Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 13:3 (Summer 1999)
Article: Count The Cost
Author: Gretchen Gaebelein Hull

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PP 13:3 (Summer 1999) p. 7

Count The Cost

Gretchen Gaebelein Hull

Gretchen Gaebelein Hull is author of Equal to Serve (available from the CBE Resource Ministry), and also contributing author to The Global God; The Women’s Study Bible: New Testament; Women, Authority & the Bible; and Applying the Scriptures. She is Senior Editor ofPriscilla Papers. This article is adapted from her presentation at the 1999 CBE Conference in San Diego, CA.

In the summer of 1998, when the Reverend Kay Ward was elected as the first female bishop in the very conservative Northern Province of the Moravian Church in America, she stated:

We never know what will happen when men, clearly led by God’s inclusive Spirit, choose to break open tightly bound fists of power and authority. And so I understand that [my election to bishop] takes place in a much wider context, a much longer journey1

Her words are an important reminder that working to implement reconciliation through Christ is an ongoing process, and represents the cooperation and hard work of many participants.

We can rejoice that increasingly women are freed from unbiblical restraints, at last able to use their gifts as God calls. But we also recognize that this movement of the Spirit has not “just happened.” The same is true of efforts to end racial discrimination and economic injustice. All these ongoing movements of the Spirit take place in the context of sacrifice on the part of persons who believe the cost of standing up for biblical justice is worth paying.

In my immediate family, I was privileged to have as role models persons who understood the importance of paying that price. My grandmother, widowed in 1912 and with two teenage daughters to support, found herself with no vote and therefore no voice in helping determine political and social decisions directly affecting her family’s welfare. She, and my mother also, joined with other suffragists and worked to achieve women’s right to vote, a right finally granted by Constitutional Amendment in 1920.

Although this battle for women’s suffrage was won before I was born, I heard and read enough to know that the suffragists had been targets of anger and name-calling; some had even been arrested and jailed. Later, I observed first-hand my mother’s ongoing work for the League of Women Voters. Voting was precious to the women in my family, because they had personally known the pain of being voiceless in society’s adult decision-making process.

My father was also an important role model in showing me what counting the cost involves. His was one of the first voices calling twentieth-century American e...

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