I grew up in a Christian home, but it was also a time when females still weren't allowed to do a lot of things. We couldn't play many sports, had to take Home Ec instead of Shop, and were generally not given equal privileges to males. Even today, women still lag behind in equal pay for equal work and are held back in many spheres of politics and business. But above all, women were-- and still are-- simply not allowed to have any "authority" over men in the church. For this and many other reasons I began a long quest of self-study in the Bible. Too many Christians were content with ignorance of all but the most basic teachings, so I started scouring every bit of material I could find on what the Bible taught.
Gradually I learned to distinguish good exegesis from bad, good logic from poor logic, and the paramount importance of context. This journey spanned many topics, including prophecy, cults, science, and everyday living. No matter what the topic at hand, I learned that nothing in the Bible was written in a vacuum, so no subject should ever be considered an isolated teaching. This is the crucial consideration when attempting to understand the Bible, and the failure to remember it is the root of many false teachings.
So for me, the issue of women in the assembly and the Christian home is important for two main reasons: it is one of many issues that is fraught with misunderstanding and prejudice, and it hamstrings half the body of Christ. We Christians seem to have gotten over the idea of the superior race and the superior class, but not the superior gender. And this is part of the larger problem of the very concept of hierarchy that makes its own class distinction between "clergy" and "laity".
We have been silent for too long while hierarchy and all its ramifications wreaks havoc on the health of the body of Christ. I believe God is moving in these last days to wake up the sleeping and confront those who "beat their fellow servants".
