.
Should ladies have the right to vote for their own rulers in the elections of church officers? The question is scriptural, practical and perennial; and, as it deals with ‘rights,’ it sometimes incites fervor in those whom the question affects. What saith the Lord?
.
.
Order of Contents
Scottish Church
Westminster
‘Brethren’ Acts 6:3
Voting on Congregational Affairs
.
An Analysis
Fentiman, Travis – ‘An Analysis of Rutherford and M’Crie on whether Ladies have the Right to Vote for Church Officers’ (RBO, 2015) 21 pp. with Samuel Rutherford and Thomas M’Crie appended on the subject
Fentiman analyzes the alternative positions of Rutherford and M’Crie on the question and comes to a third middle viewpoint in-between both. His conclusions are:
(1) The voting of ladies was defended and practiced during the best time of the Church of Scotland;
(2) Voting in elections for Church officers is not an act of ruling;
(3) The grammar and context of Acts 6 does not exclude ladies;
(4) The exegetical argument from ‘no male nor female’ (Gal. 3:28) for every-member-voting, grounded on church membership, is strained and inconclusive;
(5) There is a third, middle-view in-between the alternatives of every-church-member voting and head-of-household voting;
(6) The congregation’s consent to its rulers is necessary by natural law, and Scripture enforces this natural right;
(7) This is the substance of all that presbyterians have ever generally
desired to maintain from the pertinent passages of Scripture;
(8) The congregation holds this right of election in common, though this does not specifically stipulate that each member has the right of a particular vote;
(9) The method of election in discerning the will of the congregation is not clearly prescribed by scripture and is hence indifferent;
(10) This was essentially the view of M’Crie.
Thus, the election of officers, whether by the vote of every church member, the heads-of-households, the session of elders (in their representative capacity) or otherwise, is indifferent and adaptable.
This viewpoint (specifically points 7-9) are consistent with, and essentially that of the Church of Scotland during the Westminster era (see below on this page).
.
Pro
Early & Medieval Church
Quote
Samuel Rutherford, The Due Right of Presbyteries (1644), pt. 1, p. 204
“The Council of Constantinople IV [A.D. 869-870] called the Eighth General Council, the Council of Laodicea [A.D. 363-364], are corruptly expounded by Bellarmine, Vasquez and others, because: 1. They forbid only disorder and confusion. 2. That all the multitude, without exception of age, gifts or sexes, should come and speak and voice at the election. For in the Council of Antioch [A.D. 264-269] it is expressly forbidden that the multitude should be debarred.”
.
1600’s
Article
Rutherford, Samuel – Ladies have the Right to Vote in Ecclesiastical Elections 1644 2 pages, being pp. 476-7 of his The Due Right of Presbyteries, with a 3 page Introduction by Rev. Travis Fentiman
Rutherford, the Westminster divine, argues that ladies have the right to vote in ecclesiastical election as the right of election of officers is a privilege, not an act of ruling, and it belongs to the every member of the Body of Christ, as there is no ‘male nor female… in Christ Jesus.’ (Gal. 3:28)
.
Quotes
Samuel Rutherford
A Peaceable & Temperate Plea for Paul’s Presbytery in Scotland… (London, 1642), ch. 1, p. 4 This quote shows choosing officers is not an act of jurisdiction, or of ruling.
“…those against whom we now dispute [congregationalists], brethren, reverend, learned and holy, do confound and take for one and the same the power of electing or choosing officers and the power of ordination. And they make election of elders (which by God’s Word is due to all the faithful) an act of jurisdiction, whereas it is a private and popular act, flowing from that spirit of grace in believers and from the light of saving faith, and a grace that they call, gratia gratum faciens, grace whereby we are accepted to God, as Aquinas speaks, for it is that heavenly instinct of believers, whereby they try all things and keep that which is good, and whereby they try the spirits (even of office bearers) whether they be of God or not, and know the voice of the Shepherd from the voice of a stranger, and have their senses exercised to discern good and evil.”
