"To CBMW's founders, giving up the public sphere seemed a small price to pay in order to get more people to support their efforts to protect male authority in the private spheres of church and home."
Statue in Franklin Park, Boston
Update on Dee's Mother-in-Law:
As some of you already know, Dee's mother-in-law Polly passed away earlier today. Dee and her husband began caring for Polly in their home seven months ago (after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer), and Dee, a registered nurse, was her primary caregiver. Please be in prayer for Dee and her family.
I have just gotten back from a wonderful week of vacation at the beach, and I did my best to keep up with the blog and other interesting articles while away. At week's end, a fascinating post appeared on the BaylyBlog by Joseph Bayly. It was interesting to read his brief history of complementarianism in the wake of our posts on this very topic.
In case you missed them, you can access them below.
History of Complementarianism – Part 1
— and —
History of Complementarianism – Part 2
Joseph Bayly's post entitled The seduction of big-tent compromises seems to indicate, at least from his perspective, that there is trouble in the complementarian camp. We had already taken note of the leadership change over at the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) with Owen Strachan's resignation as president. Denny Burk was quickly named as Strachan's successor. The Baylys were involved with CBMW in the early years of the complementarian movement, but over time they have distanced themselves. We have also been keeping up with the discussion over at Mortification of Spin on the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals website. From our vantage point, it looks like there are some serious disagreements taking place.
Getting back to the BaylyBlog, Joseph Bayly begins his post by calling attention to the Danvers Statement on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, which was finalized and signed in early December 1987. Then he made these surprising remarks:
As we approach the Statement's thirtieth anniversary, though, its weaknesses are growing more apparent. Its strength is what it says about sexuality in the home and church. Its weakness is what it doesn't say about manhood and womanhood in the "rest of life."
He goes on to reveal his specific criticism of the Danvers Statement, which he explains as follows:
…the plainest reading leaves the impression that the entire document is intentionally limited in its application to the private spheres of home and church. At several key points it is impossible to understand it any other way. There is a discussion of the effects of the fall and redemption on the relationship between the sexes with sub-points for both the church and home, but then only silence on life outside those two spheres.
Bayly goes on to explain that the Danvers Statement is the only statement on Biblical sexuality that conservative churches embrace, and he expresses his frustration at the silence regarding what it means to be a man or a woman in public life.
Thick and Thin Complementarians
Who knew that there are different factions huddled under the complementarian tent? Here is what Joseph Bayly wrote about the comp's inclusiveness (see screen shot below).
Yes, you read that right! One of the problems with big-tent complementarianism, according to Bayly, is that it has been too 'inclusive'. Imagine that!
As the culture at large has gotten more and more rebellious with regard to sexuality, Bayly laments:
CBMW's strategy of large-tent complementarianism becomes increasingly exposed as short-sighted and incapable of protecting biblical sexuality even in those private spheres of life.
The Blame Game
Joseph Bayly finally gets to the premise of his post — egalitarianism is heresy and complementarians are really just semi-egalitarians. He goes on to label them as 'thin complementarians. Doesn't sound very masculine, does it? He goes on to explain (see screen shot below):
Big Tent Complementarianism Is Dead?
Finally, Joseph Bayly takes aim at Liam Goligher, whom he describes as 'semi-egalitarian'. Goligher, who pastors at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, recently criticized Wayne Grudem over at Mortification of Spin for promoting ESS [the Eternal Subordination of the Son (Jesus Christ) to Father God]. We are planning a post on the status of this debate.
Suffice it to say that Bayly condemns Goligher and other 'thin complementarians' with these words:
thick complementarianism works to guard the good deposit, showing that the Bible teaches us much more about sexuality than simply who is to fill the role of the head of the home and who is to fill the roles of senior pastor and elders in the church. The Bible and nature both reveal that men and women are different by design and those differences must inevitably come out in how we interact with each and every person each and every minute of the day—yes in the home and church, but also at school and work and in the subway and at the grocery store.
Finally, Joseph Bayly gets to what must have been the primary purpose of his post by stating:
Thirty years ago, in an attempt to defend male headship in the home, we made a sinful and unsustainable compromise with semi-egalitarians. Today we face a similar enticement to make a halfway covenant with "celibate gay Christians."
He goes on to say:
In both battles, sowing the wind of these halfway covenants will reap the whirlwind of even more sexual debauchery both in the world and the Church.
Up until this point, the conflict has primarily been between complementarians and egalitarians. Now the complementarian camp appears to be fracturing. Bayly acknowledges that Denny Burk is now serving as CBMW president, but he doesn't sound hopeful that the organization will accomplish what he expects.
Joseph Bayly's parting shot against semi-egalitarians (thin complementarians) is as follows:
What we need is faithful teaching and preaching on sexuality that explains the fundamental differences between men and women. What we need is faithful teaching and preaching that commands us to honor God by confessing the sex He made us—and confessing it not as some role we take on or off depending upon what day of the week it is and where we are, but as our station in life in every place at all times.
Perhaps the big tent built by complementarians is starting to cave in… If it does, will God still be sovereign?
first
Dee I am sorry for your loss, you and your husband gave your mom peace and showed her love. God be with you and your family.
I just refer to this “other Gospel” by its real name: “The Tarzan Gospel”.
“What we need is faithful teaching and preaching that commands us to honor God by confessing the sex He made us—and confessing it not as some role we take on or off depending upon what day of the week it is and where we are, but as our station in life in every place at all times.”
So, our sex determines our station in life? Perhaps all of the Bayly boys should undergo testosterone testing to determine exactly where they rank – when compared to, say, football players and soldiers …….
__
“God still Sovereign?”
hmmm… (Blink! Blink!)
hum, hum, hum…
Said King Jesus to the people everywhere,
Listen to what I say…
Pray for peace people everywhere!
***
Yes, Jesus will (one day) bring us peace, goodness and life everywhere…
“I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and He came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before Him.
And to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him,
His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away,
His kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.” -Daniel [1]
*
They once, as a child, brought Him gold, frankincense and myrrh…
One day the streets of Jesus’ city will be paved with gold. And He will be it’s light…
( Imagine that! )
“Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?
The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying,Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.
He that sits in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.
Then shall He speak unto them in His wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.
Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.
I will declare the decree: the LORD has said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.
***
Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth.
Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling.
Pay hommage to the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little.
—> Blessed are ‘all’ they that put their trust in Him.” [2]
ATB
Sopy
___
ref(s):
[1] Old Testament, Dan 7:13-14
[2] Old Testament, Psalm 2
—
I’m very sorry for your family’s great loss, Dee.
Does anybody know the real reason Owen Strachan resigned from CBMW?
I still say the Bayly’s would be much happier in say Pakistan?
Nancy2 wrote:
They couldn’t hold a candle to the Russian women who fought and died on the Eastern front (1941-1945).
__
Human sexuality is now viewed in America as a relative term, that must surely have these CBMW folks' shorts in a ruffle.
Yet, some 51% of the Christian church population placed in a sub-servant position are sure of their sexuality, but not necessarily the respect of their respective 501(c)3 leaders.
Go fish.
—
The whole “Council” [their own claim] for “Biblical” [their own claim] “Manhood_And_Womanhood” reminds me a great deal of the nascent circumcision party (as they became known) afflicting the early church.
Acts 15 begins:
Wartburgers who wish to refresh their knowledge of the incident are more than capable of reading the chapter for themselves, so I won’t quote it further (though here’s a link to Acts 15 (NASB) on Biblegateway).
Legalism – the belief that Jesus’ self-sacrifice was fundamentally insufficient, that his death did not cancel the written code, and that God must still be appeased through obedience to rules – was always the heart of this. The “Resurgence” has always been a resurgence of legalism. The Young, Rebellious and Reformed sub-culture is, predominantly, about law.
Legalism is, to my mind, a form of idolatry – IOW, the (irrational) human desire to worship something we’ve made. Either that, or the desire to control what is, and is not, God – really, two sides of the same coin. The opportunity that is created by legalism is that if you get to make the rules, then you get power. Indeed, if you play your cards right, you get more than that, because for all practical purposes, the person who exclusively speaks for God, is God.
So back to the “Trouble in the Comp Camp” topic: there was always going to be trouble in this camp, because it’s about control, and who gets to be God. To paraphrase George Orwell: people don’t strive for power in order to share it. Fundamentalist movements of any kind will always end up splintering into factions as everybody tries to outdo everybody else in “devotion to the cause” and thereby prove themselves better than everybody else.
All institutional religion is predicated on the tacit assumption that God needs our help in order to exist.
Another very prescient comment by Nick–thank you. Occasionally the term the islamification of the church is used when describing some of the out working of the YRR emphases–now that Burk is in charge of CBMW, perhaps we will see a push for 'Bhurkas'.
Velour wrote:
Fantastic description!
The Bayly brothers (David and Tim) were once an integral part of CBMW. However, the criticism expressed in this recent post is nothing new. Eleven years ago they condemned CBMW leaders publicly in a post entitled:
It’s Time for the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood to Close Up Shop…
According to the Baylys, here are the 10 Failures of CBMW (cited over a decade ago):
The Baylys appear to be all in with ESS which is telling, given that they could have theoretically defended their patriarchalism without it.
“The Bible and nature both reveal that men and women are different by design and those differences must inevitably come out in how we interact with each and every person each and every minute of the day—yes in the home and church, but also at school and work and in the subway and at the grocery store.”
Ah yes, that whole “feminine deference” thing which ends up being the defacto submission of all women to all men, probably for all time and eternity.
Today we face a similar enticement to make a halfway covenant with “celibate gay Christians.”
The thing here is, a plausible argument could be made for Christians’ primary identity being found in Christ instead of their sexual preferences or relationship status. Given their rhetoric however, the Baylys are more likely to repel such people as they do most everyone else.
1. Its name is false and self-serving. The one thing CBMW has never been is a true ecclesiastical council. Instead, it’s a self-appointed, self-referential group of individuals, the vast majority of whom cannot speak authoritatively for a particular church, let alone the Church.
This one I actually agree with, which has been one of its biggest problems.
Dear Dee, I am so sorry to hear of your loss. ((()))
Todd Pruitt:
“It is now clear that the men with seats at the table require a fundamentalist posture regarding complementarianism (“Our way or the high way!”). But when it comes to the doctrine of the Trinity they become there’s room for everybody big tent broadly evangelical.”
Bingo. Although some still want to hang on to the term, I predict the crackup of complementarianism as a movement and CBMW becoming like IBLP/ATI.
Aimee Byrd’s post from 7/28 has a lengthy guest post from Luma Simms titled Catholic Integral Complementarity. I haven’t yet read the whole thing, but I really liked this quote:
“It is one thing to claim on paper or teach that women have equal dignity with men, it is another to build a culture which makes that gospel truth thrive; and yet another to read me, a woman, through that respectful lens—as you would respectfully read a male author.”
NJ wrote:
What is/are “IBLP/ATI”?
@ Nick Bulbeck:
Ravi Zacharias made much the same claim that legalism is idolatry here – http://rzim.org/a-slice-of-infinity/a-new-legalism/ but the last sentence of your argument is a massive non-sequitur.
So sorry to hear the news Dee. You served her well, but I know the pain will stay in your hearts. Praying for comfort.
okrapod wrote:
First of all, you are blessed because you don’t know these acronyms.
ATI is an organization founded by Bill Gothard and it stands for Advanced Training Institute.
http://ati.iblp.org/ati/
IBLP stands for Institute for Basic Life Principles.
http://iblp.org/
Bill Gothard was a very popular Christian leader back in the 1970s and 1980s. There has been a lot of criticism of him in recent years. To learn more, just Google his name.
NuttShell wrote:
It may be as simple as logistics with a young family or it may be that he sees that the "Complementarian" movement is moving in a direction he does not like. Or maybe it was suggested that he resign. Who knows? I doubt if we will ever know.
The Bayly brothers are right- complementarianism is a manipulative idea to try to pull in people who are uncomfortable with patriarchy.
Just straight up- either you think men are higher than women or you don’t. Don’t mince words if you think they are. Own it. And let me avoid you.
Insufficient Purity of Ideology, Comrades.
Traitors and Apostates.
Deb wrote:
Gothard is part of the Quiverfull/Patriarchy cult movement that the Duggars are a part of. The teachings of this movement are not at all like mainstream Christianity. That’s why so many people hope some of the Duggar children are able to break free.
Vision Forum was another large organization of the Quiverfull group. It closed after its leaders’s sex scandal. Bill Gothard, of course, is being sued for his own sex scandal. I think the Deebs did a post on this a while back.
Deb wrote:
“[but] the money kept rolling in from all directions…..”
Deb wrote:
And you’ll know why I spell it “Got Hard”.
(“Young… Virgins… in denim jumpers… with loooooong… waaaaaavy… haaaaaaair…”)
Velour wrote:
How about God Ordained Male Entitlement, because aren’t these people really protecting their sense of entitlement?
Nick Bulbeck wrote:
“To the right, ever to the right
Never to the left, forever to the right”
By Divine Right, the Iron Throne has room for only one.
Let the Game of Thrones begin.
Deb wrote:
Or listen to the words of the prophet Steve Taylor:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKlZ7U67Uio
The Bayleys seem nutty to me. Now they seem a lot nutty! If there are fundamental differences between sexes they will be obvious. Nobody needs to run around trying to make women behave in an effort to prove that they are different! That’s really all this amounts to.
Aimee posted something about singles last week, but I didn’t find it particularly satisfying.
>>confessing the sex He made us—and confessing it not as some role we take on or off depending upon what day of the week it is and where we are, but as our station in life in every place at all times.
This is really, really weird too. Is our sex a sin that needs to be confessed? And by telling people what to do, he is assigning a ‘role’ which is not reality. Now he just wants to tell people who they fundamentally are!
