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Originally Posted by UntoHim
Evangelical, we don't have to go back 200 years, but only to early to mid 20th Century China to see the influence of women in the church...well at least your church. After all, your guru's guru's gurus were WOMEN. Thank God that neither you (or any other antiquated male bigot) were around to stifle the work of the Holy Spirit through the LEADERSHIP of those dear sisters....else the Local Church of Witness Lee movement would have never come about. Poor, poor Christianity would have remained...just that...poor. So you of all people on this forum should be thankful for the leadership and influence of those godly women upon the life of Watchman Nee.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Evangelical
Those women weren't leading a church were they?
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I think Evangelical's reply is entirely too dismissive. What does "leading" mean? Does Paul write, "I don't permit women to
lead" or "I don't permit women to
teach"?
And doesn't the Little Flock/Lord's recovery in fact permit women to teach, if they publish (or promote) Mary McDonough as an authoritative source on the "recovery" of "The Three Parts of Man" teaching?
But I want to unpack Evangelical's phrase "Leading a church"... from my memory, and others can correct me, both Ruth Lee and Miss Elizabeth Fishchbacher exercised far-reaching editorial discretion at turning Watchman Nee's speaking notes into published works, both in Chinese and English, respectively. I think the Lee biography of Nee, "Seer of the Divine Revelation", has a whole section on Ruth Lee (and Peace Wang, etc). Ruth Lee had great power in the Little Flock, as the one who made Nee's talks "official". Fishchbacher did the same thing with Keswick notes, and other speakings. Isn't that leadership? And if not, why can't women be senior editors in the LSM today, as Ruth Lee was for Nee? Why is it 100% male purview? It was not always, clearly.
My question is: why did women have such de facto "leadership" roles in the Little Flock/Lord's recovery movement 80 or 90 years ago, but not today? How did they get such editorial power once, but no more? I've never seen the current LSM leadership, nor Lee before them, ever address this obvious question. The only person who's answered has been poster
Ohio who replied that "abnormality" and "degradation" in the early years allowed for such exception, like Deborah judging Israel.
Okay, but if so, who's to determine what's normal and what isn't? The Deputy God? That's hopelessly biased and self-serving. The Deputy God or MOTA decides when women are useful and used in leadership, then when no longer needed and can be "sent down" to their traditional places. Is that how the Kingdom of God is to be run on earth? On the whims of the Chief Sinner? This isn't the Kingdom of God but the Way of the Gentiles, the Way of the Heathen. It's just like every other human kingdom, the Kingdom of Me. As one former LC'er put it: "The local church 'kingdom' is 'Me King, You Dumb'".
Or, also put bluntly, "When I do it, it's normal and godly and proper, but when you do it, it's degraded and fallen." That's what it all boils down to: subjectivism run amok. "I can do it, but you can't." Ten-year-olds are taught to abandon such selfish thinking.
I know that this thread was on "Repetition, ritual, religion" but my OP was that the use of repetitive shouting makes one's mind numb, and leads to suppression of one's critical faculties, and thus the easier to ignore the obvious and glaring discrepancies in logic and thought that turn up occasionally. And the role of women in the Little Flock/Lord's recovery movement is Exhibit A.