The future of Biblical gender equality scholarship

What is interesting in going to the conference is that there are 200 to 300 or so people (my guess) present, but as someone stated there are thousands upon thousands of Biblical egalitarians in the United States. The book Discovering Biblical Equality includes many scholars who are biblical egalitarians from such places as Regent College, Talbot Seminary, Gordon-Conwell, Eastern University, Fuller Seminary, and many other institutions. There were people here at the conference from Fuller Seminary, Asbury College, Asbury Seminary, Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, Eastern University and many other places. But we need to reach out to egalitarians who are part of many other institutions. Whether they come to the conferences is less important than utilizing their gifts in egalitarian publications.

My hope is that the sequel to Discovering Biblical Equality will contain submissions from outstanding evangelical scholars at Westmont College, Wheaton College, Calvin College, Taylor University, Bethel College, Messiah College, North Park, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Denver Seminary, Duke, Princeton, Harvard, and Yale. I think there are strong evangelical egalitarian contingents within all of these schools but many are not writing on the topic. My hope is that the strength of scholarship and credibility of Discovering Biblical Equality will persuade other scholars at these schools to come out of the closet and make themselves known through their writings. I would especially love to see evangelical egalitarian New Testament scholars contribute their considerable skills to the project.

I think the majority of evangelical New Testament scholars are egalitarian but so few are writing on the subject that it is difficult to know for sure. We should not continue to make recognized scholars Craig Keener and Gordon Fee do all the heavy lifting. We need others to support them. Two of my very favorite New Testament scholars are Richard Hays of Duke and Scott McKnight from North Park. I would love to see them write on the subject.

– Andy