Women's Roles Within the Church Structure - 6

Part VI from Friday’s post

Earlier in my article, I started out with defining the two different view points on the issue of woman’s roles in leadership within the church. To refresh, the Egalitarian believes that women can function in any role including the governmental decision making positions. The Complimetarian believes the same, except women cannot function in governmental decision making positions.

Governmental positions within the church is the only thing I can see that God has given strictly to man as a responsibility. God created both men and women in his image and he created us for specific purposes. As a woman I had to question myself and my motives for wanting a top position within the church and that lead me to look into the social issue of Suffragette vs. Feminism movements and how it affects women’s decision making today. Many men and women confuse the Suffragette and Feminist movements. Their motives are completely different and we have to understand the differences in order to make an informed decision on what we believe.

The Suffragette movement began in the middle 1800's with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Ms. Anthony and Ms. Stanton started working for women’s rights in 1851. They focused on the woman’s right to vote realizing that the injustices against women would not end without women having that right. Ms. Anthony went to Europe in 1888 and helped to form the “International Council of Women” in 48 countries. She also helped to form and was President of the “National American Woman Suffrage Association.”. The 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified on August 18, 1920 which allowed women the right to vote. Sadly, Ms. Anthony didn’t live long enough to cast her first legal vote.

The Feminist movement was birthed out of the Humanist movement. In 1966 the “National Organization of Women” was formed. The outward veneer of the organization was to protect women from injustices in the workplace and created the Equal Rights movement. On June 10, 1963 the Equal Pay Act was passed into Federal Law. Women already had the law for equal pay on their side before NOW was formed. Women just needed to be bold enough to implement a law that was rightfully theirs.