Pope Francis’ establishment of special commissions on the study of the role of women deacons has reinvigorated scholarship on the history of women's ministerial roles in the early church. Joan E. Taylor and Ilaria Ramelli's coedited collection of essays brings together an eclectic group of Christian historians on the subject of women's leadership in the early churches and provides an important contribution to this critical discussion. They state in the introduction that the goal of the collection is not to definitively prove women were in “ordained” offices (1), but rather to explore various practices and expressions of women's leadership in ways that nuances the ongoing debates on women deacons. This task, the editors argue, necessarily requires a wider definition of ecclesial leadership that both includes and expands ordination. By questioning narrow and often anachronistic definitions and notions of ministerial leadership, the book invites readers to explore numerous yet hidden ways women participated in—or were excluded from—various forms of ecclesial leadership, including but not exclusively ordained ministry, in various contexts in the early churches.
Scholars and teachers alike will find this a compelling collection of essays that appropriately challenges assumptions and interpretations of women's leadership in the early church communities. Some of the essays are highly specialized, such as Markus Vinzent's essay “More ‘Holy Women’ in Early Christianity: The Gospels of Mary and Marcion.” Essays such as this one exhibit exemplary research and will be invaluable to other scholars in the field yet may not be accessible to undergraduate students. Several essays will be beneficial to more advanced undergraduate theology or religious studies students. Because of limited space, I briefly review three essays that I think could be highly beneficial for undergraduate students.
In each of their essays, Taylor and Ramelli argue that women served as missionary partners of Jesus’ disciples and colleagues of male leaders in the earliest Christian churches. They each provide compelling textual evidence to support their arguments. Each of these essays would be beneficial in courses on the New Testament, biblical interpretation, and early church history.
In her essay “Women's Liturgical Practices and Leadership Roles in Early Christian Communities,” Teresa Berger argues that we miss the full picture of women's leadership when we focus exclusively on women's roles in ordained ministry. She proceeds to trace the various ways in which women participated in liturgical leadership, paying special attention to the relationship between power and embodiment in worship, liturgical spaces, and rituals performed by women in domestic settings. It is an accessible essay that “troubles” pervasive assumptions and interpretations of the historical evidence.
Ally Kateusz and Luca Badini Confalonieri's fascinating essay “Women Church Leaders in and around Fifth-Century Rome” argues that various literary and iconographic artifacts found in and around the city of Rome provide compelling evidence that women held the highest leadership role of “overseer” for several centuries. The essay includes highly detailed colored photographs of the artifacts that depict women with the eucharistic cloth, suggesting they held sacerdotal roles. Their careful interpretation of the evidence exemplifies to students how art and iconography can provide helpful clues to understanding the role of women in the liturgical life of the church.
All of the essays in this collection model exemplary scholarship and advance the critical conversation regarding women's roles in the church. Drawing on evidence from a wide variety of textual, literary, artistic, and archeological sources, each of the essays invites us to reimagine our assumptions of ordination and women's leadership in the early churches. In doing so, the collection challenges narrow interpretations of ecclesial tradition often used to defend the continued exclusion of women from ordained ministry today.
