Healthy, egalitarian, evangelical churches
It has been a great encouragement to the biblical egalitarian movement to have Willow Creek Community Church demonstrate having women on the leadership team and as teaching pastors. There are also a number of outstanding evangelical PCUSA churches. The issue with PCUSA churches is not whether they are egalitarian but whether they are evangelical.
Churches led by Earl Palmer, John Ortberg, Craig Barnes, Darrell Johnson and others are shining examples of what biblical gender equality can look like. Leith Anderson’s Wooddale Church is another good example. There are other denominations as well that are firmly egalitarian: Evangelical Covenant Church, American Baptist, Reformed Church of America, and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Again, I would urge these high profile pastors, those who are leading large churches, regularly speaking at conferences, and writing books, to write a chapter or an article advocating their support for the evangelical egalitarian position. These endorsements make a powerful statement to the evangelical community that churches can be both biblical and egalitarian. These endorsements begin to change hearts to reconsider the traditionalist position.
– Andy
I’d like to add the Nazarene Church to your list of denominations with egalitarian theological positions. The Nazarenes have held the egalitarian position right from its beginning about a hundred years ago, so they have the benefit of falling outside of the traditionalists’ complaint that all adoptions of egalitarian views are only a reaction to the 1960’s feminist movement.
Their practical implementation of their own theology has come up very short for the last several decades as their percent of female pastors has dropped precipitously. Likewise, my own denomination, the RCA that Andy mentions, is weak on practics, too. Having adopted egalitarian positions and ordained female pastors for only 26 years, the issue is still raw and unaccepted in places, especially in the Midwest.