Women Should Stay Silent in Church
And other pearls of ancient wisdom
“The women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak.”
1 Cor. 14:33-40
One of my favorite television sitcoms is Kim’s Convenience, centered on a Korean family who own and operate a corner convenience store in Toronto. The family attends a Korean Pentecostal church, and in one episode a parishioner is invited up to the pulpit during Sunday service to choose a verse for reading.
The parishioner makes her way up front and takes her place in the pulpit. The verse she chooses is 1 Corinthians 14:34, and she reads it aloud: “Women should keep silent in the church, for they are not permitted to speak.”
The result is hilarious, of course. The pastor, a woman, wasn’t expecting the parishioner to choose that verse and is caught by surprise. Pandemonium breaks out in the church as several young women sitting in the pews stand up and shout their revulsion at the blatant misogyny.
The pastor jumps up from her chair and rushes to the pulpit, and gently steers the guest speaker off to the side. Then she stands in the pulpit and quickly turns the pages of her Bible to a more acceptable passage, 1 Corinthians 13:4, and begins reading “Love is patient and kind…” But it’s too late and several women storm out of the church in protest.
Taken at face value, their anger is completely understandable. It is a deeply troubling passage on the surface of it. What on earth are we to make of it?
1 Corinthians 14:34 appears to literally tell women to shut up, in any and all situations. It’s not just precluding them from leadership roles, but tells them to remain silent. This would, if taken literally, effectively keep women from practically any role in the church, including participation in worship. Could that really have been Paul’s intention? Does Paul really mean that women are to remain silent? Is this a rule for all time?
There are three ways this text can be understood, and we will have a look at each approach in turn:
1. As a universal ruling. The words on the page are to be understood literally, at face value without qualification. It is therefore a universal ruling for all time in all churches.
2. Paul was quoting a Roman law to refute it.
3. It is situational to cultural issues of the time. Paul was addressing a specific situation in that church at the time. It’s not a universal ruling to be normative for Christian churches.
The difficulty with the literal approach is immediately apparent. First, this does not simply preclude women from leadership, it says they are to remain silent. They are not allowed to speak in public, and if they have any questions, they are to wait to ask their husbands privately at home. Taken literally, it commands them to keep their mouths shut and stay quiet.
Could Paul really have meant this as a general rule for all churches? There are compelling reasons why that’s highly unlikely. Such an interpretation is jarringly at odds with many passages in the Jewish Scriptures (what we call the Old Testament) that explicitly endorse women leaders who were very vocal in public settings.
Paul, an expert in Jewish law and scripture, would have known about Deborah, Huldah, Esther, and the passage in Joel (we will cover these shortly). These women all spoke out publicly, were strong leaders, and their biblical stories portray them in the most favorable light possible – as favored by God.
We would also have to believe that Paul had forgotten what he’d just written earlier in the same letter, in which he encouraged women to exercise their spiritual gifts at church, including speaking out in ‘tongues’ and prophesying (11:5; 12:1-11).
If a literal interpretation of this passage makes no sense, then what are we to make of it? Another approach gaining ground with scholars is that Paul’s intention was to argue against Roman law and custom. When Paul writes that “women should keep silent…they are not permitted to speak…even as the law says”, he was actually quoting Roman law and custom to refute it.
Paul’s wording here echoes Roman law and is very close to a popular Roman text of the day. The Roman world considered it shameful for women to speak in public, and Roman law as well as custom directed women to remain silent in public forums, and speak to their husbands privately at home.
Beth Allison Barr notes that “the Roman world viewed women as subordinate to men. The Roman world declared that men should convey information to their wives at home instead of women going out into the public forum. The Roman world told women to be silent in public forums.”[1]
Furthermore, there is no biblical law forbidding women to speak, so when Paul writes “as the law says”, he could not have had an Old Testament law in mind – since there is none. But there was a Roman law, and Paul’s wording comes very close to the wording of a contemporary Roman historian referencing that law.
Titus Livy was a Roman historian who wrote the History of Rome in the early 1st century, just a few decades before Paul. Livy’s work was very popular throughout the Empire when it was published, and he became a huge celebrity. In his History, he records a speech given by a Roman senator supporting laws that direct women to ask their husbands questions at home, rather than speak out publicly.
It was a common rhetorical practice to first quote a ‘saying’ or belief before refuting it. Livy’s History was well known in Paul’s day and Paul, a highly educated man, would have been familiar with it. While not an exact quote, Paul’s wording in verses 14:33-40 is very close to Livy and matches Roman custom and law of the time. Dr. Beth Allison Barr explains the significance of this:
“Paul was an educated Roman citizen. He would have been familiar with contemporary rhetorical practices that corrected faulty understanding by quoting the faulty understanding and then refuting it. Paul does this in 1 Corinthians 6 and 7 with his quotations of ‘all things are lawful for me’, ‘food is meant for the stomach and stomach for food,’ and ‘it is well for a man not to touch a woman.’ In these instances, Paul is quoting the faulty views of the Gentile world, such as ‘all things are lawful for me.’ Paul then strongly modifies them. Paul would have been familiar with the contemporary views about women, including Livy’s, that women should be silent in public and gain information from their husbands at home.”[2]
Many of our English translations obscure the nuances of the Greek, but the RSV does a respectable job of bringing out an inflection that makes all the difference in our understanding of this passage.
