Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Evangelical
Women in Religion
Who Can Be Called “Pastor”? On Southern Baptists, Ancient Bishops, and What Goes without Saying

Who Can Be Called “Pastor”? On Southern Baptists, Ancient Bishops, and What Goes without Saying

Last updated on: August 3, 2023 at 1:27 am by Jacob Randolph

0 Comments

Who Can Be Called “Pastor”? On Southern Baptists, Ancient Bishops, and What Goes without Saying 2023-08-03T01:27:49-04:00 Jacob Randolph

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

*Author’s note: A previous version of this post mistakenly identified Basil the Elder as the father of Gregory of Nazianzus. Basil was the father of Gregory of Nyssa. The post has been updated to reflect the change. My thanks to a close reader of the Anxious Bench for identifying the error. – JR*

Pope Callistus was a controversial figure in his day. Bishop of Rome from 218 to 222 AD, Callistus rose through the ministerial ranks quickly despite a checkered past and more than one run-in with the authorities. When in office, his policies proved, shall we say, unpopular with the hardline church leaders of his day. Most of what we know about Callistus comes from a rather irate church theologian, Hippolytus of Rome, in the ninth book of his Refutation of All Heresies (you can probably guess how Hippolytus felt about Callistus based on the title alone). In his polemic against the bishop, Hippolytus threw the book at Callistus, accusing him of everything from trinitarian heresy to moral wantonness. For instance, Callistus had the gall to readmit mortal sinners into the church once they had done penance. He also recognized marriages between free women and enslaved men—gasp! But such ethical laxity was to be expected from someone like Callistus, Hippolytus reasoned—after all, Callistus was himself a former runaway slave.

Depiction of Callistus from the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere, c. 1140

Credentials Controversies, Then and Now

Just last month, the Southern Baptist Convention gathered in New Orleans for what promised to be another consequential meeting addressing, among other things, the ouster of churches that had women on staff as pastors and how to prevent such churches from infiltrating the denomination in the future. The Convention ended with a bang as the removal of two churches at the forefront of the debate, Saddleback and Fern Creek, was confirmed. The Convention also passed a motion amending the SBC constitution to require churches to restrict appointing or employing a woman as “a pastor of any kind.” Finally, messengers voted to make a substantial change to the guiding theological document of Southern Baptists, the Baptist Faith and Message. Article VI, which outlines church governance, was amended to say that “while both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor/elder/overseer is limited to men as qualified by scripture.”

All three of these moves were aimed at restricting churches from ordaining women and kicking out those who already had. Denominational figures defending these decisions assert that the SBC is simply summarizing the Bible’s clear teaching. Denny Burk, the director of The Center for Gospel and Culture at Boyce College, wrote that the Baptist Faith and Message was “based on what the Bible says in texts like 1 Timothy 2:12, 3:2, and Titus 1:6.” He goes on to say that critics of the SBC’s policies don’t “give any sustained attention to 1 Timothy 3:2” which says that “those who hold the leadership office must be the ‘husband of one wife’” [i.e., they must be a man]. Reflecting on his role in the debates on the floor of the Convention, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Al Mohler said that “when you look at 1 Timothy, you look at Titus, you see clear affirmation of the fact that it is men who are to hold this teaching office…it is men who meet the scriptural qualifications and in whom the congregation recognizes the call to that office.”

It’s interesting that 1 Timothy 3 has been deployed frequently in the SBC’s polemic against women pastors, in part because that passage is the site of another, older debate within Christianity about who can seek the pastorate. The question at stake for many church leaders in the first and second centuries was not, Can a woman be ordained as a pastor? Rather, it was

Can a slave be installed as a bishop?

