One of the first things I noticed many years ago about my in-laws was that they lived with strict roles. A gift had been given to this couple, a two-tiered plate with a handle and separating piece with threads on both ends and maybe a nut for the bottom. My mother-in-law-to-be opened the […]
It’s tough making personal decisions that cause pain, especially ones that affect close relationships. More women are standing up for themselves, however, when it comes to their long-term goals, and how much better it is to do it early, say, before the marriage, than after. A very good friend of mine just did […]
I’m not so sure that feminists and egalitarians aren’t shooting themselves in the foot when they actively de-emphasize differences between the sexes. In my experience a high percentage of people not only see their spouses as quite different from themselves, but they see more similarities between themselves and their (same-sex) buddies. In fact, […]
I Timothy 3:1-4: “Here is a trustworthy saying: If anyone sets his heart on being an overseer [elder], he desires a noble task. Now the overseer must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not […]
Believers in Christian manhood and womanhood would like us all to believe that there is something about masculinity as it is lived out in America that is crucial to Christianity. What it means to be masculine, however, varies from culture to culture, and has no business being inserted into Christian theology. There are […]
Guess who recently said this: “Male chauvinism has been the major problem through much of history. For most cultures through most of history the most serious deviation from biblical standards regarding men and women has not been feminism, but harsh and oppressive male chauvinism. It still exists today, not only in some […]
Maggie Gallagher is a freelance writer who writes on the family, and who has written for the Bush administration. In an interview in Christianity Today called
“Editor’s Bookshelf: Raising Up Fathers”, she says some interesting things about men. As CBE is looking into new ways of attracting males to itself, and being a male […]
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 […]