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I have long observed that major movements in the world will sooner or later have their effect upon religion. Numerous examples exist:
- As the divorce rate in society has risen, we have seen it increase among those in the church.
- As the drug-alcohol problem in the world has worsened, more in the church are being affected.
- As more of the citizenry has drifted into permissive liberalism, politically and morally, the Lord’s people have been subjected to increasing disturbances fostered by moral and doctrinal liberalism in the church.
One example is the Women’s Lib movement and its implications concerning the church. In July 1974, Carter Heywood was one of ten women ordained as priests in the Episcopal Church, Anglican Communion. An outspoken “libber,” her official title is “the Rev. Ms. Heywood.” She was in Fort Worth in January, 1975, addressing the Brite Divinity school at TCU. The Fort Worth Star Telegram of January 23, 1975, featured her in a lengthy story, accompanied by a picture of her in her clerical collar and holding a cigarette daintily between two fingers.
In the story, Ms. Heywood made the “stock” complaint of the “libbers,” that Scripture and church history have always had an “anti-personhood bias” against women. Opposition to her priesthood by her own hierarchy have but further convinced her of this bias. Are attitudes such as hers affecting the Lord’s people? Regrettably, yes. Some who have forsaken the authority of God’s Word have for some time been voicing complaints about “inequalities” forced upon women by the church.
A sister in Houston said in a 1975 Bering Drive Church bulletin:
The proper role of women in the church. Here it is: My first and last and definitive statement of the ‘role of women in the church’…The proper role of women in the church is whatever you define as the role of men in the church… That’s it, no more, no less. That simple.
The unmistakable implication is that there should be no objection to women serving as elders and preachers. But I suppose we should not be too shocked. What else can you expect when one forsakes Scriptural authority?
[Note: I wrote this article for, and it was published in the September 18, 1973, edition of the Granbury Gospel, weekly bulletin of the Granbury Church of Christ, Granbury, Texas, of which I was editor.
Attribution: From thescripturecache.com; Dub McClish, owner and administrator.
