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New Testament Letters

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lizzysparkle | 23:53 Tue 17th Apr 2007 | Religion & Spirituality
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This is a question I have been thinking of for a while. Why in Christian churches are we taught to look to the letters of the NT as the guide to Christian living, yet when we get to

As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. 1 Corinthians 14 33:35

why can we we just ignore it and have women preachers? If you read the chapters round this passage, they are key scriptures to church lfe, especially chapter 13. If we say this passage is not valid and can be ignored, are we saying the rest can too?

I would be interested in any views on this.
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The women in Corinth were being a bit of a pain, so all Paul was doing in fact was asking them to exercise restraint, not to sit in total silence.

In the early church the women would sit together apart from their menfolk and continually call out questions during the service or chatter nonstop making a nuisance of themselves, so order was needed.
Maybe they were calling out to make themselves heard rather than sit there in silence.
Good morning Naomi, Luna, Wiz and any other early birds.
Wizard - Enjoy your Picolax ... mmmmmmm!
Theland, good to see you back.
had to get up early to have my second dose. Its bl00dy awful stuff, ive had to put the toilet roll in the fridge...
and im starving.Been dreaming of food all night.
Anyway Theland, where you been hiding recently?
Wiz - Been ill, but good news, my hospital tests came back O.K. So thenk you for your prayers, or erm, your thoughts.
Mad busy as well, so not too much time to post on here.
I thought you guys gave Christians a hard time, you want to see the Jewish topic on the BBC religious threads. Wow! Our Jewish brothers and sisters don't like to hear about Jesus. Have a look.
got a link?
thanks..will have a look later
Theland, whats your take on Lizzy's question?
Its something that Iv'e asked christians myself and the replies given are invariably like those given by cetti and yet I can find nothing to support that view. Nowhere does it say that the women were being a "bit of a pain" so thats why the men were asking for a bit of restraint. The plain straight forward language is that women were to be silent in meetings. Full stop.
Wizard - I think that God created men and women as equals, but with different roles, strengths, talents.
Mans role is to lead, teach, instruct in matters of fath, but women do not have a lesser role, merely a different role. This includes support for the assembly and teaching whatever dogma has been agreed, to other women and youngsters.
But, the important point is that a womans duties are complementary to a mans, just as a mans are complementary to a womans.
I therefore disagree with the ordination of women, but this is not chauvanism, just a recognition of the dual complementary roles that both have.
Leading on from this, I don't think Pauls instruction can be interpreted any other way than how it reads.
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Thank you for the replies everyone.

I do respect Thelands viewpoint, which does follow the teaching in the scripture, unlike many churches including my own, which seem to fluff round the point or ignore it altogether.

I was brought up to believe that women should not preach, cover their hair in services etc, as it was written in the Bible, which was quite clear to me.

Now it confuses me that we do not do this and does make me doubt all the teaching and whether it is Gods word or just a set of rules devised by man to mould the church into how they wanted it to be structured.
I am as equally as peed off by this notion as any woman may be. So i can't do what a woman does as good as her and visa versa? A woman has to be subservient to be equal sounds like the Quran to me. It�s such a shame that such intelligent people such as your selves can be sooooooo gullible. It must have occurred to you by now, that this book of fiction is nothing more than a guidebook for good life, edited over and over again to satisfy leaders of the day. It�s pure rubbish, every page has massive inconsistencies, the book has more versions than the Ford Escort and they all contradict each other. Not one person can agree and people get killed because of it. If you can�t see you are pointing your well-meaning hearts in the wrong direction, then you must be blind, as I don�t believe you are stupid..
Lizzy, of course it's a set of rules devised by man. The whole thing is a set of rules devised by men. As Cetti says in the early church women sat together separate from the men, and in synagogues today they still do.
"A woman in the pulpit idss dog walking on it's hind legs. They don't do it very well and one is surprised to see them do it at all"
With acknowledgements to whoever said it first.
There is a time and place for each of us and it seems that women now want to pick the most public of these. You don't see them queuing up to empty bins or sweep streets. Is it because they think that is too degrading?
I can't understand the hulabaloo from women demanding to be ordained as bishops - and their protests are sometimes decidedly unchristian.

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