How Many Churches Will Egalitarianism Claim?

Albert Mohler penned an essay today looking at the new "Illumination Project" report out of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the splinter group formed in response to the Southern Baptist "Conservative Resurgence". His essay, All Other Ground is Sinking Sand: A Portrait of Theological Disaster, is a good history lesson, although one must keep in mind that there is a partisanship about it given that Dr. Mohler was one of the pivotal figures in the Conservative Resurgence and remains one of the steadfast proponents of biblical authority in the SBC.

Mohler's essay reminds us yet again of a simple truth: there is a fork in the theological road that all denominations and local churches must eventually choose, whether to call women as elders (or ordain  them as pastors to use the institutional language). When one chooses to ignore the teaching of Scripture and call women into positions of authoritative leadership in the church there is a nigh inevitable downgrade that follows. As Mohler wrote:

This is also the logical consequence of adopting a hermeneutic that allows for the service of women as pastors — for many CBF congregations, the key issue of outrage at the SBC. The same negotiation and “reinterpretation” of the biblical text that allows for the service of women pastors will logically lead to the acceptance of the LGBT revolution. How can it not? Individuals and congregations may refuse to take this next step, but they have surrendered the only binding argument that would offer an objective truth claim. Eventually, the revolutionaries will win, and they know it. Clearly, some appear unwilling to wait.

I am not aware of an example where a denomination chose to call women as elders while remaining faithful to Scripture in other places over the long term. There is no path where women elders and orthodoxy walk hand in hand. This is the inevitable result of practical egalitarianism...

Two "married" lesbian "Senior Ministers and Co-Pastors", the "reverend" Maria Swearingen and the "reverend" Sally Sarratt who head up Calvary Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., an "ecumenical, multi-racial, multi-ethnic Christian body". The "co-pastors" wrote a screed in response to the "Illumination Project" report, where they express anger and not without reason for the CBF's schizophrenic treatment of homosexual sin, allowing open homosexuals to be hired for some positions but not for others. Their open letter includes the obligatory MLK quote, langauge about "colonialism", "violence" (Scriptural faithfulness is now violence apparently), "imperialism" and the "exportation of violent theology all over the world in service to Empire". Mixed in with a grab-bag of "progressive" nonsense is am ominous statement from these "co-pastors" (emphasis in original).

First, while all people may be equal, all opinions are not equal, nor should they be given an equal place at the table. This is a morally debilitating myth we keep telling each other to pacify conflicts and coddle our fears over disagreement and loss. Jesus did not think all opinions were equal. Jesus’ witness and example demonstrates that the opinions, better yet the lives, of the dispossessed were worthy of more time and attention than calculating mathematically equal air-time for everyone. The fact that we think decision-making in light of the gospel of liberation should look like “equally valid opinions getting equal time” is not only absurd, it is a striking example of the “banality of evil,” as Hannah Arendt describes it.

Read that again. Behind the "progressive" language of tolerance and the nice smiles of the two lesbian "pastors" there is a far more insidious message here, one I have run into personally on social media. All people may be equal (and then again they may not) but not all of their opinions are equal. To paraphrase the warning words of George Orwell, all animals are equal but some are more equal than others. In other words, these women have decreed that some opinions are just not worthy of being held and are not worth being considered. Someone with a firmly held belief, as the church has held for 2000 years, that homosexual behavior is incompatible with full inclusion in the Christian community, much less leadership, is not only mistaken but they are not even worthy of being heard. This is a sinister belief. I have been told online that because of who I am, my opinions are automatically invalid and unworthy of being heard, regardless of the merit of what I am saying. Here we sit in 2018 and a couple of women who fancy themselves married and elders have declared that the essentially unanimous position of the greatest pastors and theologians of the church for 2000 years, from Paul and Christ Himself to present day, are null and void and are not even deserving of being given "equal time". It is pretty easy to win an argument when you don't allow your opponent to speak at all.

This is the state of the "progressive" church.

It is anti-Scriptural, anti-intellectual, illiberal and authoritarian in the extreme. Ultimately it is anti-gospel and in the spirit of anti-Christ.

Is it "progress" that debates over the application of Scripture are closed down without even so much as consideration? I am glad to discuss any topic with any person with an open Bible because I am confident in my positions and hopefully humble enough to be corrected by Scripture where I am wrong. The oxymoronic phrase "progressive Christianity" is just code for a religious veneer of respectability slapped over old fashioned authoritarian thought policing. Maria Swearingen and Sally Sarratt are representative of the totalitarian progressive impulse to push an agenda by shutting down conversation and attempting to control speech and thought itself.

Like the mass media shedding the last vestige of impartiality and journalistic integrity in the Trump era, the "progressive" religious authoritarians have given up even pretending to engage in Scripture, however clumsily, and have openly resorted to demanding that certain opinions, no matter how Scripturally supported and historically grounded they may be, be considered Thoughtcrime. It is high time we stop pretending these are wayward members of the church and start to call them what they are: heretics and false prophets, wolves among the sheep. What Maria Swearingen and Sally Sarratt and Rachel Held Evans and the majority of the mainline denominations and even apparently in a clumsy sense the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship are championing is not a variation of Christianity, a mistaken but sincere expression of the faith, but another "gospel" entirely where sin is celebrated and faithfulness is silenced.

Feminism: A Corrupt Seed That Yields A Rotten Crop

Picture from AgFax.com

In my prior post, It Is Not About Getting Rid Of Gender, It Is About Getting Rid Of Men, I argued that the "transgender" and "gender fluidity" movements are mostly about ridding our culture of any actual masculine expression. I also made the statement that I think women are, by and large, not terribly happy today in spite of "feminist progress" and by implication that they would be more happy if the men in their lives acted more like men. In fact it often seems to me that things that are supposed to make women happier, like having more women with careers outside of the home and going to college, are actually conspiring to make women less happy and satisfied. As an example of this I quoted the disproportionate female-male ratio at most colleges in an article, Unequal Gender Ratios at Colleges Are Driving Hookup Culture, but the broader issue of that post was that the shrinking male population at university is actually benefitting the men enormously, at least from a standpoint of sexual promiscuity.

Women at disproportionately female schools talk openly about their frustrations. “Everyone’s self-esteem takes a hit,” a young woman at 75%-female Sarah Lawrence College told me. One reason: Sarah Lawrence men have little interest in exclusive relationships. “Why would they? It’s like they have their own free harem,” she grumbled. “One of my friends was dumped by a guy after they’d been hooking up for less than a week. When he broke up with her, the guy actually used the word ‘market’—like the ‘market’ for him was just too good.” 

A male Sarah Lawrence student offered a similar assessment of life there—though he wasn’t bemoaning the school’s hookup culture but celebrating it. The young man told me he had had sex with more than 20 of his female classmates. “There isn’t really a culture of monogamy or even dating here,” he offered. “Sometimes it feels like you can have anyone you want.”

It turns out that men and women still like to be with each other and when men are scarce, women end up having to or at least feeling like they have to, compromise what they want (monogamous, steady relationships) for what men seem to want (casual sex) in order to have any relationship with men at all. Certainly plenty of academic "experts" will tell you that casual sex with no commitment is healthier than old fuddy-duddy notions of monogamy and relationship but I don't believe that to be true for a second. Having once been an unregenerate college guy, albeit one with a steady girlfriend that I got engaged to halfway through my first year of school, I can say with some confidence that being in a culture where you are having sex with so many different girls that you number your partners in the dozens would be fantastic. Marriage traditionally acted as a civilizing influence on young men, especially young men who are outside of the faith, but now most men can get sex on demand with no corresponding commitment. If you want to see an unclothed woman, you don't have to buy a girlie magazine with a brown paper cover over it from the drug store, you can just click a few buttons and see whatever kind of woman you want doing anything you can imagine and quite a few things you can't even begin to imagine.

I have been working over a post literally for years now that I need to finish one of these days that argues we are living in the Golden Era of Male Irresponsibility. Ironically it is feminism that has made this happen. Very powerful and educated men are doing more than fine in our culture. Lazy, ne'er-do-well young men who want to live at home, play video games and watch porn are doing just fine in their pursuit. The vast majority of men who just want to be a good father and husband and productive member of society are the ones who are struggling.

