My late husband and I attended a Bible church and loved it for the first 10 years. They believed a divorced man or a man married to a divorced woman could never be a leader. Women, of course, couldn’t be leaders and women were supposed to submit (one-way-only) to their husbands.
Submitting to my husband was easy; if I asked for fifty dollars, he’d give me a hundred. At this point in my life, I’d never heard a woman preacher that I liked. So I went along with the teaching about women.
But both my husband and I had been divorced against our wills and we wondered why God would hold that against us. So we did a bible study on divorce; both of us had biblical grounds if we had filed. So we decided to see if God agreed with the church’s position that if a man is divorced, he is permanently disqualified from leadership.
We studied and researched for 8 months on divorce; we discovered David Instone-Brewer’s book and wrote a 16-page paper on our findings. We were very naive; we thought the church would be pleased but we were deemed trouble makers.
I kept going. When the women’s bible study was on First Timothy, I discovered the word translated “authority” was not the normal word that Paul used. When I asked about it, I was dismissed.
So I began another study and discovered the Junia Project which led to Helga and Bob Edwards’ book, The Equality Workbook: Freedom in Christ from the Oppression of Patriarchy. Then I was totally convinced but couldn’t find a church that believed like me on divorce or women.
I’m not pushing divorce but I was emotionally and physically abused in my first marriage and told God hates divorce. So I have a dream that someday churches will repent on the error about divorce and women in leadership. Also being mutual in marriage ought to help save marriages.