The Problem with Scripture - women!

I wrote a couple of posts ago about the problem with Scripture and in particularly the difficulty of interpretation.
Last night we had a special church meeting with a potential 'candidate' for the job of pastor. In his 'speech' he mentioned a 'non-negotiable' issue if he were to become pastor of the church. The issue was  women leadership in the church. He would not accept a woman elder because it's not biblical.

So here we find a 'classic' example of interpretation of Scripture. Women leadership was, and apparently still is a thorny issue.

In some of St Paul's epistles he does mention that women should remain silent in church, that they should wear a kind of head covering and also there doesn't seem to be any evidence of women leaders in the Bible. (Except for Deborah &  Esther in the old testament and Lydia and Sapphira in the New Testament...)

However, Paul also mentions how masters should treat their slaves (with kindness of course). Unfortunately these 'slave' passages were used to defend the practice of slavery in the 'good old days' of the Empire but today (I hope) we would agree that slavery is definitely not what God intended.
I believe that the same applies to women. Our understanding of humanity and of God has greatly evolved and our culture is not the same as Paul's. In the same way as we no longer see slavery as biblical I suggest that we should no longer see that 'women should remain silent and therefore no leadership roles' as also not  biblical.

I think Paul was heading in this direction when he wrote:
"For all of you who were baptised into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

So it's not whether you're a man or a woman that counts but your gifts, calling and character. These should be the criteria to evaluate whether you should be an elder or leader.

I think that if we contemplate the life and teachings of Jesus we would come to the same conclusion.

I'm saddened that I've had to post this.

Alas we are still focusing on the non-essentials.