As irrelevant, odd, and even offensive as that question may sound to our ears, it was indeed a live one in the early Christian communities. The question was so live, in fact, that a New Testament epistle weighed in on the matter in the latter part of the first century. The pastoral letter of 1 Timothy appears to have been composed in part to address the matter of women or enslaved persons taking leadership roles in the church in Ephesus. In the third chapter, the author writes that

[W]hoever aspires to the office of bishop desires a noble task. Now a bishop must be above reproach, married only once, temperate, sensible, respectable, hospitable, an apt teacher, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, and not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, keeping his children submissive and respectful in every way— for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how can he take care of God’s church? He must not be a recent convert, or he may be puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace and the snare of the devil. (1 Tim. 3:1-7, NRSV)

Do you see what I see? Look closer. If you blink, you’ll miss it, but notice that in this passage the maleness of the bishop is bound up with another, more important qualifier—the socioeconomic status of the bishop. The author takes a clear stand in favor of restricting leadership, not just to men, but specifically to those men who were already upstanding citizens in Ephesus.

Amazon.com: Enslaved Leadership in Early Christianity: 9780190275068: Shaner, Dr. Katherine A.: Books In Enslaved Leadership in Early Christianity, Katherine Shaner identifies the parallels between the list of qualifications in 1 Timothy and civic life in a Roman city. She writes that, for the author of 1 Timothy, “Bishops should embody free status, education, and high social positioning,” similar to candidates for civic office in Ephesus. “Such virtues,” she continues, “describe elite male citizens whose benefactions and civic service garner honor. They are virtues that precluded enslaved or formally enslaved persons from holding honorable positions.” (Shaner, 93-94) Jennifer Glancy agrees: “a man was eligible for consideration as a church leader if he had already demonstrated his ability to maintain discipline within his own household” and that “[m]anagement of household slaves was a basic element of home economics.” When we read the qualifications for bishops in 1 Timothy accounting for Romans’ sharp class distinctions, it becomes clear that the virtues listed only work on the assumption of free status. Just a few:

married (sexual unions between enslaved persons or enslaved men united to free women were not recognized as marriages)
one who manages his household well, i.e., a householder, a paterfamilias (slaves, by definition, would not qualify)
hospitable (an enslaved person could potentially offer hospitality on behalf of his or her dominus or domina, but hospitality would have been attributed to the householder)
a good reputation with outsiders (reputability was the luxury of a citizen. Sandra Joshel writes that “Enslaved people had no physical integrity and honor. Unlike the freeborn, slaves could not personally suffer iniuria— at least in the view of Roman lawyers. In cases that involved a slave, the honor of the slaveholder was abused by what amounted to an assault on an extension of himself.”)

Shaner sees 1 Timothy as one voice in an ongoing conversation on the status of enslaved Christians in antiquity. First Timothy and other early Christian texts, she argues, were attempts to regulate the positions of socially subordinated persons in the churches. The argument against enslaved leadership emerged out of pragmatic concerns, such as avoiding blowback from neighbors and authorities, but also out of an ancient Mediterranean culture that assumed the necessity of slavery. Yet there were clearly some—if few—authorities who were willing to install enslaved or freedpersons as bishops. For Shaner, the fact that 1 Timothy gives proscriptions against enslaved leaders suggests that such persons were in fact leading churches in Asia Minor, that 1 Timothy was written in part to “curb such practices.”

Mosaic of “Apostle Onesimus,” St. Petka Chapel, Belgrade

The instructions of the pastoral epistle are all the more striking when seen alongside the legacy of the most famous Christian slave of the first century, Onesimus. Onesimus is the subject of the Paul’s brief letter to Philemon written the 50s. Paul’s letter is not a theological treatise or a set of instructions to a church. Rather, it is a letter sent to accompany a slave, Onesimus, whom Paul is sending back to his householder, Philemon. He writes to convince Philemon to accept Onesimus back into the home without punishment and, some (including myself) argue, to manumit Onesimus from bondage. Mary Ann Beavis has written extensively on the legacy of Onesimus. According to Beavis, tradition holds that Onesimus became the bishop of Ephesus, being venerated for centuries as the patron saint of slaves. The slave Onesimus’s bishopric (real or not) gave a precedent for ordination in the 3rd century Apostolic Canons. The Canons stated that although slaves were not the ideal candidates for ministry, because their leaving would “grieve those that owned them” and “occasion the subversion of families”, still exceptional slaves could be received, “as our Onesimus appeared,” if their masters were willing to free them. (Beavis, 89)