.
A Survey of the Survey of that Sum of Church Discipline Penned by Mr. Thomas Hooker… (London, 1658)
p. 257
“Nor are women, sons, servants, debarred from voicing in election because it is a Church-power, for it is no power of jurisdiction. For:
1. Their tacit [understood or implied without being stated] voices and consents are not excluded, because they must try the spirits, and not upon trust and fide implicita [implicit faith] believe every teacher more than men, or believe as the Church believes, more than their husbands, nor must they take doctrines as truth upon their husband’s word; nor are women so excluded from speaking in the Church as [that] they may upon no occasion: confess their faith,
2. profess vocally repentance,
3. depose as witnesses, [or]
4. accuse the guilty before the binding Church.
4. Nor may a [civil] corporation cast out a major [an official] by an authoritative power such as binding and loosing is, Mt. 18 [that is, the power by which they do it is not of the same kind as ecclesiastical power].
5. We seek a warrant why the votes of women in choosing their pastors must more be included in the votes of the male than their being essential parts of the redeemed Church is included in the males, or their confessing publicly that Jesus is the Christ, as many women martyrs and sons and servants have gloriously done; and yet their confession of Christ to the death must be personal, and not included in the confession of husband or parents, as Mt. 10:32.”
.
p. 258
“4. The Church is not made ministerial by us, without the body exclusively wholly (for Christ’s government is voluntary), nor ought any new thing to be concluded in our assemblies while the people hear of it: for if the Romans used rogare et suadere legem [to ask and persuade the law], and obtain the consent of the people thereunto, far more are they not to be acknowledged as Church-laws that are to be obtruded upon the godly against their will and knowledge; and much more if they be against the Word of God, and former godly acts with consent agreed unto by the Church; that is, whether the people consent or not, but yet without the body, whether they exercise acts of jurisdiction or not, for no act of jurisdiction is due to them; and to exclude the consent of women, no less interessed [interested] in practice of conscience than men, is to be Lord’s of their faith.”
.
p. 259
“Paul gives rules and directions to Timothy (1 Tim. 5:1,19 and Titus 2) as to pastors, not as to believers, concerning the manner of receiving [Church] complaints, nor is there in Scripture precept, promise or practice of believers to receive complaints, we are surer than our Brethren [the congregationalists]; and it’s safer to expound this [phrase], ‘Tell the Church’ [Mt. 18:17], that is, ‘Tell Timothy and the Elders’ than, ‘Tell the church, that is, tell any member of the church at Corinth,’ i.e. tell any woman or servant [your formal complaint], for they are as essentially members as Timothy or any of the Elders,
[Point] 2. and [these laypersons] must join their consent to censures because members must hear the scandals because they must tacitly consent before censures be dispensed; it follows not [however] that members must be told [of such formal complaints as an authoritative court, in the sense of Mt. 18:17], for [only] the tacit consent of women [to such Church censures of others] is requisite, for they may be scandalized or edified by the good or evil dispensing of censures as well as men.”
.
p. 276
“Calvin says, ‘The thing before judged was cleared to the people.’ Peter Martyr, [David] Pareus and others say well, ‘Excommunication would not be done nisi plebe consentiente,’ without the consent of the people, which includes women and servants over whose consciences, faith and practice rulers are not to domineer more than over the consciences of men. Cyprian by the plebs and universa fraternitas, the people and fraternity, understands the whole redeemed flock, men and women.”
.
p. 277
“Our divines, Bucer, Calvin, Bucanus, Tilenus, Beza, Virttut [Viret?], give consenting, and in some cases correcting, not judicial, power sure, but which is great enough, a negative consent for eschewing of a schism. And the professors of Leiden, Ursinus, Pareus, Junius, give the people a vote, a consent in excommunication, and this cannot exclude women who are offended when the whole Church is offended. The times of Ambrose did witness more pride in the clergy, who began to do all without the people.