The struggles of most men is mirrored by the struggles of far too many women. Women from affluent homes are also doing great it would seem. But the majority of women in America seem far from doing just fine. They are pulled in a million directions, told that they don't need a man to be happy but at the same time constantly bombarded with marketing tell them that they need this or that to appeal to men. Women have been told that they shouldn't allow men to objectify them but the culture has led to a situation where teen girls are sending nude photos of themselves to boys that often aren't even steady boyfriends. My experience of decades in the professional work environment was that of a lot of women, I would say the majority of them, were equal parts resigned to "having to work" and longing to spend more time with their kids. Having a picture of your six month old daughter on your desk and texting the daycare is no substitute for being there for her. That may sound judgmental and cruel, and maybe it is, but it is also true. Each successive generation of Western women seems less equipped for caring for their own children but in spite of efforts by some feminists to shame the maternal instinct out of women, it is still there but women today are ill-equipped to respond to that instinct.

A perfect example of this came up this week with the cinematic release of the Fifty Shades of Grey bondage-porn sequel Fifty Shades Darker. In the spirit of full disclosure I have not read any of the books or watched the film but I have run across enough in terms of plot summaries to get the gist of the movie. The series is wildly popular. The first book, Fifty Shades of Grey, apparently sold more than 125 million copies. According to Barnes & Noble (I didn't check at Amazon where I almost exclusively shop for books because I don't want to see what else looking at Fifty Shades would cause Amazon to recommend for me), the hard copy retails for $12.95 and the e-book for $7.99 so taking the average price of the two and multiplying that times 125,000,000 copies means roughly $1.3 billion in sales. That is a pretty big number for a book. The first film adaptation made over $166,000,000 at the box office in America and more than half a billion worldwide according to IMDB. It sounds like estimates are that the sequel will earn almost $50 million during the opening weekend alone.

As you would expect just from the general hype, the book buyers are 80% women. What I found interesting when I looked at the buying profile from Bowker was what kind of women were buying it. The cultural narrative is that it is bought by bored and sexually frustrated soccer moms but that is not what Bowker found in 2012:

Compared to the typical adult fiction consumer, buyers of the Fifty Shades books are more likely to be women, live in the Northeast, and have a significantly higher household income.

Interesting indeed! I think a lot of midwestern soccer mom types tend to consume the "Amish romance novel" genre but why would substantially more affluent, presumably more educated and more "enlightened" women in the Northeast (i.e. Boston to New York to Washington, D.C., our power corridor and where you are most likely to find powerful, "successful" career women) buy a book about a disordered and male dominated sexual relationship?

Why in the world would women in our supposedly enlightened world with decades of feminist indoctrination in the schools and our pop culture, want to spend upwards of a billion and a half dollars to read/watch about what ought to be the nightmare of feminists, a wealthy older White man who apparently uses his wealth and power and *GASP* dare I say privilege to seduce a virginal, younger woman and dominate her? Everything about this storyline seems to run precisely counter to what women are supposed to truly crave. Wouldn't a better story line that would appeal to women like this be something like a professional woman, like a high power lawyer, who has a mutually respectful but open relationship with a guy who is an artist of some sort and works at Whole Foods to make ends meet but who mostly depends on his much smarter, more worldly and far more successful female life partner to pay the bills while he keeps their condo clean, feeds the cats and cleans the litter box and makes cruelty free, fair trade vegan meals and rubs her feet when she gets home?

Curiouser and curiouser.

My theory is probably not surprising. Men and women are men and women and you can market and indoctrinate the crap out of them but that doesn't change their basic nature. The Bible is again proven to be accurate in describing the human condition when it comes to gender (ex. Genesis 3:16 ). When these modern, feminism-saturated, independent, strong women get a few minutes to themselves, one hundred million or so of them read about or watched a movie about a man who sexually dominates a woman. Tens of millions more read various romance novels, including the wildly popular Amish romance genre and the Amish idea of gender is about as counter-cultural as you can get. It is almost like women really are actually craving a strong man who will lead in their relationship instead of some flaccid, milquetoast Nancy-boy that has to ask his life partner to open the pickle jar for him.

Feminism is an agenda driven ideology that really has morphed into a matriarchal religion, a religious worldview that has been mostly destructive to women, to men and to children and families. The ideas that it claims to put forth, like equality of opportunity, have long since come to fruition and what we see now are mostly policies and positions that can only be properly described as anti-male, anti-children and anti-family. The future is not female but to ensure a better future for females we must collectively reject the lies of feminism for the sake of our wives, sisters, mothers and daughters.

I feel guilty, gimme a job!

This post has so many of my most favoritest stuffs. Professional paid "ministry", women in church leadership and of course the ever-present entitlement mentality. It is like an early Christmas present! I present to you Women, Leadership, and Guilt by Sharon Hodde Miller and posted by Ed Stetzer. Sharon is a "recent doctoral graduate of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School" and in her research she discovered that many women who are pursuing formal theological vocational education feel guilty about it. See below:

What happens when you discern a call to ministry that seems totally impractical? What happens when you enroll in seminary without any assurance of a future job?

Those are the uncertainties facing the women I interviewed for my doctoral research last year. I sat down with female seminary students at three conservative, evangelical seminaries for the primary purpose of understanding “what worked.” What encouraged them to enroll in seminary when so few of their peers do the same?

Throughout the course of my research, I discovered numerous encouraging findings about how church leaders are identifying the gifts of women and equipping them for ministry. However I also uncovered a surprising obstacle. In addition to the expected hurdles of tuition costs and lack of job prospects, I found that over a third of the women wrestled with an abiding sense of guilt.

One woman confessed, “I thought maybe I was being selfish by wanting to attend. Like, I wanted to prepare myself for my career, instead of supporting my husband’s.” Another woman also admitted to feeling selfish for enrolling, that she ought to “give to people instead of giving to [herself].” One student described her own feelings of “guilt and shame,” while another expressed her fear of attending seminary “for the wrong reasons.”

Keep in mind that feeling guilty is about the worst thing that can happen to someone in our culture. If someone feels guilty or ashamed or anything other than warm and fuzzy, that means that someone else has done something bad and must be punished. This nonsense infects the "Christians" part of out society in much the same way it does the broader culture.

She does make an accidental correct point:

No Christian tradition denies the goodness of women equipping themselves to better serve God, so this sentiment is terribly misplaced.

Amen to that, the church absolutely ought to be very concerned with equipping our sisters. The question is not quite that simple because from that statement she makes a number of leaps including the grossly erroneous notion that equipping anyone in the church, male or female, requires or suggests formal theological training leading to a job at a seminary. In contrast we see that when Paul wrote to Titus he set out for us how we should equip women as well as the setting:

Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. (Titus 2:3-5)

So what is the proper way for women to be equipped in the church? It is a lot like the way men should be equipped, namely by the emulation of more mature Christians. In contrast to the "send more women to seminary" model being espoused here, what Paul commends is that younger women learn from older women right where they are and that what they are to learn is how to behave respectfully and reverently, to love their husband and their children, to keep the home and submit to their husband as the church submits to Christ. In the pages of Scripture we have no example of women leaving home to get a vocational ministry degree in order to be a leader in the church. Of course there isn't an example of that for men either. What this is symptomatic of is the contemporary secular mindset that demands that women have "a career of their own" to be fulfilled, a mindset that has been immeasurably damaging to our broader culture and even more so in the church. Of course what the Scriptures have to say on this topic isn't all that important in light of our enlightened modern sensibilities. What is really important is that some women feel guilty about this whole thing!

What then is the solution to this guilt? Well if you are unsure if you can get a job and that makes you anxious, then we should create more jobs for ya!

"In addition to providing more paying jobs for women with ministry gifts, church leaders need to be intentional about how they talk about gifts—not only the gifts of women, but men also." 

So....some women feel guilty about getting an expensive degree from seminary so to assuage that guilt the church should make up yet another paid job in "ministry"? A chicken in every pot and a full-time staff job for every seminary grad? This just assumes an endless pot of money to provide paychecks to everyone that wants a church job. Given the decline in attendance, that just doesn't make a whole bunch of sense, setting aside how unscriptural it is on so many levels.