(How interesting that the Canons simultaneously uphold the assumed power structures of Syrian Rome, warning against the subversion of family authority, and create space for that structure’s very subversion, putting in place the possibility that a freed slave may become the spiritual authority of his former master. Truly fascinating!)

In Christianity in the Roman Empire, the selection of a lower-class, enslaved, or freed person to a bishopric could be highly controversial. Introspective churchmen in late antiquity assumed that the ideal bishop’s training would be like that of Moses: brought up first in wealth and with the finest worldly education, and then called to renounce that background in the service of God’s people. (Rapp, 125-136) Claudia Rapp’s Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity points to some wealthy freeborn bishops who decried the election of former slaves and derided their fellow ministers of lower station.

For instance, Gregory of Nazianzus singled out a collection of his enemies, bishops who “come from the plough and are parched by the sun” or “have not yet completely washed away from their body the soot of their work at the fires[.]” Churchmen from such socio-economic situations were “worthy of a whipping or of laboring in the mills.” Gregory begrudgingly defended the installation of an enslaved person that had been overseen by Basil the Elder. Gregory sought to placate the slave’s master, Simplicia, by requesting that she file formal charges so that Gregory might censure and denounce his fellow bishop through the proper channels, since “by no means does he number among my friends or those who have done right by me.” (Ep. 79, trans. Bradley Storin) Or take Basil the Elder’s son, Basil of Caesarea, who referred to lower-class bishops as “slaves of slaves.” (Rapp, 174) For Hippolytus of Rome, Bishop Callistus’s early life as a slave—including his attempt to flee from his master—were revelatory of his ignoble character and heretical doctrine. By the time of Emperor Valentinian III (r. 425-455), there were laws in place regulating the consecration of enslaved bishops. Yet even then, there was a prominent fear that slaves would seek ordination to elevate themselves and “evade the yoke of their birth status.”

Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity by Claudia Rapp - Paperback - University of California Press

Context is King (or Bishop)

What’s the upshot of this discussion for Southern Baptists and broader evangelical debates over pastoral qualifications? Well, for one, I think in our rush to make the Bible applicable, we’re often tempted to wash over the cultural differences between us and ancient Christians. Such an ahistorical approach might be useful in the short-term, but it’s ultimately problematic for understanding the Bible.

For instance, Article VI of the Baptist Faith & Message assumes that what matters for pastoral qualification in 1 Timothy is 1) a man who 2) is godly. A biological man is the baseline qualification in this account. How you decide whether a man is godly, it’s presumed, is summarized in the list of virtues given. When we look at the context it becomes obvious that’s not all there is to it. What went without saying in the first century is that those virtues weren’t accessible to just any person with an X and Y chromosome. In fact, class functionally limited the criteria in more important ways than gender. This was true not only in the idealized church of Ephesus in 1 Timothy, but it was generally true in the churches of antiquity writ large.

At the same time, it’s clear that there was considerable flexibility within the ancient churches—that different expectations, traditions, and experiences shaped various leaders to respond to the needs of their communities differently than the pastor of 1 Timothy. The shared default assumption was that bishops would come from freeborn stock and have a certain pedigree. Practically speaking, however, whether an enslaved or freed person could receive ordination was negotiable. (We know this is true of women’s ordination too. For a good start, see Kevin Madigan and Carolyn Osiek’s work.) For rhetorical reasons, 1 Timothy presents a setting where the civic and religious social boundaries were synonymous and impermeable. As we look at the evidence across the empire and especially as the church situation changed, it’s clear that the composition of church leadership was much more varied.

