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'These fragments I have shored against my ruins' (TS Eliot, The Waste Land)
Browsing All posts tagged under »Gender«
Another myth about gender and church leadership
A couple of weeks ago I blogged about the regularly-heard assertion that embracing the ministry of women led to a slide into liberalism, and pointed out that there was simply no evidence to back this up. Today someone told me that a certain well-known pastor from Seattle had spoken at a church leaders conference in […]
‘Egalitarianism’ as a slippery slope?
August 31, 2012
I have heard or read a number of people recently arguing that an ‘egalitarian’ (hate the term…) position is to be rejected by evangelicals because it necessarily involves an approach to the the Bible which tends towards the erosion of Scriptural authority. This argument comes in two forms, one which has a degree of prima […]
Why ‘complementarianism’ matters: reflections occasioned by Carl Trueman
August 25, 2012
Carl Trueman has an excellent blog post on the Reformation21 site, expressing puzzlement at why so many (American, evangelical) parachurch organisations make complementarianism (male-only leadership) a defining point of their platform. He highlights the potential absurdity of this in characteristically sharp and witty fashion, pointing out that the historical divisions that these organisations choose to bridge […]
On writing and being read: Jared Wilson on Fifty Shades…
July 19, 2012
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.’ (Lewis Carroll, Alice Through […]
On not having preached about sexual violence
May 26, 2012
I’ve been involved in an online Bible study organised by the excellent Sophia Network, and we have been looking this week at narratives of sexual violence in the Old Testament, particularly (or I was particularly struck by) Amnon’s rape of his half-sister Tamar (2 Sam. 13) and Shechem raping Dinah (Gen. 34). Various points were […]
‘If God is male…’
February 5, 2012
‘… then the male is God.’ So wrote Mary Daly in a – perhaps the – classic text of early feminist theology, Beyond God the Father (Beacon, 1973). Daly’s argument in the book was that the predominantly masculine imagery deployed for God in Judaeo-Christian traditions inevitably led to a patriarchal society in which women were multiply […]
Old style evangelical gender politics
January 20, 2012
This post, by Mark Sayers, is well worth a read (ht Mike Bird on FB). It reflects briefly on the transformation of masculinity that occurred as part of the broader evangelical attempts at social transformation in the first half of the nineteenth century. Writing about the same phenomenon, John Wolffe comments: Evangelical concepts of manliness […]
Books on gender and ministry from an evangelical perspective
January 18, 2012
I’ve been asked by several people in recent months to recommend books on this subject. I can’t claim to have read everything on the topic, and I probably have a bias to British authors, but here are a few suggestions – not necessarily all the best books, but a selection that, taken together, will open […]
Why Baptists can’t (currently) be ‘complementarians’
January 13, 2012
I gestured at this argument in an introductory book on Baptist theology I have coming out soon; reading the proofs, it occurred to me that a more substantial discussion would not be out of place. Probably, I ought to write a journal article – ‘had we but world enough and time…’ One of the themes […]
Junia (3): a different witness from history
December 8, 2011
From (an English translation of) a commentary on Romans: Though Paul is not wont to make much of kindred, and of other things belonging to the flesh, yet as the relationship which Junia and Andronicus bore to him, might avail somewhat to make them more fully known, he neglected not this commendation. There is more […]
Shored Fragments 
September 21, 2012
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