Original Research

A socio-scientific reading of John 4: Lessons for the Zimbabwean Adventist church

Tendai Takawira, Mphumezi Hombana

Received: 06 July 2025; Accepted: 05 Aug. 2025; Published: 31 Oct. 2025

Copyright: © 2025. The Authors. Licensee: AOSIS.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Abstract

The article explores Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman in John 4 to uncover his inclusive perception of mission and the criteria for participation. It reveals that Jesus did not exclude individuals based on gender, ethnicity, class, or institutional power, but rather embraced all as worthy participants. Using socio-scientific models—honour-shame, collectivism, kinship, and character vilification—the study shows how Jesus subverted societal norms by elevating marginalised groups within the Johannine community. Drawing parallels with Zimbabwean cultural contexts, the article critiques the patriarchal ethos influencing the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Zimbabwe (SDAZ), which often limits mission participation based on gender and ethnicity. In contrast, Euro-American SDA churches tend to reflect Jesus’ inclusive model more closely. The study calls for the SDAZ and the global SDA Church to adopt Jesus’ radically inclusive approach to mission, as exemplified in John 4:1–42.

Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This study used a social-scientific reading of John 4:1–42 to examine how Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman challenges power, ethnic and gender biases. It advocates for an inclusive mission model in the SDAZ and the SDA world church at large, thereby affirming women’s equal participation in spreading the Gospel mission.

Keywords: gender; socio-scientific approach; patriarchy; power; character vilification; John 4; Samaritan woman.

Introduction

There is scholarly consensus holding that power has had a history, from antiquity, of perpetrating negative consequences to people when abused by those privileged to possess it. Those who hold power, be it institutional, religious, cultural, political and economic, for example, tend to abuse their authority through forceful coercion of their subjects or those with whom they interact yet not having same power. Hence, van der Watt and Kok in De Villiers and Van Henten (2012:viii) observe that this state of affairs is the reason for the eruption of schisms and violence between classes of people from antiquity as those targeted by power abusers retaliates. Hence, all religions are punctuated by vast evidence which affirms that violence and schisms are and have been alive and present in their piety throughout history. The issue of power, gender and ethnic tensions is investigated in this work through a social-scientific analysis of characters described in John 4 to discover how the interplay between power, gender and ethical dynamics is manifested and their effects on the marginalised, suppressed, muted peoples of this hybrid community and how Jesus viewed this state of affairs for application to the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Zimbabwe (SDAZ). Questions that were of interest in this study, are: (1) In what ways does the reading of the passage under study propagated and continues to, the exclusion and ‘othering’ of other classes and characters in the same text and the SDAZ? (2) How the same can be averted?

Power, gender and ethnical tensions in the Johannine community

The prejudice against women in Jewish thought

According to Witherington (1990:56), the inferiority of women in relation to men in the Jewish thought of Jesus’ era was so strong as evidenced by the rabbinical writings of the Jewish Daily Prayer Book. Gleaning in its philosophical thought would help provide insights into how it meant to be a woman in Jesus’ days. It reads:

Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe,

who hast not made me a heathen.

Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe,

who hast not made me a bondman.

Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King, of the universe,

who hast not made me a woman.

Witherington holds that another rabbinical dictum showing the denigration of women as well as their treatment as inferiors reads, ‘Happy is he whose children are males, and woe to him whose children are females’.

With these subjugatory and denigratory sentiments around women, the writer of this work postulates that it is no wonder that the Samaritan woman is projected in terms seen in the chapter of John 4. Furthermore, the basis for the supremacy exhibited by the Jewish men over the Samaritans and women can be clearly seen. I submit that this Jewish perception of other classes of people such as women and other ethnicities in the Johannine community, made Jews in this passage represented by Jesus’ disciples to denigrate and ‘others’ to exclude them from the mission.

