Monday, April 09, 2007

Women in Academics and Ministry

Looking through the Chronicle of Higher Education and came across the sad report from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary about the termination of a female faculty member in the school of theology. Over the past couple weeks I've also been reading Women in the Canadian Academic Tundra: Challenging the Chill (edited by Elena Hannah, Linda Paul, and Swani Vethamany-Globus, McGill-Queens Univ. Press, 2002) a book about the "chilly climate" for female faculty in Canadian post-secondary institutions. Seems like we (white) males really do a HORRIBLE job at honouring women, both in academia and in the Church - and in SBTS's case, both!

My only encouragement right now is that here at Prairie Bible College, we are offering a spring session course titled "Understanding Women and Ministry." The course is for both men and women and will attempt to deal with various views on the Biblical passages as well as looking at church history for examples. Most of you probably know I have very "heretical" views on this topic. Or as the Chancellor Emeritus of PBI Dr Ted S Rendall has said, "You show me the verse where the Scripture talks about "ordaining" men and I'll show you the verse about ordaining women." Fortunately PBI had a great history of women in significant ministry/leadership positions too!

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