Other Books at Freedom's Ring

Chapter 1

Mind Control - Male and Female

"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." John 8:52.

Before we can even discuss the subject of this book, it is essential that we first understand and acknowledge how the church and her institutions function. We must understand the power structures and centers of influence in the church. Without understanding and acknowledging these, we cannot appreciate the difficulties of accepting, even exploring, an expansion of women's role in the church.

It takes courage to set out on a course to find truth and practice the truth found. The leadership of churches will gladly do our thinking for us and set the perimeters of truth for us, if we allow it. Too few are open and courageous enough to break new ground. But, honest inquiry leads men and women to do so.

Most Bible students start out with the purest motives and the highest intentions in their search for truth. Often, along that path of learning, political - rather than religious - considerations tend to cloud our thinking and lead us off the straight and narrow.

Truth can be found, believed and practiced, but scholars of the highest ranks in the same religious fellowships often reach different conclusions on important religious issues.

Ordinary Christians tend to let the scholars of their choice do their study and thinking for them. The individual search for truth gets swallowed up in loyalty to our preferred scholar, preacher, teacher or party. Since scholars, preachers and teachers usually enjoy the praises of their followers, it is easy for them to encourage the party or denominational spirit where their positions on issues will be accepted and followed.

No matter how pure we believe our motives are, we are still subject to the same political pressures to conform, once we become a part of a particular religious community or fellowship. If we deny this, we have already violated truth.

Dominant personalities tend to move into positions of leadership and influence in any organization - religious, social, political or business. They can perpetuate error as easily as they foster truth. They rise up and take over pulpits, elderships, institutions of learning and benevolence, and editorships and writers' positions of journals. They serve on boards of trustees. They publish class materials for churches. They speak on lectureships and hold meetings and revivals.

Some dominant personalities are not spiritually or academically qualified to lead. However, money, position, power and circumstances open the door for them to control and direct the affairs of churches, institutions and even individual lives.

Once in positions of power in the church, dominant personalities tend to exert much of their influence and energy in maintaining the status quo and making sure no one "rocks their boat."

The quest for truth and understanding is gradually subordinated to staying on course and keeping peace, as they view the course and peace.

The average Christian, in fact, most Christians (in my experience), accept the Biblical positions of these dominant personalities because they have neither the interest, scholarship ability, spirit of inquiry, nor the courage to challenge dominant leaders. Most will not even question those in positions of power, even when doubts surface.

Most churches spend much of their time promoting the doctrines which separate them from their religious neighbors. They put out so much effort in making sure the faithful remain faithful to their peculiar doctrinal positions and long-held traditions, that they spend little time asking the questions which lead to a new and broader understanding of truth. Their time is devoted to building walls around their special doctrines and communions. Because of their need to be accepted, feel secure, maintain positions of power and influence, keep funds flowing, maintain cooperation in mission efforts, support institutions, and keep subscriptions coming, dominant personalities in the church are inclined to cease asking questions and searching for truth. And, if new truths are discovered or questioning arises, they are often not allowed to be expressed, due to the political consideration involved in the motives listed above.

Sadly, in Christian institutions of higher learning, where open and honest inquiry should dominate the intellectual process, maintenance of traditional beliefs and practices is usually the rule. If one reads college catalogs and pamphlets and listens to the speeches of their administrators, fund raisers and student recruiters, one quickly understands that maintaining the doctrinal status quo is what they are committed to. "Support us, send your children to us, and we'll protect them from error and the world." There is nothing wrong with protecting young students from the world and from error, unless we really mean protecting them from ideas, honest inquiry, and true intellectual freedom and growth.

The voices of most of our institutions cry with one loud dominant sound: "We are building and maintaining an institution where our concepts of truth and purity will be passed on to future generations. Furthermore, no administrator, faculty member, or even a student shall veer far off the accepted path, no matter how compelling their argument for change might be."

This "fortress" mentality is too often designed to control our youth, rather than to allow both teachers and students to enjoy a true university atmosphere, where truth is sought, controversy permitted, and honest differences tolerated.

On one university campus, the president told his faculty and staff at the opening meeting of the school year that he wanted them to emphasize six things in the educational process; one of them was openness. While he was making this statement, his board and his administration were engaged in the long-standing process of threatening and making attempts at and even firing employees who dared to exercise openness.

Faculty members who know better cower before the dominant personalities of the administration. And administrators cower before those above them in the hierarchy. Why? These men and women have mortgages to pay off, children to feed, and cars to run. They know their future is in the hands of those dominant personalities who decide promotions, tenure, faculty rank, chairmanships, and administrative positions.

