Powerful and Free: Confronting the invisible ceiling in the Church
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Wherever you stand in your belief system, you know this is not right. Whether something good went wrong, or really wherever and however infection set in, we are infected. The planet and its people are infected. If you’re not infected personally, you are at least affected. And infection always spreads. With nearly as many permutations and combinations as beauty, it keeps us ever seeking new antidotes.
Mysteriously however, a huge infection being slowly well-treated in most of society continues to infect, primarily, people of faith. As much as we Christians in particular proclaim freedom for all, an oppressed people group remains in our midst: women.
“Nonsense,” church men reply. “I let my wife do whatever she wants.” You let your wife?
What's worse is many otherwise powerful Christian women, in ministry themselves, confess to traces of misogyny. When you’re in the culture, absorbing, for example, all the scriptural references to men, how can you not feel at best ‘less than’, at worst, invisible?
Once upon a time I dated a black fellow who would proclaim he was not ‘black’, but ‘brown’. Well yeah ... and I’m not white, I’m pink. But I didn't feel any need to make that point. Obscure analogy I admit, but perhaps it begins to at least partially, racially, illustrate the gender issue.
Recently I listened to, and was gobsmacked and hugely healed while listening to, a talk by Danny Silk which inspired all these ruminations. As Danny says, the message is for "anyone who knows a woman.”
Preview: did Jesus—this Friend of humanity/brother/prophet—come only to break the curse over men … and not women?
You can download Danny's talk here: The Invisible Ceiling. He has also written a book on the topic: Powerful and Free: Confronting the Glass Ceiling for Women in the Church.