Dee, I’m so sorry for your family. Praying for you.
Deb wrote:
A massive indictment of ‘pastors across the country’ if ever I heard one!
NJ wrote:
This has been parsed in much greater depth elsewhere [1], but the simplest response I have is that that’s simply not how English works. The noun, “Christian,” is the primary focus of that phrase, not the adjectives that come before it.
If the Baylys are just protesting the term, saying that Christians who are gay and celibate should say that they “experience same-sex attraction” instead, it’s a silly argument, and I’ll ignore them and carry on.
On the other hand, if they’re saying that it is impossible to please God if you’re a person who lives a chaste, celibate life while continuing to experience attraction exclusively or predominantly to people of your own gender, then “Houston, we have a problem.” That ideology is so bankrupt, so rife with clear animus and contempt for non-straight and/or non-cisgender people, that it deserves to be soundly condemned by all sides, but especially by conservative Evangelicals, who have had – shall we say – issues relating to their engagement in this area in the past (and present, for that matter – refer to anything on this topic that tumbles out of the mouth holes of Franklin Graham and James Dobson).
[1] https://spiritualfriendship.org/2013/02/01/once-more-on-the-label-gay-christian/
Jeff S wrote:
Yep, that’s it.
Jeff S wrote:
Indeed.
Lea wrote:
I would have been tempted to dismiss Bayly as a lone wolf except that Lydia and Nancy2 were discussing and citing a post yesterday on SBCVoices where the premise was that the Southern Baptists did not go far enough in their Baptist Faith and Message 2000 in limiting the roles of women. My point is not to discuss the article but to note that there are other voices out there that don’t think the Comp movement has gone far enough.
FW Rez wrote:
BTW: I am not disagreeing with Lea that Bayly is nutty, just saying that he is not alone.
I wonder if the Bayly’s have commented on the PCA Study Committee on women in ministry. The committee is tasked to study the Biblical evidence for the idea of ordination itself in addition to studying the evidence for limiting the Role of women in ministry. That should get the Bayly’s in knots of indignation.
Years ago, Tim Keller ignited a kerfuffle over non-ordained but “commissioned” female deacons. His wife is on the study committee. Sounds like someone in the PCA is investigating whether there actually are Biblical underpinnings for excluding women *and* for elevating a very small group of males to the Role of Spiritual Authority.
FW Rez wrote:
No you are right. Part of the reason I’m no longer SBC.
Josh, they had a post from years back talking about this. I think it might have been the same one where Tim was explaining why they prefer the term ‘sodomite’ instead of ‘gay’ or even ‘homosexual’. They believe even the desires are a manifestation of sin, because how does someone experience sexual desire without a particular object, even if it’s just images on a screen? They also quoted verses like where Paul said, “And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” A lot comes down to their view of sanctification.
Lea wrote:
UNLESS the males are dismorphic in how they view their own maleness as ‘less than’ the Tarzan Model of Male Magnificence. I think that the more fragile their male ‘ego’, the more they require women to shrivel up as persons along side them. Perhaps Piper’s complaints about women with muscles isn’t just in the physical sense …. ‘muscles’ equal ‘strength’ and God forbid there comes a strong women into their camp because they could not abide the comparison in their own minds. In their minds, they are not masculine enough, so the women must affirm it by kowtowing and by silence and by ‘He must increase, and I must decrease’.
These men are insecure . . . in their own ‘manhood’. And not all the misogyny and ESS in the world can fix that for them, no.
Give them enough rope and they will hang themselves. ESS and its extension to the un-Biblical subordination of women is New Calvinism’s rope.
NuttShell wrote:
It could be that his cushy new job at SBC’s Midwestern seminary in Kansas City is demanding a lot of his time. Jason Allen, Midwestern president and former right-hand man to Al Mohler, recruited Strachan to serve as Director of the Center for Theological and Cultural Engagement. Think about it, the New Calvinists now have a center focused on engaging the culture with reformed theology’s view of women and other mumbo-jumbp. When will this madness end?!
Max wrote:
That should be “mumbo-jumbo” (defined as “a language or ritual causing or intended to cause confusion or bewilderment.” That pretty much describes New Calvinism’s bewildering doctrine on Eternal Subordination of the Son and their confusing subordination of women.
Christiane wrote:
I look at what I wrote there and realized I was mentioning the ‘Tarzan’ image that Velour had come up with in her term ‘Tarzan Gospel’.
I thought that the only help for these men would be to understand that the image they need to strive for is to emulate Our Lord instead of some macho fictional character.
This article is helpful:
Jesus ” openly engaged women in conversation on deep theological matters, allowed a menstruating woman to touch him, dropped what he was doing to rush to the bedside of a dead twelve-year-old girl and touched her corpse. Instead of providing for his family, Jesus relied on the financial support of women who also traveled with him and his disciples. He was afraid of expressing his emotions, but sobbed openly with a woman over the death of his friend. Try to line Jesus up with the patriarchal culture’s way of being manly, and Jesus is perpetually and resolutely out of step. But here’s the kicker—
Jesus is the perfect man. Biblical writers describe him as the perfect imago dei. He even said so himself. “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” Jesus is the ideal male. His brand of manhood sets the standard for men and boys and throws off cultural assumptions of what it means to be male or female. But really, none of this should surprise us. Jesus didn’t come just to tweak things, but to overthrow the kingdom of this world.”
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/takeandread/2015/06/on-biblical-manhood-a-qa-with-author-carolyn-custis-james/
Nick Bulbeck wrote:
New Calvinism is a religious pyramid scheme. The trouble with pyramids is that there is only room enough for one “god” to sit on the point of the pinnacle. The kids are playing “King of the Mountain” now.
@ Deb:
1.). “CBMW refuses to see this as a battle for the souls of men and women”
Got it. No patriarchy means no salvation.
2.). “What council seeking to pronounce an authoritative word to the Church of Christ has ever included women?”
Exactly! God doesn’t want women to get involved in anything. After all, we polute the word of God.Deb wrote:
3.). “CBMW has no doctrine of sexuality.”
Of course, every true follower of Christ knows that a “Doctrine of Sexuality” is an absolute must!
(Sarcasm off)
If the battle for the souls of men and women depend on stripping women of basic human rights, there is no salvation. That is equal to claiming that the battle for the souls of whites and blacks is contingent upon maintaining and enforcing slavery.
Why don’t the Bayly Boyz admit publicly and politically that they actually OWN their women. They need to take all of their females down to the PVA office and have them evaluated so that they can pay proper taxes on them. Render unto .caesar, right? Come on Baylys! Name it! Claim it. See what happens when you become good, upstanding citizens and try to pay taxes on the slaves you own!
The above quote is from the Bayly article.
Mr. Bayly is a young, frightfully ignorant man apparently incapable of making even the most basic of logical arguments.
First, Mr. Bayly has produced a straw man through his own idiosyncratic definition of egalitarianism; it is not “the denial of all distinctions”, it is by contrast the notion that all people are born equal and thus deserving of equal rights; this concept can be found in our Declaration of Independence. In a more specific religious context, it means that man and woman are equals within the marital relationship and that there need not necessarily be forced distinctions and hierarchies within marital roles. If egalitarianism truly did mean that there are no distinctions between any two things, then I’d agree with his assault on egalitarianism, but it simply does not mean what he claims, words have meanings, Mr. Bayly must grasp this if he wishes to become capable of communicating rational thought.
Next, the quote from Mr. Bayly is a non sequitur. He has not provided even the basic steps to lay out a logical argument. Taken literally, he is claiming that one espousing egalitarianism must necessarily:
1). Deny there’s a difference between men and women,
2). Believe the heresy of oneness trinitarian theology,
3). Be a universalist, and
4). Be a pantheist.
Look at his quote above, take it at face value–is there any other conclusion one can draw? His logic is patently absurd. He is apparently a young man wishing to gain influence within the complementarian movement and establish himself as a firebrand and a “comer”, but he has embarrassed himself and anyone with a scintilla of common sense within that movement. But ignorance is bliss, I doubt he’s capable of apprehending what a fool he’s made of himself.
Nancy2 wrote:
The enemy of the Cross of Christ could not have come up with a better plan than New Calvinism to distract the American Church from the Great Commission. Southern Baptists, once a soul-winning people, are burning too much precious time debating theology, rather than preaching the Gospel.
Patriciamc wrote:
Here’s something that’s not a new thought, but perhaps takes on deeper meaning in light of recent theological tremors within the complementarian camps. A very distinct set of problems that fuse gender roles/male authority with sexuality seems to show up in complementarianism generally. It includes sexual harassment, sexual grooming of underage women, protection of pedophiles, domestic violence, blaming of women for immodesty or other actions that provoke men to sexual lust-actions-violence, etc.
But, it might be intriguing to profile whether these actions — most of which are illegal and not just sinful — happen more often in “thick” or “thin” comp camps. And if so, does it seem to be tied in with interpretations/applications of particular concepts or theological systems?
If it does seem to happen more in one camp than another, perhaps that will prove a future “fault line” in the eventual (and inevitable?) break-up of complementarianism.
@ Gram3:
Yes. they have. I think it was about a month ago.
Dee,
I am also sorry for your loss… I hope your family will have peace and comfort..
Law Prof wrote:
It really is. It isn’t even logic. It’s just stating untrue things.
@ Max:
This is the tragic reality.
Lea wrote:
I think it’s more along the lines of saying that just as men are leaders in the church and in the home; so too, men are to be leaders outside of it. Just as women are to submit to their husbands and their pastors / elders / deacons, so too, women are to submit to the leaders outside of it. Being a man as a station is being called to a life of godly (god-like?) authority and being a woman as a station is being called to a life of godly submission. Gender confusion, then is men forsaking their lofty position and women trying to usurp a position that’s not theirs by not being a traditional man/woman in a traditional (biblical) marriage. He might not believe that the sacred and the secular are two separate spheres – but rather that God is sovereign over both and God’s rules are superior human human rules about discrimination.
‘Confess’ has secondary meanings like: “to declare faith in or adherence to: profess”, “to give evidence of”; he might not mean “confess a sin” – it seems like many complementarians like to use secondary definitions that are easily confused with primary definitions rather than a synonym whose primary definition matches what they mean. I saw it with ‘priority’ and ‘defer’ in another article a while back.
Law Prof wrote:
Like other Female Subordinationists, they are not trying to stimulate thought; they are trying to stimulate a reaction that stifles thought. They are anti-Bereans. They are clerical supremacists who believe that an ordained man may not be criticized. Except by them, of course.
Sergius Martin-George wrote:
OK, thanks. Let me guess what they said…
Patriciamc wrote:
God-Ordained Male Entitlement Regime – GOMER
“Shazam!”
My condolences to Dee and her family at this time.
@ Jeff S:
Jeff exactly, I mean I do not agree with Baylees position, but his observation and summary of the failings of CMBW are spot on. Especially, the points on it really being about power, having no ability to speak for a church let alone The Church, a platform for self advancement and promotion ect ect. Why those are the exact same criticisms I have. Of course I have a different solution.
@ Josh:
If it makes you feel any better…
The Christian patriarchalists / complementarians have no respect for hetero, celibate adults.
I think they are especially bad towards women in this regard, because they believe (though some of them may deny this) that the only purpose God made women was to serve a husband and make babies.
If you are female and have not put your “lady parts” to use making a baby, you have no value in their view, and you have failed to live out God’s plan, design, or purpose for you.
Patriarchalists and complementarians are not comfortable with Paul’s words in Corinthians that it is better to stay single and it’s better ‘for a man not to touch a woman’ (i.e., it’s better to stay celibate) because this does not fit their gender stereotypes about people and relationships.
Deb wrote:
Agreed. And so we must enter the battle. What we forget, I think, is that there is a spirit behind the flesh in theological confrontations … sometimes it’s holy, sometimes it’s not. So, we pray for discernment and move forward.
My thoughts about the comments in the OP (original post).
The Bible does not teach that the sexes are vastly different.
If Bayly believes that they are vastly different, he’s reading his own prejudices and cultural beliefs back into the text, or else, mistaking the cultural norms for genders mentioned in the Bible as being prescriptive rather than descriptive.
I guess if you personally want to believe that Men Are From Mars and Women Are From Venus, it’s America, and you’re welcome to hold whatever belief you want to, but – don’t try telling me that view is supported in the Bible.
I am not saying the sexes are identical, but I think they are more alike than different.
Most “differences” we see today are social constructs.
If you keep telling girls that boys are good at math and girls are not (which is pretty common), don’t be surprised when you don’t see many girls, when they become women, pursuing as many math-based careers, or taking as many math courses later.
These social constructs become self-fulfilling prophecies.
Velour wrote:
I suspect that’s an insult to Tarzan — not the inarticulate movie version but Edgar Rice “Ned” Burroughs’ original character of around 100 years ago. Haven’t read the originals, but I understand Burroughs’ Tarzan was actually very chivalrous and articulate — after all, he was a Burroughs pulp hero.
Daisy wrote:
Snagas and Isengard Spawning Pits.
I am sorry for your loss, Dee.
Jamie Carter wrote:
Thank goodness we don’t live in the theocracy that the Bayly Brothers propose, where
even a smart woman isn’t entitled to “correct” a man. Exhibit A: Baylys took
offense to smart Christian women correcting Doug Wilson for marrying pedophile
and young Christian woman in Moscow, ID. Now the couple has a baby son who
is in danger.
The Baylys demands for workplaces to run this way – white men on top and everybody else on the bottom – gives rise to record amounts of damages discrimination lawsuits for violations of federal and state laws based on sex, race, etc.
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
Thanks, H.U.G. I hadn’t gone that far back in time.
(More thoughts about the OP. I’m trying to break some of my thoughts up so I don’t create one very long post!)