Chemnitz, Daneus, the Confession of Bohemia, of Helvetia, the Synod of Middleburgh, the Synod of Tylleburgh in Nassovia, anno 1582, teach that the whole Church with consent of all did excommunicate, but the judging authority is in the eldership.”
.
p. 284
At the same time Rutherford argues that lay-persons do not have the ‘scattered powers’ (Hooker’s phrase) to call and create officers, he affirms that women have the right to choose Church officers.
“…and tell us, who gave to people, to men and to women (who have no less a power to know the voice of Christ in this pastor, and to choose an officer than men) the scattered powers official to call and create officers?
…
4. The people, men and women as sheep, choose a pastor, by no act of jurisdiction, says Ames, but rather by subjection, and election makes not a minister, but only appropriates his labors to his people, quoad administrationem, says Cyprian; ordination is the call and juridical sending. Now the apostles and presbytery ordained elders, Tit. 1:5, laid on hands and ordained, Acts 6:6; 1 Tim 4:14; 1 Tim. 5:22, committed the charge to faithful men, able to teach others, 2 Tim. 2:2; 1 Tim. 3:1-3; show me so much for your new male-Church, excluding females, who may be unbaptized men converted in China.
.
p. 285
Some have used the term ‘fraternity’ or ‘brethren’ (claiming it to refer to all males) to claim that churches of old only had a male-votership. But Rutherford calls this distinctive use of the term by congregationalists as applied to the Church, a novelty.
“This new Church, that now is called the ‘Fraternity’, a new name, not in Scripture, in this sense has neither a divided nor an united power…”
.
p. 302
“5. There is potestas doni, a power of a gift in all elections, well; a power of a gift of discerning and trying who shall be my pastor, sure; women have their gift of discerning: why should pastors be obtruded upon women blindly? Should men have dominion over their faith?”
.
p. 307
“3. That the Fraternity only, and no women, gave their tacit [understood or implied without being stated] consent to the choosing of Matthias (Acts 1), of the deacons (Acts 6), of the elders (Acts 14:23), since their consciences were concerned and they are parts of the fed and redeemed Church as well as men, can never be proved; and who can deny women to be of the plebs, people and fraternity, as Cyprian speaks? and of the brethren that Paul, James and the apostles wrote unto?”
.
p. 327
“But the Lord has given to all believers as believers of the same or of another flock, whether in Churches this way, or not, to women, as to males, in some measure, the anointing grace to know Christ’s voice [in a shepherd, in order unto ecclesiastical election].”
.
p. 335
“…admonition and consent to receive in and cast out members by consent, necessarily agree[s] to women, it so much concerning their daily practices and conscience, and they have no judicial power.”
.
p. 422
The context is Rutherford arguing against congregationalists that Church officers, as officers, have a vote in calling a man to ordination.
“Hence if the officers by these places [in the writings of reformed divines] have suffrages and votes in ordaining of officers, as why should the holy Ghost bid prophets separate Paul and Barnabas for such a ministry and command Timothy to lay hands suddenly on no man (1 Tim. 5:22) but on faithful men that are able to teach others (2 Tim. 2:2; Tit. 1:5,7-8) if officers have no official work in creating officers, but only to choose them, which any brother or woman may do?”
.
1800’s
Article
Hodge, Charles – ‘Who May Vote in the Election of Pastor?’ (1879) 4 pp.
Hodge does not explicitly mention females in his discussion, but they are implicit in the categories he discusses. His discussion is very valuable for delineating the many different views and principles that factor into the issue. We do not agree with his conclusion though, that who may vote in the election of a pastor is completely left to the liberty of the Church to decide. For the classic presbyterian position, see Gillespie below under ‘The Scottish Church’.
.
Quote
Herman Bavinck
Wes Bredenhof, ‘Herman Bavinck on Women in the Church’ (2021)
“Finally Bavinck comes to the controversial topic of women voting for office bearers in the church. He begins this discussion with an overview of where things stand: he notes that there are many churches in America, Australia, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Switzerland where women vote. He points out that it was discussed and defended in the Netherlands as early as 1898 by Abraham Kuyper, as well as by pastors A.D.C Kok and C. Lindeboom.
