I have only one wish for women and that is for them to be able to be mediocre.

apropos of another twitter-storm

A friend sent me this the other day, perhaps because she likes to see me sweat, who knows. It is a short video (screenshotted below) of new seminarians eating at the cafeteria at RTS Jackson.

From the look of the comments, you would think that this was an invading army intending to overtake the campus and hold all of the faculty hostage. Judging by the comments, there are a not-insignificant number of men who think the very presence of a woman at seminary is THE END OF ALL THINGS.

Now. There are a few ways to approach this problem. The first is to ask what kind of a problem it is that we have.

Judging from my own personal experience (which, i know is limited), my guess is better than half of these men would not dare say any of these things to an actual person.

But even if we disregard half of the comments, there are still a non-zero number of men who think Women Ruin Everything at Seminary. So what shall we do?

We might strengthen the resolve of women by supporting them deeply and insisting that God loves women, that women were first at the tomb and that therefore We Need Women to preach the gospel.

All of these things might be true, but they are also platitudes. In order to support women, we do not need to insist that women are the future of the church or that the church’s proclamation is lacking without them- I think neither of these things are necessarily true.

Indeed, it troubles me *as much* that the task of women be overstated, as it does when it is minimized. For in both cases the "presence of women” becomes a talisman of sorts, a magical set of powers that either ruins or Saves the Church. But to adhere such mystical properties to the feminine sex simply reinstates some of the problems of essentialism that we have been trying to extricate!

I see this especially in conversations about women’s ordination. For the record,
1. I think women should be ordained.
2. I think this because of the research I have done into the Biblical texts’s accounts of such things.

BUT I will resist any and all objections to male-only ordination that argue that such practices impedes the dignity or value of women, qua women. This is because ordination does not exist to endorse the dignity or value of a human person or their task as an image-bearer. What ordination does do differs by denomination, and it is no accident that these fights are often the loudest among denominations that have, let’s say, underdeveloped theologies of ordination (looking at you, Baptists).

So what if, and this is just a wild idea, we treated women at seminary just like people who were going to seminary, and did not require of them that they either be expected to save or ruin the place? What if we just let them be smart/dumb/wise/mediocre? In other words, what if we just let them be people?

To my complementarian brothers and sisters, I have now several times defended the coherence of your position- so do me a solid and please call out these vile comments when you see them.

And to my friend at RTS, I give a great lecture. Maybe it is time I come visit Jackson, MS.