Women In The Episcopal Church

As a Christian in the twenty-first century, it is important to be open-minded and slow to judge others’ denominations and ideas about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. Personally, I grew up in a Church of Christ, although after coming to Abilene and visiting other churches I have come to realize that my home church is more like a non-denominational church than a traditional Church of Christ. Upon visiting churches in Abilene, I am a frequent member of The Well, which is a non-denominational church that has many similarities to my church back home. For the church that I visited, I decided to attend an Episcopal church and I attended The Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest on February 28th. There were two services, one at 8:00 and one …show more content…
Generally, Churches of Christ tend to hold conservative viewpoints about scripture and the structure of the church. It makes sense for churches of Christ to observe the masculine pronouns and the specificity of verse 11 to women and therefore conclude that only men should have formal leadership roles in the church. As for Episcopalians, women do have and maintain formal roles in the structure of the church. When viewing this passage, they most likely have a more open mind and take into consideration that male pronouns were used in all writing during this time period. In fact, the Episcopal church has a different organizational structure of leadership as the Church of Christ, and typically has several female leaders, even going beyond just deacons but also having female celebrants and other pastoral positions. These differences in doctrines both significantly affect the churches. With a different doctrine with something as important and foundational about who holds leadership roles, the atmospheres of the churches are very different. In the Church of Christ, because of the male-domination of the leadership, most major decisions are made by males without much variation in ideas. Because Episcopalians have a more diverse leadership group, there is more opportunities for a wider mind range and more ideas. However, Episcopalians have a specific order and structure for doing things, so this does not necessarily mean that they will actually accomplish more things, but that they will have more