Bavinck notes that the issue did not seem to be a pressing one in the Netherlands of his day. Unlike in other countries, men were actively involved in Dutch church life and there didn’t seem to be any desire to have women voting for office bearers. He writes that, with such indifference, it would be foolish to press the issue.
However, he notes that if we discuss it in principle, “there is little ground to condemn it.” Bavinck argues that women are equal members of the church with men. They have just as much an interest in having good office bearers as the men do. Because of their nature as women, they tend to actually have quite a great deal of interest in religious matters. Moreover, there are large numbers of widows, women married to “religiously indifferent men,” or women married to men who belong to another church. Without being able to vote, such women are all stripped of the opportunity to have an influence on church life.
Bavinck strengthens his argument by noting that while women under the authority of their husbands in the home, as church members they receive the same benefits and should receive the same rights. He notes that young male communicant members who still live with their parents are subordinate to those parents, but yet they have the right to vote. This is unfair. Bavinck says the injustice becomes worse because women are allowed to raise objections to the election of an office bearer – yet they cannot vote. Then he notes that the vote in the church is not an exercise of power. The congregation only points out its preferences for office bearers; the consistory is responsible to call and appoint.
He maintains that there is only one objection with any weight: if women can vote in the church, it will not be long before the church will be forced to have women standing as candidates. In other words, women’s voting will lead to women’s ordination.
But Bavinck notes that this is an argument from fear. It is an argument that often persuades fearful minds concerned about novelties in the church. However, he points out, if the Scriptures are so strong that women may not serve as office bearers, then we have nothing to fear. The clarity of the Bible should prevent any such development.
He then points out that it’s not unusual for people to be able to vote and not be able to stand as a candidate. One does not follow from the other. The requirements for eligibility to vote are often different from the eligibility requirements to stand as a candidate. In the Dutch situation of his time, a public servant, clergyman or teacher was not allowed to be a candidate in a city council election. Writes Bavinck, “Thus eligibility to any office in Scripture is bound by certain requirements, 1 Timothy 3; but no such limits are placed on the power to vote.”
Finally, Bavinck comes to a brief discussion of Scripture. In Acts 1:15, in the meeting of the 120 people to replace Judas as apostle, women were certainly there (Acts 1:14). True, Peter addresses the gathering as “Men and Brothers.” That was common practice and it still was in the church of Bavinck’s day. Even though they were present the sisters were never mentioned. It’s therefore uncertain as to whether or not the women present participated in the process. Other passages like Acts 13:3 and Acts 14:23 likewise do not shed any light. Bavinck concludes that while Scripture limits the offices of the church to men, there is no definite and clear statement about who may vote.
Indeed, it seems to Bavinck, in the ancient church women were not excluded from choosing bishops or making contributions to other ecclesiastical matters. He points out that, in his day, in Germany there were Roman Catholic congregations where independent women had long been allowed to vote on the choice of a pastor. Similar situations occur in the Netherlands, he says, proving that women have not always been excluded from the voting process in the congregation just because they are women.”
.
Con
1800’s
M’Crie, Sr., Thomas – ‘On the Right of Females to Vote in the Election of Ministers & Elders’ (1822; RBO, 2015) 8 pp. a letter, re-edited with explanatory footnotes.
This is the classic, historic piece arguing ‘no.’ M’Crie’s letter is a model of principle mixed with humility and charity. M’Crie was an early 1800’s Scottish presbyterian of the Seceder tradition, and a foremost historian of the Scottish Covenanters.
.
2000’s
Kayser, Phillip – ‘Universal Suffrage: a History & Analysis of Voting in the Church & Society’ (2007) 21 pp.
This is the fullest and most detailed argument against ladies voting in both the Church and State.
.
