon to serve at table, to take the alms round to the widows and the poor. But the next thing we hear of Stephen is as an evangelist and he is being arrested because he has been preaching, and after that he is martyred. So for Stephen being a deacon was all of those things: serving, being a messenger, preaching, and being a martyr.

And I think that service is whatever God calls you into, and that way may change over the years, or even over the months as it did for Stephen.