Early this month a 92-year-old Turkish scholar, Muazzez Ilmiye Cig, an expert on Sumerian civilization, was acquitted by an Istanbul court of criticizing the head scarf as a poor symbol of women’s morality and religious devotion, since 5000 years ago it was used by temple prostitutes to distinguish themselves while having ritual sex with young […]
by Francis Thompson
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him down the arches of the years;
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,
From those strong […]
After Tony Campolo speaks to Christians at church or other gatherings about marriage and family, as he is asked now and then to do, he often gets a man who stands up and says, “But you haven’t answered the real question…. Who’s supposed to be the head of the house?”
Should Christians ever ask who […]
“Sometimes it is virtually impossible to translate a Greek word into a precise English equivalent or to show the force of the verb tenses,” says historian Ruth Tucker. Since the word “learn” in I Timothy 2:11 is in the imperative tense, the NIV translation of “should learn,” while good, may not be strong enough. […]
I Timothy 5:3-16 has practical advice on how to care for widows, young and old. Few if any churches these days follow this advice because they know that the advice was for that time and place. And yet the practical advice in I Timothy 2:11-12 (women should keep quiet in church, probably because […]
Here’s some interesting information about the PCA and women in leadership from my friend Andy.
The bottom line is that PCA denomination is solidly complementarian — restricting women from being elders and preaching — but they have theologically trained women from their own seminaries who do not know how and where to use their gifts, and […]
Over the past two decades, an extremely aggressive and clamorous battle of Biblical scholars has occurred over the meaning of one word in I Timothy 2:12: the Greek word authentein, which is translated as “usurp authority” in the KJV, as “have authority” in the NIV, as “assume authority” in the TNIV, and as “domineer […]
Some heirarchicalists teach that male headship was instituted by God as a part of creation and must therefore be permanent for all times and places. Even if headship were mentioned in the creation story of Genesis, it does not follow that it must be permanent. In Genesis 2:2-3 God creates a seventh day […]
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’ […]