The Scottish Church
(See also Rutherford above and pp. 10-11 of Fentiman’s article)
.
On the 1500’s
Todd, Margo – p. 23 in The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland (Yale University Press, 2002)
.
On the 1600’s
M’Crie, Jr., Thomas – p. 232 of The Story of the Scottish Church See especially the 2nd paragraph of the footnote. The context, from p. 228, is the discussion of patronage.
M’Crie Jr. was the son of M’Crie Sr., and was also a minister in the Secession Church of Scotland and a renowned historian of the Scottish Church.
M’Crie here describes (especially in the footnote) the view and practice of the Church of Scotland from 1649 (though not mentioning females), with a note about the relation of the Independent controversy. M’Crie summarily states what Gillespie argues for below.
Gillespie, George – ch. 2, ‘Of the Elections of Pastors with the Congregations Consent’ in A Treatise of Miscellaneous Questions (Edinburgh: Ogle, 1649)
Gillespie argues and delineates the very nuanced theory and practice of election in the Church of Scotland during the Westminster era.
He does not mention females specifically, but seems to imply their consent in the consent of the congregation. Gillespie, while affirming the necessity of the consent of the congregation, gives the chief part in election to the elders of the session of the local church. Fentiman’s view (see especially pp. 16-18 of his analysis) is consistent with this.
“The question is not…
whether the whole collective body of the Church ought to be assembled, and their voices severally asked in elections, for all may consent when none vote in elections but the representative body of the church…
nor whether liberty ought to be granted to the whole congregation, or any member thereof [females are members], to object against the man’s life or doctrine, or against his qualifications for such a particular charge…
but the question is whether it be necessarily required to the right vocation of a pastor that he be freely elected by the votes of the eldership [session] and with the consent (tacit or expressed) of the major or better part of the congregation, so that he be not obtruded renitente et contradicente ecclesia [‘resisting and contradicting the Church’].
…
Neither, in this same point of elections, do we homologate [agree] with them [Independents, Anabaptists and Separatists] who give to the collective body of the church (women and children under age only excepted) the power of decisive vote and suffrage in elections, we give the vote only to the eldership or church representative, so that they carry along with them the consent of the major or better part of the congregation… out of Thomas [Aquinas] this difference betwixt consent and election, that though every choosing be a consenting, yet every consenting is not a choosing.
[1] The liberty of consent is one thing; [2] counsel or deliberation another thing; [3] the power of a decisive voice in court or judicatory a third thing. I speak of a constituted church (for where there is not yet an eldership there can be no such distinction; yet, however, be there an eldership, or be there none, the church’s consent must be had).
The first of these [consent] we ascribe to the whole church, without whose knowledge and consent ministers may not be intruded;
the second [counsel & deliberation] to the ablest and wisest men of the congregation, especially to magistrates, with whose special advice, privity and deliberation, the matter ought to be managed;
the third [a decisive voice in court], which is the formal and consistorial determination of the case of election, consists in the votes of the eldership.
Their way [Independents, etc.] is much different than this, who would have the matter prepared by the conference and deliberation of the eldership (as we used to do in committees),¹ but determined and decided by the votes of the whole congregation.
[¹There was a change in the Church of Scotland’s practice on this, probably due a response to the Independents. See Thomas M’Crie (the younger), p. 232 of The Story of the Scottish Church See especially the 2nd paragraph of the footnote. The context, from p. 228, is the discussion of patronage.]
…
I conclude with a passage out of the Ecclesiastical Discipline of the Reformed Churches in France, ch. 1, ‘The silence of the people, none contradicting, shall be taken for an express consent…”
.
Henderson, G.D. – pp. 216-25 of ch. 6, ‘Controversy’ in The Scottish Ruling Elder (1935)
“The Order for the election of elders in use at Edinburgh at the Reformation gave the Session the duty of selecting a number of names from which the congregation chose half to be elders. This Order was generally confirmed by the Assembly of 1582. According to the Second Book of Discipline the Session nominates and the people approve. The names of those proposed were always brought before the congregation in order that any objection might be brought forward. [John G.] Lorimer, quoting the Presbyterian Review, 1834, makes a vain attempt to insist that there was real popular election in the seventeenth century… Everybody, however, was satisfied that the people’s rights were amply preserved when the Session elected.
