In conversations regarding the role of women in the church it has been said that the issues of women and slavery in the Bible are unrelated. The point being that we should view slavery as a systemic human evil; but the submission of women in the church and society is a matter of God’s order in creation. But, in fact the issues of slavery and women are indeed related. The Apostle Paul says so.
When Paul speaks about women he often follows with remarks about slaves. In Ephesians and Colossians, Paul addresses fathers (husbands), wives, children, and slaves and their relationships to each other, and their status in Christ. These are called household codes (cf. Ephesians 5:25-6:9; Colossians 3:18-4:1). Household codes were common in the ancient world. They were often encoded into law. They reflected a hierarchy of social order in which freed men had priority and women, children, and slaves were to submit to the man of the house. The household codes allowed the husband to divorce his wife without cause, kill children that displeased him, and treat slaves as he desired. Submission of the women, children, and slaves was enforced, often by violence.
Paul’s treatment of the household codes was inspired and revolutionary. In the New Testament, entire households converted to Christ (Acts 11:14). Households were “in Christ” which signified a new creation in which old things passed away and all things are made new (2 Corinthians 5:17). The Christian household should exemplify new creation. In new creation the status of male and female, slave and free, and even children is transformed (Galatians 3:28). So how does Paul’s household code reflect new creation? Everyone in the home (and church) are to “be subject to one another in the fear of Christ” (Ephesians 5:21). The mark of a Christian home is mutual submission, a submission not enforced by law or punishment, but encouraged by mutual love. We too often give priority to the word “submit” in these texts. In doing this we deny the teaching of Christ in which love has priority. Christ’s love redefines the Christian household. Women, children, and slaves should not fear the husband. The husband is to love his wife “as his own body.” This signifies a union of equals (Ephesians 5:28). Fathers are not to antagonize or provoke their children to anger (Ephesians 6:4; Colossians 3:21). Masters are to treat their slaves with equity, even as brothers and sisters in Christ (Ephesians 6:9). Paul appealed to Philemon “for love’s sake” receive Onesimus “as a beloved brother” (Philemon 9, 16). In the Christian family household there is no partiality (Ephesians 6:9; Colossians 3:25).
Unfortunately, Christians have sometimes misread Paul’s intent. In 1861, James H. Thornwell wrote “A Southern Christian View of Slavery.” He admits that Christian love would “repudiate slavery” and “equally repudiate all social, civil, and political inequalities” but insists that Christian love “implies nothing as to the existence of various ranks and graduations in society.” Thornwell understood the transforming power of love, but denied its priority in the social lives of Christians. We must ask ourselves, “Do we really believe in a Gospel in which God’s love lacks the power to transform humanity?”
In 1870, Susan F. Cooper published “A Letter to the Christian Women in America” in Harper’s New Weekly Magazine. She explained why women should be prohibited from voting in elections. She declared that women are “subordinate” and “inferior to man in intellect.” The consequence of subordination is a “difference of duties.” She insisted that “the civilization of a country must necessarily prove either heathen or Christian” and to give women equal parity – the right to vote – would lead to a heathen civilization. We must ask ourselves, “Do we really believe in a Gospel that denies women, or anyone, equal participation in society and the church?”
The issues of slavery and women are indeed related. They are related in the biblical prescription for household codes and they inform a common hermeneutic. Thornwell and Cooper shared a common hermeneutic which refused to acknowledge a new status in Christ. They failed to understand how their cultural biases shaped their reading of Scripture. They could not imagine a Christianity that transcended, or transformed, their culture.
Other contemporaneous Christians insisted that “It was for freedom that Christ set us free. . .” (Galatians 5:1). Frederick Douglass, a devout Methodist, condemned the “corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial, and hypocritical Christianity” of America. He decried “the man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin [whip] during the week, fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus.” Francis Willard and Anna Shaw, both active in the Holiness Movement, taught that a women’s voice and vote is essential to a godly society. Shaw declared that the only way to refute a woman’s equality is to “prove that women are not people.”
If we insist that Scripture teaches the subordination of women, then we must also allow that Scripture defends the practice of slavery. Or, we can read Scripture with a better hermeneutic in which new creation and the “more excellent way” of love have priority. This means that in Christ the old structures of subordination and slavery give way to a new humanity in which all redeemed humans are treated without partiality before God.
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