Power dynamics

The Oxford English Dictionary defines power as the ability or capacity to direct or influence the behaviour of others or the course of events. This section seeks to show that the dominant class in John 4 had power (institutional, ethnic, religious and gender) on their side, which they used to make the minority classes of people represented by the Samaritan woman and her ethnicity feel inferior for the mission. Van der Watt & Kok in De Villiers and Van Henten (2012:153–158) affirm this view by submitting that the Johannine community was a minority in a society dominated by Jews who were regarded as the disciples of Moses (Jn 9:28; 15:18–16:4). This distinction paused tensions between these two camps (Moses’ disciples and Jesus’ disciples). Another glaring situation that created tensions, according to Brown (1979:55–58), is the fact that the community to which the writer of the Fourth Gospel wrote was a hybrid one. It was composed of Jews, Samaritans (Keener 2003:140–232), gentiles and Greeks. In this scenario, power imbalances were inherent. Schisms emerged from conflicts between Jews and Jesus over many aspects which largely border around religion, race, gender and ethnicity.

Martyn (1968:122) has postulated that Judaism was the dominant religion. Jewishness was venerated over other ethnic groups. In line with Jewish cultural norms, the male gender and masculinity dominated the feminine gender, and it was the distinction that separated those who would participate in the mission. Under Judaism, women were confined in the home and barred from public space roles, which could not allow them to meet strange men such as Jesus. As such, the Johannine community and other ethnicities were regarded by traditional Judaizers as threats to their cultural norms and religious belief systems for their tolerance of women in public space roles, a practice that was regarded as taboo in Judaism.

As such, powered with cultural, institutional and religious power, the Jews made other minority groups stand powerless and vulnerable as they had no social and political power to their side. It is for this reason that the Jews are seen as hostile towards Jesus’ disciples, who were the minority and, to a large extent, the socially inferior. Martyn (1968:122) concludes that this is the context in which the Johannine community is described as having suffered a traumatic expulsion from the synagogue and a prolonged and violent controversy with the Jews of that synagogue because of the abuse of social, economic, political and religious power by the Jews.

Punt, in De Villiers and Van Henten (2012:160–161), concurs with Van der Watt and Kok in De Villiers and Van Henten (2012) by adding that this conflict is characterised by an imbalance of power where the Jews have institutional and political power to control and exercise radical influence over the Jewish community. The Jewish leaders have been feared by the Johannine community because of the way they used this institutional, cultural, ethnic and political power they had at their disposal. Punt maintains that they had so much power that they even influenced Pilate to grant their desire over Jesus’ fate on the cross. They had a band of soldiers, chief priests and the Pharisees at their disposal to use to grant their wishes (Jn 18:3). On the other hand, adds Punt, Jesus and his followers had none of these benefits. With numbers to their side as the majority group and the power they exhibit, the Jews intimidate the minority classes of people in this Johannine community to the extent that they are so afraid of the Jewish leadership. Their fear of the Jews is seen in the hesitation to do anything that might appear to be supportive of Jesus and his agenda. Punt observes that the culmination of this particular mobilisation eventually leads to the exclusion of the followers of Jesus from the Jewish social group, particularly their excommunication from the synagogue in John 9:22.

Excommunication was seen as an extreme form of violent action in these ancient group-oriented societies that were largely collectivists. It is in this context that Van der Watt and Kok (2012:151–152) hold that the Gospel of John exhibits power and ethical imbalances which disadvantaged the minority groups as the majority Jewish leaders and their communities wielded authority and coerced their subjects into doing what their (Jewish) society alone regarded as norm.

Character vilification and the minorities’ standing in John 4

According to Du Toit (1994:403–412), the Greco-Roman world in which the Johannine community lived utilised a number of social-scientific models which gave status or removed it from people. Character vilification was one such social tool used to codify and stratify people in honourable or dishonourable states, a phenomenon that led to the exclusion of the vilified members. Under this practice, the person who happened to have been vilified would lose honour while the one/s vilifying would gain it. Malina and Rohrbaugh (1998:33) concur with this view and submit that all the accusations levelled against Jesus, where he was described as someone who was engaged in deviant behaviour according to the Jewish norms, such as being demon-possessed (Jn 7:20), a liar (Jn 8:48; Jn 7:20), arrogant (Jn 8:53; 5:23, 41–44; 7:18; 12:26), morally corrupt (Jn 18:30; 9:24–25); a disturber of people’s peace (Jn 7:12; 11:47–48), were meant to vilify him. It is thus in this context that Jesus is vilified in John 4 for his association with the Samaritan woman, who is from a bunch of vilified social group.

