Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 38:1 (Winter 2024)
Article: Pentecostal Women Leaders: The Interplay Of Egalitarian Theology, Feminism, And Pentecostalism
Author: Anna Morgan

PP 38:1 (Winter 2024) p. 25

Pentecostal Women Leaders: The Interplay Of Egalitarian Theology, Feminism, And Pentecostalism

Anna Morgan

Anna Morgan Pastors Word Of Life Church With Her Husband John In Northern Virginia. She Is Vice President Of Academics At Ascent College And Teaches Leadership At Fuller Theological Seminary. Anna Earned An MA In Global Leadership And A Doctor Of Intercultural Studies Degree From Fuller Theological Seminary.

Most Pentecostal movements today are welcoming women leaders and preachers in their embrace of egalitarian theology (even if not always in practical application). The pursuit of women’s equality is typically an objective of those who lean left on the values spectrum. Pentecostals tend to be socially conservative. Why, then, would Pentecostals embrace egalitarian theology?

Taking the intersection of the Pentecostal movement and women’s movements in North America as a case, this essay traces how egalitarian theology developed into a clearly organized set of ideas and practices. We shall see how, over the past two hundred years, social changes produced by women’s movements have propelled the acceptance of women church leaders and changed the landscape of Western church leadership. While egalitarian theology is not a product of secular feminism, feminism created an environment where egalitarian theological reflection could take root and flourish. This has not happened in a linear fashion, however. Pentecostals, for example, found themselves entwined with feminism in its earliest days, but this has been a push-pull relationship over time.

The Early Church

While the formalizing of egalitarian theology occurred in recent history, egalitarian practices and informal reflection are much older. Since the early church, women have been leading and ministering. The Apostle Paul mentions Pricilla, Phoebe, and Junia as women leaders with formal leadership roles (Rom 16). Historians Leanne Dzubinski and Anneke Stasson have well described the diversity of leadership roles held by women in the first several centuries of the church. Women led as early church patrons, missionaries, apostles, widows, martyrs, deacons, scholars, virgins, and desert mothers.1 Christian art from the first and second centuries depicts women teaching, baptizing, administering the Lord’s Supper, leading public prayer, and caring for physical needs.2

However, the church has not always recognized this female ministry. As Christianity gained ground in society, women began to be excluded from the historical record in deference to cultural attitudes about appropriate behavior for women. Men wrote his...