I must have missed the part in Scripture where the church exists to provide full employment for people who feel "called" to ministry. How about we encourage people to minister right where they are rather than insisting that they have to get specialized vocational training and in turn demanding a paycheck to minister? What we need in the church are not more "paying jobs" for men or for women but more engagement from the rank and file who sits mutely by while the professionals are expected to do the work of ministry. That is true for men and for women.

One would be hard pressed to argue that women need less help in caring for their home and family and more help in getting a seminary degree. As I have argued for, well pretty much for as long as I have been blogging, if we really want to help our sisters in the church we ought to be telling them "It is OK to want to be home with your family". I don't know of many women who have the "being a mom and wife" thing all figured out and are bored looking for something else to do, just as I haven't met a single man who has the "being a father and husband" thing figured out.

Snarkiness aside, we have to get out of the professional ministry mindset. The best training ground for the church is right at home where we live, work and raise our families. There is a place in the church for academics and professionals but it isn't the place for most of us, not for men and especially not for our sisters who are already overburdened by the pressures of raising a family and caring for a home in our modern era. The best teachers in the church are not the guys with the fancy degrees and a litany of letters after their name but rather are the men and women who live the lives others ought to emulate. You don't have to go to a seminary to find them, they probably live right by you and best of all watching and imitating them is free!

The Institutional Mindset and Gender Roles

There are some conversations that keep coming around and around so I blog about them again and again. Reformed theology used to be one of those but I haven't bothered in a while because it has been hashed over so many times that it just wore me out and the Arminian answers are just so awful. So now I write about things like non-violence which also gets a visceral reaction and of course gender. Today was one of those gender days and as usual the discussion has gone around in circles, circles based on whether we should examine what Scripture says to inform our decisions on application or whether we should look to see what Scripture doesn't say to override what it does. I know that is a loaded and smarmy statement. 

One of the common arguments against the historical and I would say glaringly clear teaching on gender in the Bible is the notion that Paul is addressing an issue in the culture of the day, making concessions or teaching for pragmatic reasons or dealing with some specific problem. The accuracy of this is pretty easy to ascertain by simply reading what Paul wrote. What is Paul's reasoning for his teaching on gender (emphasis mine)?

I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. (1 Tim 2:12-14)

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

(Eph 5:22-24)

But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. (1 Cor 11:3)

For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. (1 Cor 11:7-9)

So we have the creation order. We have the relationship between Christ and the church. We have man as the glory of God but women as the glory of man. An image of male headship that is not incidental or cultural but intentional. God could have created Adam and Eve simultaneously but He did not. He made Adam, declared him incomplete and in need of a helper and created Eve out of Adam. There is a very explicit pattern here that is repeated in 1 Corinthians 11:7-9 and it deals with the order and method of creation.

So what we have to work with is sufficient to inform our interpretation and application but what we don't have is almost as important. No hint of the culture of that day. No suggestion of pragmatic reasoning. Nothing that implies that this is something only for this time and place, having no universal application. I have said this all before but many who find the Biblical teaching on gender odious and embarrassing in our enlightened era simply refuse to accept it.

Here is what is so troubling about this to me. Because we can't get past our institutional religious setting we think that "If you ain't a pastor, you ain't nothing". The only service and leadership in the church that matters is "preaching". Ironically "preaching" as we understand it doesn't even appear in Scripture so we have elevated an extra-biblical practice to a position of overwhelming prominence and in doing so have diminished every other calling in the church and especially diminished the calling of wives and mothers. This is true even among those who, on the surface, reject institutional religion but still can't let go of that need for ecclesiastical recognition.

Being a mother and raising children. Caring for the home. Submitting to a husband who is often an idiot but needs your support anyway. Those are infinitely more important and difficult than preparing and delivering a 45 minute sermon once a week that no one will remember next month anyway. The church should be doing everything in our power to support and encourage our sisters in this noble endeavor. Instead we subtly look down on them and say they are not good enough. You need a career! You must be allowed to "preach"! You must be granted a religious title! Being a mother and wife is hard enough without piling on extra expectations. The simple fact of human beings is that we cannot do it all. We are not made to do it all. There are 24 hours in a day and about a third of them we need to sleep. There are only a limited number of years to bear children. We exist in time and space so if you are in location A doing activity Y you cannot also be in location B doing activity Z. We should encourage wives in what they already have on their plates instead of piling on more. 

Being a mom and wife is stressful enough without making our sisters feel like they are not doing enough. If you care about women, care enough to affirm and support their calling as women and quit trying to make them into something that God never intended regardless of what the culture around us might say.

Dividing Over Gender

Not sure how I missed this. In November a fairly prominent commentator on religion called for a wholesale schism in the church. Now if you don't know anything about this you might assume that one of those terrible complementarians is calling for schism in the church, since they are bad people and all. You would be wrong. No, the person calling for schism a month and a half ago is none other than Tony Jones, he of the so-called "red letter Christian" camp. Here is what he said in November:

The time has come for a schism regarding the issue of women in the church. Those of us who know that women should be accorded full participation in every aspect of church life need to visibly and forcefully separate ourselves from those who do not. Their subjugation of women is anti-Christian, and it should be tolerated no longer.

That means:

• If you attend a church that does not let women preach or hold positions of ecclesial authority, you need to leave that church.
• If you work for a ministry that does not affirm women in ecclesial leadership, you need to leave that ministry.
• If you write for a publishing house that also prints books by “complementarians,” you need to take your books to another publishing house.
• If you speak at conferences, you need to withdraw from all events that do not affirm women as speakers, teachers, and leaders.

That is, we who believe in the full equality of women need to break fellowship with those who do not. The time for dialogue and debate has passed. The Spirit has spoken, and we have listened. It’s time to move forward with full force.

Well there you go, you have your marching orders. According to Tony, "gay rights" is something we are still working on but "The full equality of women and men, however, is an issue that has long since been settled." Well, glad he settled that for us (and defined anything other than radical egalitarianism as "inequality"). Apparently the discussion is over. I must not have been on the distribution list for that memo because I don't think the "debate" is over and settled once and for all in favor of "egalitarianism". Quite the opposite.

The sheer hubris of that is breathtaking. Here is some guy on the fringe of orthodoxy, and that is being generous, with a disturbingly large audience deciding on behalf of the church that a contentious issue is settled and anyone who doesn't agree with him should shut their yap or get in line to be voted off the church island. Tony offered a more "nuanced" position in a later post but even there he said, regarding the arguments for "full inclusion in ministry", that "Anyone who is not paying heed to those arguments is willfully ignoring them." Yeah that must be it, the old ploy of suggesting that anyone who doesn't agree with your scintillating argument must either a) not understand it or b) be willfully ignoring it because no one could study an issue and come to a contrary position. Sorry to break it to you Tony but I do understand your argument and I am not ignoring it, I am simply rejecting it. According to Tony embracing complementarianism is "anti-Christian" and "subjugation". Those who hold to that position are no longer welcome in polite company. After all "the Spirit has spoken". Not sure what he means by that but it sounds like he and other egalitarians have received some sort of special revelation that the knuckle-draggers in the complementarian ranks like me are not privy to. Not surprisingly Tony admits to being befuddled by the mere presence of complementarians, as if they are some fringe kooks that only exist in the backwoods of the less "progressive" and genteel corners of the church.

As an aside, I liked some of the comments on the article, especially the ones that point out that Tony Jones and company pick this issue to divide over but seem content to welcome pretty much any other heterodox error in the cool kids camp.

The "egalitarian" position is a pretty recent phenomena. As far as I can tell it did not have a major influence on the church until the 20th century and in many major wings of the evangelical world it still does not. Something being around a long time doesn't make it right but it does mean you should try to examine your new, enlightened understanding in view of the weight of history. My position on this question is unequivocal. Functional gender egalitarianism is based largely on conjecture and "evidence" that is not in the Bible yet trumps what the Bible explicitly teaches. I don't think my egalitarian friends are heretics, just misguided.  Yet we have people like Tony Jones calling for wholesale schism in the church, dividing the church up into two camps based on their understanding of the functional roles of men and women in the church. Ironically while Jesus never mentions egalitarianism by word or deed, He does speak powerfully about unity in the church.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I would not gather on a regular basis in a group where women teach men. I think the Biblical prohibitions against this are clear and I will not be party to someone being disobedient even if they don't think that they are. Would I refuse to share a public platform with them? Refuse to publish books from the same publisher? Would I force them into the position of being an enemy of Christianity and drum them our of the church? Would I refuse to engage in works of ministry with them? Hardly. I am not so uncertain of my positions that I fear a public discussion of them. Taking your ball and going home is childish and so is this ill-conceived call for schism in the church, especially when you hide behind "the Spirit has spoken" as your excuse.

