Photo by kiran kumar

By Eun Joo Angela Ryo

“Why go to seminary? You are a woman. You can learn at the church.” I still remember the shocking comment my college pastor made when I shared with him my deep-seated desire to go to seminary after graduation.

Growing up in a Korean immigrant church under a youth pastor who taught us that women should be quiet in the church and submit to male authority, I should not have been surprised by what the college pastor said to me. My youth pastor thought that boys over the age of twelve should not even be taught by female Sunday school teachers! Despite his views on women, however, he acknowledged my gifts for ministry and did not discourage me from possibly exploring the option of going to seminary in the distant future.

In college, I was pretty active in a large non-denominational campus church. It was a predominantly Asian American church that was known to produce many pastors. In my excitement to find a church that supported and encouraged college students to go into ordained ministry, however, I totally overlooked the fact that none of the students who decided to go to seminary were women. Nevertheless, I didn’t think anyone would actually try to stop me from going to seminary simply because I was not a man! Well, I was wrong. My college pastor went on to say that it would be a waste of money for me to go to seminary because I couldn’t be ordained anyway. “The Bible says women should not be ordained ministers. But the church would be happy to train you as a lay leader,” he said.

Sitting in that cafe, I felt a strong sense of anger and indignation rising up. If I was merely considering seminary before our talk, I was 110% sure that I HAD to go to seminary after our talk. I also needed to find out for myself what the Bible really said about women in ordained ministries. Sometimes, the Holy Spirit has a strange way of confirming your call to ministry.

Those in the theological camp that oppose women ordination believe gender roles are ordained by God. They insist that what the Bible says about women are prescriptive rather than descriptive. That’s hugely problematic considering the Bible was written during a time when women had very little agency and were considered to be property much like slaves. If we, as a Christian community, have acknowledged that slavery is not a God-ordained institution, why do we still uphold gender roles to be “biblical” and act as though they are sacred? By doing so, who benefits and who hurts? I hope that the day will come when we, as the Body of Christ, can fully live into the truth of Galatians 3:28: “ There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Eun Joo Angela Ryo immigrated to America from Korea when she was nine. Having graduated with an MDiv from McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, she was ordained as a Teacher Elder in the PCUSA this past July and now serves as the Assistant Pastor for Christian Formation at Kirk in the Hills Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) in Bloomfield Hills, MI.