Major League Baseball’s first female umpire set to debut

Jen Pawol has been a minor-league umpire since 2016. She played softball at Hofstra University and at the Amateur Softball Association Major Fast Pitch level for ten years before transitioning to umpiring. She reached Triple-A in 2023 and has served as an umpire at Major League Baseball (MLB) Spring Training games.

This weekend, she will become the first woman to umpire a regular-season MLB game. She will call three games during this weekend’s Marlins–Braves series in Atlanta, including both ends of a doubleheader on Saturday and the series finale on Sunday, when she will be behind home plate.

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said, “This historic achievement in baseball is a reflection of Jen’s hard work, dedication, and love of the game. She has earned this opportunity, and we are proud of the strong example she has set, particularly for all the women and young girls who aspire to roles on the field.”

The MLB Umpires Association added: “We are proud to stand with Jen as she breaks this barrier, and we look forward to welcoming more women into the umpiring profession.”

I have never umpired anything beyond an occasional church league softball game, but it seems obvious to me that women possess all the attributes necessary to do this work as well as men. They have the physical stamina to do so; studies even show that they are better at running marathons than men. While men and women have different cognitive advantages, both are clearly capable of the intellectual work required by umpiring.

Therefore, I cannot imagine why it has taken this long for the first woman to umpire an MLB game, but we can at least hope Jen won’t be the last.

The “best preacher” in Billy Graham’s family

However, my purpose in this article is not to focus on Jen Pawol but on a theological issue her promotion raises.

There is a spectrum along which various evangelical Christians fall with regard to the role of women in ministry leadership. Some embrace a strong “complementarian” position by which women should not be permitted to exercise any leadership role over men. Some embrace a strong “egalitarian” position by which women should be permitted any leadership role without regard to gender. Some are somewhere in between. (For my study of this issue from biblical, historical, and theological perspectives, go here.)

Whatever your view on this divisive subject, here’s the point I wanted to make: what women are permitted to do by churches or culture is seldom related to what they are able to do.

There are some obvious exceptions: a woman cannot typically sing bass any more than a man can typically sing soprano. Men model men’s suits better than women can, and vice versa.

But I cannot think of a leadership role in a church or ministry that women are unable to fill by virtue of their gender-related capacities.

If you have ever heard my friend Anne Graham Lotz speak, for example, you will agree that she is exceptionally talented as a speaker. (Her father, Billy Graham, called her “the best preacher in the family.”) 

The church I pastored in Atlanta had a heritage room with a letter from famed missionary Lottie Moon (1840–1912) appealing for support for her work in China. I have never read a more moving or persuasive call for ministry engagement.

I was led to Christ by the woman who taught my tenth-grade Sunday school class. My most important encourager and counselor in my first pastorate was an elderly woman who held a prayer meeting in her home each Tuesday and prayed for me each day. 

When I taught philosophy of religion at various seminaries, some of my most brilliant students were women. In the churches I served, women were among our most effective staff members, role models, and servants of the Lord.

We are each “fearfully and wonderfully made”

If you take the view that women should not exercise leadership roles over men in the church, I encourage you to do so in a way that does not deny their God-created equality with men (Genesis 1:27) or their capacities for kingdom service. If you take the view that women should be able to exercise all leadership roles in the church, I encourage you to do so in a way that affirms them for who they are rather than simply for their gender.

Whatever the issue at hand and wherever you fall along the spectrum between egalitarian and complementarian positions, it is unfair to women to treat them as a class rather than as individuals. Such a perspective shares some dangerous similarities to the way Critical Theory would approach our subject, where women are treated as a minority oppressed by the male majority and in need of liberation. This Marxist construct is as unfair to women as it is to men.

The biblical fact is that God created each of us as we are. We are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14), whatever our gender. He has a kingdom assignment for which we are uniquely created and prepared. Every part of the body of Christ is essential to its functioning and health.

I will forever (literally) be grateful for the woman who led me to Christ. I am confident you have cause for gratitude for the women God has used in your life.

Today would be a good day to thank them or, if they are with our Father in heaven, to thank him.