Experiencing the Leadership of Women in the Church

The current mood (at least on my Twitter feed) within the church seems to be one of antagonism towards and rebellion against complementarianism, male leadership and even translations of the Bible that show, according to some, 'gender bias' and this often within more conservative circles. As someone who served within a mixed denomination for many years, which meant working alongside and in some senses under women leaders, I find this increasingly concerning.

The root of all sin is, of course, the human heart (Mark 7:20-23). That's the human heart, not the men's hearts or women's hearts, but all human hearts. That means that while we must be horrified and saddened at what we hear of sinful leadership from men, it would deeply surprise us not to find sinful leadership in women too. That was my experience.

Many of the women who exercised leadership in relation to me in my time in the Church of England used their power to try to manipulate and bully me. On average, they were much worse to me than the men (although I wouldn't pretend there weren't plenty of instances with men as well). They sought to manipulate my theology, stop me progressing through assessments, prevent me taking jobs and take advantage of me in vulnerable situations.

Now, to a degree, I think this was understandable - although by no means acceptable or not sinful. I disagreed with their theology at a minimum on their role within the church. You can understand how that would make them uncomfortable. Moreover, many had expended much effort fighting against something they saw as an evil and which I represented. Even worse, I was relatively young - a new generation of evil coming into the church in their eyes. Perhaps worse still I wasn't compliant. Not always, but often, the manipulation and bullying didn't work very well. That said, I left the Church of England, so in the long run, they got their way.

Why write this? Surely you're just asking for trouble. Surely you're just a minority report in a much bigger issue. Perhaps. But where we lack nuance, we lack truth, especially in areas like this. Much of what is being written and said implies, often not so subtly, men = bad and women = good. Or perhaps, in the postmodern parlance, men = oppressors and women = oppressed. In a society and a church that has been structured in a particular way for a long time, we will not be surprised that the majority of examples fit this pattern. Ironically, as someone coming from a complementarian position, I think there are good reasons to think that ungodly men with power can be more dangerous.

But it's worth looking at contexts where the power dynamic has changed to see the results. My observation is that the results are pretty bad - my experience and observation could almost reverse the picture (i.e. men = oppressed and women = oppressor), although that would be to overstate it. If that's the case, put simply the evidence (let alone the Bible) suggests that it isn't complementarianism that's the problem.
In short, there is no egalitarian utopia out there. Sin corrupts and whoever has the power will often use it for evil, because that's who we are. Do we need to work hard on our theology and make sure it is biblical? Yes. Do we need to reflect on our godliness and look to be more humble in Christ? Yes. But that is not a one-way street.