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Women and the Church: Perspectives

A guide highlighting resources on women's historical and current contributions to the Church, as well as the various viewpoints on what those roles should be. This includes resources exploring the Pauline texts associated with this topic.

Two Main Views

The two main views on gender roles and women in leadership are complementarian and egalitarian, but there are also those who find themselves in between, or who prefer not to identify with a specific view. Within each there is a fairly broad spectrum of understanding. There are many resources within our library exploring these views and related topics. This is by no means an exhaustive list. Browsing the shelves around these items, as well as other works connected to their respective subject headings, will lead you to more. Resources highlighted here are organized by general topic and listed alphabetically by title.

Defining terms

Complementarians "believe that men and women, by God's design, are to complement one another by functioning within distinctive gender roles that uniquely endow men with authority in marriage and church gatherings" (Sumner, 2017, p. 338).

Egalitarians "believe that men and women are to function equally in all contexts, in accordance with the submission and authority that comes with particular positions and their spiritual giftedness" (Sumner, 2017, p. 338).

Gender Roles

Leadership & Ordination

Search Terms

When searching the library catalogue for resources on gender roles or women in leadership, some useful subject terms include,

  • Sex Role
  • Women in Christianity
  • Feminist Theology
  • Women in Church Work
  • Ordination of Women
  • Christian Leadership
  • Women Clergy 

When searching these subjects, select "Subject" from the search field drop-down to call up resources with this subject heading. Alternatively, if you select "Subject Browse" from the drop-down it will produce a list of similar subjects in alphabetical order. Clicking on these brings up all of the titles with that particular heading. For example searching Women in Christianity with the Subject field selected produces this result. Searching Women in Christianity as a Subject Browse produces this result. 

Views

Ministry

Questions Regarding the Trinity & Gender Roles

Reference

Sumner, S. (2017). Gender. In D. J. Treier & W. A. Elwell (Eds.), Evangelical dictionary of theology (3rd ed.) (pp. 337-40). Baker Academic.