It can be thus construed that the description of Jesus as being welcome to classes of people considered by the Jewish thought and standard as dubious and the misfits of their society such as harlots, tax collectors, leppers, Samaritans by the author of the Gospel of John was a character-vilifying measure meant to bring an intense onslaught on the person of Jesus and his followers to discredit him so as to preserve the Jewish honour while Jesus, other minority ethnicities, their religions and cultural norms got vilified. Hence, Punt (2006) sums it up in the following words:

Vilification is to be seen as a form of social violence in John. Vilification discredits a person within a social group causing him or her to be excluded. In ancient times social violence was far more destructive than it is today, because people found their identity within the context of a group (collectivism). Vilifying a person could thus be seen as the destruction of a person’s social identity and sense of belonging within that community. Hence, the process of vilification in the Gospel of John culminates into serious schisms between Jews, Jesus and his followers and their excommunication from the synagogue (a significant social centre). The latter is an action that represents total dissociation and thus, also social dishonouring and shame. (p. 166)

The Samaritan woman and character vilification

According to Punt, the Samaritan woman is vilified in John 4 to discredit her gender and her ethnicity so as to raise the Jewish supremacy over other ethnicities, cultures and religions. For him, this is the reason why the writer of this pericopae projects her in negative terms, such as prostitute and a social misfit (who could only fetch water secretly).

Koester (1990:665–680) concurs with Punt’s submission on the intention of the writer of John 4 to project the Samaritan woman in a vilified state, which he epitomised by describing her harlotry state in symbolic and proverbial terms rooted in the woman’s ethnic national history, which is traced from 722 to 721 BCE, when the Assyrians conquered Israel and eventually decimated it and deported it to suffer the prohibited intermarriages which Yahweh forbade. For Koester, the intermarriages between the captured and vanquished Israelites led to the emergence of a mixed race, the Samaritans. Thus, though they were rightful descendants of Jacob, the Samaritans stood unaccepted in the Jewish thought because of their being a mixed race. Thus, the issue of intermarriages is said to have continued to cloud relations between Jews and Samaritans as the Jews saw their originality having been tainted. The Samaritan woman’s description in proverbial language of her being married to five husbands and living with the sixth in John 4:16–19 according to Koester (1990:665–680) is derived from the Assyrians’ conquest of Israel mentioned above in 722–721 BCE where they are said to have had brought colonists from five foreign nations into Samaria (2 Ki 17:24). Josephus attests to this issue of the five nations that attacked Samaria in 722–721 BCE, where he adds that the Samaritans are referred to as ‘Cuthians’, Jewish writings point out that they were the descendants of colonists from Cuthah and other places (Josephus, Ant. 9.288), an unacceptable reality for the Jews.

As regards the significance of her pointing out the religious places used for worship between the Jews and Samaritans in John 14:19–24, Koester argues that the woman responded to Jesus’ insights about her personal life by calling Jesus a prophet and raising an issue of national importance – namely, whether people should worship at the Jewish sanctuary in Jerusalem or the Samaritan holy place at Gerizim. According to Koester, the Samaritans, because of their having appropriated pagan gods, were regarded as sinful, just as the Samaritan woman is seen as sinful too, thereby affirming the character vilification practice in this chapter which denigrated other classes of people and disqualified them for mission.

I argue, therefore, that had Vyhmeister (ed. 1998:174–175) and Duff (2016:100–103) understood the role of character vilification in John 4, they would have not mourned over what they describe as an unfortunate reality that the woman’s true social standing is greatly fabricated by her being described as a desperate divorcee and as adulterous, yet the culture of her era did not even give women the power to decide for divorce and also that there is no way a woman of such status as an adulterer would have convinced the entire city since the practice was regarded as a sin worthy of death by stoning, yet the entire city believed her word alone. Spiller (1985:47) concurs with this that by adding that women under the Roman law during the Empire period could not enter into any contractual agreements as they had no property rights. The Roman law of persons forbade women from entering into marriage contracts, and thus it would be very unlikely that the Samaritan woman would have been the one who divorced the husbands or consented to marry the five or six men as narrated by the writer of John. This research has therefore answered Vyhmeister’s (ed. 1998) and Duff’s (2016) worries above by evincing the real reasons why the Samaritan woman, her ethnicity and her religion are described in denigratory terms and in relation to the Jewish standard.

