Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 35:2 (Spring 2021)
Article: Book Review "Christian Egalitarian Leadership: Empowering The Whole Church According To The Scriptures" Edited By Aída Besançon Spencer And William David Spencer (House Of Prisca And Aquila Series, Wipf And Stock Publishers, 2020)
Author: Jeff David Miller

PP 35:1 (Winter 2021) p. 16

Book Review
Christian Egalitarian Leadership: Empowering The Whole Church According To The Scriptures
Edited By Aída Besançon Spencer And William David Spencer (House Of Prisca And Aquila Series, Wipf And Stock Publishers, 2020)

Jeff Miller

Jeff Miller Is Editor Of Priscilla Papers.

Essay collections have been important to the thriving of evangelical egalitarianism over the last few decades. A key example is Women, Authority, and the Bible (IVP, 1986), edited by Alvera Mickelsen, the first board chair of CBE International. This volume assembled the voices of more than twenty evangelical scholars and was instrumental in articulating the theological and biblical case for egalitarianism. Two decades later, editors Ronald Pierce, Rebecca Merrill Groothuis, and Gordon Fee crafted Discovering Biblical Equality: Complementarity without Hierarchy (IVP, 2005) to include not only biblical and theological essays, but also chapters on church history and pressing issues such as abortion, self-esteem, marriage, and unity. The volume under review here, Christian Egalitarian Leadership, takes further steps toward broadening the issues (e.g., it is about more than gender) but also focuses on one essential aspect of the thriving of egalitarianism—leadership.

Before addressing the several essays that comprise this unique book, a word about the series of which it is a part will help. The series title, House of Prisca and Aquila, refers both to a publishing “house” and to Acts 18:26, where Prisca and Aquila famously invited Apollos into their “home” (NIV, CEV, etc.) and “more accurately expounded to him the Way of God.” The House’s mission is “to produce quality books that expound accurately the word of God to empower women and men to minister together in a multicultural church.” More than twenty volumes, on a wide variety of topics, have been published (see http://HouseOfPriscaAndAquila.com).

The book has two sections, “Theory” and “Practice.” The first, and shorter, section consists of five chapters; chs. 1 and 2 lay the foundation. First, coeditors Aída and William Spencer overview NT teaching on egalitarian leadership. They describe their understanding of leadership: “We propose that leadership, especially in the church, should be Christian egalitarian servant leadership” (3). They also make clear that the book is about more than gender equality: “Egalitarian leadership includes the equal leadership of men and women, Gentiles and Jews, rich and poor, slave and free, and the lack of permanent or/and innate human hierarchy except between God and humans” (4).1 One refreshing aspect of this cha...