God and women
Christians have interpreted the Bible as giving men explicit authority over women for the last 2,000 years. Is this belief justified by scripture? or is this a practice best consigned to the rubbish heap of history?
Does the Bible require my wife to listen to what I say because I'm a man and she's not? Does the Bible forbid my wife from teaching me? from pastoring a church? from having authority over other men, or me?
When I was about 9 or 10 (we moved frequently, and I remember the house we were in at the time), I remember having a talk with my parents about the Bible. I don't remember how it came up, but at one point, Dad told me that he was the head of the house, and everyone had to listen to him - including Mom. I scoffed and said, "Yeah, I don't think that's true." (Just ask anyone who knew me when I was younger - I was harshly dismissive of others, including my parents.) Internally, I thought Dad was just trying to get me to listen to him (I also had a problem with obedience - so sorry, Mom and Dad!). But Mom piped up and said, "No, it's true. If your dad wants to buy a sports car, I can tell him I think it's a bad idea, but I can't tell him 'no'." And that was the point when I became a complementarian - not because my dad was a complementarian, but because my mom went along with it.
But is this biblical? Does my mom really have to let my dad spend tens of thousands of dollars on a luxury item if that's what he's decided to do? I hardly think so.
There are a variety of perspectives on why the relegation of women to second-class is incorrect, and even unbiblical. I'll try to address a few of these here. The most frequently quoted passages in reference to the issue of women leading or speaking in church are 1 Timothy 3:1-7, Titus 1:6-9, and 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, so feel free to have a quick read.
Possibility 1: Paul's letters address specific churches with specific issues
Some scholars and teachers assert that Paul never issued a blanket prohibition on women teaching or speaking in church, but rather gave specific churches instructions on how to handle unruly congregations. It's a matter of historical record that several cities in the early church (including Ephesus, where Timothy lived) had problems with pagan cults. According to our records, these cults had issues with women exerting domineering authority over men. This wasn't just an issue in a patriarchal society; the behavior of these particular women might be compared to the behavior of particularly sexist men today. This would cause strife within the early church, and Paul would want to make sure such behavior stopped. A quick mention in his next letter would ensure that his advice was followed, and Paul didn't dwell on these issues - he mentioned it briefly and moved on.
Finally, remember that the Bible is not the Word of God. God wasn't using Paul to implement a rule for the entire church until Christ's return - Paul was just writing a letter. Paul fully expected Jesus to return in his lifetime, so he never envisioned that his letters would still be read by the church almost 2,000 years after his death, and he certainly never considered that the later church would consider his words to be universal commandments. He probably never even intended his letters to be read by other churches of his day; the epistles to Timothy were private letters, and the epistles to Corinth weren't intended for Ephesus or Rome or the Jews. It's a precarious position indeed to consider Paul's church-specific instructions to be general commands applicable 2,000 years later.
Possibility 2: Paul's letters are misinterpreted
The New Testament was written in Greek. No translation is perfect, unfortunately, and sometimes, things don't translate perfectly from Greek to English for one reason or another. The pastoral qualifications in 1 Timothy and Titus are written with gender-neutral pronouns, which is a feature of Greek that doesn't translate well to English. English is a language that uses masculine pronouns as the default, so when 1 Timothy and Titus were translated, the translators used the masculine pronouns in English. This led patriarchal churches reading English Bibles to assume that the language was meant to be gendered, when in the original Greek, it was not.
As for 1 Corinthians 14, there must be an alternative interpretation of Paul's prohibition on women "speaking" in Church because three chapters earlier, Paul speaks of women keeping their heads covered when they pray and prophesy. It could be argued that Paul is not talking about church-specific customs until later in chapter 11, but considering public prophecy was a common part of church gatherings in Paul's day, I don't find that argument particularly convincing. The issue of head coverings does raise some questions regarding Paul's stance on egalitarianism, but Paul makes clear in 1 Corinthians 11:16 that he is referring to customs regarding hair coverings, not to God's commands. Nowhere in 11:2-15 does Paul suggest that God commands women to have their heads covered when they pray, only that the church customs require it. There are a number of alternate egalitarian interpretations of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35.
Possibility 3: Paul's letters reveal his cultural bias, and do not constitute a command from God
Paul is writing his letters in his capacity as an apostle. However, we also need to consider the single biggest change in my theology: The Bible is not the Word of God. The Bible is a collection of works by men who wanted to share their experiences with God, or else to try to teach others how to follow God. These men are fallible, and they have their own set of preconceptions and prejudices that are likely to bleed through into their θεόπνευστος work. It's entirely possible that Paul can be writing a God-breathed work that includes sexist or otherwise incorrect theology.
Possibility 4: The Pastoral Epistles are inauthentic
The majority of Bible scholars today reject the Pauline authorship of the Pastoral Epistles (1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus). There are several reasons for this. The use of vocabulary is greatly different between Paul's undisputed epistles and the Pastoral Epistles (the Pastoral Epistles use several hundred unique words compared to the genuine Pauline epistles), as is the grammatical style. No early copies of the Pastoral Epistles have been uncovered. No contemporaries of Paul make mention of the Pastoral Epistles in their own writings, nor mention content that may be associated with them. The church described in the Pastoral Epistles seems to be different than the church as it existed in Paul's day. The earliest significant mention of the Pauline Epistles is from Polycarp, a 2nd century CE martyr (Polycarp has been proposed by some scholars as the actual author of 1 Timothy for this reason). And finally, the early lists of Paul's authentic works do not include the Pastoral Epistles.
Statement of faith
I believe that the Pastoral Epistles are possibly authentic to Paul, although I don't take a strong stance either way. While Bible scholars reject Pauline authorship, I believe that Pauline authorship is still possible on the grounds that the Pastoral Epistles are different from the other Pauline epistles for logical reasons. The Pastoral Epistles use different language and grammatical structure because Paul was writing to personal acquaintances, rather than to the entire church or a specific city's church. The Pastoral Epistles, as private letters, may not have been exposed to the global church until some time after Paul's death (and, likely, the deaths of Timothy and Titus), explaining why Paul's contemporaries and early lists of his authentic works excluded the letters. In any event, I don't believe that the Pastoral Epistles contain critical theology, so neither including nor excluding the Pastoral Epistles has a major impact on our theology.
I believe that the Pastoral Epistles do not explicitly disallow women from teaching and preaching. After balancing alternative interpretations of the Pastoral Epistles (and 1 Corinthians 11/14) against Paul's other writings involving women, including places where Paul seems to describe women in senior and leadership positions in various churches, I believe that Paul was an egalitarian who nevertheless had problematic cultural views regarding women that fortunately no longer apply to the modern church.
I believe that a woman is not subject to the authority of her husband. Paul's most famous passages teaching that wives submit to their husbands also teach mutual submission of believers to one another. Combining this with Paul's assertion that "[t]here is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28, NIV), I believe that there is no logically consistent way to teach that women are especially subject to the authority of their husbands or to other male authority figures. Rather, I believe Paul is most likely putting special emphasis on women submitting to their husbands, not in a way that creates a hierarchy but instead as a callout, similar to a parent warning children to behave: "You behave while I'm gone, kids...especially you, Christian!"
Conclusion
For more information on how the Bible can be used to defend the equality, leadership, and even priesthood of women, see The Bible vs. Biblical Womanhood by Philip B. Payne. Payne is a conservative evangelical Bible scholar who holds to the inerrancy of scripture. He also believes that women have been unjustly and unbiblically subjugated by the church for nearly 2,000 years.