Summit lecturer Susan Campbell discussed the leadership role of women in the church on Monday in her lecture entitled “Dating Jesus.”

From a young age, Campbell began asking why a woman could not be a preacher. Growing up in a fundamentalist Church of Christ community, Campbell soon learned women in leadership wasn’t part of the doctrine. Throughout her life, she has molded firm pro-women beliefs in leadership positions.

“I don’t think I’m called to be a preacher, but I also think we, as people, aren’t called to keep women from visible leadership positions in the church,” Campbell said. “I don’t buy that God has given us that role.”

Campbell has earned many accolades as a Hartford Courant columnist and won the 2010 CT Book Award for Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl. She was invited to speak by Dr. Brady Bryce, director of ministry events. The mission of Summit, in a few words, “is a conversation where life and faith converge in Christ,” Bryce said.

“I’ll have people say ‘why in the world are you bringing in [fill in the blank]’ and then other people will come about that same person and say ‘I’m so excited you are bringing them in,” Bryce said. “To both of them I say, hey, we’re about having conversations, they aren’t the safest ones – we don’t always leave them saying ‘well, now I know the answer’ or ‘now I know exactly what I believe’ but we’ve come together, we’ve dialogued and in that process we are usually changed if we are willing to listen to one another.”

Terry Cagle, father of two daughters and minister of Christ Community Church in Arlington, agrees with Campbell.

“I raised my daughters to feel like they are valuable to God and to people,” he said.

“I feel very strongly that the ground under the cross is dead level – it is flat. If I am a boy, I don’t have a step up,” Cagle said. “It’s flat because Jesus loves everybody. So women should be just like men, and their gifts should be celebrated and used just like men. There is no male or female.”