The plot of John 4

According to Natar (2019:115), the narrator of the John 4 story pictures two people from differing ethnic and religious backgrounds conversing (Jesus, a Jew, and the unnamed woman, a Samaritan). However, from the story, one is quick to discover that one ethnic group seems to be dominating over the other. The Samaritans are described on the basis of the Jews. Jewish standards and norms are used to evaluate the Jesus–Samaritan woman’s conversations. For example, Jesus’ talking with a woman faces two problems judged from Jesus’ religion and not the Samaritan woman’s. Readers are made aware that ‘it was not only a taboo for Jesus to have talked and asked for water from the foreign woman, but it was a scandal. Secondly, Jesus’ religious office as both a Rabbi and prophet forbade him from speaking to women in private’. Hence, Schottroff and Wacker (2007:532) hold that the interchange between Jesus and the Samaritan woman is said to bring out two taboos; namely: men greet foreign women, and Jews who ask for water from a Samaritan woman, the strange outlook which was also easily observed by his students (the disciples upon returning from their shopping spree) in John 4:27.

O’Day (1992:295) further notes that the conversation brings out the social (men and women) and religious (the chosen race and the rejected) barriers which separated them. However, Natar (2019:116–117) comments on the Samaritan woman for neutralising the Jewish supremacy which the writer of the narrative wanted to venerate through the question by the woman, ‘Do you, a Jew, ask me to drink, a Samaritan?’ Through this question, Natar holds that the woman was able to face Jewish views and prohibitions, where she showed her willingness to cross all the barriers set and dictated by the Jews and talk with Jesus, an exercise that speaks of her courage.

Critique of Jewish supremacy in John 4

Okure (1998:247–249) has castigated the Jewish supremacy tag graphically made to dominate the narrative of John 4 by berating the disciples’ suspicious view of the Samaritan woman, which projects that they seem to have thought that the evangelisation role was solely for them alone as men, as dictated by their Jewish cultural norms. She lampoons their ‘chosen race’s ideology’, which, according to her, is the reason behind their refusal to accept the woman as qualified to converse with Jesus and, worst still, to be one of the practitioners of the mission like them.

Okure argues that actually:

[T]he role of the male disciples who re-appear in vv. 37–38 after they had gone shopping is merely that of harvesting what others had sown, which makes them enter into the labour of others in v. 38. The one who finished the work which they are to harvest is none other than Jesus. (Jn 4:34, 35)

Brown (1979:189) attempts to situate the disciples and their role by undertaking some lexical considerations of the John 4:38–39 text, where he holds that the Samaritan woman is projected as an apostle. Brown argues that based on the lexical definition of the term, apostle [ajπόσστολος], which renders it to mean ‘anyone who got sent’ [άποστηλειν] by Jesus and fulfilled the task, verse 38 sets up the basis for the claim that the woman assumed the apostleship role as she was sent to the entire city and they all heeded to her word. Hence, the woman assumed a truly commissioned apostolic role as she managed to convert an entire city testifying to her effective witnessing tact (Brown 1979:190).

Brown too concurs that the context of John 4:37 clearly shows Jesus explaining to his 12 disciples that the harvest was going to be a function of one having ‘sowed’ and them (the 12 disciples) having to ‘reap’ θερίζων what was sown by others. After the disciples seemed not to understand what Jesus meant by the ‘Samaritan harvest’ and the ‘sower-reaper’ analogies, Brown (1979:189) opines that Jesus’ simplified explanation to them: ‘what I send [άποστηλειν] you to reap θερίζειν (therizein) was not you who worked for or sowed σπείρων (speiroon) but that others had done the hard work and you have come in for the fruit of their work’ made them realise their place of being ‘reapers’ in the whole story. Thus, according to Jesus’ hipsissma verba (actual words of Jesus), the 12 were the reapers, while the Samaritan woman was the sower who had toiled for the harvest because of the commission she received from Jesus and faithfully tackled it when she realised that she had been sent [άποστηλειν]. However, Brown differs with Okure (1998), Natar (2019), O’Day (1992) in seeing the Samaritan woman as the sower. The three view her as a reaper instead, in the stead of the 12 disciples.

Thus, it is seen in John 4:37–38 that the 12, as well as the Samaritan woman, were sent, thereby qualifying the woman as having fulfilled the apostleship role just as they (the 12 too). White (1925:195) adds that the Samaritan woman proved herself to be an apostle as she brought the entire city to belief in Jesus by her word alone, as testified to by the fact that nowhere else in the New Testament records anyone who preached and converted an entire city. Concurring with White’s views, Specht (1984:65) adds that the Samaritan woman’s testimony in her town has been regarded as the magnacata or watershed of missionary expeditions.

Okure (1989) postulated that John 4:36–38 ‘describe the male disciples’ actual role by its shifting attention from the labourer Jesus to the harvesters, the male disciples, and the nature of their harvesting work’. Jesus had to correct this elevated status assumed by his disciples. In so doing, the Samaritan woman’s standing before the disciples got ameliorated as a lesson that she too was a worthy participant in the mission regardless of her race, class and gender.

McKay (1981:289–329) and Moulton and Turner (1963:5) concur with this notion by observing that verse 38:

[I]mplies that those so addressed by Jesus, namely the disciples, need to be reminded that they are not the principal agents at work in the missionary enterprise. Quite the contrary, they are merely appropriating the fruit of others.

… labour without doing any work themselves [εισεληλυθατε]. Okure (1998) maintains that it is made true by the particularisation of the sowing role which is put to Jesus and the Father alone. For Okure, this:

[P]articularisation of the sowing role to Jesus and His father alone is epitomised in the sense that it is even them who are involved in the effort to lead the woman to a life-giving knowledge of Jesus (vv. 10, 25) to which she insinuates that had the disciples been there, the conversation of Jesus and the woman could have never taken place due to their conception of other ethnicities, women and cultures and their standing before Jesus and the mission. (p. 310)

Hence, the disciples are depicted as absent throughout the conversation of Jesus and the woman (the disciples are looking for food in verses 8 and 27) to declare that the sowing role resides in the realm of the Father and Jesus only. Thus, the sending of the woman by Jesus to her kinsmen is a demonstration of the universality of his mission (where even outcasts are entrusted with this task) that the missionary task of reaping not sowing is also extended to unbelievers if they are willing to believe. This was ego-emptying reality for the disciples who venerated themselves over other ethnicities and genders among the evangelisation work’s participants.

With this, Okure thinks that the universality of Jesus’ mission, which excludes no one, is really a gift to all humanity. This gift nature of Jesus’ mission is to be appropriated by the church today to include women in its work. Okure (1989) maintains that:

Not only does Jesus’ mission exclude no one (vv. 13–14; 21–24, 42), it is in every sense of the word a ‘gift’ (3:16–17), something which is wholly unmeritted; not gained as patriarchal inheritance (vv. 11–12, 20a). (p. 310)

Moreover, Okure (1989) adds:

[T]he free gift is not offered with indifference to any who are willing to receive it, it is made attainable by the Father’s active seeking of such recipients through Jesus’ mission and imparting of the Holy Spirit. (p. 310)

From the perspective of the disciples, the gift nature of the mission is underscored by the contrast of the enmity that existed between them and the Samaritans, a reality that would have hardly made them able to evangelise and their kinsmen. Hence, on the level of grace alone (John 4:36, 38) is such a mission made possible. Thus, it becomes clear to them that the success of the mission to the Samaritans could not be accredited to them as missionaries but to God and Jesus’ enablings in their sowing role, which no gender, culture or ethnicity could qualify (Okure 1998:311–315).

The universality of Jesus’ mission, which cuts across ethnicity and power dynamics and privilege, such as religious, social and patriarchal to mention a few of the social categories which usually exclude others, is the point of departure of contextualising the article to SDAZ context, where all must be involved regardless of gender, ethnicity, power and/or culture. According to Brown (1979:189), Jesus’ inclusivity mantra in John 4 is consistent with his ‘sending’ concept seen throughout the Gospel of John and has allusions to Jesus’ prayer in John 17:20: ‘All who would believe his Word from those he sent [άποστηλειν] would see God’s glory’ and in John 20:21, which reads, ‘as the Father has sent me, so do I send you’.

It is in this context that this research holds that the message implied in John 4:37–38 is to be understood to mean that both the 12 and the Samaritan woman were all equal participants in the mission to evangelise the world, a lesson to be learned by the SDAZ.

