In the Easter story, women are the first to proclaim the resurrection – but churches today are still divided over female preachers

'Holy Women at Christ's Tomb,' by 16th-century painter Annibale Carracci, shows an angel explaining that Jesus has risen. Hermitage Museum via Wikimedia Commons On Easter Sunday, festively decorated churches across the United States will be filled with worshippers eager to celebrate the most important day in the Christian year. While some will attend services led by pastors who are women, the overwhelming majority of worshippers will not. Women constitute 23.7% of professional clergy in the U.S. and an increasing percentage of people earning graduate theology degrees. However, data from 2018-19 shows that only 14% of U.S. congregations, most of which are Christian, are led by women. The number of women in Christian pulpits stands in jarring juxtaposition with the Easter narratives in the New Testament. The Gospel stories of the resurrection of Jesus point to how essential women’s witness and proclamation were in the earliest stages of Christianity. First witness Many denominations share a system assigning particular Bible verses to be read at each week’s services – a cycle that takes three years, called Years A, B and C, to complete. Because Easter 2026 falls in year A in the common lectionary, the Gospel reading that many congregations across the U.S. will hear read on Easter Sunday 2026 is Matthew 28:1-10, while others will hear John 20:1-18. A beloved New Testament passage, John’s account of Jesus’ resurrection, is perhaps the most familiar. Following Jesus’ death on the cross – the day that Christians around the world mark as Good Friday – the text describes two men, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, retrieving his body. They prepare it for a traditional Jewish burial, then leave the shrouded corpse in a nearby tomb. As Chapter 20 begins, one of Jesus’ most devoted followers, Mary Magdalene, approaches the tomb. Upon finding it empty, she tells two angels in white that “they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”

As the story unfolds, a weeping Mary is greeted by the risen Jesus, whom she at first mistakes for the gardener. When Jesus calls her by her name, Mary immediately recognizes him, calling him “Rabbouni,” or “teacher.” Jesus explains he will soon ascend to God, instructing her to go to the other disciples and share what he has revealed to her. As the story concludes, “Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her.” It is for this reason that Mary Magdalene has long been known as the first witness to the resurrection of Jesus. In his 13th-century commentary on the Gospel of St. John, Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas called Mary “apostle of the apostles.” Women watching The Gospel of John’s description of Mary Magdalene’s actions aligns with the other canonical Gospels’ portrayal of women who followed Jesus. Despite small differences, all four describe women being the first to proclaim the resurrection. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, all of which were likely written before John, are known as the “Synoptic Gospels” because they narrate the basic story of Jesus’ life in the same general sequence. All three depict a group of women witnessing the end of Jesus’ life. They are identified as disciples who followed Jesus in Galilee, which was at the time a largely Jewish region under Roman rule. Galilee was central to Jesus’ ministry: It included Nazareth, where he was raised, and Capernaum, on the Sea of Galilee, which seems to have served as the hub of Jesus’ ministry. According to the Synoptic Gospels, the women watched from a distance as Jesus was crucified and “saw the tomb and how his body was laid.” The three books differ in which women they name at the scene, although all include Mary Magdalene. Most importantly, all the Synoptic Gospels narrate the women’s encounter with angelic figures at the empty tomb, who, in Matthew and Mark, instruct them to tell the other disciples that Jesus has been raised from the dead. In Luke 24:9, the women immediately proclaim the news. In Matthew’s telling, the women are greeted by the risen Jesus himself.

The Gospel of Mark, the earliest of the four canonical Gospels, differs in the way it concludes the story. As scholars have long recognized, Mark 16:8 formed the original, very terse conclusion to Mark’s narrative. After the women are told that Jesus has been resurrected, Mark writes, “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” On a first reading, the stark ending seems anticlimactic. Indeed, later editors eventually added two more endings to Mark’s Gospel. The longest ending includes the risen Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene, whose testimony is initially rebuffed, and then to others. No matter which ending we read, though, the Gospel of Mark underscores that it was a woman’s voice that first proclaimed Jesus’ resurrection. Even the terse original ending suggests that the women eventually found their voices. By describing only the women as witnesses, Mark implies that they had to eventually share news about Jesus’ resurrection in order for the Gospel to be written. Preaching today Together, the canonical Gospels underscore the importance of women’s proclamation in the Easter story. Yet opposition to women regularly preaching persists in some Christian circles. A majority of Protestant groups ordain women, including all seven “mainline” denominations – including the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church USA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Episcopal Church – as well as some Pentecostal and evangelical bodies, such as the Assemblies of God and Church of the Nazarene. Yet multiple studies have pointed to the gap between supporting women clergy in principle and hiring them in practice, particularly as lead pastors. In 2017, about 27% of pastors in mainline Protestant churches were women, including, but not limited to, those in senior positions. Moreover, the two largest Christian bodies in the U.S., the Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention, officially oppose women serving as pastors. The SBC’s Baptist Faith and Message 2000 states that “the office of pastor/elder/overseer is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.” In February 2023, in a move that attracted national attention, the denomination expelled Saddleback Church one of the most prominent megachurches in the country, because it had hired Stacie Woods for a preaching position. In total, the SBC deemed five churches “to be not in friendly cooperation” because of women’s roles. Since then, the convention has been mired in disagreement over how to apply the ban on women as pastors. The matter is an especially timely one to consider at Easter. Churches will continue to debate whether to ordain women, depending on how they interpret specific parts of the Bible. Yet according to the Gospels, the New Testament as we know it would simply not exist were it not for the proclamation of women.

Mary Foskett wrote a successful NEH grant and a Hanes Foundation grant for the WFU Humanities Institute. She serves on boards for the Foundation for Theological Education in Asia and the Pacific, Feminist Studies in Religion, and Pacific Asian and North American Asian Women in Theology and Ministry; she was once a member of a church that was affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.