The Women-Take-Over Argument
For no women in church leadership
The Argument: “If women are part of church leadership, they end up taking over. They do all the work. Then men just sit back and become couch potatoes. They sense they’re not needed. And that’s not right! Thus, women need to stay out of leadership so that men will stay involved. Besides, men don’t want to participate in something led only by women. If only women lead, men feel like it’s just a woman’s thing.”
Counterargument 1: The first part of this argument is called a composition fallacy. It assumes that what is true of the part must be true of the whole. That is, if some women took over at one time, all women would take over. Church History is full of leadership power struggles of primarily men taking other men’s power. However, this has not led us to conclude that men shouldn’t be in church leadership. Rather, we have concluded that domineering, egotistic men shouldn’t be in church leadership. Certainly, in some cases, women have taken over church leadership, but the logical conclusion isn’t to keep women out but rather to keep domineering, egotistical women from leading.
Counterargument 2: This argument assumes that women wouldn’t be able to lead without taking over, that all women are unable to restrain themselves, respect men, and share power. History has proven that this is not true of all women.
Counterargument 3: This argument doesn’t follow the golden rule, which is to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If men do not wish women to exclude them from leadership, men ought not to exclude women from leadership. If excluding one gender from leadership isn’t right, then it’s wrong for either gender to do this to the other.
Counterargument 4: While I think there’s validity to the last part of this argument, this doesn’t support the exclusion of women from leadership. It only supports that the leaders should include both men and women.
For more arguments and counterarguments, click on the links below: