The Bible says women can never teach or have authority over men

1 Timothy 2:12 is a genuine, difficult verse: "I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet." One reading takes it as a timeless, universal instruction for every church everywhere. Another reading argues Paul is addressing a specific problem in first-century Ephesus, a city dominated by the cult of Artemis, in which female religious authority was the cultural norm being imported into the church in a way Paul saw as a real, local danger.

Whatever the answer, any reading has to reckon with Paul's own undisputed letters elsewhere, where he treats women in exactly these roles without apparent discomfort: Phoebe is named a deacon (diakonos) of the church at Cenchreae and entrusted to carry Paul's letter to Rome (Romans 16:1-2); Priscilla, alongside her husband Aquila, privately corrects and further instructs the eloquent preacher Apollos, her name listed first, unusual for the era (Acts 18:26); and Junia is called "outstanding among the apostles" (Romans 16:7), a title later scribes found so uncomfortable that some manuscripts quietly changed her name to the masculine "Junias" to avoid the implication. A single verse forbidding women to teach has to be read against a writer who, elsewhere, commends a woman deacon, a woman who teaches a leading preacher, and a woman apostle by name.