There are some things that the church is rightly divided over. There are even some issues that we should separate over. Is gender one of those? Should we refuse to even so much as share a stage with the unclean advocate of a position on gender that we don't agree with? I don't think so. The irony of the open-minded "progressive" position being the one that is marked by sticking their collective fingers in their ears and singing "La-la-la, I can't hear you" is not lost on me. I get that my position on this issue, or at least my stridency in bringing it up, is not popular with a lot of the limited pool of my regular readers. Likewise among those that agree with me on gender there is a distaste for my less than traditional view of the church. On both issues the New Testament speaks forcefully and regularly. Because it does, I think it is an issue worth debating and discussing. I also think that chasing out anyone you disagree with is the very opposite of charitable dialogue. If we only allow people we agree with to be engaged in the conversation we end up with the sort of destructive theological in-breeding that hampers spiritual growth. Anyway feel free to tell me you think I am wrong. I won't excommunicate you over it.

Why Complementarianism?

John Piper, Tim Keller and Don Carson talk about why The Gospel Coalition is complementarian and why this is an important issue. The video is 17 minutes so it is not a quick watch and it covers some deep issues but I think it is worth your time. If you are not going to watch and interact with the video, please don't comment.

Why Is TGC Complementarian? from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.

 

I think Piper is at his best here and his best point is this one:

"We live in a culture where for the last 30 or 40 years, the collapse of the meaning of biblical masculinity has not produced a beautiful egalitarian society," Piper observes. "It has produced a brutal masculine society."

That is exactly true. I have been toying with a post about this but egalitarianism in the church and more broadly feminism in the culture has not made life better or happier or more fulfilling for women and it certainly has not been beneficial to families and especially not children. The only people it has benefited are those in the swelling population of child-men, men who reap the benefits of an egalitarian society but don't do much to contribute. It is the cruel irony of feminism that the primary beneficiary of feminism has been the most irresponsible of men.

This is an interesting video. Piper is right on the mark most of the time, again where he speaks of how we handle 1 Tim 2:13 or Ephesians 5 (at around the ten minute mark) and what that implies about how we handle Gospel texts as well as a powerful statement about how our unwillingness to stand against the culture on this issue speaks to whether we will stand for other issues.

I think they stretch the point a bit in places but I obviously believe this is an important issue Some suggest that these questions are divisive and distract us from the more important stuff. I reject the idea that we should ignore issues like this and just concentrate on the "big stuff". If God deigned to reveal and preserve something, He did so with a reason. As Carson points out, the relationship between husbands and wives is so deeply interwoven with so many other issues (esp. Christ and the church) that if we start to miss this issue we will start to miss other issues and pretty soon the church devolves into an anything goes religious club that does good work but misses the big truths that the church is founded on (for evidence of this see pretty much every "mainstream" and egalitarian denomination).

This is an unpopular  topic but one that demands more than platitudes and "I thinks". How we handle these passages speaks volumes about how consistent we are about other passages.

A Different Perspective

Eric Carpenter has an interesting post this morning on women and the church. Eric's title pretty much lays it out: One Good Reason For Women To Speak. Eric states up front that he is not looking at the traditional restrictive passages but instead offers up his reason why women should speak during the church assembly:

The reason: women offer a different perspective than men do.

If we are honest we will all admit that men and women are very different. This is how God made us. These differences were apparent before the fall, thus ensuring that these differences are a good thing. God has designed men and women to complement one another, not to be carbon copies of each other. Frankly, life would be a lot duller if we were all the same.

A great reason for women to speak during church assembles is that they often provide differing perspectives than men do on all sorts of things. This might mean a somewhat different interpretation of a scripture passage. More often than that, it is the application of the passage that is different. Women are usually more nurturing than men, and therefore have important things to say about passages containing the "one anothers."

What do you think about that? God clearly made men and women differenly, with few exceptions we all agree on that. The question I have is this: can we discuss this issue without addressing the verses that traditionally have been interpreted to restrict women from speaking in the church gathering, whatever that looks like?

I have disabled comments on this post, please read Eric's post and comment over there. Little surprise I disagree with his assertion but I would be interested in seeing what others have to say.

Not A Monolithic Movement

Like almost anywhere else in the church, the house/simple/organic church is not a monolithic movement although it is sometimes stereotyped that way. There are Arminians and Calvinists, home schoolers and public schoolers, complementarians and egalitarians.

For example, Frank Viola posted today on the topic of women in ministry, Rethinking Women in Ministry. Ironically it seems he views "ministry" in the same way that the traditional church does, namely as the person "leading" from "up front". His essay is being widely read and cited today. I found it pretty lacking in persuasion if not in volume but then again I already have a pretty firm position on this issue. While Frank's position is the majority report among simple/house church types (notably also Jon Zens, another prominent leader in the house church setting that holds to egalitarianism), it is by no means the only view.

A Facebook friend, who seemingly disagrees with me and agrees in part with Frank, sent me a great link to something written by Steve Atkerson writing for the New Testament Reformation Fellowship, has a very different and far more traditional understanding of gender relations and functions in the church. His essays, Correctly Interpreting 1 Corinthians 14:33b-35 (Part 1) and (Part 2) come to a very different conclusion than Viola. No surprise I find Steve's essay far more compelling and a lot better interaction with the text rather than appealing to external sources to override the text in favor of a culturally palatable interpretation. I especially appreciate that Steve makes the obvious point, one that is missed by many who quote 1 Cor 11: 2-16 as a defense of women teaching/speaking in the gathered church, namely that those passages in no way refer specifically or even infer that they are directed at church gatherings.

Anyway, these are great essays on both sides and they demonstrate that far from being a simplistic, lowest common denominator movement, many proponents and practitioners are in fact serious Biblical exegetes who take the Word of God and its study quite seriously. If you have a fair amount of time, give both of them a read and let me know what you think!

The cult of child hatred

James Taranto, a secular editor for the Wall Street Journal, posted an interesting item last week as part of his popular "best of the web today" column, The War on Fertility. James was looking at an essay by Lisa Miller in the Washington Post, Romney, Santorum and archaic ideas on fertility. Apparently Ms. Miller takes umbrage that some Republican presidential candidates have large families and have the arrogance to not hide them away during the campaign. If you missed this column, you need to read it because it is equal parts fascinating look into the anti-child mindview and important lesson for believers. Here is the intro...

Between them, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum have as many children — 12 — as there were tribes of Israel. Ron Paul has five of his own, and in an early debate, perhaps unwilling to be outdone by Michele Bachmann’s fostering of dozens, Paul boasted that when he worked as a physician he delivered “4,000 babies.”


There’s nothing wrong with big families, of course. But the smug fecundity of the Republican field this primary season has me worried. Their family photos, with members of their respective broods spilling out to the margins, seem to convey a subliminal message that goes far beyond a father’s pride in being able to field his own basketball team. What the Republican front-runners seem to be saying is this: We are like the biblical patriarchs. As conservative religious believers, we take seriously the biblical injunction to be fruitful and multiply.

Especially worrisome is the inevitable corollary to that belief: Women should put their natural fertility first — before their brains, before their ability to earn a living, before their independence — because that’s what God wants.

Gasp, there is nothing worse than a believer that...believes! It cracks me up that she has assigned a blanket, unspoken motivation that covers all of the past and present republican candidates even though that group contains a libertarian Christian man in his 70's, a much younger evangelical woman, a Roman Catholic and a mormon. She seems more put out by large, intact families than by Newt Gingrich and his serial adultery.

Needless to say, when she writes "There's nothing wrong with big families, of course", it is inevitable that she does think there is something very wrong with having a large family, namely that having a large family and daring to show them in public is somehow striking a blow against "women's reproductive freedom". How else to explain the "smug fecundity" of these...these....parents!

