Women Preachers: Future Projections

Someone once asked Bishop Lawson if prophetesses still existed. He answered,

I do not know of any. However, the Bible says, "Your sons and daughters shall prophesy." (Defense, p. 441)

One would not expect such an open-ended answer from a man who was so clearly opposed to women in positions of ecclesiastical authority. Yet this response reveals much about Lawson. His ability to envision a hypothetical modern-day prophetess while he condemned the female pastors he could see is paradoxical, to say the least. However, Lawson's sense of divine economy (how God handles things), ecclesiastical economy (how he felt the church should best be run,) and his insight concerning the issues of the Body of Christ at large are what formed his understanding of what ministry was and how women could operate in the church.

Never once did Bishop Lawson fail to remind his parishioners of the scriptures that limit women's authority in the church. He never ordained women as ministers (though there were several women he oversaw who might have qualified). When women presented their visions and callings to him, he licensed those whom he felt were sincere, trustworthy, mature, and of sufficient spiritual depth, but he did not turn churches over to them or install them into ecclesiastical offices (bishops, deacons). He encouraged and laid hands of blessing on the women, but never intimated that he would ever support, personally, hermeneutically, or otherwise, female pastoral ambitions.

However, as far as spiritual giftings go, Lawson was open God's sovereignty in choosing and using whom He will. Even though he preached that female pastors and bishops would be "lost unless they repent on their dying beds, because they have done things that God did not give them authority to do," he in the same sentence declares, "Yes, women can preach and get people saved" (Defense, p. 287). In other words, as long as women did not usurp authority over men, they could be used in myriad ways to the glory of God and the benefit of the church.

To give another example, in the article "Divine Healing" (1960), Lawson wrote that "gifts of healing are in God's hand and he gives to male and female as He wishes. No woman, however, should anoint with oil ... [or lay] hands on the sick anywhere except in her home" (Defense, p. 415; nor did Lawson condone individuals anointing themselves with oil, though he allowed that any saint could be called on for prayer). Paul's prohibitions for women, he reckoned, were not limits but parameters.

A careful scholar of scripture will note that Paul is speaking of himself when he writes, "But I suffer not a woman to teach" (1 Tim. 2:12). He appeals to the law in 1 Cor. 14:34 when he writes, "It is not permitted to them to speak." Not once from Paul, or from scripture in general, is there a direct and final 'thus saith the Lord' limiting women. To the contrary, scripture has shown that, in absence of a male, women were able to execute a variety of family, social, and religious roles with some success. Though the Bible unquestionably favors male headship, it is safe to say that the patriarchal fabric of the scriptural testimony is decorated here and there with precious stones, tried stones: women.

Not only does scripture present us with both the pattern and the exception, but rabbinical Judaism, Orthodoxy, Catholicism, early Protestantism, and American revivalism all have examples of women who were exceptional in their ability to fill a void in the story of human spirituality and to sustain the support and interest of men, whether as Doctors of the Church or rebbes or, yes, Pentecostal pastors.

We have already established the fact, too, that Lawson came into Pentecost at a time when women Pentecostal preachers were common. Even though he didn't endorse the practice as scriptural, he did acknowledge it. And even though he didn't permit it in his organization, it has already been mentioned that the birth and growth of churches depended largely on the spiritual efforts of women. So Lawson, true to his intention (Defense, p. 282) was like Paul: he himself didn't suffer a woman to preach, but he also knew many Priscillas and Phoebes and could hypothesize God using women in amazing ways outside of a sacerdotal calling.

Outside of a few conservative Pentecostal organizations, the question of women in ministry has found most Pentecostal, neo-Pentecostal (e.g., AME, FGBC), and charismatic organizations affirming the right of women to preach and lead congregations. Even in conservative organizations, like Way of the Cross Church of Christ, women that come ordained are recognized as such during their stay with the organization. The Church of God in Christ does not ordain women, but missionaries who start or lead congregations have gained substantial recognition as pastors or "shepherd mothers" or some parts of the United States. The influence of Bishops Lawson and Mason cannot be underestimated: The influence they were able to exert on the Pentecostal movement in respect to church polity during the first half of the 20th century still informs 21st century Black America's foreseeable religious future.

It is therefore a matter of of no little importance that organizations like International Bible Way, Free Gospel, and Scripture Cathedral have begun to endorse (license and/or ordain) female ministers. The Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ has become a refuge for those classical Pentecostals that long for the comfort to continue the holiness praxis that Pentecostalism inherited in its beginning: conservative, but also fairly flexible, as classical Pentecostal organizations go. Lawson's vision for his Pentecostal organization included room for both the folksy and the urbane, the rustic and the refined.

