CSC: WELS Topical Q&A: Christian Living - Human Behavior: Gender Roles: women voting
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Q:Your answer to a question posted on 10/25/04 about women voting in the election I believe makes it clear that the act of voting is not exercising authority over a man. Could not a woman vote in church quarterly meeting to "oppose" a woman who has the wrong view of ministry in the church? If so (and your logic from your 10/25 question follows), women voting in the church in our democratic society is not viewed by our culture as a exercise of authority over a man. Isn't that biblical and shouldn't we change our teaching?

A:Both the premises and the logic of your argument are mistaken. Your premise that "the act of voting is not exercising authority over a man" is wrong and was not stated in our previous answers. What was stated is that it is not our position that voting in every case is necessarily an exercise of authority, for example, in an advisory vote or an opinion poll. Voting is, however, an exercise of authority in the voting assemblies of our congregations which are designated as the authoritative governing bodies of the congregations.

The nature of voting in the bodies of the church is not set by the view of our culture but by the way in which the church has set those bodies up. Our practice that women should not vote in the church applies to authoritative governing bodies, not necessarily to other bodies. Our teaching is that women should not exercise authority over men in the church. This is virtually a direct quotation from Scripture. You have provided no scriptural argument for changing it.

Your logic is faulty in saying that voting to oppose a woman with a wrong view of the ministry would be a good reason for a woman to vote in the voters assembly of our congregations. This would be true only in a voters assembly which had become corrupt, and in which women who accepted the biblical principles were voting to try to reestablish the right biblical principles in opposition to people who were supporting unscriptural views. This does not apply to voters assemblies which are following the biblical principles, since in them there are no women voting to promote false views of doctrine who need to be opposed.

The principle you cite could be applied in a Lutheran voters assembly that had departed from Scripture and was allowing women to vote. Some women who believed that the congregation had erred in adopting this practice regularly refrained from voting because they believed that this practice was unscriptural. The congregation restudied the issue, and many came to the conclusion that the congregation had adopted an unscriptural practice which it should discontinue. When the issue came to a head and was brought to a vote, the women who believed that women should not vote in the governing body of the church came to the meeting and voted that the women should not be voting members of the church. Both when they refrained from voting and when they voted to give up their vote, they were expressing support for the biblical principle. This is not a hypothetical case but has happened.



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