Of particular and unpleasant interest are the comments that follow her essay. If you thought she was a bit over the top, you ain't seen nothing yet! It is always instructive as well as ironic to read the vitriolic rants of people spewing hatred, stereotypes and intolerance toward those they accuse of....hatred, stereotypes and intolerance.

I have never, not once, heard anyone among the "Christian right" tout any of the candidates for their large family size. That doesn't mean that nobody has made that case but I haven't seen it and I certainly spend more than my fair share of time reading places where that should come up. This isn't really an issue among the "Christian right" at all as much as it is a visceral reaction among the secular Left to large families, at least large in the eyes of people in New York, D.C. and Los Angeles what qualifies as a large family. Where we live a family with five kids is not all that unusual but I can assure you that even in the Midwest large families garner a gasp and head shake response, perhaps more polite than in larger population centers but a shocked and disbelieving reaction regardless.

Although many people would classify me as intolerant because, for example, I think murdering unborn children is wrong, I don't presume to tell anyone else how many children to have. Of course I also don't presume to tell anyone how many children are enough. I think that decision is something left to each family to decide for themselves. For Christians it becomes more complex because we do have some explicit teaching from the Bible that describes children as a blessing from God which we ought to embrace rather than avoid, something that is formative rather than something to put off until the last moment. That doesn't mean that the Quiverfull folks are correct but I certainly am more sympathetic to their view than those who view children in a manner little different from the world.

That really isn't my point here. It is hardly news that "traditional" families seem to agitate people of a certain political viewpoint, especially if they are large families. Of greater concern to me, and what is sure to get some people wound up, is the way that feminism is being integrated into the church. From Taranto's post:

...why does it so bother Miller that the Romneys, Santorums and Pauls (and also the Palins, whom she mentions in another paragraph) made the choice to have large families? If she cared about choice, she would recognize it's none of her business. But contemporary feminism does not actually value choice, except as a means to an ideological end, which is the obliteration of differences between the sexes. The biggest such difference consists in the distinct and disparate demands that reproduction makes on women. Thus in order to equalize the sexes, it is necessary to discourage fertility. Implicit in contemporary feminism is a normative judgment that having children is bad.

James Taranto, an admitted unbeliever, seems to understand something that a lot of Christians are missing. Feminism is not a force for the "liberation" of women, it is a method for ideological transformation. A lot of Christian are buying into a form of feminism dressed up in Christian sounding language and in doing so are unwittingly buying into a worldview that has a goal far beyond women pastors. It is a worldview that diminishes the importance of family, replaces mothers with institutionalized childcare and ultimately denies the image-bearer understanding of humanity as unique in the world. It is lived out in the disbelieving looks large families get and the subtle insults (don't you know what causes that?) even in the church and in the burgeoning literature of neo-feminist Christians who consistently misinterpret and misrepresent Galatians 3:28.

I make no apology for sounding the warning against the influence of feminism in the church. To me it is no different than any other worldly influence, whether patriotism or materialism or environmentalism, that seeks to pervert and diminish the worldview that should be the focus of Christians. Just as patriotism conflates national identity with the church and militarism flips the peacemaking life of the disciple on its head, feminism seeks to replace the complementary and interdependent structure of the family with the radical but false independent life that reduces women to occasional baby-makers before sending them back into the work force as a unit of production. Let me be clear, women are not "liberated" by going to work outside of the home. We are living in a culture that rapidly is becoming one where staying at home, once the norm, is becoming something only the very well to do can afford (see this excellent comment on this very topic by the same columnist, James Taranto: The Unchained Woman). When staying at home with your children becomes a sort of luxury good and status symbol, who is really benefiting from feminism? Not the women who scramble all week to get their kids up, ready for school and daycare, rush to drop them off before trudging off to work only to do the same scramble in reverse at the end of the day. Certainly not the children who are raised by and large by strangers because the harried schedule of their parents and economic pressure of a two-income society reserves full-time parenting to the country club elites.

As the church we are called to look at life and the world differently, to not be carried along by every wind and whim of the culture but to hold fast to the timeless and counter-cultural teaching of Scrpture. This is true for the family more than almost any other facet of life and not surprisingly the family is often ground zero for attacks from the Enemy. Not every Christians is called or able to have a large family and having a large family is not a sure sign of theological maturity but we must be wary of worldviews that teach beliefs that run contrary to the Bible. Even if those beliefs are not overtly anti-Christian we must examine the underlying worldview of those who teach worldviews contrary to Scripture, whether in the family, in education, in the church or anywhere else. Although some honest opponents of the faith will be open about their opposition, many others utilize a more subtle influence that often is dressed in religious language and aimed at tickling our ears. We must constantly be wary and hold up every belief to the Word and the influence of the Spirit working in conjunction. Otherwise we invariably will be led astray by those who deny the Son of God. The more we look and think like the world, the less we look and think like Jesus.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2)

Focusing on can rather than can't

Few discussions in the church generate more heat and less light than gender discussions. As a topic it is heavily influenced by our prevailing culture which makes it doubly difficult to have a calm discussion. This is tragic because it is an important topic to understand, both from an interpretive standpoint (for example why Jesus speaking to the woman at the well was so scandalous) and from the standpoint of practice in the church and in the family. It is easy for me to point the finger at those who I believe are influenced by the prevailing feminism of the day and are trying to force those contemporary cultural mores into the Scripture. I make no apology for that but I also recognize that on our end those holding to and advocating for a more traditional understanding of gender roles have done a pretty poor job of approaching a topic that carries so much cultural and emotional baggage. Part of the problem has been that we somehow have ended up with Mark Driscoll as the most visible figure in the complementarian camp. That certainly doesn’t help especially given the serious scholars and academic work that has been done by less…flashy…spokesmen, men like Wayne Grudem and John Piper. The other problem, and the one that I think is far more crucial, is the way the issue has been framed.

I think we have gone the wrong way by focusing on what women can't do instead of encouraging them in what they are called to do. Most arguments about gender roles, complementarianism vs egalitarianism, patriarchy vs Christian feminism, whatever you call it focus on the negatives and go like this:

- Women can't be elders. Yes they can!
- Women can't teach men. Yes they can!
- Women are to be silent in church. No they aren't!
- Wives are to submit to their husbands as to the Lord. No they aren’t!

Round and around we go, getting angrier and more strident as we do. Whether these are valid and applicable, and I believe they are, it turns discussion on gender to the negative leaving complementarians saying "You cannot" and egalitarians saying "Sure you can!". The debate centers around restrictions on what the church, wrongly, assumes to be crucial functions like "preaching" and often ignores what women are called to do which tend to be overwhelmingly what the Bible values most highly, functions like serving and caring for others.

Let's face it, no one likes to be told what they can't do.

Conversely, telling someone what they want to hear is always easier but it is rarely helpful.

Our sisters don’t need us to tell them what they can’t do as much as they need us to support and encourage and equip them to fulfill the noble calling of being a wife and mother. This requires two steps.

The first is kind of easy, at least compared to the second….

We as men in the church absolutely need to equip and encourage our sisters who are married in their calling as wives and mothers. The Bible speaks both positively about what women are called to, whether through example (like Mary anointing the feet of Jesus with oil and wiping His feet with her hair) and through exhortation (Titus 2:3-5; 1 Peter 3:1-6 ). There is a virtually unlimited need for the sort of service and ministry that women are not only called to but inarguably best suited for. We don’t need more people to give sermons or lead worship music or teach Sunday school. There is plenty of that already going on. We do need more serving of others, more loving homes, more mentoring of younger women by older women. This is not true just for our sisters who are already married with children. We also need to prepare our daughters and other unmarried sisters for this calling, not by sitting around pining for a husband but by ministering in and out of the Body in the ways that honor God and their calling as women and sisters in Christ. Being engaged in service and ministry before marriage is some of the best training to be a wife and mother that serves and ministers later on.

The second step is much harder, at least for me. The church desperately needs for men to step up so women don't have to fill in the gaps. That doesn’t involve watching mixed martial arts on pay-per-view, just FYI. I doubt that outside of a few ideologues who have an agenda to pursue that you would find many wives who don’t wish that their husbands would step up more in the church and the home. I fail at this on a regular basis and I am guessing most other men do as well. For the complementarian position to work, both sides need to be complementing the other and this often is an unbalanced situation where wives carry the lions share of the relationship.