Unfortunately, today those two sides of Pentecost seem to be in competition with each other. The question becomes, "Will I be old-fashioned or up-to-date, traditional or progressive? will I stay true to the charted path or find new scriptural solutions to the problems of the day?" In general, those leaders who most want to identify with and show loyalty their respective founders tend to be traditional to a degree that they become fixated on a few salient doctrinal points and rigid in their stance. For instance, while Bishop Lawson apparently knew of and tolerated "Mother [Mary] Wilson," Bishop S.E. Williams' mother, running "a revival for him once a year" at Bible Way Temple in Washington, D.C. (Defense, p. 275), but the movement against women preachers in the 1990s by Bishop W.L. Bonner and the apostles indicated anything but toleration of women attempting to execute rhetorical techniques most readily identifiable with male preachers, drawing on some of Lawson's more incendiary (and thus more memorable) indictments against women preachers (e.g., Defense, p. 288) rather than on his catechismal teaching of the preacher as a sacerdotal functionary.

One of the sad side effects of this situation is that many women, potential spiritual matriarchs with strong speaking ministries, are often discouraged from "preaching," with the reasoning following a variety of paths, even when these women have no intention on pursuing a pastoral ministry. The sum effect of this discouragement is that many women expect little of themselves and become lukewarm, and therefore congregations entire become lukewarm, including the men. As Bishop Lawson's own life shows us, spiritual women can turn spiritual apathy into interest or even enthusiasm in the lives of the men they encounter.

Also, the history of the church shows us that many (if not most) churches were founded by women. Unlike non-clergy working men, who were generally the breadwinners, lay women and missionaries had ample time and opportunity to evangelize, disciple new converts, and nurture young ministries. Past articles in this series demonstrate how women were able to augment the work of pastors, or even serve as substitutes when male clergy were not available. Therefore, a categorical disallowance of women as ministers could conceivably spell the stagnation for an organization that has experienced a lack of male ministers throughout its history. It is not our opinion that the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ should follow the model of any other organization, but that there was sufficient room for women in ministry under the missionary model that was enacted long ago. However, you must have a missionary society on spiritual fire, not on doctrinal ice.

All that notwithstanding, Bishop Lawson's conservation of the pastor as a patriarchal community figure has proved prophetic. Many parishioners come to see their church as an extended family, with the pastor and his wife being more than preacher and first lady, but father and mother raising spiritual sons and daughters. The black community in the U.S. has not yet recovered the sense of familial stability that it knew in generations past, so the pastor's role as the father-figure will not cease to be valuable in the foreseeable future. An organization with a spiritual stake in male ministers can thus be seen as an organization committed to strengthening the family wherever it sets up shop. Perhaps Bishop Lawson saw this day when he preached on so many of the social ills of his time.

With Bishop Bonner being the last (active) of the great Lawsonites, the future of the Lawson's legacy, the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ, hangs in the balance. In allowing his late daughter to address the international planning session, and in having installation services for his 12-member mother board in Detroit, Bonner has shown some of the same lenient economy that Lawson did: endorsing women's gifting, but rejecting women's ordination. The question is this: Will the Lawsonite praxis concerning women in ministry be retained (and possibly expanded), or will it be done away with altogether with as the organization transitions in the near future? If retained and expanded, there will be organizational growth and emulation by other likeminded organizations. If done away with in favor of some other church's model, then there will likely be controversy, schism, and parishioner migration to and from other organizations, all of which will lead to the compromise of the organization's original platform.

In any event, COOLJC is just one segment of the literal church of our Lord Jesus Christ. While we ponder the issues of this now concluded series, the reality is that no one yet has had a premium on interpreting scripture for Pentecostals.

Women Preachers: Missionary Work

We, the women of the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ, knowing that God has called us into holiness and sobriety, and charity, to rescue the fallen and administer any and all help, as we have opportunity, whether spiritual or material to the glory of God and to the honor and majesty of His great Name, now take our place in the ranks of the workers of our Lord to do our part in harvesting souls for Jesus Christ, as our Lord is coming soon to gather the precious fruits of the early and latter rain.

So begins the Preamble to the "Constitution of the Department of Women's Missionary Work of [the] Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ," organized in September of 1923. In the organization's Discipline Book, just above the preamble, are three scriptural references: Romans 16:1 (or 16:1-2, a reference to Phoebe, a female collaborator of Paul); Philippians 4:2 (sic, should be 4:3, where Paul enjoins the saints to help the women that worked with him, Clement, and others); and Titus 2:3-6 (sic, should be 2:3-5, which describes the teaching duties of older women; vs. 6 concerns young men). Taken together, these scriptures give a fairly modest, but conveniently flexible, framework for the missionary work of called women. While male ministers were to give themselves primarily to pastoral duties and evangelism, women were to augment the men's preaching ministry by whatever means they could (short of preaching), and were also to teach and set an example for younger women, especially as wives and mothers.

