[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on The Changing Role of Women in Christian Ministry
The role of women has significantly changed in both the Roman Catholic Church and the Episcopal Church over the last 50 years.The Protestant conviction that Scripture alone is the sole authority in matters of religion reinforced traditional biases against the participation of women in most positions of leadership in the church. The Pauline insistence on women keeping silent in church is but the most famous example of a general biblical tendency to teach a concept of female subordination. Wives were counseled by Paul to be subject to their husbands, whose lordship was compared to that of Christ over his church. Women were clearly depicted as the weaker sex and admonished not only to learn in silence but to do so in a submissive manner .
The earliest Protestants demonstrated a willingness to embrace the idea that women could be partners with men in the work of spreading the gospel. Neither Lutherans nor Calvinists were willing to admit women to the formal work of the ministry in the sixteenth century, though Luther was willing to allow women to preach if men were unavailable. Various women nevertheless made substantial contributions to the spread of the Reformation. Wives of Lutheran ministers, such as Katherine Luther and Katherine Zell, provided crucial support to their husbands but were generally confined to working in the context of the parsonage.
Unlike Calvin's followers, Lutheran midwives were allowed to continue the traditional Catholic practice of baptizing infants in danger of imminent death. The same practice was allowed in the Church of England, though it was opposed by the Puritans. In general, however, Calvinist women were active in a broader range of religious activities than their Lutheran counterparts. This is particularly true of those ladies of aristocratic status, who used their wealth, prestige, and influence to provide patronage and political backing for Calvinist clergy......