If men would do a better job of encouraging women in their calling and serving as God has called them to do, I think a lot of the squabbling over gender roles would go away. Sure there are always going to be those who have a book to sell but among the "regular" folsk I think the debate would simmer down. A properly functioning, complementary and balanced marriage is one of the best witnesses to the world we have and the very best atmosphere for raising children but that sort of marriage won’t happen on its own. It is not enough and is in fact disingenuous to pound the pulpit about uppity women if we are not going to do everything we can as husbands to encourage our wives and rise to the challenge as men in our own callings.

I am not going to stop writing on this topic although I am aware that it rubs a lot of people who read my blog the wrong way. It is a subject that gets a lot of ink in the New Testament and that is reason enough for us to study it humbly and seek to apply what the New Testament teaches us consistently. I am going to try to spend more time focused on what our sisters are called to rather than what they are restricted from. I have made my position on the boundaries around gender roles very clear and now I need to spend more time working through how we equip women to serve in the vital ways that they have been uniquely called.

Don’t let anyone tell you that “just” being a wife and mother is something to be ashamed of or that you need to "do more" to be a valuable part of the Body of Christ. As I said, we have plenty of “preachers” in the church but we can never have enough wives and mothers carrying out that unique ministry.

Mutual Submission?

One of the most popular buzz phrases in the gender discussion is “mutual submission”. I see it all the time and it is often laid down as a conversation stopper, a trump card of sort. The notion of "mutual submission", a fairly recent invention, is based primarily on a single passage of Scripture, Ephesians 5:21, that allegedly commands all Christians to submit, without distinction or definition, to one another. That is a bold claim and one that bears examination. If it is true, then centuries of gender relationships in the church and home are out of step with the Bible. If it is false, as I will assert, then what we are seeing today is an attempt to subvert the teaching of Scripture and replacing it with a culturally palatable sidestepping of a crucial relationship.

(More after the break)

Driscoll eating his peas

(I am going to use "eating your peas" as a code for anything unpleasant in honor of our President and his condescending comments the other day. FYI. Until it gets boring.)

So Mark Driscoll posted a response of sorts to the issue raging in  the blogosphere that I blogged about yesterday. Apparently the email campaign worked, not to silence him but to call him to account a bit:

I then put a flippant comment on Facebook, and a raging debate on gender and related issues ensued. As a man under authority, my executive elders sat me down and said I need to do better by hitting real issues with real content in a real context. And, they’re right. Praise God I have elders who keep me accountable and that I am under authority.

Mark is going to actually engage the issue more, not less and I am glad for that:

So, we are working on a new website where I can speak to these real issues in a fuller context. Lord willing, sometime in September, after my trip to Turkey with my family and a lot of other people, and then some recovery time, we will launch a new website.

In the past, I’ve not had a regular place to work out personal commentary on social issues, and so I’ve erred in sometimes doing so in places like Facebook, Twitter, and the media, where you can have a good fight but don’t have the room to make a good case.

The first content on the new website will be about gender, and much of it will be around a book my wife, Grace, and I have completed together called Real Marriage: The Truth about Sex, Friendship, and Life Together, to be published by our friends at Thomas Nelson in January.

Both Grace and I will be blogging at the new site on issues related to gender and marriage, including mistakes we’ve made, sins we’ve committed, and convictions we agree on. And, we’ll have lots of other content on other issues as well. Until then, have a great summer, and a sincere thanks to all my critics who sometimes have good wisdom that helps me out.

What I am hoping comes from this is more serious writing from Driscoll and others on gender issues. We certainly need more people to talk about this given the massive confusion in the church regarding men and women and the sheer volume of references in the Bible. As I mentioned, Mark is a very bright brother and when he isn't being juvenile makes some great points. Lets hope he stays away from silliness and gets down to the serious issues.

What is up with Junia?

I read something interesting the other day regarding Junia, mentioned in Romans 16:7...

Salute Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen, and my fellowprisoners, who are of note among the apostles, who also were in Christ before me. (Rom 16:7)

Junia is one of the many people named in passing in the Bible that we don't know much about. I imagine that during eternity we will have plenty of time to get to know them! We do know that she is known among the apostles in some way and is somehow affiliated with another relatively unknown figure, Andronicus.

Anyway, Matt Slick who writes apologetic works for CARM (Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry), penned a fairly in-depth study of Junia and what we know and more importantly what we don't know about this intriguing individual. This is especially pertinent because some people take this passage about Junia and her relationship to the apostles as "proof" that there are no gender distinctions in Scripture in terms of who leads and how they lead. Matt's article, Was Junia in Romans 16:7 a female apostle in authority? , debunks this idea.

I think what Matt's article demonstrates is that what we know of Junia is pretty sketchy. Was Junia a "he" or a "she". Probably a she. Probably. Was she an apostle or known among the apostles or known by the apostles? It depends on the translation but it certainly seems plausible that she was well known by the apostles. Who is Andronicus? Her brother or her husband? Maybe a married couple like Priscilla and Aquila. If she is a she and if she is an apostle, what does that mean? She wasn't one of the twelve. She wasn't an apostle like Paul. Who did she minister to? Who did she teach? Half of the church were probably women, so can someone be an apostle (one who is sent) and minister/teach exclusively among other women?

Junia appears all of one time. Once is enough to recognize her for who and what she is but to try to override other, more clear and explicit teachings on an uncertain reference to an otherwise unknown individual seem pretty sketchy to me. Suppositions are OK but not when we use them to trump explicit teachings.

The neo-Reformed shock jock versus the neo-feminist egalitarian

In one corner we have the bad boy of the "young, restless, reformed" crowd, Mark Driscoll.

In the other corner we have the popular egalitarian blogger/author/speaker Rachel Held Evans.

The main event? A post by Mark Driscoll on Facebook that was supposed to be funny but came across as anything but:

So, what story do you have about the most effeminate anatomically male worship leader you’ve ever personally witnessed?

Needless to say this didn't sit well.

This is going to be a long post, so I am going to throw a break in. If you are interested readig in the rest, follow the link below...

Biblical Patriarchy: A Conclusion

So after all of those lengthy posts, what exactly is my point? It is pretty simple. God created men and women differently and likewise has called them to function differently. As it relates to gender the Scriptural evidence is crystal clear and overwhelming. God has called men to sacrificial and loving leadership as the head of the home and as servants in the church. God has not called men to abuse their headship or even to focus on authority or making their wives submit. The submission of a wife to her husband is an act of obedience on the part of the woman and the sacrificial love of a husband for his wife is not predicated on her submission to her. Likewise a woman’s submission to her husband is not based on how much her husband loves her but rather how much she loves Christ.

I am a big boy. I know that there is not a single man who has ever loved his wife the way that Christ loves the church. In our sinful, finite existence it is by definition impossible. I also recognize that I especially fall far short of the mark here, both in loving my wife and in leading the family. Here’s the rub. Our perceived failures don’t give us license to rewrite the Word. We are called to roles by God and in spite of our failings the calling remains the same. The problem is not in the Scriptures, it is with us.

Taking this a step further. The failures of male headship in the church are caused by the weakness and failings of men, not with the underlying principles that are so clearly laid out for us in Scripture. The failure of Biblical male servant leadership in the church and in the home shouldn't lead us to teach our daughters to assume the roles reserved for men, it should cause us to redouble our efforts to raise our sons to be godly, humble and loving leaders in the church and home. In other words we as parents need to raise our sons to embrace loving, sacrificial Biblical headship in the home and male servant leadership the church and we need likewise to raise our daughters to seek husbands who understand, embrace and seek out their God ordained role in the church and family.

As the church we likewise need to mentor young men to be the men they should be in the home and family and provide examples for them to follow. Instead of age based segregation in the church, putting "young adults" in one class and "senior saints" in another, we should encourage the different generations to mingle and form friendships. A 65 year old brother may not be up to speed on the latest smartphones or who the coolest contemporary Christian music groups are but he has knowledge that is timeless and precious and all too often ignored and lost with each passing generation. How often are couples who have been married 40 or 50 years encouraged to form bonds with newly married couples? We don’t need to recreate the gender wheel with every couple, we have already been given timeless wisdom in the Word and invaluable experience in the older generations of Christians. Anyhoo, off my soapbox….