Disciples, discipleship and the Samaritan woman versus power and ethical qualification

This section seeks to situate the male disciples and the discipleship against the woman and her role in contrast with Jesus’ ideals for discipleship and the mission. According to Brodie (1993a:214–215), the Samaritan woman’s story teaches of the need to crash all boundaries when it comes to the mission and God’s will for his people. As much as the Jewish supremacy seemed to have castigated other groups by their monopolising God and worship institutions, they too misunderstood God, Jesus, the nature of their mission and the role of each of them in it. While the Samaritan woman was vilified for adultery and over her ethnicity, the conversation with the woman reveals the same weaknesses exhibited by the disciples, too. For example, the woman is concerned about earthly things – water and men. The disciples, too, are concerned about the same earthly things – food. They both, in this context, do not understand Jesus, for the disciples refer to him as Rabbi, just as the woman too, yet later on they saw that he was the Messiah (Saviour) of the whole world. Brown (1979:181) notes there are similarities between the two conversations, between the woman’s misunderstanding about water (4:7–11) and the disciples’ misunderstanding about food (4:31–33). In this regard, Okure (1984:267) then argues and seems to be right in her claim that there is no room for outcasts in the mission of Jesus. There is no room for exclusionary mentality for all are fit for the mission. This thought is helpful in the SDAZ context, where mission is lined up along tribal lines and gender lines. If this thought is embraced by the SDAZ, the mission will greatly succeed.

The Seventh Day Adventist Church in Zimbabwe’s context

This section is an attempt to situate the SDAZ in her proper context by bringing out its brief background so as to explain the reasons why the Euro-American Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) churches have a bearing on a proper understanding of this church’s piety in relation to the subject matter under study in this work. However, scope as well as spatial limitation do not allow a deeper description of SDAZ’s interconnectedness with other SDA churches worldwide, a reality that gives her a global face. Thus, the SDAZ’s context is investigated to establish the extent to which other classes of people may be excluded in the mission on ethnicity, class, culture, gender and power basis so as to establish whether she is continuing with the Johannine practice or not, for the proffering of suggestions that averts that reality. The SDAZ’s liturgy and administrative documents are analysed for this cause.

Brief historical background of the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Zimbabwe

The SDAZ is part of the large network of SDA churches around the world with a presence in almost every corner of the globe. As regards the nature of the SDAZ, the 2018–2019 Southern Africa Indian-Ocean Division (SID) Working policy (p. 60) and the 2022–2023 General Conference Working policy B 05, any SDA church in the world has both local (e.g. the SDAZ) and global (SDA world church) identity. As such, the SDAZ, the SDA church in Botswana, the SDA church in South Africa, or in any other part of the globe cannot be described in isolation from their relationship with other SDA churches (the SDA world church) because of the fact that both local churches and the global SDA world church are bound by same administrative policies contained in the SDA church manual and the General Conference Working Policy documents, a system meant to guarantee group harmony, uniform piety, identity, as well as common belief systems. It is in this context that the SDA 20th edition church manual (2022:29) declares that ‘In Seventh Day Adventist Church structure, no organization determines its own status, nor does it function as if it had no obligations to the Church family beyond its boundaries’. This is why this article discusses the SDAZ as if it is also an SDA church in Euro-American territories because they all are controlled and governed by standards and church policies. This is why too, a comparative analysis of these churches is possible in this work.

Gender roles in the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Zimbabwe

Dudley (1996:134) has voiced that the SDA world church has had a strange ambivalence on gender roles in church spanning over a century because of her ordination practice. This ambivalence is manifested by differing ordination of women practices between SDA church in Africa and those in Euro-American and First World territories in particular. Timm (2014:14–18), Gangmei (2011:9) and Koch (2013:32–35) affirm this disparity by holding that SDA churches in the Western territories are allowed to ordain their women, yet those in Africa deny the ordination rite to be conferred on their female church members. According to Timm (2014:18030), this defies the whole essence aimed by having one administrative church policy that governs all SDA churches for a common belief system and uniform piety when differing ordination of women’s positions are allowed to exist. Hence, this article argues that the same issues which the privileged classes in the Johannine community took advantage of, namely power (institutional, religious, class, status, ethnic, racial and economic), seem to be at play too in the SDAZ’s gender role dynamics. Women in the Euro-American churches, and in the North American Division (NAD) in particular, because of their class, race, economic muscle and status, seem to have bargaining power for roles denied to the SDAZ for reasons highlighted above. Thus, John 4 becomes a relevant case study for the SDA church to draw lessons and ideals for mission as perceived by Jesus.

