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There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:28
This seminal statement in the letter to the Galatians is the foundation upon which this book is based. Its clear teaching about our unity in Christ overrides other sources of identity and is the recurring theme in this careful, sensitive and informed research about issues surrounding the ministry of women in the churches.
Neither Male nor Female’s particular focus is the Lutheran Church of Australia, traditionally opposed to such leadership, and apparently based on what has been considered sound interpretations of New Testament teaching, especially in the letters of Paul
Noel Schultz does not ignore the passages used by those who oppose women in ministry. Rather, as an eminently qualified scholar of the Bible, he contends that such texts need to be understood in their original social contexts with all the limitations that such contexts make to our ongoing understanding of their teaching.
The struggle to include women in ministry and leadership in the churches has been long and divisive. Neither Male nor Female argues that now is the time for the Lutheran Church of Australia (and other Christian churches) to affirm the roles of women at all levels of the church’s life and especially reassess their dependence on such exclusion on long misunderstood Scripture verses and long abandoned expectations of women’s roles in society an church.