“As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, even as the Law says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. What! Did the word of God originate with you, or are you the only ones it has reached? If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that what I am writing to you is a command of the Lord. If anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized. So, my brethren, earnestly desire to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues; but all things should be done decently and in order.” (vv.33-40, RSV, emphasis mine).
Paul is calling out their wrong practice (“women should keep silent”) to question it (“What!”), and then correct it (“do not forbid…”). Which would mean Paul’s intention was to allow women to speak, the exact opposite of how the passage has been understood by complementarians.
We know that it was a common method of arguing in Paul’s day to first quote the opposing belief, then refute it. And we already know he does this in the same letter, in chapters 6 and 7. Barr asks, “Isn’t it possible… that Paul is doing the same thing in 1 Corinthians 11 and 14 that he does in 1 Corinthians 6 and 7? Refuting bad practices by quoting those bad practices and then correcting them?”[3]
This would explain the jarring change in Paul’s tone beginning at verse 36 (“What!”). Paul is first laying out the faulty practice of the Corinthians, who were following Roman custom, and then challenging it, just as he does elsewhere (chapters 6 and 7). He then concludes with correcting the Corinthians: “desire to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues; but all things should be done decently and in order.” In other words, don’t forbid women from speaking.
Paul’s intention was not to enforce Roman gender hierarchy, but to encourage the Corinthians to jettison it and embrace the freedom we have in Christ. He was countering a custom that the Corinthian men were dragging into the church from the Roman world in which they lived. They were forbidding women from speaking in public, according to the customs of the day, and Paul was correcting them.
This interpretation is consistent with Paul’s encouragement of the public exercise of spiritual gifts in chapters 11 and 14 of the same letter, which place no restrictions along gender lines. Not to mention Paul’s open acknowledgement of female leaders in his other letters.
Even if this interpretation is wrong, then it is much more likely Paul is referring to a specific situation rather than making a universal ruling. Catherine Kroeger researched the Corinthian situation at the time of Paul’s writing. Mystery religions, similar to what was happening in Ephesus, had penetrated the church in Corinth.
Mystery cults were popular with women at the time. After completing her investigation, “Kroeger proposes that the Corinthian situation was influenced by the disorder, enthusiasm, and female dominance characteristic of the mystery cults… In this context of aberrant conduct, prompted by mystery cults, Paul wrote these restrictive words. Thus, because these commands were situationally motivated, they should not be considered normative for all situations and all time.”[4]
There is an overwhelming body of biblical evidence which fully supports gender equality and women in leadership. (This will be the topic of next week’s blog. Please stay tuned!) Taking this evidence into consideration, along with the cultural situation of Corinth at the time, this passage should not be interpreted as a literal rule forbidding women from speaking. Such an interpretation would put Paul in conflict with his own words throughout the New Testament, in which he openly acknowledges several female church leaders. It would also require us to believe that Paul had forgotten about women leaders in his own nation’s history, such as Deborah, Huldah and Joel 2:28-32 in the Old Testament.
To borrow a few words from Lucy Peppiatt: “… even if we could never prove that Paul was addressing this or that particular situation, we know enough to know that this could not have been a universal ruling and so must discount it as that anyway.”[5]
Complementarians believe that men and women are equal in salvation, but have different roles which “complement” each other. The role of men is to lead, and women to submit to male leadership. Women are barred, on the basis of their gender, from senior leadership positions. To support this position they rely heavily on two key passages, both in 1 Timothy: 2:8-15 (“I do not permit a woman to teach or lead a man…”) and 3:1-13 (“An overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife,”). When interpreting these specific passages, they love to champion a so-called “plain sense” of the text.
When it comes to 1 Cor. 14:34, however, most complementarian churches almost never rely on a literal or “plain sense” of the text. A literal approach for this verse is so clearly problematic that even complementarian churches allow for a ‘cultural’ exception of this verse in order to avoid the obvious difficulties with a literal interpretation.
The result is, fortunately, that mainline complementarian churches do not believe 1 Corinthians 14:34 is literally a rule that women cannot speak in church. However, this is a case of complementarians wanting to have their cake and eat it too. They’ll allow for a cultural understanding of “women should keep silent” in 1 Corinthians 14:34, but dismiss any cultural understanding of 1 Timothy 2:12 and 3:1-13. This is inconsistent, to say the least, and a red flag in any hermeneutical approach.
1 Timothy 2:12 and 3:1-13 are the two key passages complementarians rely on for their gendered view of church leadership, and we’ll be looking at them over the next couple of weeks to see if they really mean what complementarians claim.
This post is part of a continuing series about women in church leadership and gender equality. Adapted from chapter 5 in my book “Jesus and Captain Kirk”, available on Amazon
[1] Barr, Biblical Womanhood, p.60.
[2] Barr, Biblical Womanhood, p.60.
[3] Barr, Biblical Womanhood, p. 61.
[4] Swartley, Slavery, Sabbath, War & Women, p. 173-174
[5] Lucy Peppiatt, Rediscovering Scripture’s Vision for Women, p. 145.