A few weeks ago, I had the distinct privilege to attend a Notre Dame Panel on "Women and the Church: An Inter-Tradition Dialogue" and the question is "Christianity Bad for Women?" The accomplished women that made up this panel were best-selling Christian author Rachel Held Evans, Social Service Sr. Simone Campbell, executive director of NETWORK and popular national spokesman for the Nuns on the Bus movement and Mary Rice Hasson, a self-proclaimed Catholic conservative writer, speaker and author who is also a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. It was an honor to hear each perspective and see such great disagreement in such a reconciliatory and respectful way.

As a young evangelical millennial woman raised and shaped by the profound wisdom and leadership of strong Christian women, this topic of what women's role in the church should be is one I often wrestle with.Fortunately, the question "is Christianity bad for women", is an easier question to answer. If we take a brief look outside our Western shoes, and beyond our borders, we see worldwide that female children have been deprived of food, sold into slavery, or denied education, It has been the church that has instilled back in these women their God-given value, purpose, and dignity. The church fostered their growth and education.Why is that? At the heart of the gospel is this radical idea that we as humans, as Imago Dei, or the image bearers of God are imbued at creation with unalienable purpose and dignity. This is regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation or religious practice. It is regardless of every mistake you've made, are making now or could ever make. The fundamental truth about you and everyone around you is that at the foundation of all you are is that you passionately and whole-hearted loved and accepted by Jesus, and so much of his blood was shed to ransom you.

This radical acceptance of Jesus doesn't give a free license to indulge uninhibited, but a calling into life to at the fullest. It's a wholeness that liberates us from pretense, and from chasing hollow empty pavement. It humbles us out of our self-righteous attitudes and petulant stubbornness to blaze our path. It's a revelation beyond the half-hearted connections, meaningless run throughs and dark shadows that are so apt to color our lives. In this act is the good news, and it's for everyone. It's for the broken, the sick, the poor, the rich, the successful, but Jesus, in particular, focused his ministry on the marginalized, on the outliers of society. Because is it really good news, if it's only good for the best of the best, No. It's good news, only if it's good news as well to the poor, to women, to the LGBT, to African Americans, it is so radically upside down that is a completely counter-cultural doctrine to not only to Bible times but to now.

If I center myself in this, my problems are less with fighting the institution that can sometimes be unfair to women and other minorities and instead I fight for a more fruitful and restorative cause, fighting for the dignity and value of people in the midst of the struggle. It's was not God's design that patriarchy, sexism, and discrimination came to be, but rather that was a part of the curse.

Women played a vital role in scripture. Who were the first people that saw the resurrected Christ and were given the lofty task of changing humanity? Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and other women who came to the tomb. Who was called by Paul, “A fellow worker in Christ” and held up as the great teacher? Priscilla. Who was given the responsibility to answer to angels, take on cultural and personal scorn and shame,and bear the Son of God, Mary, the mother of Jesus? Jesus engaged women as peers and nourished their leadership.Stories of strong women leaders color the pages of our most beloved Bible stories. Who hasn't heard the stories of Miriam, Deborah, Abigail,Esther and more? These women challenged and warred against armies, fought Kings and nations, saw unbelievable miracles and revelations. Miriam led the Israelite in the powerful worship of their defender, reconciler, and provider after their rescue from Egypt. Rahab put her neck on the line to rescue the Joshua and Caleb at the risk of her own life, knowing it would benefit God’s people and save her family. Barak recognized God speaking to Deborah of the Israelite’s victory in battle—and they won against astronomical odds. Abigail, Ruth, Esther, Naomi, the Proverbs 31 woman—all made judgment calls and acted to benefit God’s purposes. New Testament passages endorse the ministry, teaching, and leadership of Lydia, Dorcas, Priscilla, Tryphena, Euodia, Syntyche, Junia and many others. God endowed these biblical women with unique and mighty gifts for handling what came their way as they built God’s Kingdom. This Biblical legacy of women reveals a broader spectrum of women's role than we often see translated in churches. Even from the beginning at creation women, specifically Eve was designed to be the helper, but if we look at the Hebrew word for this ezer, it's not a derogatory or subservient term, but a term used to describe God's ability to shield, provide, and defend.

So what is the practical application of this? First Our primary focus as a church and as we live out the Gospel daily, we should shift back to Jesus's ministry of the margins. While as evangelicals, we are passionate and proactive in dealing with issues of personal sin such as sexual immorality, lust, swearing, gossip etc, we can tend to let more systemic sin such as racism and repression of women and other cultural minorities fall to the wayside. We called to not to perpetuate a spiritualized version of our culture, but to embrace the radical, countercultural idea that the exceptions, the oppressed, and the margins of society pave the way in the Kingdom. We called to not sit idly by and embrace neutral comfortable life, but stand in the gaps and in words of Desmond Tutu, a South African pastor and social justice activist, “In a situation where human life seems dirt cheap, with people being killed as easily as one swats a fly, we must proclaim that people matter and matter enormously, because they are created in the image of God.”

Secondly, we as a church must embrace and foster the leadership of all those gifted and called. I think it's a mistake to assume that if women ran the church that the basic ideologies, practices, and teachings of the church would change especially on issues of sexual immorality and ethics. We have the assumptions that the Church is against women by being against abortion and sexual promiscuity, but those practices are actually detrimental both men and women. Men and women living in equality and mutuality is a more fuller picture of our triune God who lives in dynamic equality and mutuality. We are called as the body of Christ to be conduits of grace, love, and salvation, and our broken, bleeding the world can't afford to wait for us to finish this argument of who get to what to redeem and reconcile them.As Dorothy Sayers wrote, on the practical work of living out the Gospel and redeeming souls in the Kingdom: “As we cannot afford to squander our natural resources of minerals, food, and beauty, so we cannot afford to discard any human resources of brains, skills, and initiative, even though it is women who possess them.”

So let's live out the Gospel radically reconciled together, men and women. Let's fight together on equal platforms, with equal voices for the value and dignity of all humans, Let's advocate for and minister to the margins, and let the gospel be hope in the midst of the darkest shadows. Let's seek and deeper and fuller picture of our God by embracing and valuing our differences. Let's be banner carrying, Christ empowered anointed prophets of love and truth. Let's do it... together.