Women in the Early Church. Van, our pastor, is taking us through the Book of Acts during his Sunday morning sermons. Yesterday we were in Acts 8: 1-7. The first part of that passage deals with the persecution of the church in Jerusalem. During the sermon, Van took note of the following in verse 3:

But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off men and women and put them in prison.

He drew our attention to the fact that women were being dragged off as well as men. He commented that if these women had kept to their traditional place, they may have avoided persecution. But they seem to have been as outspoken as the men, because they generated the same reaction. This does not conclusively point to formal leadership in the early church by women, nor to informal leadership by women that extended beyond other women to men. But it does seem to point to vigorous, front-line participation by women from the beginning, and its worth noting.