I have known some faculty members who have been brought up through and protected by the parochial system but have not even learned that there are questions to be asked or that there are religious issues yet to be resolved. They join their alma mater to protect and promote the "fortress." They have been assured that the board of trustees, the administration and Bible faculty have the truth on all subjects and that they are fully capable of protecting the institution, its students, and the brotherhood from religious error.

One faculty member of one of our institutions of higher learning was asked by his president to speak on a particular subject at the university's annual Lectureship. The president told him to make it interesting, but "not too interesting." In other words, "Don't challenge the brotherhood to think; keep them satisfied as if what they know and do in worship were God's final and absolute plan. Please don't scare any supporters or prospective donors off and, especially, parents of prospective students." This faculty member knew what he was to say and what he was not to say, regardless of how much new truth and insight he could have imparted.

I bought the tape and listened to the lecture. He had heeded his president's warning. Why? He needed to curry the favor of the dominant personality on campus. He needed his job. He wanted the chance to speak again on future lectureships.

Experience has taught faculty members and administrators that "real" or "would be" dominant personalities on the boards, administration above them, or in the broader brotherhood can leverage their influence in such ways as to make life most miserable if they exercise their academic and intellectual freedom. It would mean misery at best, the loss of a job next, and being blackballed at worst.

If any of these "real" or "would be" dominant personalities have deep pockets (full of money), the road to exercising academic freedom by faculty members is a very dangerous course to pursue.

Thus, the traditional doctrines and religious practices are perpetuated on the campus. At the same time, honest inquiry and open dialogue are stifled by these dominant personalities. They get their power and way by contributing funds or withholding funds and by exerting or not exerting influence. The usurpers and "would be" dominant personalities get their way by raising loud and long objections to people and policies. I have seen them make administrators and board members jump and "heel to", even though the cause was but a "mouse that roared."

Whether on the campus or in the local church, the pressure is always on for the rank and file to submit to the dominant personalities and even compromise integrity in the name of harmony.

No reader will challenge the statement, "Honesty is a cornerstone of Christian character." Yet, honest inquiry and differences are too often subordinated to public and private pressure, fear, and the need to be fully accepted in the community of our choice.

Our inconsistencies should not be equated with dishonesty. The most honest people I know have their inconsistencies. But, when one's inconsistencies are clearly pointed out and he or she refuses to acknowledge those inconsistencies, they become hypocrisies. Hypocrisies, then, become issues of Christian character. It is at this point that we deliberately reject a cornerstone of Christian character, and our basic integrity becomes flawed and is compromised.

Then, we chart a course of denial, in which the line between truth and error becomes so blurred that we cease using logic in our search for truth.

Administrators and faculty members can, by their position and power, determine which of their graduates are recommended for pulpits and various ministries.

I sat in a forum at a well-known Christian university in which a young Christian man asked a question of a panel of aged and learned men - men whom I love. The question was about the "power structure in the church." The brother who answered the question is a dear personal friend. But he was in denial. He rudely accused the younger brother of using words put in his mouth by others. Then, he hastened to assure his audience that there was no "power structure" in the church - and that every church was autonomous.

Every well-informed person in that audience knew a power structure existed in the church. This brother was on the forum, instead of others, because of a power structure. The boards and administrators exert great power over the affairs of institutions of learning and the church. They determine what courses will be taught in our institutions, how they will be taught, and by whom. They determine who speaks at chapel services and at the annual lectureships, and on what subjects.

Power structures exist in our publications. The editors determine whose writings and what subjects the church members at large will read. They also have the power to blackball people, churches, institutions and movements among their readers, for good or bad reasons.

The editor of the Firm Foundation wrote an editorial on August 12, 1986, soliciting submissions from readers. He said, "We also welcome articles written by faithful Christian ladies, but do ask that the articles be directed to the needs and interest of Christian women."

The conclusion: Christian women should not, can not, and will not address issues in this journal which meet the "needs and interests" of men. Summed up, women, no matter how well informed, have nothing to say to men, and subtly, God wouldn't approve of it anyway. How bitter is the fruit of error. How far from the straight and narrow our warped thinking leads us. It cries, "Priscilla, you must not really have had anything of value to say to Apollos."

In the church, preachers with dominant personalities intimidate those with lesser strength, and thus control the churches in a given geographical area. Usurpers, as preachers, have appeared in cities and have built or have attempted to build a power structure around themselves to dictate what all congregations in the city must teach and practice.