In 1642 the Assembly stated the rule that the old Session should elect the new [elders] both in town and country, always of course with the consent of the people [contra patronage]… The same custom was followed in the churches of Strassburg, France and Holland…
…On these occasions [in 1654, 1656, 1658, 1669, which were enumerated by Henderson, though not quoted here] the congregation apparently was not present, though the regular edicts with regard to objections had been submitted; but clearly it was more usual to admit elders publicly before the congregation, as for example at Yester in 1683. Nevertheless, at the end of the eighteenth century and beginning of the nineteenth elders at Oldmachar were regularly admitted simply at a Session meeting.
…
But the idea of popular election really came in with the Secessions [1733 ff.]. Currie, of Kinglassie, a Church of Scotland minister, had attempted something approaching popular election before 1740. In 1761 Aberdeen Associate Church minutes that ‘this congregation knows that the right of election belongs to such as are in full communion with us.’
In the Church of Scotland some of the Evangelicals favored popular election, and Lorimer devotes a chapter [ch. 10] in his Eldership of the Church of Scotland to advocating the method. It had been definitely rejected by Assembly a few years previously, but in 1842 it was carried, and it became the rule in the Free Church. At Urquhart Free Church in 1845 elders were elected at a meeting of male communicants and male heads of families…”
.
The Secession Church of Scotland 1733 ff.
Brown of Haddington, John – Letter 10, ‘Of the Election of Ministers’ in Letters on the Constitution, Government & Discipline of the Christian Church 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: Turnbull, 1799), pp. 62-71 See especially p. 69.
Brown of Haddington (1722-1787) was a leading minister and professor in the Secession Church of Scotland during the mid-to-late 1700’s.
Thomas M’Crie Sr. (1772-1835, also a Secession minister) said, regarding the voting of females in ecclesiastical elections, that “I am satisfied it was not the practice in the Secession [Church of Scotland] at the beginning [1733 ff.].” M’Crie refers to two pieces of evidence for this, only one of which he cites. The wording in the citation is a bit ambiguous and is up for interpretation (see more on this below).
The documentation below casts great doubt on M’Crie’s claim, if not partly overturns it. If head of household voting was not the practice of the Secession Church (the leading evangelical Church in Scotland during the 1700’s), it also casts doubt that head-of-household voting was the accepted, societal, practice of the Scottish Christian Churches of that era, which M’Crie assumes.
Brown frames the question as “whether visible believers, adult, blameless, have a right to choose their pastors and other officers…” (p. 63)
One of his opponents (who is arguing for patronage: for civil citizens, who are not church-members, having a vote in the election of a church officer) poses the question: “Shall a cottager, poor, unlearned, who pays not one farthing of the stipend [to the minister]… have an equal choice of a minister with his [civil] master…?” (p. 67)
In responding, Brown says, “If worldly privileges and endowments cannot make one a subject of the Mediator’s spiritual kingdom; how can they entitle any to, or raise him above his brethren, in the privileges thereof? If by the Son of God the poor cottager has been made free indeed… has received a kingdom which cannot be moved…” Brown goes on to mention “the poorest believer”. (pp. 67-8)
In this context, on the grounds of the right for Church election, Brown says: “How easy to find the herdman, the silly woman, who will endure a trial on Christian principles to far other purpose than many of your rich, your great!” (p. 68) Brown goes on to say, “While in Him, there is neither male nor female… headship over a family can found no claim to a spiritual privilege.” (p. 68)
Brown continues: “Your great man bears the load of the [minister’s] stipend no more than the poorest cottager… might not a poor widow’s two mites be more in Jesus’s account than all he gives? Will you… indulge the thought that the gifts of God, the spiritual privileges of his Church, are to be purchased with money?” (p. 69)
Brown again frames the question on p. 70 as, “in the choice of a pastor, where none but the visible members of Christ’s mystical body, adult and blameless, were admitted to act in the choice… To deprive the Christian people of their privilege in choosing their pastors and give it to others…”
Brown’s framing of the question and arguments that he supports it with are only coherent if lady-church-members had a part in electing their officers.
