Source: Women, Leadership, & the Bible – Greg Boyd – ReKnew
Here is some food for thought, though I doubt it may do much for those who share a different hermeneutical paradigm. Yet, even for them, it helps to understand that those who think differently are not fools, who try to detroy the word of God.
Finding My Place in The Gospel Coalition | Her.meneutics | Christianitytoday.com.
Jen Pollock Michel discusses in this article about the (unconfortable) place of women in the neo-reformed Gospel Coalition.
Slanderous Accusations against Egalitarians.
Are you a complementarian or an egalitarian? It really depends on what you mean by those terms.
It was interesting for me to ind out that ‘the earliest so-called “egalitarians” were calling themselves “complementarians” (without hierarchy) before complementarians grabbed the term as their own and then turned to call their brothers and sisters who believed in shared and mutual authority in the church and home “egalitarians.” (Which gained traction in a day when the “equal rights amendment” was disputed by some who are now called “complementarians.”)’
Gungor continues their ascent through the Christian music genre with the addition of their latest music video, “God is not a white Man” a precise and thought provoking song about the misconceptions involving God. The film was constructed entirely of felt and was developed and directed by Goodwin Films.
(look HERE for Mark Gungor.)
Of course, God is not a man, but Owen Starchan, or John Piper, and other such fundamentalists, would like God to be male.
That is, as Rachel tightly argues here, idolatry – worship of maleness.
Let me quote Rachel again:
‘The people of Israel received a strong warning from God about this in Deuteronomy 4:15-17: “You saw no form of any kind the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully, so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman, or like any animal on earth or any bird that flies in the air…”’
(Source, TIME)
I have found today on a Facebook page that was new to me a very interesting article on gender matters and I invite you to read it by quoting a few paragraphs:
In the not-so-distant past, “gender” referred only to grammatical fields. But in 1955, a sexologist suggested that we distinguish between biological sex and gender as a way of distinguishing between male and female. Another fifteen to twenty years passed before his idea caught on. In the 1970s, the field of gender studies emerged, and we began to define “gender” as the social construction of biological difference, or what we consider masculine and feminine behavior.
…
The Sojourners have published a very insightful article by Catherine Woodiwiss, on a very up-to-date topic: sexual violence in religious contexts.
Here the first part of this text:
* * *
Most of us are too familiar with this story: an Upper Midwestern Baptist minister claims that “God made Christianity to have a masculine feel [and] ordained for the church a masculine ministry.” Or a Reformed Christian pastor mocks the appointment of the first female head of the Episcopal Church, comparing her to a “fluffy baby bunny rabbit.” Or a Southern Baptist megachurch pastor in California says physical abuse by one’s spouse is not a reason for divorce. Or numerous young evangelical ministers brag about their hot wives in tight leather pants.
Fewer of us are familiar with this story: Tamar is raped by her half-brother Amnon. Tamar protests her brother’s advances, citing the social code of Israel, his reputation, and her shame, to no avail. Their brother Absalom commands her to keep quiet, and their father, the great King David, turns a blind eye.
What do these contemporary statements above, delivered into cultural megaphones with conviction and certainty, have to do with the Old Testament rape and silencing of Tamar? The difficult answer is, quite a lot. The narrative dominance of these stories rests on power and control, which — whether intentional or not — speaks volumes about whom the church serves and what the church values. Continue reading “Catherine Woodiwiss – In the Image of God: Sex, Power, and ‘Masculine Christianity’”
Wayne Grudem is one of the favourite authors of those evangelicals inclined towards fundamentalism. His extremely simplistic Systematic Theology (see for instance his absolutely pathetic treatment of the doctrine of the Trinity|) has been translated into many languages, including Romanian, creating confusion in the minds of many candidates o ecclesial ministry.
Among other subjects, it seems that Grudem has acquired a real obsession with evangelicals sympathetic to the egalitarian position on gender roles (or what he calls ‘evangelical feminism’). He has published already three books on this topic (see HERE, HERE and HERE).
Recently, David C Cramer, from the Council for Biblical Equality, in his article ‘Assessing Hierarchist Logic: Is Egalitarianism Really on a Slippery Slope?‘ has taken Grudem to charge on his claims that what he calls ‘evangelical feminism’ is leading people on the slippery slope towards liberalism, showing the logical fallacies on which Grudem builds his argument. Continue reading “Wayne Grudem Continues His (pseudo)Theological Crusade”
In his book The Blue Parakeet, at p. 148, Scot McKnight argues that, to be consistent, a man who refuses to listen to a woman teaching in church, he should also refuse to read biblical commentaries written by women.
In a recent audio commentary, John Piper takes on that issue and argues that reading a biblical commentary written by a woman is OK ‘as long as the man does not see her’, and he suggests that is behind Paul’s injunction that ‘women should not teach men’ (1 Timothy 2:12).
I am afraid what we have here is not only a sample of outdated fundamentalism, of the kind Piper if guilty time an again, but also an unintended Freudian confession of being obsessed with women bodies.
Rachel Held Evans takes this on in her article on this topic and provides us with a few examples:
As Evans rightly argues, these statements, and others like them are dehumanising for women and, I would add, a pathological expression that needs a bit of psychoanalytic unpacking. Continue reading “John Piper’s Freudian Slip – On What Else but Women Teaching Men”
Rachel Held Evans | Teammates…..
Me: “This person says the men in my life need to do a better job of exercising their God-ordained authority to ‘silence’ me.”
Dan: “You tell him that this man’s doing everything in his power to make sure your voice is heard.”
Amen!
In one generation after 1531, under the mother symbol of Our Lady of Guadalupe, almost all of the native peoples of Mexico accepted Christianity. A new level of Christianity unfolded in the New World, exactly as it was fighting and dividing in the Old World. I believe that Christ takes on the face and features of each people God loves. In this case God knew that the face and features had to be feminine and compassionate, after centuries of a tyrannical Sun god and Catholic-Spanish machismo. The Lady of Guadalupe is the eternal feminine, the heart, hope, and strength of all new life revealed in a marvelous brown and pregnant image—to people who could not read. Continue reading “Richard Rohr on ‘the Eternal Feminine’”
Carol Howard Merritt is a pastor of Western Presbyterian Church, an intergenerational congregation in Washington, D.C.
In a recent post on her blog, TribalChurch, she identifies what she describes as ‘seven things guys need to know about post-evangelical women (PEWs)’.
Here is the list:
1) We were told to keep silent in church.
2) We’re not welcome at every table
3) We don’t want to hear whining about forced quotas. Continue reading “Carol Howard Merritt – Seven Things Guys Need To Know About Post-Evangelical Women”
I like reading Scot McKnight’s Weakly Meanderings (see HERE the latest one). I always find a few very interesting links.
This week’s most interesting ones for me have to do with the complementarian vs. egalitarian debate.
Rachel Stone, who writes for Her.meneutics, the Christianity Today blof on women issues, shared with us recently two interviews she took on this issue.
The first to be interviewed was egalitarian theologian William Webb, now an adjunct professor at Tyndale Seminary in Toronto, Canada’s largest evangelical seminary, after he was forced to resign from a tenure position at another evangelical school, because of his egalitarian views. Here is the first part of this interview: Continue reading “Egalitarians vs. Complementarians”
Gender Debate: SBC Pastors Denounce NIV | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction.
SBC does it again. These guys never stop in their blind fundamentalism.
“Southern Baptists have asked their denomination-owned retail chain to stop selling a best-selling Bible translation, saying it contains errors when it comes to language about gender.”
Persona 