I’ve said before on older threads on complementarianism, that as loathesome as I find the hyper-comp (patriarchalism?) of the Bayly types, at least they are taking the soft complementarian views to their logical conclusions by consistently applying them.
The hyper complementarians apply complementarianism not just to women in marriage or in church settings, but into wider culture.
This does help cut down on the confusion we see among the soft to moderate complementarians; for instance, John Piper being okay with women drawing city plans, as long as a man is only reading those plans and not hearing them spoken directly from the woman.
I still think that single women, particularly, maybe, never-married women over the age of 30, such as myself, pose a problem even for Bayly- Complementariansm.
There is nothing in the New Testament saying that an unmarried woman has to live at home with a father, or be under a father’s command.
The only verse that specifically calls out a woman to submit to any man, is a wife to a husband, in Ephesians chapter 5.
There is no explicit command in the Bible (especially under New Testament teachings) calling for any and all never-married women to submit to ANY man at all.
(We’re not in ancient Israel, but in the United States in the year 2016 in a Republic.
We’re not a religious theocracy, so I don’t buy any patriarchalist argument that says women in the USA today should be living under laws meant for ancient Israel in the Old Testament.)
I hope that soft complementarians, especially the women, such as Aimee Byrd, take a good, long hard look at the Bayly posts where he severely rips apart “soft complementarianism,” (a.k.a. “thin comp”), because it may (hopefully) open her eyes to see that the very base of complementarianism is flawed and sexist.
Up to this stage, I am thinking a lot of soft comps (such as Byrd) are “okay” with soft comp, because it seems harmless enough.
Soft complementarianism sounds so nicey-nice and noble in an old- fashioned way, to think of a man tenderly, lovingly “serving leading” his wife, putting his coat down over mud puddles so she doesn’t dirty her feet, or the husband fending off fire- breathing dragons on the wife’s behalf, etc, and so on.
However, the root of this soft comp is the same root at the base of hyper-comp; softies just don’t implement it consistently or as harshly.
But both share many of the same troubling assumptions about marriage, women,, there is still an insistence in male hierarchy, that the Bible authorizes male privilege, female subordination, etc.
“As we approach the Statement’s thirtieth anniversary, though, its weaknesses are growing more apparent. Its strength is what it says about sexuality in the home and church. Its weakness is what it doesn’t say about manhood and womanhood in the “rest of life.”–Joseph Bayly
thick & thin complementarian
+++++++++++++++++++
what is it about these guys and sexual stuff? sexual imagery? they seem to love to say and write the words “sexual” & “sexuality”. And thick & thin?? good grief.
I mean, we’re talking about mundane things here, such as who manages the money, who decides things about family vacations or when to replace church carpet, who prays at the family table or at church. Joseph and others categorize these things as “sexuality”. Ridiculous.
The words “Sexual” and “sexuality” are the buttoned-up way to refer to getting horny & what happens. Right?? Not “how we interact with each and every person each and every minute of the day—yes in the home and church, but also at school and work and in the subway and at the grocery store”, as Joseph put it.
It’s like there’s some weird obsession with their male appendage — it’s the frame of reference for seeing all of life for themselves (and therefore everyone else). I’m sure years of repression is involved. It’s like the ‘sexual revolution’ has finally made it o them, & it is naturally so liberating. but it’s frightening — so their joyful giddiness prompts severe rules for all of everything. i think it’s so powerful a thing for them that they assume it’s like this for everyone.
brad/futuristguy wrote:
Good list of problems. I’ll add to it. At my ex-NeoCalvinist church (located in California) the pastors/elders’demands that church members “obey” and “submit” to them in “all things” as well as to husbands (if woman was married) crossed the line over in to criminal conduct.
Pastors/elders demanded that mothers not protect their children from dangerous people and that fathers “had final say” over permitting a convicted sex offender to touch children.
Pastors/elders said moms “had not say”.
The reality is that mothers are required under law to protect their children and a failure to do so by “obeying” her husband and pastors/elders doesn’t get her off the legal hook when it all goes wrong. She can be arrested and prosecuted. If the district attorney’s office prosecutes a mom they can do so as a misdemeanor or a felony. If it’s a felony, and she’s convicted, she can face a “strike” under the “three strikes and you’re out law.”
That means that a 2nd strike would get her double the punishment/time. And a third strike gets her 25 years to life in prison. Child Protective Services can take away her children.
Other crimes. Criminal Conspiracy [agreement to commit a criminal act among 2 or more persons, including pastors/elders], Aiding & Abetting, Accessory after the Fact [covering up for a criminal act after it’s happened], Obstruction of Justice, Intimidating a Witness, failure to report as a Mandated Child Abuse Reporter. And that’s just the tip of the criminal iceberg.
My ex-pastors/elders demanded that women and wives “obey” and “submit”, including screaming it at them and going to one woman’s home. That can be: false imprisonment,
assault [the threat], battery [if physical contact was made with the person in any way, including by using an object], and other crimes.
The pastors/elders ordered that one wife be harassed by church members “to repent” because she left for a saner church. Those are more criminal acts. Criminal Conspiracy, Stalking, Harassment.
The pastors/elders insisted that the almighty Membership Covenant gave them these rights over peoples’ lives. Oh no they don’t. In the United States you can’t “contract” for criminal acts.
In my county (Santa Clara County, CA), the actions of my pastors/elders involve multiple law enforcement agencies, the district attorney’s office, the San Jose Mercury News (our big newspaper), and the top womens’ groups who deal with domestic violence.
NJ wrote:
I don’t know the views of either party well enough to claim full equivalency, but that seems similar to Denny Burk’s views on the sinfulness of merely experiencing what he deems “unnatural” desires. It comes down to a desire to find a way to falsely equate temptation and sin, for a temptation that they [probably] don’t personally experience, so they can justify the contempt they feel for people they consider “icky.” I stopped caring long ago whether they change their minds; I take comfort in the simple joy of watching them broadcast their views as loudly and obnoxiously as possible, knowing that with the trajectory of not just secular society – but Christian culture as well – they’ll talk themselves into a pit of their own making, from which they won’t be able to climb back out.
Based upon everything else I’m seeing by Bayly in the OP, he sounds like he wants the USA to have a Christianized Sharia, and for Christians to model themselves on nations such as Saudi Arabia, where women are not allowed to drive cars.
Rather than trying to make Christianity into an image of militant Islam, why doesn’t Bayly just convert to militant Islam and be done with it? Why doesn’t Bayly become a resident of Saudi Arabia?
Bayly said,
No, not really. The Bible says God created humanity in his image, male and female, but the sort of sharply delineated differences Bayly assumes to exist are not outlined in the Bible.
The only time the Bible may describe differences is due to the cultural status of women in whatever society (Peter, was it, saying that the woman is the weaker vessel?).
But there is no passage in the Bible saying something like,
“And thus the Lord God created all men to be tough, assertive, football watching, fire breathing dragon slayers. And the Lord God created all women to be passive, meek, demure, and to love sewing, reading love poetry and wearing pink, frilly dresses.”
Other than some biological plumbing differences, I am not so sure about the “nature clearly demonstrates” argument about men and women.
No Such Thing As Male or Female Brain [2015] Study Says
http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/well-good/teach-me/74682857/no-such-thing-as-male-or-female-brains-study-says
elastigirl wrote:
Getting a glimpse into the mind of a Righteous Horndog?
Joseph says, “Like the roles of man and woman in marriage, Fatherhood and Sonship in the Godhead are roles, also, and being arbitrary, they could be reversed. The Father could as easily submit to the Son and the Son could a easily command the Father.”
+++++++++++++++++++
I get the feeling that Joseph feels his patriarchal way would be so much more straightforward and convenient.
But i can see it now. you think all the rules promulgated by CBMW & co are ridiculous? you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!
just how does Joseph think a pure form of female submission is going to happen?
the only way to establish patriarchy is to codify what women can and can’t do to the extreme. and it is a cruel slap in the face to all those who sacrificed greatly for the freedoms that even he enjoys.
i think joseph bayly has a logic problem.
Bayly writes:
The Bible says men and women are both made in the image of God.
Notice how the Bible is more into how men and women are alike than different.
The Bible also teaches that both men and women who accept Christ have the Holy Spirit residing in them who does not gift and lead said person based on sex.
As I just said in a post above, the Bible does not contain entire chapters laying out exactly how men and women are different.
I do not trust any man to make up such a list, especially not one who reads the Bible through a sexist lens, which is automatically predisposed to limit women (such as Piper, Grudem, Driscoll, or Bayly).
Because if so, I can guarantee that the results will end up merely in rules of what they think women cannot and should not do (go to school, stay single, work as a police officer, etc).
I can guarantee that said list will end up keeping men in full power and control in marriages, society, jobs, and churches (and at the expense of women). Creating such a list would be an exercise in self-service for a complementarian man.
As someone else earlier in this thread noted, complementarians and patriarchalists want to have this both subject ways.
On the one hand, they teach that there are OBVIOUS differences between male/female, but then they go on to argue that the church needs to write up very detailed Talmuds and lists specifying exactly HOW male/female are different, and what tasks either gender may participate in.
How about No.
How about I just live my life, making choices that suit me and what’s best for me-
Rather than in getting bogged down about questioning any event I take place in – whether it’s going out a jog, playing frisbee in a park, or giving driving directions to a lost male motorist – may be violating one of their precious gender rules?
I bet God himself may have trouble keeping all the Piper – Grudemn – Bayly gender rules straight.
If God keeps up with this stuff, he must have angels in Heaven with enormous Excel spreadsheets and poster or chalk boards keeping tally on what these complementarians think God said women can and cannot do.
Jesus, meanwhile, said his yoke was easy and light.
Velour wrote:
They already anticipated you, Velour:
“Who shall we obey? Vain Imaginings of Men or The WORD OF GAWD?????”
Deb wrote:
Wow. They are so illogical. There is no chain of theology here. The only reason God is our father is because he actually “fathered” us, as in progenitor of us. There is no gender about it. Adam had nothing whatsoever to do with fathering women. God put him to sleep and took from him, maybe without even asking him for his permission. I donate a kidney, does that give me father-rule of its recipient?
Max wrote:
Not “theology”, Comrade.
IDEOLOGY.
As in “Who Has The Most PURE Ideology?”
Ask any survivor of Cambodia’s Killing Fields or China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution how far that can go. And HAS gone.
elastigirl wrote:
I think that all of the Baylys should be separated from one another, no electronic devices, and they should be sent traveling and backpacking around the world for a period of 5 years.
Then bring them back to the U.S. and see if they’ve changed.
Daisy wrote:
Yep. If it were so obvious, they wouldn’t have to write books and article and obsessively teach it. Because it would be obvious.
The truth is, aside from a few things, we are MUCH more alike than different and looking at individuals is more important than any slight group tendencies.
Bayly said,
At the start, in the first quotes I read by him in the OP, Bayly sounded like he was advocating some cross between militant Islam, with its love of Sharia, and Mormonism’s insistence that female subordination continues into the afterlife.
Here, Bayly sounds a bit like he’s advocating for a caste system, where you are stuck in your station in life permanently because of how or what you were born, and there is no rising above it.
It’s Hinduism that has teaching about castes, isn’t it(?) And isn’t there one class that is below all, the “untouchables?”
It sounds as though Bayly wants to put women in the “Untouchables” lowest class of Christianized Hinduism.
Bayly said,
What does that even mean, ‘confessing the sex he made us’?
I can agree (or “confess”) that I was born female, but what of it?
Because I was born a woman, I must therefore _____ (fill in the blank with Baylyisms and Piperisms: only marry and have babies; never work as a police officer; never receive a college education; etc.?) Nope. Those conclusions don’t follow from the premise.
Law Prof:
The main trouble with young Joseph Bayly is that he now pastors the newest Clearnote offshoot in Cincinnati. I can only hope that he is sufficiently transparent to any newcomers, that they’ll realize how unqualified he is. His theological education appears limited to his daddy’s pastors college.
@ Cousin of Eutychus:
“now that Burk is in charge of CBMW, perhaps we will see a push for ‘Bhurkas’.”
+++++++++++
really? it seems to me that Burk’s job is to keep CBMW in the fuzzy intoxicated light of pleasant & happy feelings. metaphorical ‘Bhurkas’ would betray far too much, scare reasonable people away, and they would love money & power.
@ elastigirl:
“…scare reasonable people away, and they would lose money & power.”
(now even the auto-correct feature is horny! guess that’s what happens with patriarchy and the windows 10 upgrade collide)
Bayly said,
IMO, ancient Israel was way more patriarchal than American society today, yet having very sharply defined, limited roles for women way back when didn’t halt things such as King David arranging for the death of a dude, because he wanted to ‘get it on’ with said dude’s wife.
Ancient Israel sinned left and right almost constantly, including sins of the sexual variety. Having patriarchal-like beliefs and practices didn’t stop it.
The Duggars today follow a lot of these repressive gender roles that Bayly pines for, and it didn’t stop their son from fondling girls.
Ditto on Bill Gothard, Dougie Esquire who assaulted Lourdes the then-teen nanny, etc.
Other than keeping women out of power and control in all spheres of life, I don’t see what Christian patriarchy or hard core complementarianism is any good for, or what it accomplishes.
I am a woman in my 50’s. I never think that men are looking at me in a sexual way. I’m not sure I ever did. I’ve been married to a man for over 31 yrs now, and I know he doesn’t think of other women in sexual ways either. We both have friendships with those of the opposite sex. We know that neither one of us would ever step past the boundaries of friendship .I also agree that the Comp guys think of everything in a sexual nature. Even when I was single, I never thought I had to ask an older man who I could or couldn’t so. To think that I had to have a man as a “cover” for me would have been absurd. I married at age 26. If someone would have told me that I had to ask a man about whether he thought I should go someplace or do something is hilarious. I’m a strong woman and come from a long line of strong woman. Wow be to the man that tells any one of us that we have to under his covering and that we have to ask him about every aspect of our lives. I think we’d all gang up on him, and he’d come out singing a different tune. Remember the old song – I am woman hear me roar. I’m sure the Comp guys think that song is the Devil speaking.