Letter 11 makes it clear that Brown did not consider the election (partly by females) of officers to be an act of ruling power or that it confers power on the officer. Rather the power by which the officer was ordained and installed was that of the elders: “Election marks out the person; confers not the office,” (p. 71) etc.
M’Crie makes his argument for the Secession Church in its early period only having male-voting by the use in his historical quote of the terms: ‘brethren’, ‘brotherhood’ and related words. However, in a quote above (and in Brown’s chapter and book generally), as Brown considers females to have a right to vote for ecclesiastical officers, his use of the term ‘brethren’ must refer to the body of male and female church members, and not males only.
The Oxford English Dictionary (1979, the most standard and authoritative dictionary of the English language), defines ‘brother’ and its plural use (‘brethren’) through the 1500’s to 1800’s (citing numerous examples) as inclusive of the meanings:
“A fellow member of a Christian society, or of the Christian Church as a whole; a fellow Christian; a co-religionist generally.”
“‘The Brethren’: in N.T. the members of the early Christian churches; hence, sometimes adopted by (or applied ironically to) members of various Christian associations, claiming to adhere to New Testament principles; e.g. the Puritan party in the Church of England under Queen Elizabeth…”
Thus, it is clear that the historic English usage of the terms could follow, and often did follow (especially in a religious context) the usage of the New Testament Greek terms (which included females, see Fentiman, pp. 9-10).
.
The Westminster Assembly
In debates at the Westminster Assembly over Church government, the ‘Dissenting Brethren’, seven leading Independents, put in their objections to the proposals of the largely presbyterian Assembly. The Assembly responded in detail to this new way of Church government and their objections with detailed, Scriptural arguments.
The presbyterian Assembly held and argued that one public meeting would not have been able to hold all of the Christians in Jerusalem, and that multiple congregations of Christians in the city were united under one presbyterial government. The Independents argued, on the other hand, that there was only one public meeting of the church in Jerusalem. In seeking to prove that all the Christians in Jerusalem met together in one place, the Independents argued that the ‘whole multitude’ of ‘disciples’ in Acts 6:2,5, which were met together to elect church officers (Acts 6:3,5-6), designated all of the believers in Jerusalem.
The Westminster Assembly argued that the phrase ‘all the multitude kept silence’ in the Jerusalem synod in Acts 15:12 (where only male elders would have spoken) did not refer to every believer in Jerusalem, and that the Independents affirm this. If this is true in Acts 15:12, then there is no reason to interpret the similar phrase in a local, church election in Acts 6:2,5 differently.
In the presbyterian Assembly making this argument, they distinguish themselves from the Independent practice of not allowing women and children ‘their suffrages’ (votes), which the Assembly implicitly held to be due to them. ‘Children’ here could very well have been meant to include, rather than young children, teenagers and single men under the roof of their father.
The Westminster Assembly’s statements are consistent with Gillespie and Rutherford’s testimony (above) that not allowing women and ‘children’ to vote was a novel distinctive of the Independents, and not a characteristic of presbyterians.
The Answer of the Assembly of Divines unto the Reasons of the Seven Dissenting Brethren, against the Proposition of Divers Congregations being United under one Presbyterial Government in The Grand Debate, The Reasons Presented by the Dissenting Brethren Against Certain Propositions Concerning Presbyterian Church Government (Naphtali Press, 2014), Reason 5, Answer 1, p. 118
“‘Then all the multitude kept silence,’ [Acts 15:12] which even themselves [the Independents] will not expound of ‘all’ the church [every last person], but only of such as were men of age and discretion [that is, the elders in the Jerusalem synod who would have been speaking], excluding women and children, who if excluded from the multitude there [in Acts 15:12], why not here? [in Acts 6:2,5] Especially considering that this meeting [in Acts 6:2,5] was for the choosing of church officers, wherein we suppose our [Independent] brethren will not allow women and children their suffrages.”
