Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 36:4 (Autumn 2022)
Article: A Medieval Makeover: Women’s Roles Before And After The Reformation
Author: Michele Arndt

PP 36:4 (Autumn 2022) p. 8

A Medieval Makeover: Women’s Roles Before And After The Reformation

Michele Arndt

Michele Arndt recently earned an MDiv from North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago, Illinois. She formerly worked in the corporate sector and then with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. She is now lead pastor of The Crossing, a congregation of The Evangelical Covenant Church. As one of the winners of CBE’s 2022 student paper competition, Michele read this article at CBE’s 2022 International Conference in Atlanta.

The journey of women’s leadership in the church is hardly a straight line. It is a curvy road with plenty of twists and turns, sometimes pointing women to lead and, at other times, pointing them right out the door. The goal of this article is to examine the eras on either side of the Protestant Reformation. On one side, we will find women serving and leading in the church. On the other, they will be serving and leading in their homes. What led to this drastic exchange? To answer this, we will need to make a few broad-brush strokes over the top of the history of the early church and its interpretation of Scripture and women before arriving on the doorstep of the Middle Ages. This era sets the scene for where women will land, both before and after the Reformation. And what we will find is indeed a medieval makeover. This article explores the various religious, social, and historic dynamics surrounding the Reformation that led to driving women out of leadership in the church and back into their homes, as well as the ways we are experiencing the impact of these developments today.

The Early Church

Cissie Fairchilds offers a robust study of women within religious and social circles in early modern Europe.1 In her opening chapter, Fairchilds describes how patriarchal views were established and sustained in the early church despite the Christian faith being built largely on the premise of the spiritual equality of all human beings. She explains how patriarchal interpretations of Scripture became the dominant and preferred narratives, beginning even with the story of creation. Genesis includes two accounts, the second of which, in Gen 2, provided plenty of fodder for those in the church in the early Middle Ages who began to bear down on women more forcefully regarding their accepted roles in the church and in society. In short, an interpretation of Gen 2 that took root at that time painted Eve as made, not in God’s image, but rather in Adam’s. Additionally, that Eve was the one tricked by the serpent introduces the idea that women are intellectually inferior, hence more readily deceived. And thus, the story of women as the weaker ...