Pulpit preachers must believe they have important and eternal things to say, or they would not be in the pulpit. Those who stay in the pulpit for a lifetime tend to dominate the minds in the churches they serve. When other more dominant personalities in the pew refuse to accept the preacher's position, the preacher usually moves on, or the church splits.

The preacher is usually the most influential and dominating force in the local church. He is the only one who has the undivided attention of the members for one hour or two each week. He also works full time ministering to the local flock during the week. In addition, he teaches public Bible classes. He is usually the most eloquent and articulate person in the local church. It is assumed that he is also the most informed Bible student in the church. So, why shouldn't he dominate the thinking in the average church and set its doctrinal standards? By and large, he does. He may too often see himself as a keeper of the orthodoxy, and not as a man with a passion for seeking truth.

The church submits to the teaching and preaching of this pulpit minister because few, if any, believe they have equal knowledge. And if they did, they would be powerless to challenge him because of position and training.

Therefore, the church and its leadership usually defer to the preacher's knowledge and accept it as final eternal truth. The attitude mentioned by Shakespeare, "I am Sir Oracle, and when I speak, let no dog bark," has found its way into the personalities of some preachers.

Next in line are the elders. Even though elders have the God-given charge to feed and protect the flock, they usually do most of it through hirelings and volunteers. They enjoy the power to hire and fire, set and approve budgets, determine discipline, and plan the work of the church.

The church is taught to respect and submit to the elders. The members are warned not to bring a charge against any of them "without two or three witnesses." The church members are taught that elders are their shepherds, looking out and responsible for their souls. So, most church members, out of trained consciences, submit to the decisions of the elders, even though they know that some decisions are unprincipled, unjust, ignorant and even destructive of truth, peace and spiritual growth.

One local eldership, twenty years ago, passed a rule on women's dress. They issued a policy forbidding the wearing of slacks, pant suits, and jeans to church. They claimed this was Biblically wrong. It was immodest dress. My guess is that some elder's wife or some other woman with a dominant personality didn't like it. Today, slacks, pant suits, and jeans are both Biblical and modest in that same church.

The dominant personalities in the eldership rule the church and the weaker elders as well. In the end, preachers and elders do most of our thinking for us, while making decisions which determine the spiritual growth, quality of worship, standards of Christian living, and our ultimate destiny for good or bad.

To those who would like to see what extremes dominant personalities will go to control the lives, minds, and souls of church membership, I recommend Robert Lindsey's book, A Gathering of the Saints, published by Dell. It will force one to take a critical look at those who would control their eternal destiny, and that of others, at any cost.

In this maze of local and brotherhood power structures, we may use fear, insecurity, ignorance, tradition, and basic human weakness to keep the ship of Zion on a predetermined course. Woe unto the men and women who warn of dangerous shoals or point out ports-of-call where spiritual nourishment and the fresh waters of freedom exist. Some are so harbor bound that they do not know that a whole ocean of truth lies yet ahead of us. We sail on, submitting to the officers, even though suspecting or even knowing that some courses we take are filled with doubt, or are even wrong. We submit to the dominant personalities as well as the usurpers out of fear, for conscience's sake, in order to curry favor, escape wrath, keep the peace and maintain the association.

So it is with our study of the women's role in the church. Young girls, from early childhood, are taught that from the beginning God planned forever that women are to be in submission to men. We assert this as truth, in spite of what I have come to believe has no Biblical teaching to support it but with clear teaching to the contrary.

In fact, one of our brothers recently published a book on the subject. He asserted in his opening chapter that God, from creation, had put women in a submissive role to men - as if it were proven. He claimed God had made men women's spiritual leaders. He then proceeded to build an entire book of argument on this unproven assumption.

In fact, most people make such an assertion when they attempt a study of this subject. It is usually stated this way, "Since we know that God planned, from the Garden of Eden, that men should rule over women, we must not violate God's plan." They then attempt to make all scripture in both the Old and New Testaments, to the contrary, fit into an interpretation based on traditions built around this assertion and the three short passages in I Corinthians 11 and 14 and I Timothy 2. Lacking knowledge, no one in the church is able or willing to challenge this false assumption. Therefore, the traditional teaching and practices continue, such as "drawing a line at age 14."

Since the leadership of the church dominates our thinking, these traditional assumptions and assertions become rooted in our concept of Biblical truth.