Gram3 wrote:
And most certainly not by a woman! No sirree, no matter how intelligent or correct she is, no woman must ever be permitted to gainsay a ManaGawd!
Just behold the Baylys’ reaction when a woman criticized Doug Wilson’s theology, and later demonstrated his plagiarism. Venom, vitriol, and then stomping away with their fingers in their ears.
I wouldn’t be surprised that soft complementarians would not appreciate being termed “semi- egalitarians” by Bayly, or accused of “using feminist talking points.”
Also, contrary to Bayly, it wasn’t any so-called “semi egalitarianism” that started this most recent shake down in the world of complementarianism: the alarm was raised over views about the Trinity. He’s sort of trying to argue it was the other way around.
I was sad that it took the doctrine of the Trinity to shake soft complementarians out of their apathy.
Soft complementarians should have been alerted and repulsed years ago at how complementarianism is nothing but sexism, and, it tends to foster or perpetuate domestic violence.
IMHO, those should have been the first triggers for soft complementarians to pick up something was horribly wrong with complementarianism, not propogation of E.S.S., or Trinity doctrines being piddled around with.
Based on the tone of her blog post I read, Aimee Byrd (who I consider a soft complementarian, though I don’t know what label she would give herself if any) didn’t seem to be aware of the fact of the horrible things being taught under complementarianism by various comp preachers until she read Ruth Tucker’s book about male headship, and how often it is abused by terrible husbands.
Byrd seemed very surprised that comps were teaching the garbage they were (telling women abuse is their fault, etc), as though Tucker’s book was the first she had heard of it.
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
Agreed. Not gospel, but philosophy.
Joseph Bayly: “get more people to support their efforts to protect male authority in the private spheres of church and home”
And there you have it.
What needs to be protected?
Women and children?
HECK NO!
What is more important than the gospel of Jesus Christ, more important than the welfare of women and children, more important than the souls of men?
Jesus told us to not seek after the hierarchy structures that the gentiles pursue.
But the Baylys ignore the words of Jesus so they can do the very thing Jesus warned against.
Then they have the nerve to tell others that following the words of Jesus concerning hierarchy is heresy.
I know. This comment adds nothing to the convo concerning the split within complementarianism. But I am still amazed to seen such blatant idol worship of ‘male authority’.
I should be duly hardened to the madness. Guess there is a naive part of me always hoping that men will eventually come around and chuck their hierarchy gospel for the pure waters of the words of Jesus Christ.
Daisy wrote:
HA! that’s a good one! I’ve math-tutored teen girls from my old church who can think rings around those dolts (the Baylys).
What we need is faithful teaching and preaching that commands us to honor God by confessing the sex He made us
Ignoring people with nicely lined up DNA to make most people feel they are male or female yet who still think they are not who their DNA indicates….
What about those who are born with ill defined sex? The rate of this happening is not well documented as many parents and societies don’t want to admit it happens. But it seems that more 1 in 1000 people are born with some degree of not being absolutely male or female. Which leads to 7 million or more people alive on the planet today who are excluded from the statement made.
NJ wrote:
If they go there and can’t see through a charlatan as obvious as young Bayly, then one must suppose they get what they deserve. Paul dealt with this issue in Second Corinthians. Mr. Bayly impresses me as one who doesn’t know enough to apprehend that he doesn’t know enough. This is normal among young men, and why the Bible’s pretty clear about young men submitting to older men, newer believers not being elders, elders being called elders in the first place, and there existing nowhere within the New Testament anything like a head pastor position; it’s to prevent this sort of nonsense.
But once people such as Mr. Bayly start detaching themselves from the Bible and the words of Jesus, the truth, once they start diminishing Jesus in any manner, such as discussing His “submission” to the Father in anything like the sense that we typically regard the word (an absurd proposition considering that Jesus, the Creator of all things, does not have some independent will that can run afoul of the Father’s), once they start making Him eternally subordinate, eternally anything less that the Main Thing, they’ll do the stupidest things imaginable, because they’ve detached themselves from the way the truth and the life, and one must wonder how they’ll ever get to the Father through a lesser Son.
Deb wrote:
Regarding point:
2. Biblical language, the word or concept of patriarchy.
As I’ve quoted author Custis-James as having said before (paraphrasing here), patriarchy is the Bible’s backdrop, not its point.
That the OT especially was set against patriarchal cultures doesn’t mean God was okay with patriarchy or endorsed it or commanded Christians in 2016 USA (or Britain, Australia, etc) to live by that.
3. Bayly said, “Where is its [CBMW’s] statement on women in the military?”
Why does it need to have one?
First of all, the OT mentions Deborah, who was not only a woman Judge over Israel, but also a woman military leader who took their army into battle.
A civilian woman, Jael, drove a tent peg through the brow of a sleeping enemy combatant, and the text doesn’t say either way if God approved or not.
Secondly. The American secular governing authorities and/or military groups have said women are allowed to serve in the military, and now in combat positions also, IIRC.
Paul said Christians are to obey their secular ruling authorities, AND, that it is not a Christian’s place to judge those without the church but within it.
Therefore, if the American military wants to permit women into the armed services, Bayly can pipe down about it. It’s not his place to judge and condemn the secular authorities he’s living under over that, far as I can tell.
4. Bayly: It’s a battle for souls.
Are you serious? You really think a woman’s eternal destiny hinges upon you being allowed to argue in her face that her only supposed right, role, or purpose in life is to marry, have kids, and clean dirty laundry?
The apostle Paul boiled down the Gospel to being ‘Christ and Him crucified,’ and said nothing about gender.
On his other points.
That Bayly approves, agrees with or endorses Doug Wilson, under his point 8 (who thinks women should marry pedos, among his other revolting beliefs), shows he is not a good judge of character.
Point 9. That non-complementarians don’t share Bayly’s weird, twisted interpretations of the Bible, or Bayly’s biases about women (which he gets from culture, not the Bible) does not mean they ‘deny the Bible.’
How insulated of a world do you have to be in to imagine complementarianism is any kind of a “big tent” to begin with?
Daisy wrote:
True that. I teach at a large university. I’m a dolt compared with my wife, the valedictorian who majored in math and minored in physics, who studied theoretical mathematics at the PhD level, who taught at a Pac 12 university, she didn’t take calculus, she taught it. I took college algebra and worried my through it, had to have her hold my hand through statistics (which she’d previously taught) or I’m not certain I’d have passed it. So when anyone wants to talk about male/female in the hard sciences, my anecdotal experience is that there is a difference: females are stronger.
Patti wrote:
Lol! Good point.
Daisy wrote:
That was the feeling I was having about Driscoll.
People should have been booted out of the ‘golden boy’ spotlight over his terrible comments about sex, women, and punching insubordinate elders.
But no, the beginning of the end was plagiarism and buying a spot on the NYT best sellers list.
Again. People, especially women, being thrown under the bus doesn’t make a blip on the radar.
It takes something that touches the ‘big names’ personally to get any concern or action.
NJ wrote:
If I am understanding her comment there correctly:
Many of us here have been saying that the complementarian talking point that “women are equal in worth just not in role” is nothing but window dressing and, in practice, bunk.
Sounds sort of nice in theory but where the rubber meets the road, women are not treated as equal in worth in reality.
When and if you bar a group of people permanently, due to some in-born trait, from performing some duties or roles they are otherwise qualified to perform, you’re really conveying you do NOT believe those people are “equal in worth.”
The “equal in worth, not in role” shtick does not work in practical terms.
Especially, not, I guess, in cases of domestic violence. I just read a page at CBE that sort of got into that. This may be the page I am thinking of:
3 Ways Egalitarian Theology Opposes Abuse
http://www.cbeinternational.org/blogs/3-ways-egalitarian-theology-opposes-abuse
Mara wrote:
People should have booted HIM out…
Sorry.
All these guys crack me up. They really do know how to push each other’s buttons.
I could not figure out why Pruitt was so declarative about NOT being a “thin comp”. Now I know why.
But it does not explain why Bayly has the power to offend Pruitt. Why on earth does Pruitt care what Bayly thinks? those bothers have been strange fringe for a long time.
I’m trying to wrap my head around Wayne Grudem and the “eternal subordination of the Son, Jesus, to the Father.” Um what? Since I believe the Trinity is a mystery similar to eternity (really impossible for my human mind to fully understand every detail of how One God, Three Separate Personalities All still One God) yet, I have faith in this because of Scripture. How in the world can he claim that is authentic Trinity explanation in the Son being subordinate? To me, that is heresy and relegating Jesus Christ as a lesser god. To me, this is the most serious problem and all of the complementarianism dogma that springs forth from it.
Daisy wrote:
But I think it is. I believe Satan is attempting to redirect people from the truth, to tie them up in controversies and doctrines of men, ones that diminish Jesus by making Him subordinate, that diminish His words by focusing on gender issues and authority and hierarchies, to focus damaged, disturbed men upon that which they think will ease their pain–gender superiority, church hierarchies with them at the pinnacle–rather than that which will ultimately ease their pain and save them–Jesus.
Harley wrote:
I’d be happy to send you and Nancy2 (from Kentucky) to my ex-church to straighten out the
insufferable “you-will-obey-and-submit” pastors/elders.
Muff Potter wrote:
LOL. I didn’t see your post when I did one of mine earlier. I speculated he’s probably be more happy living in Saudi Arabia.
Bayly also seems to subscribe to a Hindu caste version of Christianity, where women are always at the bottom rung.
Jeff S wrote:
Good post. I agree.
I detest complementarianism, especially the more severe, Bayly like variety of it, but at least he’s being forthcoming about where complementarianism really is and where it can lead. Makes it easier to spot and thus avoid.
If I walked into a church that was that wide out in the open about it, or a guy on a dating site, it would make it that much easier for me to wave good-bye as I walk out the door.
Mara wrote:
And even after Mark Driscoll’s firing from Mars Hill and the closure of the church,
John Piper waxed on about how Driscoll no longer being there was “a loss for The Gospel”.
No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t a fervent answer to prayer, including mine.
Cobber wrote:
Good one! Now can you come up with appropriate words to make the acronym “PYLE”?
Daisy wrote:
P.S. Well, I suppose it depends.
I guess on some days I find the ‘milder’ form more annoying. I guess it depends on my mood or the context of it.
NC Now wrote:
That statement struck me as disingenuous. First, how does this confession take place? To whom?
I see all sorts of hoops to jump through to pass the gender litmus test they invent.
And those who don’t confess? Oh my.
FW Rez wrote:
If I’m not mistaken, isn’t that the document that asked for wives to “graciously submit” to their husbands? I don’t know what, if anything else, it said about wives/ women.
But that isn’t “going far enough?” Do tell.
The hard-core complementarians won’t be satisfied until, what?
Until… Women are bought and sold as sex slaves at markets, forced into arranged marriages, never allowed to attend school, not permitted to divorce abusive husbands, or work outside the home?
All that sounds remarkably similar to, oh, I don’t know, certain Islamic groups I keep reading about in the news.
When your view of Christianity and/or women starts strongly resembling that as found in Islam, Hinduism, or Mormonism, you have really veered off the reservation.
Daisy wrote:
As a woman who majored in mathematics in college, I can vouch for that statement. I didn’t hear it from my family, but I did hear “boys are better at math, girls are better at grammar and lit. at school. Even in high school (I graduated in ’82), only a few of us “girls” took the higher level math courses.
For the record, my county tested 8th graders in mathematics to determine which math class to assign each student when we went to the high school. The top three scorers in our county were girls!
Daisy wrote:
What it does is keep Christian women from exercising their God-given gifts. And just which side does that benefit???
All I can say is, Satan must be very pleased…
Harley wrote:
A different tune in a different key?
NC Now wrote:
Either intersex people are a liberal conspiracy, or … “STOP TRYING TO INVALIDATE MY HARD AND FAST RULES WITH THOSE PESKY EXCEPTIONS!” (or both). They will never answer how intersex people fit into their rules, though.
Velour wrote:
Afghanistan, Iraq, Somolia, North Korea, and last but not least, Anartica.
Nancy2 wrote:
Patriarchs Yawn Like Earthworms?
Nancy2 wrote:
Pretend You Like Eve?
Max wrote:
Other than maybe very sexist and insecure men, I don’t know who they hope to attract to their brand of Christianity.
Driscoll was able to get crowds of young men at his Mars Hill church for a time with such teaching, but eventually that imploded.
I keep reading articles that more and more Millennials today are tired of the culture wars and cannot be won over to the Christian faith by appeals or arguments involving such things.
My hunch is that many to most adults over the age of 35 have also had it up the wazoo with the culture wars, though we over 35s don’t get as much media attention.
I don’t think many to most people today (Christian or Non) will agree with, or accept the overt sexism one finds in complementarianism.
If anything, complementarianism acts as a repellent, I think.
I find it interesting when watching atheist-created videos on You Tube, or reading atheist commentary on other sites, they interpret the Bible the same as the comps do, or they point to quotes by complementarians (such as Piper, Driscoll, etc), to jump up and down and say, “See, see, Christianity is sexist!!!!”
siteseer wrote:
Excellent point!
Daisy wrote:
Oh, but the Baylys say the blame for that was all Bathsheeba’s. She knew what she was doing when she went strutting out there buck naked when she knew King David would be watching!
Daisy wrote:
Good catch Daisy. Here’s a comment (reconstructed from best recollection) I left over at Denny Burk’s blog back during a gender skirmish. It never saw the light of day in the comment stream. Orwell’s memory hole in his ministry of truth was its fate I reckon:
“When Ivan (the Red Army) had pushed the Wehrmacht far enough West and the death camps in the East got liberated, the vast majority of survivors were women. I’ll grant you that men in general have an initial physical strength greater than women, but in harsh and corrosive environments, women will outlast men much in the same way that titanium will outlast the strongest steel alloys.