Have we culturally outgrown the old fashioned gender roles we see in the Bible or have we abandoned those important doctrines in favor of modern sensibilities? It strikes me that when we have a disparity between what we see in Scripture and our current cultural norms, the Bible should win out. This is true in places like sexual immorality and propitiation as well as in gender roles. Our culture today is hardly superior to that of the first century. Men and women have not fundamentally changed and the world is still in the grips of sin. Every effort to conform the Scriptures to the whims of the culture has ended disastrously.

Male headship, patriarchy, whatever you want to call it, is not merely a social construct of the ancient world that we have outgrown. It is deeply tied into the entirety of Biblical revelation from Genesis up to the image of the church as the Bride of Christ. While the term and the idea have been hijacked by some in the so-called "patriarchy movement" that doesn't mean that the underlying idea of male headship in the home and church, demonstrated by humble and loving servant leadership, should be discarded in favor of a more socially acceptable egalitarianism. Our standard is always the Word of God and the consistent theme throughout Scripture is of different and complementary roles for men and women that are established in Genesis, demonstrated in the Old Testament and reinforced strongly in the New Testament. What is acceptable to the culture, what is pragmatic, what is equitable is irrelevant to those who follow Christ.

A quick word regarding the so-called “Biblical Patriarchy movement”. I am not a part of this movement, nor do I seek to be part of any other “movement” whether it be homeschooling, Reformed theology, house church, headcovering, etc. The danger of so any “movements” in the church is that they often elevate secondary doctrines to positions of preeminence and likewise divide the church. I experienced and participated in that with Reformed theology and in doing so likely alienated many fellow believers. While I believe that Reformed theology, i.e. the Five Points and the Five Solas, is an accurate summarization of the soteriological message of the Bible, it is not the Gospel no matter what Charles Spurgeon said.

I hold to a patriarchal position because I think the Scriptures clearly present this as God’s plan and intent in the design of human beings, the family and the church but I do not impose it as a barrier to fellowship or cooperation. I think that the various types of gender egalitarianism are in error but I also think that infant baptism is an error (you can replace infant baptism with dispensationalism, arminianism, etc.). That doesn’t mean that I reject fellowship with those who differ from me. I find it disingenuous to acknowledge someone as a fellow believer in Christ in words but to reject their fellowship and cooperation in Kingdom work in deeds. Nor do I seek to be an evangelist for patriarchy (or believers baptism or Calvinism or….). My intent in this series was and always has been to present a counter-voice to those who push for egalitarianism and the blurring of Biblical gender roles, a movement that is prevalent in the simple church crowd and a position that I say unapologetically is an error. I am not at all interested in using secondary, important to be sure but secondary, issues as a wedge between believers. I have tried very hard to avoid bashing or slandering those who disagree with me on this issue even as I recognize that some who are advocates of patriarchy have not done the same. Of course as I mentioned there is undeniably plenty of vitriol, slander, ugliness and half-truths on the other side of this position as well. Wherever that sort of unpleasantness crops up, whether from people I agree with or disagree with, it is unscriptural and damaging to the unity and witness of the Body of Christ. There is plenty of work to be done for the Kingdom without expending so much of it tearing into those we should be laboring alongside of. Patriarchy, complementarianism, male servant headship, whatever you call it, is important and needs to be given a fair hearing in the church but it is also not the Gospel and never will be. I hope if nothing else that this series has given you cause to think or rethink your position and that it spurs you onto greater love, greater sacrifice and greater service in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Biblical Patriarchy: Common Objections

There are quite a few people who reject the position I have laid out in the previous posts. I have not compiled a comprehensive list of them nor am I going to take their arguments apart piece by piece. What I am going to do is put forth a few of the general arguments I have seen from the opposing position and demonstrate why I don’t find them compelling.

The Galatians 3 argument

I have often seen Galatians 3: 28 offered as a counterpoint to the explicit passages regarding gender relations and roles. Here is the passage in question in the surrounding context.

But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise. (Galatians 3:25-29)

So isn’t Paul saying that there is no difference between men and women in Christ? Well yes and no. Paul is not speaking of gender at all, he is saying that in Christ salvation is for all. Just as he is not saying that when a slave becomes a Christian he is freed from this earthly master (in fact he says that servants should obey their masters in Ephesians 6: 5-8) or that a Greek who is saved becomes a Jew, he is likewise not saying anything about gender relations here.

This is another example of why context is so important. You cannot read Galatians 3:28 in a vacuum, you need to see the whole thing so you can understand what Paul is saying and why what he is saying here is not that in Christ there is no difference in function between men and women, it is that the saving message of the cross is universal and doesn’t apply only to the rich, the Jew, men, etc. but that salvation comes to all people. Galatians 3:28 is perfectly compatible with what Paul and Peter say elsewhere regarding gender.

The cultural argument

Another argument is made that the writings of Paul and Peter regarding gender are merely reflective of the prevailing culture of the time they were writing. The customs of ancient times don’t apply to us today, we have advanced beyond that. Just as we use email and cell phones instead of papyrus, we should likewise dump the anachronistic gender roles we see in the New Testament.

Here is the problem with that. There are actually a couple of big problems. First, when Paul especially speaks about gender roles and boundaries, he never appeals to the culture of the day and in fact he typically is speaking of universal principles. We see this most pointedly in his appeal to the creation order and the Fall. The realities of those events are timeless. The second is that you can make that same argument about all sorts of precepts in the Bible. Maybe women don’t need to dress modestly, maybe stealing isn’t all that bad, maybe loving our neighbors is outdated, maybe marriage is overrated? You can see the problem here. What the Bible is speaking of are universal and timeless truths. There is nothing in what Paul and Peter wrote regarding gender that would be tied to the culture of the day and therefore no longer be applicable. In fact I would suggest that egalitarianism more of a capitulation to the prevailing culture than complementarianism is a throwback to an ancient culture.

The denying the one who is equipped argument

But, some might say, my wife is a great leader! She is a wonderful teacher! Why would God equip her in that way and then deny her the ability to function with those talents? That doesn’t make any sense!

I get where that argument is coming from. My wife is a very good public speaker. She has spoken to much larger audiences than I ever have and is quite good at it. That really isn’t the point. The point has to do with obedience and calling, not perceived ability. Just because we think someone is “good at” something doesn’t override what Scripture teaches.

God has given people talents that can be used to accumulate a great deal of wealth. Does that mean that they should pursue monetary gain? God has given people the ability to lie convincingly. Does that mean they should lie to others? Of course not and likewise while some women have a gift when it comes to teaching and serving, that doesn’t mean their perceived abilities should trump Scriptural prohibitions. There is plenty of work to be done in discipling other women and raising and caring for children and that is just as important as teaching men. Perhaps we should ignore the culture around us that devalues women “just” raising children and focus on obedience as a sign of our love for Christ? I would go so far as to say that we have plenty of talented teachers in the church but what we really need are godly women who embrace raising their children and helping younger women learn how to also be good wives and mothers. All of the teaching and leadership in the church is not worth very much if the home and family are unsound.

The separate is inherently unequal argument, i.e. women are second class citizens in the church

This viewpoint makes an interesting point, one that is familiar in our culture. If men and women are relegated to certain roles, that is inherently discriminatory. They would argue that no matter how you slice it, different is unequal. Most of us recognize this principle in areas like racial segregation where “separate but equal” has been declared to be intrinsically discriminatory. It is an argument that resonates with us, especially in America with our history of racial discrimination.

Here is the big problem with this argument. You and I don’t get to decide what is “fair” or what is “equal”. What is truly “fair” is that we all spend an eternity in hell. For those who are saved, bought by the blood of Christ and adopted into the family of God, the Word of God is our standard. Not the culture. Not our personal opinions. Not what is fair or equitable. The Word.

