Updated 1:30 p.m. EDT, 24 October 2025
The Wesleyan Church, Houghton’s parent body, has supported women in ministry for over 150 years. Despite cultural push-back, then and now, the church has embraced this stance because of what they see in Scripture. What do they see?
“…we are the new creation, male and female standing equally before God…”
Humans in creation and redemption: In creation, God makes humans—male and female—in God’s own image and then commissions them to steward creation together. In redemption, we are the new creation, male and female standing equally before God, and commissioned with the work of the kingdom.
Biblical women in prominent roles: Miriam, for instance, is called a prophet at the crucial moment of liberation from slavery; hundreds of years later Micah 6 says God sent her along with Aaron and Moses to rescue the Israelites. Deborah speaks for God, not only giving wise counsel as a judge, but also delivering God’s message as a prophet. At the end of the monarchy, the prophet Huldah delivers God’s words to King Josiah about the coming exile. Women are called on at critical junctures to serve as mouthpieces for God.
Around Jesus’ birth, we see again how God bestows prophetic insight on women. First, Elizabeth and Mary speak prophetically about the nature of the child in Mary’s womb. Then there’s the prophet Anna who lives in the Temple precincts, and who, after seeing the baby Jesus, proclaims him to all who were waiting for redemption. In other words, the arrival of the Messiah is announced in the Temple by a woman.
In his ministry, Jesus treats women with respect, welcoming women as disciples, including Mary Magdalene (who was healed of demon possession, not prostitution), Susanna, Joanna and “the other women” who followed him and supported his ministry financially. Jesus also welcomes women’s evangelism, as seen first when the Samaritan woman brings her whole town to meet him and when he asks the woman healed of a hemorrhage to speak publicly about God’s work in her life. Most significantly, all four gospels describe how God entrusts news of the resurrection to women. Women, then, are the first to preach the full gospel which includes the crowning event of Jesus’ earthly ministry.
Mary, Jesus’ mother, and “other women” are part of the 120 gathered in the upper room waiting for the Holy Spirit. On the day of Pentecost, women proclaim good news on the streets of Jerusalem along with men, something Peter highlights by quoting the prophet Joel: ‘your sons and daughters shall prophesy.’
In the rest of Acts, we see women promoting the gospel in many ways and heading up house churches. Paul, too, endorses women’s ministry: he affirms women praying and prophesying in public (1 Cor 11) and celebrates women as co-workers, most clearly in Romans 16. Not afraid to use leadership titles for women, Paul calls Phoebe a diakonos, usually translated minister or servant. Priscilla, he describes as someone who worked with him in the gospel, who risked her life for him and who was widely known among the churches. Most significantly, he calls Junia prominent among the apostles. Paul expressed deep gratitude for his female coworkers.
Whatever problems Paul was addressing in 1 Cor 14 or 1 Tim 2, those passages must be seen in light of all the ways God called and empowered women to speak in biblical history, and all the ways Paul, too, explicitly affirmed women’s leadership.
“The New Testament never designates any gift as being only for men.”
Gifts: The New Testament never designates any gift as being only for men. The Spirit simply gives gifts and recipients are to use them for the health of the Christian community and the work of God in the world. We do not get to decide to whom God gives which gifts. And since God has given women all sorts of gifts, in the biblical era as well as in the history of the church, the question is: how best can we encourage our sisters to use the gifts God has given? It would be a shame to tell them to bury them in the ground!
Reverend Dr. Kristina LaCelle-Peterson is an associate professor of religion and part of the Center for Faith, Justice, and Global Engagement at Houghton College in New York. Hear more from her in her book, “Liberating Tradition: Women’s Identity and Vocation in Christian Perspective.”