Real world empirical observation will not support 1 Peter 3:7 unless the much broader meaning is the brutal cultural constraints placed on women in the ancient Greco-Roman world.”
siteseer wrote:
Lol!! Exactly!
Daisy, one of my biggest problems with Mormon theology is this: for even a pious LDS woman to enter the celestial realm, she must not only be married but called forth by whichever husband she was sealed to in the Temple. If for any reason he doesn’t do so, she can only hope Christ Himself intervenes. Women in this religion cannot approach God the way men do.
Then there’s that whole eternal pregnancy and spirit children thing. I think I’d prefer the terrestrial realm as long as it’s pleasant.
Lydia wrote:
If any of them had any sense, they would have run some of the guys like the bayleys out for their opinions a long time ago. (And Doug Wilson. And CJ Mahaney. And a whole bunch more of them).
All I can say is that they are insular little boys club, so afraid of being labeled ‘thin’ comp, or feminist or egal or what have you that they can’t call out the real, serious evils coming out of supposed men of ‘gawd’.
Nancy2 wrote:
Protecting Your Little Egos?
Nancy2 wrote:
As a 60+ year Southern Baptist, I can tell you something else girls are good at. They are great at keeping dying SBC churches in rural America out of the grave. If it weren’t for godly women standing in the gap, when men gave up, many a Southern Baptist church would have closed their doors. Many SBC women have agonized, prayed, and sacrificed to carry such burden when their men just didn’t want to tote it. The truth of the matter is boys are better at math only to the extent that girls buy that lie.
Mara wrote:
Falsetto, permanently.
Incidentally, I think “Comp Camp” should be a Thing.
Law Prof,
Timothy seemed to do okay but then, he was being mentored by the apostle Paul. When a young man has spent his entire life being mentored by the likes of Tim and David Bayly, the result will be very different.
According to his profile, Joseph is available for biblical counseling as well as answering questions about Christianity. 😛
Nancy2 wrote:
You don’t need an acronym. You just need an S on the end.
elastigirl wrote:
I wish I had saved it, but someone weeks ago (here? another site?) linked to an article about some ancient society where the society had huge Phallic sculptures all over their cities.
Mark Driscoll, in his rants, can’t even refer to women without referring to that part of the male anatomy: he referred to women as “penis homes” in some online tirade years ago.
Nancy2 wrote:
Prattling Young Lemming Education?
Nick Bulbeck wrote:
But I’m having so much fun!
NJ wrote:
He needs biblical counselling?
Well… that’s his call.
Mara wrote:
This one is thumbs up!
elastigirl wrote:
That, plus, I am sorry to be a broken record, he’s in the wrong religion. He’d feel much more at home in militant Islam.
Bayly probably likes Jesus, and Islam only regards Jesus as a prophet, not a deity, but the thing is, Bayly doesn’t like the actual Jesus of the Bible, the one who went against the patriarchal times of his day to treat women as equals and with respect.
Nick Bulbeck wrote:
Some of these guys need to be forcibly committed, at least for the mandatory 72 hour observation (by a female doctor and female staff, of course!).
Daisy wrote:
Polygamy. They will not be satisfied until they can practice polygamy along with the rest of this. Mark my words.
@ Mara:
I’m not sure whether “piles” is a colloquialism for hemorrhoids in the US…
Lydia wrote:
Yes. I like Nick’s idea, but I think we need to follow one acronym with another.
Josh wrote:
Black and white thinking only allows for two possibilities.
Nancy2 wrote:
I’m sure they could endure it for a season.
Nick Bulbeck wrote:
LOL…if only. Nope, he thinks he’s competent to counsel.
My condolences to Dee and the Parson family as they mourn the loss of Polly.
Daisy wrote:
I just scrolled down to that comment of mine, and it got me thinking.
Suddenly, I pictured Complementarian Jesus.
I could picture a woman accepting Jesus as savior, and Jesus’ first reaction is to hand the woman several super heavy volumes.
The woman asks, “Huh? What is all this stuff?”
Jesus replies, “Those are the long lists of rules of things you can and cannot do because you’re a woman. You need to study those and follow those, if you want to follow me.”
Complementarian Jesus would not allow the Holy Spirit to guide and direct a woman but give her lots of books to read about ‘How To Be A Woman’ with lots of gender rules to follow.
Doesn’t sound like the Jesus of the Bible that I’m familiar with. 🙂
Nick Bulbeck wrote:
It is, but it’s not all that common a term. I remember it being used more in publications from the 1940s-50s.
Nick Bulbeck wrote:
No, I never heard that one.
But my brain went to piles, as in piles of manure.
Nancy2 wrote:
One of my all-time heroines is Hypatia of Alexandria. Mathematician extraordinaire, astronomer, and geometer of the conic sections. Had she not been murdered by a mob of religious zealots around 415 A.D., I’m convinced that her ongoing work might have predated Kepler’s by many centuries.
Nancy2 wrote:
Baylys could be a bio-hazard in Antarctica.
Serving Kids In Japan wrote:
That was Rachel Miller who embarrassed them all with, you know, facts. Facts are stubborn, stubborn things, and they do not care what gender one is. If only Owen BHLH would take writing lessons from any of these lovely and articulate and bright *conservative* young women like Rachel and Aimee and Wendy and others.
Estelle wrote:
Me too, again.
I prayed for Dee first thing this morning when I awoke.
siteseer wrote:
Not just your words. I’ve heard on this and other blogs about Christianese websites that DO advocate it. Guess that means they won’t have to convert to Talibani Islam after all.
And in Polygyny, you go back to animal herd-harem behavior, where the Alpha Male/Herd Boss (human definition Money & Power) grabs all the females for HIS harem and drives off or kills any Beta-to-Omega who tries to muscle in (including his own male offspring upon puberty). And the Beta-to-Omegas have to do without — unless they kill/overthrow the Herd Boss and become THE NEW Herd Boss…
Talking about Bathsheba and her bathing. Does anybody know why she was bathing on the roof? I have heard the dismissive comment that ‘they used to do that’ but that is not enough of an answer. If ‘they’ used to do that, why did they used to do that? I mean, the water would have to be carried up in buckets since they did not just have some faucet they could turn on up on the roof. And then, I suppose carried down or thrown over the edge. According to the bible the roof top was not exactly private. And water is just as effective for cleansing at ground level as on the roof. There is just something missing in this story it seems to me. We also are not old why David did not go out to war in the time when kings go out to war, but it seems that Bathsheba’s husband was off with the army doing something so it must not have been a time of total peace. I want to know if D and B knew each other already, if the rooftop scene was a signal that her husband was safely gone, and if there is lots more to the story. And I partly wonder because she does seem to have become some sort of instant favorite among the wives and the mother of the successor to the throne.
Serving Kids In Japan wrote:
No rolling around chewing the carpet?
Harley wrote:
That’s because (unlike all these MenaGAWD) you are NOT a nymphomaniac.
To be honest, I’m a little surprised a Clearnote survivor blog hasn’t cropped up yet. I’ve seen hints here and there of past attenders or members being mistreated, or hearing outrageous things, but so far nobody has been able or willing to document folks’ past experiences.
Gram3 wrote:
You mean facts aren’t gender specific. Or don’t change depending on what gender the source is?
Daisy wrote:
Well, I can tell you from some personal experience that not all complementarian churches are CBMW complementarian churches. Especially if you are in a conservative Presbyterian or Reformed church, you may never read much of Grudem or Dever or Ware, so they might well not have been aware of ESS.
Mara wrote:
Bingo!
Daisy wrote:
Anyone can confirm your hunch by reading through the comments on said articles [1]. I suspect that millennials get too much of the credit because we’re more likely to complain on social media, but the sentiment crosses generational lines. Yet, the Southern Baptists (for example) stick their heads in the sand and refuse to see the light, because “look at us, we’re not declining as quickly as the other denominations, so clearly we’re doing something right.” Will they catch on before it’s too late?
[1] One such article posted by a Facebook friend of mine recently is this: http://amygannett.com/2016/07/29/why-evangelicals-are-losing-an-entire-generation/
okrapod wrote:
I heard somewhere that it could have been some sort of ritualistic cleansing after her menstruation in rain water that was collected on the roof. That it was a completely normal and expected part of their culture.
Or something like that.
@ Harley:
I don’t think complementarian men who are really stuck in the complementarian bubble (such as Bayly, Piper, Wilson and the rest), the ones who sit around all day blogging, consider that the lived experiences of women don’t line up with their abstract, longed-for gender roles.
My reality doesn’t match up with what they think about women, or how they think I or my life “ought” to be.
Their views are irrelevant to me and how I live my life. Some of their teachings wouldn’t work for me or are not practical for me.
They sit around day dreaming about how great life in America COULD BE IF ONLY all women were permanently subjugated under men. That is never going to happen.
They’re wasting their time fantasizing or pining away about how they wish women and culture “could” or “would” be, instead of dealing with women as they are.
Max wrote:
Targareyn, Targereyn, Baratheon, Baratheon-Lannister, Baratheon-Lannister, Lannister, …
Mara wrote:
If the Spirit is not in them, why would they care what Jesus actually said and did? I disagree that your comment does not add to the conversation. It certainly does by pointing out exactly what is at stake. These men are the NT incarnation of the Scribes and Pharisees who study the Law endlessly but cannot recognize the embodied Lawgiver when he walked among them. Some did, like the Apostle Paul, so I think there is hope.
Serving Kids In Japan wrote:
Ironic, considering that Wisdom is personified as a woman (“she”) in the Old Testament if I remember my Bible correctly.
Daisy wrote:
To which I say (like to all fanboys): “GET A LIFE!”
Nick Bulbeck wrote:
I’ve heard of “man camp” (eye roll, groan). What would Comp Camp entail?
Nick Bulbeck wrote:
I am pretty sure older generations used it.
@ okrapod:
This is a link to an article about David and Bathsheeba. It makes sense to me.
http://www.case-studies.com/davids
My question for the Baylys: if .bathsheeba was the guilty party, why did Nathan rebuke David?
Muff Potter wrote:
Old School D&D application, circa 1976-80:
In local D&D convention, when you rolled up a character (3D6 on all stats), if the character’s Strength was higher than Constitution (Endurance), the character was male; if Con was higher than Str, the character was female. (Not sure how you ran it if Str = Con…)
God Ordained Male Entitlement Regime Protecting Your Little Egos, aka GOMER PYLE.
The only problem I have with it is, now that I think about it, it is kind of an insult to the Gomer Pyle character!
@ Mara:
This isn’t a perfect comparison, but it reminds me a little of mafia guy Al Capone, who didn’t get sent away for all the really bad stuff he did, but the feds got him on tax evasion, or something smaller like that.
Velour wrote:
“Me Tarzan, you Jane”?
@ Nancy2:
By the way, I was just using math as one example.
There are many more. Churches / society have billions of these stereotypes.
Women/girls are supposed to be better at relationships, feelings, nurturing, home keeping, party hosting, etc. etc.
(There are many more for girls and another list for boys/men)
But most of that stuff is culturally conditioned, those are not traits girls are born with.
But the Baylys of the world think that God “hard wired” girls and women to like the color pink, sewing scarves, playing dolls, being emotionally open and “touchy feelie,” etc.
No, society expects those things of girls, hence, you end up with a lot of girls who play with doll houses, etc.
I was a tom boy when I was a girl. I didn’t care for Barbie, had no maternal interests, didn’t want to play with baby dolls. I don’t fit into the Bayly Box of Gender Expectations.
Obviously, I am a case subject that God does not hard wire women / girls to be home- making, scarf- sewing, pink- dress- wearing creatures.
But it’s not surprising that since so many girls are told from childhood they should WANT to marry, have kids, be a SAHM, wear pink, knit bed spreads, etc, and all that stuff is normal and natural for girls and is the province of women, that they will gravitate to those pursuits.
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
This is possible and present globally:
1 – Yemen
2 – Pakistan
3 – Chad
4 – Syria
5 – Mauritania
6 – etc.
Mr. Bayly’s description of egalitarianism bears no resemblance to actual egalitarian doctrine. He’d like it to be thus because it’s easy to mock such a nonsensical belief. But it has no basis in reality.
NJ wrote:
There have been more and more articles the last few years that there is a severe man shortage in Mormonism.
There are way more single LDS women than there are men, so there aren’t enough men for the women to marry.
It’s quite similar to Protestant evangelicalism – man shortage. I also read an article that a similar thing is going on among conservative Jewish groups in the USA (i.e., man shortage for women who want to marry).
waking up wrote:
Right, and that was George Knight III’s contribution to the discussion about 40 years ago. His seminary, Greenville Presbyterian, is aghast that the PCA has established a study committee for the concept of ordination and the question of women in ministry. How can a theological seminary object to studying the Bible to get answers to questions people are asking?
I think if they do not come up with some very good answers, the PCA/OPC are going to get smaller with the Millennials coming up. Comp is not their native language, and if there are good Biblically and logically sound reasons for it, then the Study Committee should be able to come up with them. Ligon Duncan of T4g is on the committee, IIRC, and I said when this ESS issue first blew up that the spotlight would be cast in his direction at some point. This may be that point since I’m pretty sure that the PCA view on women does not hinge on ESS, even if a PCA/OPC guy came up with it in the first place.
@ Tim:
Agreed. Thanks Tim!
Daisy wrote:
Women are prohibited from from being pastors in the BFM Y2K.
The misogynistic battle cry used to be “a woman’s place is in the home” which was a more polite way of saying she should be barefoot and pregnant.
