ӣƵ half the world is made up of women. Books such as Half the Sky (Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn) and Half the Church (Carolyn Custis James) highlight how important it is for the Evangelical church to consider God’s vision both locally and globally for women. In the light of the Gospel, the church during the Reformation also wrestled with women’s place, in the church, marriage, and society. While the Protestant Reformers did not set out to define women’s roles, as they fleshed out their theological convictions of sola Scriptura and the priesthood of all believers, they were faced with addressing the question of how women are to participate in the church and the world as both receivers and conveyors of the Gospel. Did the Reformers’ responses result in “constraining” women by moving their ministry from the convent to the home (as Jane Dempsey Douglass argues), or did it provide them with “new dignity” (as Stephen Nichols suggests)? The answer to that question is complicated.

The Protestant Reformers' study of Scripture and the resulting conviction of the equality of all believers before God led them to initiate changes in the way education, the church, family, and societal structures were conceived. As a result of the Reformation, women were given new opportunities to be educated, participate in the church and in the family, and share the Gospel.

Martin Luther proclaimed the priesthood of all believers, teaching that both men and women were equal before God and free to pursue their God-given vocational callings. This concept elevated the status of both the homemaker as well as the farmer in the field. The hierarchy was no longer to be valued above the lay person. Changing diapers and milking cows were holy work. In his treatise, To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, Luther wrote:

It is pure invention that pope, bishop, priests, and monks are called the spiritual estate while princes, lords, artisans, and farmers are called the temporal estate. . . all Christians are truly of the spiritual estate, and there is no difference among them except that of office. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:12-13 that we are all one body, yet every member has its own work by which it serves the others. This is because we all have one baptism, one gospel, one faith, and are all Christians alike … we are all consecrated priests … as St Peter says in 1 Peter 2