Institutional and religious power

The current updated 20th edition of the SDA church manual, page 85, approves the conferment of the ordination rite to female members elected to serve as female deacons. This same church manual’s pages 77–81 now incorporate gender-neutral terms for eldership roles (unlike the previous ones, e.g. the 1930s–50s church manuals, which had masculine pronouns for persons who were to assume the eldership role), suggesting that even women can now be elected to serve as elders too. However, regardless of this church policy approval, the SDAZ women who get elected to serve as female deacons (deaconesses) go on to serve without the ordination rite having been administered on them, while male elected church members alone fulfil the prerequisite of having to be ordained first before they assume their roles to serve as deacons. The eldership and pastoral roles are blocked for women in the SDA world church, since only men can be ordained. However, as has been submitted by Timm (2014), the NAD allows women to be ordained for the deaconess role and also to serve as commissioned pastors (unordained pastors), yet it is not so with the SDAZ.

The culture factor

According to Mbiti (1969:101), culture has been and will always be the avenue through which the biblical texts are interpreted and understood. Oyserman (2011:164–214), Triandis and Suh (2002:133–160), Goldston et al. (2008:14–31) concur with this notion by submitting that ‘the cultures, world-views, and value systems from which a person creates meaning in their world during a specific time-period, guides gender behaviours, gender expectation and the concomitant gender roles’. Hence, Trim (2016:6) submits that to a greater extent, both the collectivistic and individualistic mind frame dictate or restrain their members from entering into certain roles. In this regard, Takawira (2024:104–111) seems to be correct by noting that it appears that the differing ordination of women practices between the Euro-American SDA churches and the SDAZ are based on cultural lines.¹ The African culture seems to be informing the barring of women for ordination, while the Western culture makes the Euro-American SDA churches see no problem in allowing their women to be ordained and to serve as commissioned pastors. That the Western culture is allowed to grant women privileges denied to the SDAZ may be problematic as this places it at an elevated status above the SDAZ. Yet Jesus condemned the issue of cultural restrictions on women as a basis to exclude them from the mission, as is seen in his sharp reproof to his disciples as discussed above.

Economic power

Be that as it may, the barring of the ordination rite for the deaconess role to SDAZ women is not the case for women in SDA churches in economically stronger territories of the Euro-American continents. These have long ordained their women for the deaconess role. They have even gone steps further in advocating for and commissioning their women to serve as women pastors. One wonders what causes them to do what the SDAZ has failed to implement, yet they are all guided by the same administrative policies and the same Bible. The writer of this work insinuates that maybe it is the issue of economic, racial and status power that has contributed to these women’s recognition in a state, which those from poorer territories, such as Africa and Zimbabwe, in particular, just as was the case with the Jewish supremacy, which denigrated other classes of people in the Johannine community.

Ethnic or racial divide

That SDA church women in the Euro-American territories are being ordained for roles their counterparts in Zimbabwe are denied points to ethnic and class supremacy aspects said to be at play. One is made to conclude that racial, class and ethical privileges are separating women in sister SDA churches in the First World and those from Zimbabwe’s SDAZ. This then affirms that the SDA is largely exhibiting the state of affairs which was being held by the Judaizers in John 4. As such, the admonition by Jesus to his disciples to desist from the exclusionary view of mission and embrace the inclusivity one is germane for the SDA church so that she aligns with the ideals and concept that were perceived by Jesus.

Furthermore, the GC working policy 2022–2023 edition number BA 60 10 and the Fundamental Belief No. 14 stipulate that the SDA policy follows a non-discriminatory employment practice which upholds the principle that both men and women, without regard to race, class, colour, economic standing and gender, are suitable for employment in the church if they so qualify for a said role. According to the GC Policy BA 60 10:

[A]ll church members are given full and equal opportunity within the church to develop the knowledge and skills needed for the building up of the church. Positions of service and responsibility (except those requiring ordination to the gospel ministry*) on all levels of church activity shall be open to all on the basis of the individual’s qualifications without paying regard to gender, race, sex, ethnicity and colour because all are created equal before God.

