I’ve always loved middles. Golden means. The place away from extremes. I describe myself as a moderate, both politically and theologically. So I’m attracted to the rare attempts at finding a logical, maybe even warm, middle in between patrarchialism and egalitarianism. The well-known Christian psychologist and best-selling author Dr. Larry […]
A wonderful opinion piece appeared in the Chicago Tribune on September 6, 1998, shortly after the Southern Baptists reimbraced a patriarchal social order. The Northwestern University law professor wrote the following.
“Though I yield to no person in my commitment to the accepted tenets of gender equality, I actually took some satisfaction in the Baptists’ […]
Chapter 3 in Julie Ingersoll’s book Evangelical Christian Women: War Stories in the Gender Battles is called “Conflict in the Lives of Individual Women.” Even women, she says here, who have been groomed and carefully nurtured to be put on the faculty of conservative educational institutions come to believe that’s it’s only an […]
Not as many people know Frank Schaeffer as knew his father, Francis, the early Christian Right apologist, but he’s apparently well enough known in evangelical circles to get hate mail from them. I’ve been quite taken with two of his novels, Portofino, and Zermatt. They, along with Saving Grandma, are the ongoing saga […]
Fifteen years ago, Deborah Tannen wrote a bestseller about miscommunication between the sexes called, You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. Four years earlier than that she had published That’s Not What I Meant: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Your Relations with Others, which also showed how people subconsciously miscommunicate, […]
I recommend “Commander in Chief” on ABC TV Tuesday nights. Mackenzie Allen, the USA vice president, played by Geena Davis, becomes the first woman president of the United States by being sworn in upon the death of the president, against the president’s wishes and the leaders of his party. They’d prefer someone “more […]
To this point, the CBE blogging team has been providing summaries and some personal reactions to various seminars and sessions of the 2005 annual conference of the Christians for Biblical Equality. Perhaps it is time to provide some analysis and personal takes on the conference experience.
This was my first CBE conference. It was […]
It’s good for egalitarians to remind themselves that the patriarchal traditionalist scholars do teach that men are to love their wives and children and take responsibility in the family, even though we suspect that that message is not filtering down to the average guy in the pew. This month’s Mars Hill Audio (Vol 74) […]
Having taught Mere Christianity in small group over the last year, I was not pleased with the comments C.S. Lewis makes in this book that he published early in his writing career. It was of great interest to me, then, to see this topic addressed at the CBE conference by Dr. Mary Stewart Van […]
Earlier in the main session, Craig Keener told how he recently got married. He had been friends with an African woman who had to flee the violence in the Congo. They had delayed getting married because of a misunderstanding about “ministry.” She had said that she did not feel called to “ministry” – meaning being […]