Dr Paul Allen

A while back on Church Leaders, N.T. Wright was interviewed on what he thinks about women preachers. Here’s what he said: “The usual idea that women were kept down in the ancient world and it’s only recently that feminism has brought them back up is quite wrong,” Wright argues.  The theologian, who recently published a book called The New Testament in Its World, said women who had some authority in the church and society were not anathema in the ancient world.  “There were many independent women in Paul’s world, and that was something Paul worked with.” In John 20, when Jesus is raised from the dead, the first person he meets is Mary Magdalene. “He does not say, Mary, I’ve got some essential news–I want you to go get Peter because I need to tell him so that he can then go and tell everybody else,” Wright explains.  Instead, “he says, ‘Mary, go and tell my brothers–those men who are hiding at home because they’re scared–go and tell them I am ascending to my father and your...