Thoughts on women...

Let me first start by saying that the only skin I have in this particular game is that I love to pick away at threads where I feel that patriarchal systems have sought to supress and 'keep women in their place' through an interpretation of the scriptures. I don't personally want to be an elder, nor do I think I necessarily fulfil all the requirements regardless. I do however believe that the church family and wider church is poorer for this prohibition and that is my motivation for this whole blog really.  That off my chest, for this post I wanted to put down in writing some of my thoughts on this so far. Also, they are just that, my thoughts so far and for this post I've landed on 'pronouns' and 'tradition'. I've come on a journey from a complementarian stance to a mutualist/egalitarian stance and I hope I am still learning and developing all the time. I've talked to MANY people about this and funnily enough it was a recent discussion about the ...

A couple of weeks ago we heard at the Covid Inquiry that a lack of female perspective at the heart of government had a significant and negative impact on policies implemented during that time. Helen MacNamara, former deputy cabinet secretary pointed to resistance within government to consider the gendered impact of the lockdown, including women and children experiencing domestic violence, childcare, unpaid carer roles and the impact on pregnant women's experience of maternity care. Many of the findings of the inquiry have been difficult to hear but they aren't surprising. When women's voices are not represented or listened to, the result is inequity between the sexes and women usually bearing the brunt of it. It is interesting to discover that globally, when women are in positions of government and influence, outcomes for all are improved, including healthcare, education and policies relating to inequality of all kinds. Governmental decision making is improved when women ar...

We don't need to read far into the Bible to see Gods blueprint for the earth and humanity. All of creation was designed to work in harmony and at peace with one another. Everything was 'good' until He created mankind and it was the completion of everything including humanity, which earned his final, sixth day 'very good'. God said "Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over...[every living creature].. so God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them" (v26-27). God is fully expressed in the combination of male and female. One is not complete without the other. Not necessarily in a marriage sense, but humanity is only complete when both male and female are fully expressed as they are in God. It is here also that the counter culturedness of scripture is established. Early readers and writers of scriptures were familiar with predominantly male kings and rulers being...