Women in Religion

History and Religion

Previous Post

July 20, 2023

Rose Macaulay's CREWE TRAIN; or, It All Started with Agatha Christie

Next Post

July 24, 2023 Faith, Friendship, and Sweet Magnolias: A Roundtable Discussion

Recent Comments

0 | Leave a Comment

"There are no such things as witches. They were just unmarried or elderly women with ..."

Dot Newkirk

How Scotland Gave Us Our Modern ..."

"The book of THE KEEP is wonderful, but I was not such a fan of ..."

philipjenkins

Fairies, Witches, Folk Horror, and the ..."

"A similar film from the late 80s was The Hidden with Kyle MacLachlan. I get ..."

Terry

Fairies, Witches, Folk Horror, and the ..."

"Life Force is a guilty pleasure of mine! Not a great film, but a fun ..."

philipjenkins

Fairies, Witches, Folk Horror, and the ..."

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category abolitionism Abortion Abraham Joshua Heschel Abraham Kuyper Abraham Lincoln Academia Activism Adam Renberg Advent Adventist africa African American Religion Agnes Howard Albert Camus American History American Religious History American Revolution American West Anabaptists Ancient History Andrea Turpin Andrei Tarkovsky Anglicanism Annales Ansley Lillian Quiros anti-Catholicism Antisemitism Anxious Bench apologetics Apparitions Arash Azizi Archaeology archives art Artificial Intelligence Asia Asian Americans Augustine Authors Bad Bunny Baptism Baptists Barack Obama Battle of Hastings Benjamin Franklin Bernard-Henri Levy Beth Allison Barr Beth Moore Bethany Mannon Bible Bill Cunningham Billy Graham Black Music Bob Dylan Body Boenhoffer Books Breastfeeding Bruce Springsteen C.S. Lewis Calvinism Cancel Culture Capitalism Carmelites Catholicism Cedric Robinson Cesar Chavez Charismaticism charity Charles Dickens Charles Lindbergh Che Guevara Chicago Children Chinese Christianity Chris Gehrz Christ Christian death Christian Higher Education Christian life Christian Nation Christian Nationalism Christianity Today Christmas Church life Church Practice cinema Civil Religion Civil Rights Movement Civil War civility Classics Climate Change Cold War Colonial Mexico colonialism Comer Communism community complementarianism Conference on Faith and History Congregationalism Conspiracies Conspiracy Conversion Narratives Coronavirus Costa Rica Council of Nicaea Covid-19 Creation Critical Race Theory Crusades Culture culture wars Daniel K. Williams David Barton David Swartz Death Ways death with dignity DEI democracy Democratic Party Devotion Digital Age Diplomacy discipleship diversity Donald Trump Drama Dua Lipa Early Church early modern Early modern Catholicism Easter Eastern Christianity economic exploitation Education elections Elie Wiesel Elizabeth II Elizabeth Taylor emotions Empire Engineering England enslavement Entertainment Episcopal Church Erica Ramirez eschatology Eurocentrism Evangelicalism Evangelicals Exegesis Family Feminism Film Flannery O'Connor folk music Food Foreign Policy founding fathers Franciscans Franciscus Junius fundamentalism Funerals G.K. Chesterton Gender Genocide genre geography George W. Bush George Washington George Whitefield Global Christianity Global church Grief Guadalupe Guest Post guest post gun control gun violence Gustavo Gutierrez Hamid Dabashi Harold John Ockenga Harvest Hate Hawaiian Christianity Healing health care Heather Cox Richardson Hell Heresy Hermeneutics Higher Education Hinduism Hippocratic oath Historical Fiction Historical Methodology Historical Profession Historical Profession Historical Theology Historical Thinking historiography Holidays Holocaust horror movies Human rights Humanitarian Work humanities