Women have been conditioned since childhood, to be in subjection to male leadership in the home, church, and world. They cannot speak up without violating the "rules of God" and their well-trained consciences. In fact, for women to even question assumptions and assertions is a violation of their God-given submissive role, so they dare not question or think, lest they sin. After all, God planned from the beginning for men to be their spiritual heads and to dominate their lives, didn't He?

One well-known scholar, in reviewing this manuscript, asserted, "Every right-thinking woman is pleased to say that in order and arrangement, 'Man is greater than I, just as Jesus said, 'My Father is greater than I'.'' Here we clearly see how mistaken even scholars can be. I know of thousands of women who are greater than thousands of men. I know of no man who is greater than a woman simply because he is a man.

Men, on the other hand, enjoy the right to dominate women and other men. If a weaker man dares to think for himself, some dominant personality will call him off and silence him.

Little boys, like little girls, are conditioned in their pre-school years with the concept that they are ordained by God to rule women. In some homes, only dads and brothers lead the prayers in family devotionals and at meal times. In most Sunday Schools, little boys can lead prayer; usually little girls can't. Boys can collect attendance cards and pass out bulletins in church, but girls can't. So, we develop a mindset in boys that they, somehow, have a preference over girls, mandated by God.

Divisions in churches usually occur over the clash of dominant personalities, rather than over what is right or wrong. Seldom, if ever, are churches split over doctrine. I know one church which split over feathers and flowers on a woman's hat. Back in the days when "head coverings were scripturally required," women wore hats to church. In this farm community, the hats were plain, without adornment, and usually black. On one Sunday morning, one sister showed up to worship with a new hat with bright feathers and flowers adorning it. The leaders met, no doubt because some sister with a dominant personality (and perhaps the owner of just a plain hat) demanded it. They told the lady her hat was both vain and immodest. Moreover, it attracted undue attention to her and attention away from God, whom they gathered to worship. The male leaders mandated, "Take the feathers and flowers off your hat."

Her family refused to buckle under to such arrogance and ignorance. The church split because one woman with a dominant personality and influence had her way. I'm sure there have been thousands of other church splits in Christendom because domineering men and women determined to have their way and found a Biblical (?) doctrine to support it.

So it is in the study of women's role in the church. Traditional male preachers, elders, teachers and scholars have concluded what is the final truth on the subject. Being trained to be subservient to men and having consciences trained by men, women seldom get to make suggestions, object to decisions, or involve themselves in the decision making process of the church in any way. Neither do men who take on the submissive role. Some women and weaker men do get power by objecting to or rebelling against the decisions of the leadership.

We sometimes give greater consideration to what is safe, traditional, and acceptable to those who fill pulpits, serve as elders, administer institutions, or publish, than we give to what is true or right.

All too often, those in power have assumed that present positions on issues are as final as if someone spoke ex- cathedra about them. Most often the rule is, don't point out our inconsistencies, ask hard questions, create doubts, or challenge our authority. On the question of women's role in the church, the domineering personalities will be glad to do our thinking for us if we let them. Many of them will use their positions of power, even their money, to keep us from studying the subject or teaching anything new on it. They will condemn us without a trial. The Catholic Church at least held inquisitions.

To overlook the evangelistic power of sixty percent of church membership, to bury their talents, and to not use their skills and strengths, is tragic. But, it is done at the congregational level with casual dismissal. It is done with the claim, "The issue of women's role in the church is forever settled." This is flippant at best and closed-minded at its worst.

I include a questionnaire which I have given to hundreds of inquiring Christians. By the time you answer the questions in it, I am sure you will realize that the question of women deserves much greater attention than we have dared give it in the past.

One reviewer challenged my use of questions, stating that it is a debate tactic used to embarrass those who disagree and who find their practices inconsistent with what they think the Bible teaches. I confess to using questions in my desire that readers confront their positions, inconsistencies and explore what the Bible teaches on this subject. I confess that I hope men and women would be open and honest enough to laugh at themselves in the confrontation they have with what they think they believe and practice and what they really believe and practice.

As to using questions to disarm others, I have a pretty fine "approved example" to follow, the Lord Jesus Christ.

We do not always understand how much "baggage" we bring into the study of any subject, especially this subject. The questions that follow should alert the reader as to how many answers are unclear and how much non-Biblical baggage we are carrying around with us.

Each of us is responsible to God to find, preach and live by His truth. We cannot allow dominant personalities, male or female, to stifle or threaten or do our thinking for us. Men shackle us and do not set us free; truth sets us free.