@ Lea:
What I find somewhat funny about Bayly using the ultimate complementarian / patriarchal put down of another complementarian – the dreaded “feminist” or “egalitarian” label – is that the label I feel suits him best is misogynist. A woman-hater and/or woman-fearer.
I think being a woman-hater is far more serious and perverse than some guy who may disagree with another one over what roles women may perform in life or church.
Nick Bulbeck wrote:
I see what you did there.
Perhaps, as part of their treatment under women doctors, they could be assigned to cafeteria clean up duty, where they would have to rinse all sudsy glasses off.
@ okrapod:
I hope that wasn’t one big exercise in victim-blaming Bathsheba and letting David off the hook.
One thing I do recall in reading about that incident is that a woman back then could not refuse a king anything, not even sexual favors. Her life could’ve been at risk.
Josh wrote:
A good start, IMO, would be for all viewpoints to separate conditions of any given human being from that person’s personhood. My personhood and humanity is not a function of my sex or my chromosomal configuration, so an intersex person is a person, and their identity is not in their condition of being intersex or not intersex. My two cents because issues of sexual “identity” are beside the point when talking about someone’s basic humanity.
Bayly can stuff his church and stay out of my world.
Here’s a link to the SBCVoices article where the guy thinks article xviii in the BFM2K doesn’t go far enough.
http://sbcvoices.com/women-and-sbc-ministry-clarifying-the-2000-bfm/
Daisy wrote:
My take on the culture wars is that the culture warriors spend so much time on battle plans that they forget about the civilians that are getting caught in the crossfire. I understand that, as a Christian, I need to stand with Christ on certain issues. The fun part is that I get to decide, hopefully with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, where exactly I think that is.
Mara wrote:
Wunner!
Winner!
It’s not surprising to me that these hyper-fundamentalists are splitting themselves off from the rest of the evangelical/fundamentalist camp for not being extreme enough. Bayly’s voice is one of those heard loudly in the Quiverfull camp. The rest of evangelicalism has never been extreme enough for him. It seems to me he’s merely using this ESS debate, and the inclusion of celibate gay Christians in evangelicalism, to cut himself off from those he deems less pure than himself and his militantly authoritarian camp.
It’s not enough for men like this that women should be subordinate to their husbands or excluded from church leadership. He believes they are fit only for domestic servitude and childbearing– and that means as many children as possible, and that if girls, those children should stay home until their fathers give them to a husband. And now he would exclude gays even if they are celibate and trying their best to follow his version of Christianity.
Jesus wept.
First point in the Bayly post re: why CBMW has failed/is failing:
“1. Its name is false and self-serving. The one thing CBMW has never been is a true ecclesiastical council. Instead, it’s a self-appointed, self-referential group of individuals, the vast majority of whom cannot speak authoritatively for a particular church, let alone the Church.”
This is RICH, coming from the Baylys. Especially Tim, with whose history I am most familiar (which is not saying a lot).
Tim came out of seminary and did his pastoral internship at my then-church, a wonderful PC-USA Presbyterian Church, under one of the best people ever to walk the planet, a true pastor and one who followed Christ right to the gates of Everlasting Life, praising Christ with his final breath.
Tim Bayly left the PC-USA for the PCA and then when he didn’t think they were good enough anymore, he started his own denomination (a la Doug Wilson), complete with pastor’s college and so on.
I hereby reiterate Bayly’s own words and let the reader draw the meaning re: Bayly’s situation: “It’s a self-appointed, self-referential group of individuals, the vast majority of whom cannot speak authoritatively for a particular church, let alone the Church.”
siteseer wrote:
There seriously are such thing as church-sponsored “Man Camps.” Here is a link to just one of a few:
Man Camp
https://www.crossroads.net/mancamp
I guess women cannot, do not, or no woman ever has wanted to, sleep outside, build fires, drink beer or talk to God or make pals?
Camping has never been my thing, I prefer sleeping inside, having access to indoor plumbing and air conditioning, but some other women are into that stuff.
Nancy2 wrote:
“For married SBC women, I’m not sure how a wife can serve as a helper to her husband to whom she’s supposed to submit, while at the same time teaching him Scripture in a Sunday school class or on the mission field.”
I’m sorry, but these people are just dumb.
Daisy wrote:
The behavior Jesus exhibited toward women earned him the contempt of his male contemporaries. Just like the Baylys and their fellow travelers at CBME have contempt for men who dare to go outside the boundaries patrolled by the gender cops.
FW Rez wrote:
That may be their secret wish, but that genie is out of the bottle and can’t be stuffed back in, so I wonder why they keep fighting for it?
They should just learn to navigate society as it is, rather than complaining about how it is, and how they miss the good old days.
JYJames wrote:
LOL.
One woman positively tweeted about the recent Council on Biblical Manhood Womanhood conference, “At least they’ve put all of the men that I would NEVER date in one room.”
@ okrapod:
Possibly that is where the cistern was? IIRC, David’s palace was at the highest point in the City of David, so any rooftop would probably have been visible from the roof of his palace. I think the big issue is that David was in his palace and not out fighting the battles. I can imagine sermons about “wicked Bathsheba” but I have not ever heard that personally. Also, the roofs, IIRC, were supposed to have parapets according to the law, so her roof might have been private from the street. To be honest, I’m going off what an Israeli tour guide told us, but they are pretty well informed, at least the licensed ones.
Well, for the Compalvnaist (my new name), they have the hardest row to hoe. Per their beliefs, why would they ever have a need for CBMCW (or whatever the heck the initials are) since women being in “submission” and dominated by males really only needs to apply to the elect. Wouldn’t people be irresistibly drawn to this line of thinking and not have a need to be instructed to it? There organization doesn’t even need to exist unless they believe people can freely choose to belong….oh wait…
@ Mara:
Facts are independent of gender except in the world of the patriarchs and some people who hate men in which case the truth of a fact depends upon the gender of its source.
*Compalvanist…I spelled my own new label wrong.
@ Mara:
Facts are independent of gender except in the world of the patriarchs and some people who hate men in which case the truth of a fact depends upon the gender of its source. In Baylyworld, even male facts are filtered by whether they are ordained male facts or non-ordained male facts.
waking up wrote:
Excellent points.
*their not there…egads the mistakes!
I know this is off topic, except I was not the first to mention this (a little CYA there) but I find the whole David and Bathsheba thing interesting, especially in the face of so many different opinions and viewpoints. If you all are interested in an entirely different viewpoint, check this out.
https://torahideals.com/essays-and-imaginings/david-and-bathsheba/
And because it is off topic I will say no more, and frankly I wish that christian preachers would give it a rest.
okrapod wrote:
They won’t. It’s ALWAYS the woman’s fault. From Eve to Bathsheba. End of sermon.
Daisy wrote:
Why do al-Taliban and Boko Haram try to force the entire world back into the First Century of the Hegira?
Dee and family,
I’m so sorry to hear of your loss. I can’t imagine that she could have been cared for any better or had a more loyal and faithful advocate to see her through these past seven months. I pray you and your family feel all the love and care you’ve shown so many.
I’ll never forget the kindness you and your family showed us when our grandson passed away suddenly last year. You unknowingly sent me my favorite flower and supported us in so many ways, we could never thank you enough.
Please know we’re sending prayers of comfort and lots of love your way.
Gram3 wrote:
Reality cannot be permitted to contradict Ideology, Comrade.
Daisy wrote:
In the 19th Century, that problem was solved via the doctrine of Plural Marriage.
Tim wrote:
Sounds like the exact same tactic Ken Ham uses regarding evolution.
Deb wrote:
This is confusing me as to what a “doctrine of sexuality” would entail. But equally confusing is this Baylyblog post of 7/29/16.
http://baylyblog.com/blog/2016/07/good-father-childbirth-brings-new-standard-beauty
Specifically, it is his the use of phrases like the following when thinking of your wife’s sagging breast, flab, stretchmarks or varicose veins:
“a couple apple and one peach tree”
” The weight of the harvest leaves the peach tree with snapped limbs” (just how much did she gain? wow….she ain’t heavy …she’s my wife)
“The heifer that has just calved is a bloody mess and she and her calf are sitting prey for turkey vultures” (what family member is the vulture?)
“That fresh fruitless beauty is gone”
Finally, I may have my long sought answer of what a “Doctrine of Sexuality” looks like…wait for it..”in the flesh, so to speak.”
“Back in the sixties, a lithesome blond woman from the UK took over the modelling world. Skinny like a twig, she was called Twiggy, and ever since she has been the picture of beauty most admired in the Western world. It was not always so. Back a few centuries the standard of beauty was not adolescent, but maternal. Compare pictures of models today with paintings of beautiful women by the old masters and we know why women pushing babies in strollers are running on sidewalks and through every city park.
Christians should be different. We should love the distinctive marks of motherhood on a woman’s body and honor woman’s fruitfulness by cultivating and adopting a biblical Rubenesque standard of beauty.
In sexual attraction and lovemaking, we should be men—not boys.”
I have to admit, I needed Google on “Rubenesque”.
My questions after reading this post are..
Does a “Doctrine of Sexuality” represent one man’s sex fetish? (a sort of Gothard-esque inner turmoil)
Or, does it represent one mans inner torment over an actual obsession with “Twiggy” shaped women, while confronted with a more “Rubenesque” reality?
What I know for sure, is I will never be able to sing, “your a good good father,” again in church without vision of large women thrusting themselves into my mind.
Velour wrote:
The crux of comp/patriarchal thought for all time. And if it is the man’s fault, it was for not ruling his woman properly!
@ Velour:
They are information challenged and low on information processing ability. My grandmother used to say ‘You can’t beat stupid with a stick’ which was short for ‘you can’t beat the stupid out of somebody with a stick’ which was a common saying of the day, or so I was told.
okrapod wrote:
I love it. Is that a Southern saying?
Lea wrote:
Back to the Comp defense attorney’s table: If SHE had “behaved/obeyed/submitted” he wouldn’t have ‘a problem’.
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
Speaking of the Kentucky “Ark”, from what I’ve read the parking lots are pretty empty and they haven’t had a “flood” of visitors. It cost $102 million to build, including with
KY’s tax dollars.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/us/noahs-ark-creationism-ken-ham.html?_r=0
I can’t comprehend why the Patriarchal crowd doesn’t get this:
God, Who is the first origin of everything, TRANSCENDS the human distinction between the sexes. He is neither man nor woman: He is God. No one is father as God is Father.
Christiane wrote:
The Patriachial crowd doesn’t want to see the truth. They just want to use God’s name to rubber stamp their ideas.
On Tim Bayly and Twiggy,
He actually should have gone back further to the flapper of the 1920s when talking about adolescent standards of female sexiness.
Gram3 wrote:
And this kind of thing is proof that they don’t really want to know God’s truth; they just want to perpetuate the system. Why I don’t buy most of these self
Surgery went great, was only about 20 mins long. Have 2 more short sessions, though. They can’t do anything else until the swelling goes down. Moving Thursday, so lots to do. Will have to drive back for the dental appointments, but only an hour away.
Law Prof wrote:
His shuddering horror at the imagined uniformity of an egalitarian world is quite insane. He reminds me of folks who used to proselytize my family about the John Birch Society and other movements. If the USA changed in any way (through, say, fluoridated water), we would instantly become Red China under Mao, with everyone dressed identically, parroting the Party line. So I’d suggest, maybe,
5). Be a Communist.
Velour wrote:
And their ideas are, “I’m the boss and God agrees with me on that.”
Or, “I’m the boss and I don’t fear God enough to not use Him to advance myself.”
In other words, they are taking God’s Name in vain in order put themselves in His place of rulership.
Spell check won’t accept my word, rulership but will accept the word headship. How messed up is that?
“these stuff”=this stuff. Gotta stop using my phone to post.
You all want a doctrine of sexuality? I will let you share mine.
I am so tired of the excesses of requirements of what a female should look like and how she should act and whether the fact that she has stretch marks and ten pounds left over was the cause of her husband’s lack of interest and/or infidelity or worse yet his anger problem. This is just one way to put her into an emotionally vulnerable position, if she can be convinced to blame herself. The fact is that the world is full of men (well, has lots of) who will ‘take what they can get’ (wink) and then lie about it. And the fact is that people get bored with same old same old. And the biological fact of species survival via sexual reproduction is that promiscuity has its advantages as well as its disadvantages, and the practice does not seem to have become extinguished in our species. None of this male behavior can be ‘blamed on’ the females. Now, if she launches out on her own quests, that may be a different story. As for him, if he is not happy at home the chances are good that he is happy somewhere.
A former classmate of mine, married with kids, was messing around and one of our classmates called him on it in public, to which the tomcat replied ‘what is she (his wife) going to do about it’? Ah, yes. What a good idea to get the little lady in a position where she has no options, nothing she can do about it, and then jump the fence every which way from sunday. These patriarchs are not concerned about God, but rather about themselves. If they can just get it all under control at home then they can be free as a jaybird, with their sexuality and with their money and with their time and attention and with who looks good in the public eye because ‘what is she going to do about it’?
My apologies if that does not sound like something a little ole southern lady might say, because I promise you it is exactly what a little ole southern lady would say. We have seen enough good ole boys to last us a while.
ishy wrote:
Goods news. I will continue to pray for you.
Mara wrote:
You read my mind. Yes, they are taking God’s name in vain.
Daisy, HUG kind of referred to what crossed my mind with your comment about shortages of men. With the way things are going, we may live to see the mainstream LDS church lift the ban on polygamy if the situation doesn’t improve soon. The other possibility is that we’ll eventually see a bunch of middle aged, never-married Mormon women getting Temple marriages for eternity to famous Mormon male celebrities.
As far as the Jewish situation goes, what I remember from that article was that their problem could be solved if they would copy the Hasidic community in their courtship scheduling.