The mindset that sees any barrier to how women serve and function in the home is ironically the same mindset that sees titles and functions as key to the church. If women can’t be pastors or elders they are being treated unfairly. Jesus taught over and over that the greatest among us are the humble servants, not the “leaders”. In many ways, a woman who graciously submits to the leadership of her husband is far more godly than the man who has a title like “Pastor” or “Doctor” in front of his name and a slew of initials after it. I think many Christians fall into the trap of equating “institutional church” with “complementarian gender roles” and chuck the good with the bad.

Examples of women that appear to be fulfilling male roles

There are a couple of places where we see examples of women allegedly fulfilling roles that I have argued are restricted to men. These can seem, at first blush, to be compelling arguments against the patriarchal position I have laid out. When you dig a little deeper and look at them in context, they are far less convincing. For example:

On the next day we departed and came to Caesarea, and we entered the house of Philip the evangelist, who was one of the seven, and stayed with him. He had four unmarried daughters, who prophesied. (Acts 21:8-9)

This makes sense in light of the passage in 1 Corinthians 11 that speaks of women praying and prophesying (1 Corinthians 11:5). Clearly women prophesied. I find it somewhat amusing that the same people who try to use this passage to support egalitarianism are often the same people who reject headcovering. But I digress. What else do we know about these women? Not a whole lot, this is the only mention of them although Joel prophesied about women prophesying on the day of Pentecost in Joel 2:28 when he wrote that “your sons and your daughters shall prophesy”. The question we need to raise here is not just what does Luke say about the daughters of Philip but also what does he not say. He doesn’t say when or how often these daughters prophesied. Was it in the gathering of the church? Maybe, maybe not. I am not convinced that prophesying (along with headcovering) is something restricted to the gathered church. We know that they were unmarried so they didn’t have husbands obviously. Who did they prophesy to and what did they prophesy about? We don’t know. Is this something normative or are these daughters unique? Again we don’t know but I am pretty sure I have not heard anyone, male or female, prophesying in the sense of a prophetic utterance. What we know about this event is pretty scarce and what we don’t know is quite vast. I cannot see that a brief blurb about unmarried daughters prophesying without a touch of context to explain it should override the multiple, lengthy and explicit New Testament passages that deal with gender relations in the church and home. I certainly don’t discount that God can and has used women as vehicles for prophesy but I likewise don’t see that contradicting what Paul and Peter taught.

Then there is this one:

Now a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was an eloquent man, competent in the Scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord. And being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John. He began to speak boldly in the synagogue, but when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him and explained to him the way of God more accurately. (Acts 18:24-26)

What do we know about this? We know that both Priscilla and her husband Aquila took Apollos aside and explained “the way of God more accurately”. That is about all we know. So doesn’t this seem to violate 1 Timothy 2:12? Not necessarily. First, we note that both Priscilla and her husband took Apollos aside. We also note that they corrected him after taking him apparently out of the public eye in the synagogue. So in this event was Priscilla somehow exercising authority over Apollos? We certainly cannot be sure since we are given neither the content of the conversation nor are we presented with this event with an accompanying judgment call as to its appropriateness. Any suggestion that this event trumps the explicit gender passages relies on mere conjecture and that is always a poor hermeneutic.

As I mentioned, this list is not and was not intended to be comprehensive. These are just some examples of the objections to patriarchy and headship I have run into. I would welcome the chance to interact with any other Scripturally based arguments against complementarianism.

My final post will be a summary of Biblical patriarchy, what it is and is not and with a quick word regarding the “patriarchy movement”.

The gift of gender

From the very beginning, gender was pivotal to Creation and the plan of redemption. God created man first. Scripture is clear about this. That doesn’t mean man is better or superior, it means what it means: God made man first. But man was created, by a perfect God, purposefully incomplete. That was God’s intent as was His solution to provide a complementary partner for him. We see the origin of women early on in the second chapter of Genesis.

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” (Genesis 2:18)

In that one verse we see gender explained Biblically. Every conversation about gender needs to be framed by that verse. While some people are gifted with singleness, the normative state is not to be alone. Men are formed intentionally incomplete and God in His infinite mercy and wisdom created woman from man to be a helper and a compliment to men. God did not say that Adam was just lonely and needed someone else to keep him company so he made another person who was just like Adam. God made man a helper fit for him, a helper that was different and complementary. Men and women are made differently for a reason and neither is complete alone. Both are of equal value in the eyes of God even, and perhaps especially, though they are made differently and called differently. This theme runs throughout the Bible and culminates in the Son of God being born of a woman and in the picture of Christ and the church, the Bridegroom and the Bride.

Unfortunately, instead of rejoicing that God in His infinite and holy wisdom created men and women with a purpose and for a purpose, many have decided to rewrite the Script to suit our cultural standards or worse yet to appease that same culture out of fear of ridicule and being called “backwards”.

What is ironic is that so many of the advocates of gender equality or egalitarianism or whatever they call it are also the most anti-hierarchical people around. In spite of the distrust of hierarchy and clericalism, many advocates of egalitarianism seem to be unable to view women as serving equally in the church unless they are filling traditional leadership roles. The idea that if a woman is not recognized as an elder in the church or if she does not teach men or hold the title “pastor”, she is somehow inferior and being oppressed is completely without Scriptural warrant and a gross misunderstanding of the idea of leadership, service and discipleship in the Bible.

Jesus is the King of what many rightly describe as an upside-down Kingdom, where the great are brought low and the lowly are lifted up, where the greatest among us are the least among us and where being a servant is the highest calling. When I read Scripture and look around the church, I don’t see the “great” Christians among us as the leading theologians or the famous pastors that everyone wants to endorse their book. I see the women taking meals to people recovering from surgery or the older men who share their simple wisdom with the younger. I think we all get that but once you make a suggestion that God has fenced certain functions in the church and home based on gender, our theology goes flying out the window.

This is a tragic shame because the message women hear is that the callings of a woman are inferior. That message comes not from the ogres who advocate complementarianism, if comes from egalitarians who are unable to see the value in a woman unless she is functioning in a traditional male role. Taking a page from the handbook of the prevailing culture, womanhood is discounted. How ironic that this comes from those who wish to liberate women from patriarchy!

A woman’s strength is not found in demands to be treated like a man. The strength of women, which is considerable and formidable and found throughout the Bible, is a different kind of strength. While we see the male leaders of the church out preaching the Gospel on the street to crowds, we get a different picture of women. Peter writes that women are powerful influencers in a completely different way. Not an inferior way, a different way and one that is honoring to God.

Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct. (1 Peter 3: 1-2)

An unbelieving husband who has his heart softened to the Gospel by the working of the Holy Spirit and the quiet, submissive conduct of his wife is redeemed the same as someone who comes to faith under the authoritative teaching of a man. What is missed by so many is that this is not a “woman submitting to man” thing. It is a woman submitting to God thing. God created women for a specific purpose, to carry and bear children and to raise those children to honor their parents and above all honor God. That is a glorious and wonderful purpose and we would see a far greater impact on the wellbeing of the church if more women embraced this truth. We have plenty of teachers and pastors and preachers but we certainly need more women committed to fulfilling the calling God has made them for.

Ultimately when it comes to gender roles in the church, there is really only one thing to ask. Doesn’t God get to determine what the full role of anyone is in the Body of Christ? If God calls you to minister in Africa because He chose for you to be born there, that is His calling. If God calls you to minister to children and care for your household because He made you a woman, that is a noble and righteous calling. Certainly the world would not agree but I didn’t think we were supposed to take our cues from the world. The picture of the relationship between men and women is the relationship between Christ and the church. I don’t think anyone in their right mind would suggest that the church should usurp the role of Christ as mediator of the New Covenant, as King of Kings, as the propitiation for sins. Why would we then suggest that the relationship between men and women is subject to reinterpretation at the whim of the prevailing culture?

Women are precious in the sight of Christ and have a wonderful calling and role in the home and in the church. It is simple pride and dare I say sin to say to God that women deserve more. God made men and God made women and I think He gets to determine how His creatures should serve Him. I thank God for a wife who loves me and loves my children, who walks in an attitude of submission to my flawed leadership because she is confident in God, a woman who doesn’t see her role at home or in the church to be inferior because she isn’t the center of attention. You won’t see her at the front of the church but never assume that means she isn’t ministering to others and serving her Lord.