Missionary work, of course, did not have its beginning in the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is likely that Bishop Lawson was influenced by Bishop C.H. Mason, the influential founder of the Church of God in Christ. Though they differed in doctrine (Mason was, at least nominally, a trinitarian), the two were friends. Mason was very ecumenical in his fellowship, and as the founder of the first incorporated Pentecostal church, he had given credentials to ministers throughout the Pentecostal movement. Lawson, fairly broadminded and ecumenical, had great respect for Mason's administration of the church. They both agreed that the scriptures gave women a place in ministry, but that teaching, not preaching, was the appropriate focus of women's speaking abilities.

Mason further established a women's department under Mother Lizzie Woods Roberson (or 'Robinson'), based on Titus 2:3-5 (women, not men, are best suited to teach other women). Lawson's missionaries were not self-governed, but were under the authority of their local pastor or state overseer, who was more or less answerable to Lawson himself, during his administration. In both the Church of God in Christ and the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ, women were organized in high-functioning missionary bands whose operations are likely traceable to the women's missionary societies of the Baptist church, to whom both men had ties.

Again and again in research, one encounters the confession that women who became missionaries in the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ had expressed some sort of calling to mission work. The most common work that one finds in reading biographies in COOLJC's The Contender for the Faith, in the International Missionary Department's Beacon, or in special publications (e.g., the IMD's Outstanding Women series), is work that characterizes what women do in general. Women sewed baptismal garments; cooked for the community; conducted prayer services; assisted with communion and church maintenance; taught life skills to girls and young women; counseled younger congregants and new converts; and helped the church meet its financial obligations. Examples include the late Mother Marie Robbins Dunlap, who zealously passed her baking skills on to the young women in her circle; Mother Clarissa Brown, who with her local missionaries supplied and maintained window treatments and altar cloths for their church; and of course, the late Mother Carrie Lawson, the consummate mother, homemaker, spiritual advisor, hostess, prayer warrior, cook, and first lady, who raised and trained the late Mother Grace Spellman beside her own four sons.

Here and there, however, there would appear women of unusual spiritual depth and gifting. Mother Lawson we have already discussed; yet there were many like her, women that chose to complement rather than compete, to supplement rather than supplant, and to transform Pauline limitations on female ministers into scriptural grounding for an expressly feminine brand of apostolic mission work. Let's examine the lives of a few such women.

Women Preachers: Pastors vs. Missionaries

When Bishop William Bonner interviewed Mother Wheatley for his book, My Father in the Gospel, she remarked at one point that Harlem was "infested" with women preachers. This may seem harsh, but one of characteristics of Lawson's doctrine was his disapproval of female ministers. Differences of interpretation of the New Testament scriptures concerning women in church help precipitate Bishop Lawson's withdrawal from the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World. To this day, "no women preachers" is a fundamental point of doctrine for most of the church groups that came from under the Lawson umbrella. Some of these churches have recently begun the practice of ordaining women as elders, a practice that even the fairly liberal Church of God in Christ has yet to do.

Bishop Lawson's relationship with female clergy began in the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, whose doctrine of gender-inclusive ministry was largely influenced by the egalitarian nature of the Azusa Street Revival. Women and men were considered equal in Christ, though ministerial titles differed. Women were known as "evangelists," while men were known as "presbyters," or "elders." Men, then as now, outnumbered women in the ministry; additionally, certain offices, such as district elder and bishop, were closed to women.

Bishop (then Elder) Lawson spent much of his early ministry traveling through the Mid-West and at least as far east as New York City. We know that he encountered a church in New York pastored by Mother Susan Gertrude Lightfoot (or 'Lightford'). Apparently Lawson preached for Mother Lightfoot's church, King's Chapel, though he did not endorse women preachers scripturally or experientially. When Lawson resigned from the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World and settled in Harlem, several of Mother Lightfoot's members 'defected' and began supporting his ministry.

According to Mother Wheatley's interview with Bishop Bonner, on more than one occasion women who were pastors ascribed to Lawson's doctrine and turned their churches over to male ministers. Interestingly, Mother Wheatley conceded that Lawson's teaching was not so much against women preachers as it was against women pastors, and went on to describe how she and a group of women were commissioned by God to begin a work in Mamaroneck, N.Y. (today known as Strait Gate).

In those days, a Pentecostal woman who became a missionary was not simply joining a women's auxiliary or a fundraising committee, but was acknowledging a calling to work alongside (but subordinate to) male ministers, at home or abroad, for the saving of souls. What kinds of activities typified the vocation of these called women? Let's find out by examining the work of several women who began their mission work under Bishop Lawson.