However, regardless of these clear pronouncements of the above church policy, the SDAZ excludes women from eldership and pastoral roles through their barring them from ordination. Thus, the SDAZ seems to oppose her own standing church policies by not ordaining women for the deaconess role, yet NAD and other Euro-American churches seem to be allowed the same rite.

She attempts to justify these discriminatory policies by citing another policy, namely the General Conference Working Policy FB 05 – K05, which claims to give women a plethora of roles outside the ones that require ordination. But the bottom line remains that women in the SDAZ are barred for deaconesses’ ordination.

The Seventh Day Adventist Church’s selective ordination practice analysis

Ordination in the Adventist theology is an important rite which empowers a church member to do mission globally. The 2021–2022 GC Working policy’s Article numbers L40 & L45 define ordination as:

[T]he setting apart of the employee (of the church) to a sacred calling, not for one local field alone but for the world church and therefore needs to be done with wide counsel. Workers who are ordained to the gospel ministry are set apart to serve the world church, primarily as pastors and preachers of the Word, and are subject to the direction of the church in regard to the type of ministry and their place of service.

Ordained pastors officiate over church services, which those not ordained are not authorised to do. These include ordaining deacons, elders and pastors, presiding over a wedding, organising churches and officiating at baptisms. It is done by praying and laying of hands by the ones ordaining over the head of the one being ordained in the presence of the church.

Thus, barring it for women in the SDAZ while granting it to other SDA church women in the First World territories is a sign of falling trap in the concept of mission held by the disciples and their Jewish supremacy, a concept that was radically opposed by Jesus in preference of the inclusivity approach.

Conclusion

The survey of the SDAZ’s piety evinced that to a greater extent she exhibits the same outlook spoken of in the 4th Gospel. Institutional, economic, ethnic, gender and cultural power seem to be used to exclude women in the mainstream ministry of the church. These seem to be used to legitimate the exclusion of women in the SDAZ and African women from accessing the same roles assumed by those in Euro-American SDA churches. This stands in stark contrast with how the mission in John is understood and demonstrated by Jesus. Jesus viewed it as universal, where it did not pay regard to sex, gender, race and economic divide. This view corrects both the Johannine view and the SDAZ’s, which seem to exhibit an exclusionary concept of mission. Although the General Conference Working Policy FB 05 – K05 of the current 2022–2223 policy document holds that there exist many lines of ministry in which women can take part, the fact that the policy BA 60 10 forbids women to assume the ordainable roles may be seen as discriminatory and exclusionary. The Samaritan woman stood excluded on cultural, gender, ethnic, racial, class and power lines in the disciples’ view till Jesus corrected them by bunching them in the same class with the very woman they segregated on the evangelisation roles. This lesson ought to be understood by the SDAZ and make her include women in all roles of the church, including the ordainable ones, as is taught and demonstrated by Jesus’ admonition in John 4 and especially in verses 37–38, according to this research. The article establishes that the exclusion of women in both the SDA Church and the Johannine community appears to be rooted in the social-scientific models of honour–shame, collectivism, and kinship, which prioritize ritual purity, group harmony, and strict adherence to established norms.

Acknowledgements

This article is based on research originally conducted as part of Tendai Takawira’s doctoral thesis titled ‘Investigation into the Role of Women during Early Christianity: Implications for the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Zimbabwe (SDAZ)’, submitted to the Faculty of Theology and Religion, Department of New Testament and Related Literature, University of Pretoria, in 2025. The thesis is currently unpublished and not publicly available. The thesis was supervised by Dr Mphumezi Hombana. The manuscript has been revised and adapted for journal publication. The author confirms that the content has not been previously published or disseminated and complies with ethical standards for original publication.

The authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article.

T.T. was responsible for the conceptualisation of the study and the preparation of the first draft, including the methodology. M.H. supervised the research, provided critical review and editing of the manuscript, and supplied the necessary academic resources.

This article followed all ethical standards for research without direct contact with human or animal subjects.

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

The authors confirm that the data supporting this study and its findings are available within the article and its listed references.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and are the product of professional research. It does not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated institution, funder, agency or that of the publisher. The authors are responsible for this article’s findings and content.

References

Footnote

1. A deeper study on this issue is captured in my 2024 PhD thesis – ‘Investigation into the role of women during early Christianity: Implications for the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Zimbabwe’, pages 104–111. This thesis, published by the University of Pretoria UPSPACE, is available online.