Hummingbirds Hungary hymns Imago Dei Immigration Injustice Interviews Iran Islam Islamophobia Israel Ivan's Childhood Jacob Randolph James Bratt Janine Giordano Drake Japanese history Japanese Literature Jean Paul Sartre Jesse Miranda Jesus Jesus Christ Jimmy Carter Joan Baez Joan Didion Joanne Freeman João B. Chaves Joao Chaves Joey Cochran John Calvin John Fea John Tillotson John Turner Johnny Cash Jonathan Edwards Jonathan Tran Joseph Smith Josh Howerton Journalism Jr. Judaism Jürgen Moltmann Just War Justice Justin Brierley Karl Barth Katelyn Beaty koi ponds Kris Kristofferson Kristin Kobes Du Mez Latin American Religious History Latino Americans Lectio Divina Leisure Lent Leonard Cohen liberal arts liberalism Liberation Theology Linda Ronstadt Lisa Clark Diller Literature Lou Reed Lynchings Lynneth Miller Renberg Mainline Protestantism Malcolm Foley Marilyn Monroe Maritime history Mark Noll Marriage Martin Luther Martin Luther King Martyrdom Marxism Mary Masih Alinejad mass shootings material culture medieval Christianity Medieval Ethiopia Melissa Borja memory Mennonites Mental Health Mental Illness Methodism Mexican Americans Mexicans Mike Madrid Miles Mullin Min Jin Lee Miscarriage Missionaries Mister Rogers Mitt Romney modernity Monasticism Mormonism Motherhood Mothers of the Church Moving Music Musicals Nadya Williams Nahua Christianity Native Americans Natsume Sōseki New Contributor New England New Year New York Nico Non-Violent Protest Orthodoxy pacifism Paleo Evangelicals Palestinians Parenting Patti Smith Paul Kingsnorth Pedro Calderón de la Barca Pentecostalism Philip Jenkins Phillis Wheatley physician-assisted suicide pilgrimage Pilgrims pluralism Plutocracy Poetry Politics Pope Francis Pope Leo XIV post-modernism prayer preaching Presbyterians prosperity gospel Protest Public history Publishing Puritans purity culture Quakers race Race Massacres Racial Capitalism racial reconciliation racialization Racism Raha Bahloulipour Re-Enchantment reading Reformation Refugees religion and the university religion and war Religious Freedom Religious Nones Religious Pluralism Religious Symbols religious violence Republican Party Revival Rita Coolidge Ritual Roger Williams Roman Catholic church Royalty Russell Moore same-sex marriage Sarah Irving-Stonebraker Scandinavia Science Science and Technology Scopes trial Scriptural Interpretation secularism Selena Quintanilla seminary Seventh-Day Adventists sexual morality Sexuality Sikhs Silence slaveholders theology Slavery Slavoj Zizek social justice Social Media Southern Baptist Convention Southern Religion Spain Spiritual Autobiography Spiritual but not religious Spiritual Discipline Sports Stanley Hauerwas Suffering Summer Camps Sunday Night Odds and Ends Supernatural Supreme Court Syriac Christianity Tal Howard Taylor Swift Teaching Technology Television Thanksgiving The Beatles The Mission theater TheoBros Theology Thomas Dixon Thomas Jefferson Thomas Kidd Thomas Merton Tim Gloege Tim Walz Tom Holland Tourism tradition Tragedy Translation Transnationalism Travel Trump Ukraine Uncategorized Unitarians United Methodist Church US History Vanessa Chan Velvet Underground Verónica A. Gutiérrez Veronica Gutierrez Vikings Violence Virgin Mary Virtue Virtue ethics Visions Voting War WCTU Wendell Berry Westminster Assembly White Evangelicalism Wildfires Winnie the Pooh Witches women Women in Ministry Women's and Gender Studies Work Worship writing Yasunari Kawabata Zena Hitz

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What was Peter's original profession?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Carpenter Fisherman Shepherd Tentmaker