For God’s sake! Let the women sit at the table

Even at 80 years old, my deceased grandmother would walk a relatively long distance and on top of that cross a very busy and precarious road just so she could go to “her church”; The Church of Pentecost.

Occasionally, her daughters who attended a nearby Christ Apostolic Church would certainly impress upon her the potential dangers in crossing that busy road and an attempt to persuade her to join them, but no she won’t barge.

Repeatedly on Sundays, as was ritually expected, she gets dressed up and heads out to her church.

I remember quite profoundly, those midnights in the village that she would wake me up for dawn services. As I reminisce, I recall Teacher Evans, my Sunday school teacher, who relentlessly, would endeavour to come into our compound to insist that my brothers and I attend Sunday school to the extent that on some Sundays, he had to simply chase us around the neighborhood.

I emphasized these points to illustrate that the church was an inevitable part of my life while growing up. However, perhaps like most teenagers, during my senior high school days, I began drifting away, and then came the transition into the University which took me away almost completely.

Fast forward to 2015, as fate would have it, here I was studying in a foreign land where the tendency of losing one’s focus and sense of self is high particularly due to youthful exuberance.

In order to stay grounded in my identity, I found myself searching for my beginnings and I ended up where I had started; the Church of Pentecost, where I still continue to fellowship.

On one fateful Sunday, the presiding elder led a discussion on the theme; Organization and Tenets of the Church of Pentecost. It came to my attention that there are no female representations at the highest decision making bodies of the church i.e. the General Council and the Executive Council.

As curious as I was, I queried and was told that the General Council membership requires one to be an ordained Elder, and to be a member of the Executive Council, one has to be an Apostle.

As a doctrinal principle the Church of Pentecost does not ordain women into the position of eldership and/or apostleship, hence their complete absence at both councils. That answer and explanation to me were grossly unsatisfactory, given that a church whose membership is largely women, they are completely left out at the highest decision making bodies of the church because of such a discriminatory doctrine. This puzzled me, for which reason I decided to probe further.

On another soulful Sunday, I came into contact with the Apostle of the Church of Pentecost in our part of the world in whose absence, the earlier stated discussions had taken place. As bewildered as I was, I put forward the same question as to why the outright neglect of our mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters at the paramount authoritative bodies in the Church. The apostle began his submission by referring to the scriptures where Jesus appointed twelve male disciples as perhaps his justification.

He went further to say because Jesus did not appoint any woman as part of the twelve that is why the church doesn’t appoint women as elders or as apostles and invariably their inability to qualify for the council. I humbly enquired of the Apostle as to why he thinks Jesus didn’t appoint any women as disciples. His answer was; the answer to why isn’t always clear or now that I think about it, perhaps he was just trying to get rid of me. Nonetheless, I did find the answer quite lackadaisical, the apostle couldn’t or wouldn’t explain to me why Jesus didn’t appoint any female disciple yet the church continues in that path.

From the pulpit, messages said again and again: “Whatever you put your mind to and work hard at, you can achieve it, with God on your side of course.” Well inherent in that statement is a hypocrisy that we have allowed to persist on for decades because per the status quo there is no amount of hard work and God's favour that would qualify a woman to the status of eldership or apostleship. '

The artificial ceiling is virtually certain that currently as it stands, they cannot make it to the highest decision making body of the church. In effect, we have subconsciously created a culture of nonchalance and perhaps timidity amongst the women because apparently, they have accepted the relegation.

The church I believe to a large extent is arguably responsible for the moral conscience of our society, good or evil.

Our dear women as do our men albeit one can argue that the men are more recalcitrant embodies the socialization that goes on in the church and so when we tell them that they cannot sit at the highest table and they believe and accept it, why won’t they capitulate when the rest of society tells them they can’t sit at that table either. Don’t get me wrong, a couple of women would get over the gargantuan hurdle however a conscious gaze at all sectors of our so-called modern society reveals conspicuously the enormity of the patriarchy. Sadly we continue to embolden a toxic system entrenched by our colonial masters and upheld by our fathers.

In the not so distant future, if this culture is not uprooted, another president will opine similarly about the lack of dynamism among Ghanaian women as the current president recently did and the church would have failed yet again the next generation of women.

Respectfully, women should absolutely have representation at the councils one way or another and since the criteria for being a member of the council requires the position of Eldership or Apostleship, then there ought to be different criteria set out for women membership to abolish this discriminatory artificial barrier instituted against women.

For example, a system can be instituted for women of good standing and character to be nominated and perhaps elected for as is done for the membership of the Executive Council. In the accounts of Luke 8:1-3 we understand that every city and every village that Jesus ministered in, in addition to the twelve disciples, certain women were with Him all time.

In the highly patriarchal Jewish society of about 2000 years ago Jesus didn’t sideline women such as Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Susanna so how is it possible that in a Ghanaian society in 2020 we have allowed the continuance of an Executive Council whose membership is 15 men and a General Council whose membership is however many presiding elders and apostles there are.

I am not entirely sure how my grandmother looking down from heaven would feel about this but I am pretty sure she’s smiling down on me here and frankly this isn’t an environment I want my unborn daughter(s) to grow in or my unborn son(s) either.