Gram3 wrote:
Amen. And if Galatians 3:28 is true, I daresay that is how God sees us: as human beings in Christ.
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
Daisy wrote:
He wants to waste a religion and a lifetime on beating this distinction into everyone’s head. Even the teaching on the Trinity is subordinate to the M/F distinction.
Daisy wrote:
An excellent turn of phrase.
Daisy wrote:
Aw, come on Daisy. I’ll teach ya how to make biscuits in a skillet over an open campfire.
Your on your on for finding bathroom facilities, though. I was chased away by a momma partridge once – you don’t want me to show you the “best” bathroom spots! Those momma partridges can get mean!
That Tim B. article came across as a scold, perhaps because of Tim running into this among other men within Clearnote? Tim preaches against birth control in general, and likes to extol large families. For his patriarchal ideology to stand, I suppose he needs to keep the men in line lest the women experience good reasons to drop it.
@ ishy:
Hi ISHY,
hope you feel better soon . . . you have my prayers
Nancy2 wrote:
in the mountains of western Massachusetts, the best ‘bathroom spots’ are found away from the poison ivy and poison sumac bushes
take this advice from one who knows
Daisy wrote:
With all due respect, no one who is a Christian should be “won over to the Christian faith by appeals or arguments” to begin with.
siteseer wrote:
YES!!! Our human dignity comes from God. We are beings in the image of our Creator God Who transcends ‘male’ and ‘female’, so as persons we are not dependent on our ‘parts’ for either our identity or our dignity.
someone needs to tell those foolish comp. men that the Cross is not a phallic symbol
Daisy wrote:
Touché…
PaJo wrote:
I thought he had separated from mainline denoms. What a hypocrite!
Bridget wrote:
Oh, he HAS separated from mainline denominations, by starting his own. Which makes his authority questionable by words from his own mouth.
Same with Doug Wilson as re: what they have established and, by the way, used to promote their offspring. Both these, and others like Mark Driscoll, are self-anointed because they will not sit under authority not their own.
NO ONE is self-anointed in the Scriptures. PAUL was not. David was not. The apostles were not.
That is one of the most dumbfounding things about these guys: Authority over thee but not over me (unless I get to pick the guys).
@ okrapod:
I think scripture does not say Bathsheba was bathing on the roof, only that she was bathing and was visible to David who was walking on his roof.
You might enjoy this “Sympathetic look at Bathsheba.”
http://newlife.id.au/equality-and-gender-issues/a-sympathetic-look-at-bathsheba/
@ bonnie knox:
Thanks for the link. That is the traditional approach to the story, at least as understood by christians, and it was well written. The site I linked is from one Jewish way of looking at it and they conclude that nobody committed either adultery or murder, for lots of reasons having to do with Jewish law at the time, but they conclude that since David was king he cut it so close, so to speak, that it was as if he had and therefore…. By which I conclude, just my own thinking here, that the story is interesting, the viewpoints are interesting, and I need some more information from the Jews on this story. I am not saying that they are right necessarily, but merely that for me there is interesting stuff to be read by looking in that direction.
Some time back here we got into some conversations about David, and how come Samuel called David a man after God’s own heart, and then Luke tells us that Paul said the same thing quoting scripture, when look what David did. Well, that is a good question. Some Jewish thinking is that David did not exactly do what the common understand may be that he did. I think a more complex look at the D/B incident may shed some light on that, and possible the nuances of Jewish law at the time may contain some of the answer. But that is still off topic right now. It would be nice, however, to get it all sorted out and put both issues to rest.
NJ wrote:
I agree with you regarding the absurdity of a mentorship relationship headed by a Bayly. As for Timothy, I don’t know how old he was, but the range of speculative ages I’ve seen experts propose reaches into the upper 40s. Youth can be relative, as a person around that upper end of ages that experts speculate Timothy may have been, I’d consider my age young for an elder. There’s something about the etymology of that word “elder” that makes me think it was intended for older adults, not a veritable child like Joe Bayly.
PaJo wrote:
You know, it’s interesting you made this comment. I’ve been mulling over this very issue.
My ex-NeoCalvinist pastor was an incredibly abusive person and countless former members,
dear men and women (all ages and economic backgrounds) say that he verbally abused them,
screamed at them, threatened them, and lied about them.
He was constantly telling us from the pulpit that he was “called by God.” And I’d think,
“Why would God call an abusive person like you to ministry? That’s not like God.”
I think these guys use the “called by God” many times the way they use “Biblical”,
to sound good and to shut down criticism. “Biblical” just means “do it my way”
and “I’m right.” If you question someone like him you’re “un-Biblical.”
@ FW Rez:
What I don’t get is the Neo Cals like Mohler are constantly invoking church autonomy yet added the women roles clause to the BFM.
Not an autonomy issue? But child predation is?
Gram3 wrote:
Bingo!!!
Nancy2 wrote:
Isn’t it interesting how they threw church autonomy out the window when it comes to women?
Lea wrote:
Getting mental image of the wife following him around carrying his papers and books while wiping his brow and serving him drinks. How dare her think she has the brains to teach! She is to serve him.
The problem with these guys is they then insist their wives are smart and quite capable and could do much more but choose to serve them instead.. They are embarrassed we might think their wives arent smart.
It is hilarious. I have seen it over and over. Their ego needs both a smart wife who could do great things but gave it all up to be in servitude to them.
@ Gram3:
Also in houses full of family and workers, the roof was often a place of rare privacy. Also a place to sleep.
nathan priddis wrote:
His wife, the baby-making machine, appears to occupy the same sphere as a fruit tree or brood ewe.
(Wonder if he ever looks in the mirror?)
Um okay…
Seriously, that post was way too big a peek into his personal thought life.
Okay, well, I’m just going to go and wash my brain now…
Lydia wrote:
Didn’t they collect rain water on roofs too?
@ okrapod:
“He Will Take”: David and Bathsheba
http://www.cbeinternational.org/blogs/he-will-take-david-and-bathsheba
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
I’ve just accepted that the Muslims overseas want to never leave the past, though I find it rather weird. Seems to be a cultural thing with them not just religious.
I can’t figure out why professing Christians in the U.S.A. in 2016 want to live under 5,000+ year old rules meant for ancient Israel.
@ nathan priddis:
😯 What in the heck did I just read? What is Bayly smoking over there???
Daisy wrote:
Spot on, Daisy. People who don’t respect other peoples’ (or childrens’) right to have healthy boundaries…are up to no good.
Velour wrote:
Complementarians should make up bumper stickers for themselves:
“Complementarianism: Everything is a Woman’s Fault – Even When It’s Really a Man’s Fault”
Or something like that.
@ NJ:
There’s a man shortage among Christians (evangelical Protestants) too.
I’ve already given up on dating Christian dudes. I’m fine with dating Non-Christian ones.
Friend wrote:
Now that I think about it, it sounds like a vaguely dirty movie title – which wasn’t my intention when I typed that LOL 🙂
Dee: Praying for you and your family at this time of loss. Hope you all feel our love.
@ Nancy2:
I came close to a camping experience when the electricity went out where I live about two weeks ago, for about 2 – 3 days in a row. There was no air conditioning, and that about did me in. Boredom sets in when the sun goes down – no TV to watch, too dark to read books.
Caveat warning: the real reason the Bayly’s are no longer with CBMW is that they are militant fundamentalists who end up offending pretty much everyone and were given the left boot of fellowship. They have been pretty well tarred at SBTS, although that is just more neo-cal politics in my book. I reject pretty much all of the narrative in these two posts. It just conveniently happens to coincide with some of the nonsense that the Jo has been putting out there for some time now, like his fundamentalist rants against “big-tent” evangelicalism (to give you an idea of how loathsome that position is, it was whole-heartedly endorsed by the philistines over at Grace to You). Yeah, these posts mell like propaganda to me. As usual, coming from anyone with the last name Bayly.
@ Dr. Fundystan, Proctologist:
Thanks for letting us know. I thought that might be the case.
Velour wrote:
The individual being “called by God” is not a new phenomenon…but what IS new about it is that they aren’t considered nutz for saying so. The _church_ has always called its leaders. That is true in both Orthodoxy and Catholocism (rather obviously) but people might not realize that this is also true in much of mainline Protestantism. I will speak of Presbyterianism, because I am most familiar with it, but the details are all that differs.
An individual may express an INTEREST in coming into ministry. S/he is examined by the board of elders (who are not appointed by the pastor, but elected from the congregation) and if s/he is found worthy, is put under “care of session” and is assigned a senior pastor as a mentor. THEN comes seminary, and continued meeting and examination of the mentor and the session, and when the candidate graduates, if s/he is still found worthy, THEN s/he must receive a call from a church, which comes from THAT church’s board of elders after a search committee (elected by the congregation) has examined a number of candidates and has brought in two or three for interviews. The board of elders at the calling church votes and extends a call…or not. Once the call is accepted, THEN the candidate is ordained to ministry. And as pastor, s/he is not a voting member of the church, nor is s/he allowed to see the financial giving practices of the parishioner.
I am sure I have omitted a couple of steps or abbreviated, but that is the general idea. (It’s been awhile.) One doesn’t just go “start a church”–and this has been the tradition, East and West, before and after the Reformation, until fairly recent history.
The very idea that one can self-call and self-anoint is ridiculous and has no precedence in Scripture or in the long traditions of Christendom.
Dr. Fundystan, Proctologist wrote:
What is your take on John MacArthur, his Grace to You program, and his church?
It seems very cultic to me, very authoritarian, as do reports I’ve heard
from those who’ve been at JMac’s The Master’s College and The Master’s Seminary.
My former pastor got his degree from these schools. I’m not impressed by the lack
of scholarship, lack of critical thinking skills, and complete lack of training
for pastors in the “big issues” (alcoholism, domestic violence, sexual abuse,
drug addiction, and mental illness). The Nouthetic Counseling (Jay Adams/Bible Counseling) that is taught there is beyond useless and is quite dangerous. Much of it in my state (California) crosses over the line into the Unauthorized Practice of Medicine (a crime in
my state that can be prosecuted as a misdemeanor or a felony).
I have come to see the JMac schools, especially the seminary, as a “franchisee” training ground, like learning how to run your own 7-11.
PaJo wrote:
Thanks for explaining that process.
At my ex-NeoCalvinist church plant (a new church) the senior pastor and a group of his friends started the new church (it’s about 10 years old now).
It’s as disastrous a church in its abuses as Mark Driscoll’s Mars Hill. While I know that spiritual abuse and other abuses can take place in any denomination, of any size, with any time of church government, it seems more prone to it in these ‘lose cannon’ operations
where pastors are ‘self-appointed’ or were rubber stamped by their friends.
PaJo wrote:
Now, barring other evidence, I think a pastor who does this is nutz and most seem self-seeking, in it for the money, power, and what ever else they want.
Pam Palmer wrote:
Amen, Pam.
Velour wrote:
Velour, I have told the story before on this blog of the fellow I sat next to on a plane who was going to seminary so he could start a church, because “that’s where the money is.” He didn’t believe a single Christian dogma.
Daisy wrote:
Get one of those head lamps, like for camping or biking that you strap on your head. That way when the lights go out you can still read. That’s what I do.
So you’re telling us, Daisy, is that when we have the opposing conference/camp (to Council on Biblical Manhood Womanhood) in Kentucky, with our “Down with Patriarchy is my cardio” t-shirts and yoga pants/leggings, being taught by Nancy2 (we will be using patriarchy books for target lessons and get a “Cover my what?” t-shirt)…you’re not sleeping outdoors.
I guess you’ll want to bunk in this RV, like Will Smiths.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uypQyrh49Pc
Velour wrote:
Already got two of ‘um.
PaJo wrote:
I remember that story. I forgot that you were the one who posted it. Well that was chilling, wasn’t it?
I give the denominations credit who put potential men and women seminarians through a battery of psychological and personality tests, like law enforcement officers have to go through. The men and women I’ve known who’ve passed those tests said that they weeded out the people who were troubled. (Nothing is 100% of course, in life. But at least they’ve tried to protect the denomination, the churches, and the church members from troubled
clergy members.)
For Dee and family, on your loss of your beloved mother-in-law Polly.
“Thank you for my mansion” by the late Frank Williams, the founder of the Mississippi Mass Choir.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEP5a-ZR2_4
Velour wrote:
Troubles will still happen, sadly. The last Presbyterian church with which I was affiliated had a molester–but the guy got the boot. And arrested. The one before that, the pastor had an affair and had some funny business going on with the accounting, and HE got the boot. He went on to another church which completely disregarded our warnings and … guess what…yeah. Flat out embezzlement in that one, and it was revealed that he and his wife (the same one as at our church) had _always_ had an “open marriage” but had just lied about it. So badness still can happen. But because of the structural oversight, it can also be rooted out, if it isn’t caught in the screening or if someone “breaks” along the way–which can happen–and when it did happen, the pastor had to go to jail, but when he was out, the church was merciful, helping him find a non-ministerial job where he would not have to face that particular temptation. And they fed and sheltered his family while he was doing time. THAT was a good church.
PaJo wrote:
Indeed they will.
Dr. Fundystan, Proctologist wrote:
Does anyone know if the Baylys are friends with another true-blue wackadoodle, Geoffrey Botkin? Botkin’s daughters are the poster children for the Stay at Home Daughter movement. I will bet you money that at some point, some very unsavory information about that family will come out.
Didn’t someone here once know Timothy Bayly a long time ago, and he acted like a normal person? Could mental illness run in the family?
Velour wrote:
I was going to propose this for Pound Sand Ministries, but it will work for your conference too. How about a tee shirt that says, “I compromised John Piper’s masculinity, and all I got was this tee shirt.”? You could even do bumper stickers, mouse pads, cups, etc.
Patriciamc wrote:
I’m with you on that one. I’ve been thinking the same thing about these families, that all is not right.