.
On the Word ‘Brethren,’ Acts 6:3
Quote
Samuel Rutherford
A Survey of the Survey of that Sum of Church-Discipline Penned by Mr. Thomas Hooker (1658), pp. 285-86
“Why does Mr. [Thomas] Hooker [a congregationalist] give this new [type of] Church [a congregationalist church,] a Latin name, ‘The Fraternity’, that is, a Church of redeemed ones built on the Rock, made up of brethren and no sisters?
Ah! are women, servants, aged children, nor redeemed, not built on the Rock? So is there a Gospel-instituted Church described. The word [in Greek], as Stephanus tells us, is only twice in the New Testament: 1 Pet. 2:17, ‘Love the brotherhood’, that is, the company of the brethren, say Mr. Leigh, Beza, Calvin, English Annotators. ‘The company of the brethren’, Lorinus; ‘The Church’, Esthius; the brethren by regeneration, and new birth. So Piscator, the brethren that are regenerated; as ‘the nobility’ is put for the nobles.
Let any man judge, if name or thing [as signifying only males] be so much as hinted at, when Paul and the rest of the apostles exhort the brethren, Jam. 5:12, ‘My brethren, swear not’, does he not forbid women to swear?… Yea, and when Paul determined to come to the brethren at Rome, Rom. 1:13-14, to whom he was debtor to preach the Gospel, came he only as such a debtor to brethren of a single congregation [as in congregationalism]? or only such brethren of a single congregation justified by faith? are they only no debtors to the flesh? Rom. 8:12 & 7:1 & 10:1 & 7:4, ‘Wherefore my brethren, ye are become dead to the law by the body of Christ’: are not women dead to the law through Christ?
See Rom. 8:12; 1 Cor. 1:10,26, and in many places of the Old and New Testament, if the Scripture mean only unofficed men by ‘the Fraternity’ and ‘Brethren’. Cyprian hath the word ‘Fraternity’, the whole Fraternity: but all that read him know, he means most ordinarily the whole Church and flock of men and women. And when it is taken for only men, it is brethren in office, Acts 10:23 & 15:23, never for brethren of this new devised Church. Augustine useth it sometime for brethren in the Ministry, and so doth Basil and the Fathers.”
.
Article
Fentiman, Travis – pp. 9-10 of ‘An Analysis of Rutherford & M’Crie on whether Ladies have the Right to Vote for Church Officers’ (RBO, 2015)
.
Historical: The Origin of Women Debating & Voting in Congregational Affairs
Notes on the Below
The issue treated of below is not ladies giving an assent, or expressing that consent in a public vote, to proposed Church officers ruling over the congregation.
Rather, the issue here is of lay-members, including ladies, giving, by their public vote, their power unto determining ecclesiastical affairs, or, in other words, in governing the churches. Their speaking before the congregation is not simply to give relevant witness and information, so that minds and relevant factors might be known, but rather has the nature of public legislators exercising governance in so determining such things.
.
Quote
Robert Baillie
A Dissuasive from the Errors of the Time, wherein the Tenets of the Principal Sects, Especially of the Independents, are Drawn Together in One Map (1645), ch. 6, p. 111
“In this our London Independents exceed all their brethren, who of late begin to give unto women power of debating in the face of the congregation and of determining ecclesiastic causes by their suffrages, if doctor Bastwick be rightly informed.”
.
On Women Publicly Covenanting
Scottish Reformation
Todd, Margo – p. 119 in The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland (Yale University Press, 2002)
.
.
.
Related Pages