“This is just one of the many, many places throughout church history that show women exercised significant pastoral leadership over men.”
Granted, I filmed this video in Whitby (which I will discuss in my third book) not in Much Wenlock (which is the site I discuss in Becoming the Pastor’s Wife). But the point is that medieval women like Hild and Milburga served in ordained ecclesiastical roles that exercised significant pastoral authority. They aren’t difficult to find. They aren’t anomalous. They are an ordinary part of the medieval ecclesiastical landscape.
Yet I bet you have never heard of either of them, or at least don’t know much about them. Why? Because the church history we usually tell either omits women like Milburga or classifies them as ‘extraordinary’ and therefore the exception that proves the rule.
As I write in chapter four, “the Rise of the Pastor’s Wife”:
“Describing women as extraordinary is often a subtle way of reinforcing patriarchy. If Deborah becoming a judge in the Hebrew Bible is understood an an exception due to extraordinary circumstances rather than something normative, then her appearance in that role doesn’t threaten claims that the Bible supports male-only pastoral leadership. If Hildegard, a woman who preached to male clergy, including the highest ecclesiastical officials in her world, is just an exception, then her status as a preaching woman who exercised pastoral authority over men supposedly doesn’t threaten claims that Christian history ‘speaks with one voice’ on male-only pastoral leadership.
Do you see how it works?
Categorizing women who function as pastors as exceptional maintains the fiction that women are not pastors.”
The problem is that women throughout church history did function with pastoral authority. And it is time to tell their stories. It is time to stop letting institutions that deny women’s callings continue to claim that history is always on their side.
Because it isn’t.
Becoming the Pastor’s Wife releases today, y’all!
It tells a history that can change the church if only we will let it.
Find it wherever books are sold (amazon, target, barnes & noble, etc) or your favorite bookstore. Some of my favorites, including Fabled where my book launch will take place tonight in Waco, are here on my website.
Also, if you want to join the book launch conversation tonight then here is the livestream from Fabled.
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