High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! 1 Timothy 2:12 is a passage from the first letter, I Timothy, of the pastoral epistles in the New Testament. The excerpt is typically raised in opposition to women being ordained as clergy and holding certain other positions of ministry and leadership in Christianity. It is a key passage in the debate between complementarianism, which holds that men and women are of equal intrinsic worth but should have different and complementary roles in the church and in society, and egalitarianism, which argues for no institutional distinctions between men and women. Application of the passage varies, with women in some complementarian churches being denied a vote in church affairs, denied the right to serve as teachers of adult Bible classes or as missionaries, and generally disenfranchised from the duties and privileges of church leadership, while other complementarian churches allow women to perform any role (including that of deacon) available to a non-ordained man.