Is the church safe for women?

Church participation is mostly female, yet there’s still too much abuse and too little empowerment

Amanda Jackson, tireless advocate for women in the church

Happy Easter, Christ is risen!

All four Gospels agree on the amazing fact that the first people to discover the resurrection were women. So Easter is a great time to consider how the church treats women today.

The long-running debate over women in pastoral ministry obscures serious problems regarding women in the church, such as sexual abuse. This problem surfaced again last month when Cindy Clemishire testified before the Texas (USA) state legislature in support of a bill that would limit the use of non-disclosure agreements to silence victims in sexual abuse cases.

Clemishire was 12 years old in 1982 when she allegedly experienced sexual abuse by Robert Morris, an evangelist who was staying in her parents’ home. Morris went on to found a megachurch. He acknowledged having engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior in his past but didn’t say that he had been intimate with a youth.

Clemishire sought reimbursement from Morris for her counseling expenses in 2007 but walked away with no money because she refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement. When her allegations became public last year, Morris resigned his pastorate. One month ago, he was indicted on five counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child. He has pleaded not guilty.

This is far from an isolated case, as recent, wide-ranging sexual abuse scandals in the Southern Baptist Convention and the Catholic Church have reminded us.

Amanda Jackson wants to see this sad situation change. Jackson, who directed the World Evangelical Alliance Women’s Commission from 2015 to 2022, is one of the pioneers of Rise in Strength, a network of international Christian women leaders. She founded the global Christian Network to End Domestic Abuse and is the chair of Kyria Network UK, which aims to equip and develop healthy female leadership.

“Sexual abuse will be present as long as we have sin,” Jackson told me. “It’s all over the Bible—shocking, cruel behavior, mostly by men against women. We will never abolish it completely, but we need Christians to understand that when we seek to expose the problem, it’s not because women have an agenda to attack the church or blame all men for these failings.

“But one of the church’s great weaknesses is to think that powerful people in the church can and should keep things quiet. Even the Archbishop of Canterbury has had to resign over a coverup. The person responsible in that case went on to abuse many other boys because he was not stopped. If we acknowledge and address behavior patterns early on, we can perhaps keep it from descending into more serious abuse. And we need to think more about changing the hierarchical and male-led structure of churches.”

Jackson described the impact of conferences for women in leadership, particularly in eastern Europe, where women have had few opportunities to hear Bible teaching that encourages their gifting rather than saying their gender is a limitation.

“Several years ago,” she explained, “we held a meeting in Serbia. One pastor’s wife stood up and talked about the abuse she had experienced in her marriage, and how the church had told her to stay quiet and support her husband because he was the pastor. This is crushing for women to hear. It’s a technique of the devil to undermine half of the church. On the other hand, when women hear each other’s stories and realize it is not biblical to submit to abuse or think you are worthless, that is wonderfully releasing.

“But we can’t just work with women. If we change only the women, they will still face barriers unless we also encourage men to see the benefits of co-working and co-leading. In Pakistan, I have worked with male leaders who, in their attempt to serve God faithfully, have neglected their families. Even if it doesn’t end in abuse, you end up with a church planter or Christian leader who is not flourishing because his family is dysfunctional. At the early stage of problems, these men need to hear that they can have a healthier relationship with God and more effective ministry if they work on issues together with their wives.”

Jackson said that when she teaches on a Christian understanding of women’s function, “We talk about the whole narrative of the Bible. We start with Genesis and show what God wanted for men and women. We look at what it actually means for the woman to be a ‘helper’ (Genesis 2:18), because it has been drummed into many women that their calling in life is simply to help their husband. Help and submission are mutual for men and women together.

“I don’t just go to the verses you’d expect me to use,” Jackson added. “I try to look at the whole biblical narrative story, to establish what God’s heart is. If God is serious that there is ‘neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Galatians 3:28), does that give us an ideal to work toward? If Lydia hosted the church in Philippi (Acts 16:15), wouldn’t Paul trust her to explain the gospel to people? If Paul called Junia an apostle in Romans 16, surely that is an example for all of us. We will never see the Church flourish and grow fully without the full participation of all women and men.”

Jackson cited the research of Gina Zurlo, author of Women in World Christianity, who surveyed people on what they think men and women should be doing in the church—encompassing all kinds of roles, from janitor to pastor—and then compared her results to what was actually happening. Zurlo found that people’s perceptions of what women should be doing tended to exceed what women were actually doing.

For Jackson, that’s a sign that the limitations women face are more cultural than biblical. “If we are called to be transformed by the Spirit and not conformed to the world,” she concluded, “then a key part of that is shaking up the world’s friction over men and women.”

As Zurlo stated in a Lausanne movement podcast, “Men never have to ask what they can or cannot do in a church. They can pretty much do what they want. Women are constantly navigating what they can and cannot do and trying to balance that with what they feel called to do.”