The Bible and Gender Equality

January 21, 2006, by Rebecca Merrill Groothuis

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What is Biblical Equality?

Evangelical egalitarianism, or biblical equality, refers to the biblically-based belief that gender, in and of itself, neither privileges nor curtails a believer’s gifting or calling to any ministry in the church or home. In particular, the exercise of spiritual authority, as biblically defined, is deemed as much a female believer’s privilege and responsibility as it is a male believer’s.

Biblical equality does not mean women and men are identical or undifferentiated. Biblical egalitarians recognize average differences (both learned and intrinsic) between women and men, and affirm that God designed men and women to complement and benefit one another.

Although it shares with feminism the belief that unjust treatment of women should be remediated, biblical equality is not grounded in feminist ideology, which is derived from cultural factors and philosophies. Rather, biblical equality is grounded simply and solely in the properly consistent interpretation of God’s written word. On this basis, biblical egalitarians (a) affirm that the gifts and callings of the Spirit are distributed without regard to gender, and that all believers in Christ stand on equal ground before God, and (b) repudiate the notion that the Bible grants to men spiritual authority and other religious privileges that it denies to women.

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Searching for Woman's Place in Evangelicalism

July 29, 2005, by Rebecca Merrill Groothuis

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A review of God’s Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission by R. Marie Griffith (University of California Press, 1997).

R. Marie Griffith’s inside look at the culture and beliefs of the Women’s Aglow Fellowship, an international charismatic Christian women’s organization, illuminates how and why so many evangelical women support and identify with the doctrine of female submission to male authority. This, in my estimation, is the book’s most valuable contribution.

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Where Do Biblical Egalitarians Go from Here?

October 01, 2004, by Rebecca Merrill Groothuis

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Since the early 1990s, the evangelical gender debate has become polarized and unproductive. We have learned much, solidified our arguments, and encouraged one another; but public discourse on the basic question of the relationship between gender and spiritual authority rarely informs and often offends.

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