I also questioned years ago, when the Duggar family was building there big new home
why it was so weird upstairs. The girls’ bedroom all crammed together. The whole open walkway thing in the house. And I said, “That’s weird. They’ve got that entire floor.
Why don’t those girls spread out? That is so strange. Something is wrong with that.”
Turns out, I was spot on. The parents had designed the house to protect the girls
from Josh predatory behavior.
To Dee and family: I’m thinking about you during this difficult time. RIP, Polly.
So the gist of what Bayly is saying that the evangelical oppressors of women are not oppressive enough. How loving.
Tim Bayly was an intern at my church when he graduated (I think) Gordon Conwell. He was well liked, and my church was not whackdoodle and the senior pastor was a saint (since the phrase “man of God” has been ruined…). I received a great kindness in very odd circumstances from Tim Bayly’s wife in 1979, and I have expressed gratitude for that.
I think when PC-USA started getting away from Scripture, a lot of churches and pastors went to PCA. And I don’t know that I blame them. But this sort of move and kind of criticism sets you up to think you know better than other people, and sometimes it goes awry in the end…you just have to keep moving until you find a church (or FOUND a church) that agrees with YOU. And, as a friend of mine said, at some point it gets to where you are the only one who holds to True Doctrine and you end up worshiping alone in your basement. Somewhere behind the water heater.
As I recall, Tim’s father was a good pastor in his day.
Patriciamc wrote:
Dear Sharpshooter/future camper in 2017,
You know, I like the way you think.
I think we should have a large banner over our target practice, “I compromised John Piper’s masculinity.” Group photo with our we ladies and our fearless leader Nancy2
at target practice, in our camo shirts, and precious, precious, precious Patriarchy books shot to smithereens! We will tweet our photos to the hastag #CBMW17 (Council on Biblical Manhood Womanhood’s conference).
Signed,
Velour, Vice President of
Online Retail, Marketing,
and Consumer Surveys
Pound Sand Ministries (TM)
PaJo wrote:
Conservative churches hold themselves up as being so much more holy than liberal churches, but really, they’re just as sinful and screwed up than the liberal churches (maybe more so), just in a different way. One of the many flaws of conservative, complementarian churches is that they play up to men’s weaknesses. They think they’re developing strong men, strong leaders, when in fact, they’re encouraging men to act out of their insecurities instead of being like Christ and overcoming their insecurities. So yeah, I can see how Bayly fell into that trap by going PCA and then even more extreme. Frankly, I would think that someone truly close to God and open to the Holy Spirit could catch on to this and stop it before they went too far, would realize the deception and instead become men who really are Christ-like. Thank heavens there are guys who recognize the BS and choose not to be like Bayly, Driscoll, etc.
Thank heavens my parents’ church went Evangelical Pres. instead of PCA when they left the PCUSA. Evangelical Presbyterians allow churches to have women in all areas of leadership if the congregation wants them.
Dr. Fundystan, I was always under the impression that Tim had left CBMW of his own accord once he decided that they weren’t conservative enough. Are you saying he was booted out?
Velour wrote:
*applause, applause* I love it!
Hey! For the guys here, we can get them shirts that say, “I took direction from a woman, and I still have all my parts.” Too risque? How about, “I took direction from a woman, and I’m still a man.”
I feel a new food discussion coming on, food for the conference.
We were all created in the image of G-d…..soul, spirit and body (see the book of Hebrews about the WORD splitting between spirit and soul). 1 John 3 says when we meet Jesus we will be like Jesus……John doesn’t mention gender there… it’s for all of us. In eternity, it seems whomever”could” be the “head” doesn’t really matter
Patriciamc wrote:
Excellent idea. T-shirts for the men.
Food. I am not clear on all of the details yet. We will be somewhere in Kentucky.
We will be having camp fire biscuits. I don’t know what else we will have.
Perhaps fried chicken. I don’t know if we’ll be having pies. On Sunday we
will be having the Pound Sand Ministries (TM) Official Frozen Dessert:
Sacred Cow Sundae (Gram3’s TM).
I don’t know if they have hush puppies in Kentucky. I am in California. I am
not familiar with Southern food. It all seems like “comfort” food to me.
Patriciamc wrote:
This is what I found for Kentucky foods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuisine_of_Kentucky
I’d vote for bbq and any kind of cornbread. And that cake with jam. Well that looks divine.
Velour, VP
Pound Sand Ministries (TM)
Velour wrote:
Why do I get the impression that is NOT hard to do?
Daisy wrote:
My own theory is that Islam began with an unbroken 400-year winning streak where they were THE Superpower and they’re trying to turn the clock back to that Islamic Golden Age and stop it there forever.
Christianity spent its first few centuries as an underground outlaw religion, Judaism has been stomped on periodically since Nebuchadnezzar, but Islam suffered the curse of Runaway Early Success. Because when that unbroken winning streak ends, it lets you down HARD. Crash and Burn, with memories of when We Were Lords of All Creation — perfect-storm setup for a Grievance Culture.
Daisy wrote:
Obviously they see some sort of personal benefit from it.
PaJo wrote:
“The only goal of Power is POWER. And POWER consists of inflicting maximum suffering upon the powerless.”
— Comrade O’Brian, Inner Party, Airstrip One, Oceania, 1984
“There is no right, there is no wrong, there is only POWER. And those who are too weak to have it.”
— Lord Voldemort
Velour wrote:
Isn’t that the original (and still is the Jewish) definition of the commandment “You Shall Not Take The Name of Adonai Your God In Vain”?
NJ wrote:
I’ve always thought “Twiggy” would be a great name for a hippopotamus.
(Cut me some slack – I was only eight years old when I came up with that one.)
Gah! All the talk of “thick complementarians” and “thin complementarians” is so…phallic! Did he use those words on purpose?
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
Affirmative, H.U.G.
You may now go to your nearest See’s Candy for a free sample. Tell them I sent you.
Tell them you need to have Nick’s free chocolate too, as he is in Scotland.
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
ROFL
Velour wrote:
We do hushpuppies. Got catfish, too.
Do you know how to bait a hook?
Nancy2 wrote:
Have Swiss Army Knife, will travel.
Bait, kill, gut, clean, fry. That’s me. My favorite way to fish is to put a trolling road between my hiking boots, row the boat on the lake, and catch trout that way.
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
When my daughter was in middle/high schools, she had a pet turkey. We named it Asia Minor – really tripped up her history teachers.
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
Wow. Eight years old. So you’ve been ‘Headless’ for a very long time now.
You’re so gifted. I like to think of you as the Stephen Colbert of TWW. 🙂
Velour wrote:
We also have to have the spaghetti sauce that’s supposed to be so good. Oh, and ribs. Adam’s ribs.
Patriciamc wrote:
There is a recipe for hushpuppies in this month’s Kentucky Living magazine (We get one through Pennyrile Rural Electric). I do bread pudding, hickory nut pie, pinto beans or navy beans with cornbread and ripe tomato relish. I can my own relish – my grandmother’s recipe. What hooked my Yankee husband, though, was fried chicken with mashed potatoes, gravy, and biscuits.
Nancy2 wrote:
Indeed. Fishing since age 3.
Velour wrote:
Yeah, I was 4 when we were fishing in a pond at my dad’s aunt’s, and I caught my daddy’s aunt. Luckily, I just got her dress in the front shoulder and didn’t draw blood. I kept fishin’. Daddy just made me stand way over by myself.
Patriciamc wrote:
This is that wonderful spaghetti sauce that I make, and that people beg me to make them for their birthday dinners: http://www.food.com/recipe/jo-mamas-world-famous-spaghetti-22782
I like the name of the ribs: Adam’s ribs.
Nancy2 wrote:
I caught a steelhead in a river here in California at age 3. It almost pulled me overboard and a relative had to reel it in.
Velour wrote:
They certainly do. I have fond memories of fried catfish and hushpuppies after church on Sundays. This was at the far western end of the state near Paducah. The rest of the state has them but different. 🙂
NC Now wrote:
The look delicious.
Nancy2 wrote:
Miss Nancy2, it seems you were mischief from the day you were born.
And that’s a good thing. You will single-handedly save Kentucky from John Piper.
He’s heard about you, I’m sure, and will bypass the entire state. God bless you,
Ma’am.
Carl Trueman delivers a devastating critique of the “centres of power” operating outside of traditional evangelical church structures.
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/commercial-property-for-sale/property-59195246.html
@ Lowlandseer:
This is a better link, I think . . . 😉
http://www.alliancenet.org/mos/postcards-from-palookaville/its-the-economy#.V6Hak3NlCBY
@ Lowlandseer:
When I click on the link, it sends me to a realty ad for a 10 bedroom hotel.
Lowlandseer wrote:
I wouldn’t really call the article “a devastating critique.” That is a bit sensational. I can’t help noting that Carl is still within the bubble he wants to critique. It is hard to have eyes to see when they are sudsy. And honestly, the “traditional evangelical church structures” are part of the problem. He seems to believe that the problem is outside those structures.
@ Bridget:
PS – The desire for power over others is the problem (.) Inside or outside the traditional evangelical church structures isn’t the issue.
Nancy2 wrote:
A friend at Cambridge (she got a First in Mathematics, as a matter of interest) had a cuddly toy in the form of a mole; she called it “Avogadro”.
@ Bridget:
Where he is makes no difference. And it is devastating for those who increasingly are bent challenged.
*Being*not bent
Velour wrote:
I think those lamps you carry around are pretty good for this. They give more light than a flashlight or headlamp. Picked one up black Friday last year for cheap.
Patriciamc wrote:
This is kind of what I have decided. At least the liberal churches seem to err on the side of too much kindness.
Nancy2 wrote:
He can’t even bait a hook.
He can’t even skin a buck.
He don’t know who jack daniels is.
Ain’t never owned a truck…
Darlin’ I ain’t even worried cause you’ll come running back
He can’t even bait a hook.*
*sung by someone from my neck of the woods 🙂
@ Lowlandseer:
Too bad he did not “challenge” Mahaney when he was handed the opportunity. His friend Pruitt maintained FOR Trueman that he was simply following the narrow confines of his task. Perfect “institutional” rationalization for exonerating a shepherding cult leader and re victimizing those who had been molested and abused at SGM “under Mahaneys care”.
You know, at some point Trumans so called brilliant doctrinal positions might need to actually translate into caring about actual people. So far, not so good from Mahaney to comp.
Lea wrote:
Indeed they are.
PaJo wrote:
Like A.W. Pink?
When it comes to “complementarity” in Southern Baptist ranks, here’s the reality. Of 16 million members in SBC ranks, only a handful of academics are fussing about it. The masses couldn’t define complementarian vs. egalitarian if their spiritual lives depended on it. But they do know when a woman is treated as a lesser citizen in the Kingdom and they won’t put up with it. Thus far, the abuses of comp doctrine and practice are confined to SBC’s growing number of New Calvinist churches, and a few “traditional” SBC churches in the good-ole boy South where ungodly deacons rule over gender, race, and even pastors. There was a piece in the news this week about an SBC church in Alabama that fired their pastor because he wanted to invite black children to Vacation Bible School! Un-Christian behavior dies hard where it has been allowed to take root. If/when the media starts covering the subordination of women in churches, like it does racial issues, then perhaps the battle will move from the blogosphere to a dialogue within mainline Christianity to put an end to any teaching that challenges “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
@ Barbara Kelley:
Lol! It only shows how ingrained this caste system is when one feels the need to defend from being called a thin comp. Are there any grown ups left with official christian titles?
Tim wrote:
That’s one of my main contentions, that he simply made up a definition for egalitarianism that was easy to lampoon and then ran with it hoping no one would call him on it or perhaps even convincing himself that such was what egalitarians really believed. Of course it has nothing to do with reality.
Trying to make some scrap of sense out of what he was saying, wonder if perhaps he wasn’t arguing from a slippery slope perspective, i.e., “Once you start down the path of undoing God-ordained distinctions, such committing the ‘heresy’ of fuzzing husband/wife roles, you’ll eventually wind up making no distinctions at all and finally run headlong into apostasy, such as pantheism and universalism.” That’s not really what he said, he seemed to be saying egalitarianism necessitates those things, not that it could lead to them.
But I may be trying to make sense of white noise; young Master Bayly, being inexperienced and bathed in a culture of anti-thought, probably doesn’t analyze what he’s writing nearly as much as we are, he’s likely just throwing it out there trying to sound passionate, but giving very little thought to details or bothering to connect the logical dots. Who among his associates and gurus ever bothers to do that anyway? It can drive you mad trying to make sense of it, like my misspent two years in a neocalvinist complementarian church, trying to make the pastor’s rambling 100 minute sermons with multiple contradictions hold together logically.
Max wrote:
I saw that. I have been praying that Christians raise up funds to support him and his family in ministry/outreach.
@ Max:
I would like to hear the other side of that story since it comes from what looks like a hot headed controlling 30 year old newish pastor who might have been fired or told he was going to be.
Since the church is so tiny, my guess is there are no members who are even close to media savvy. Too many people jumping on the media bandwagon like Pravda (SBCVoices) who are following Russ Moore’s lead on low hanging fruit issues to change the conversation in the SBC. My other guess is that the members might be shocked at his side of the story he made public.
Law Prof wrote:
Spot on, Law Prof. My ex-NeoCalvinist pastor was illogical, schooled at John
MacArthur’s The Master’s College and The Master’s Seminary, which seems to
be an inferior education, lacking critical thinking skills.
My ex-pastor’s *Ph.d.* (cough) is from a Missouri diploma mill/store front.
Cost: $299.
None of my ex-pastor’s arguments made sense, and I watched godly Christians, couple after couple, family after family, many of them very conservative — flee, never to be
seen or heard from again.
Lydia wrote:
Yes, there are two sides of every story. It could very well have been a challenge-with-an-agenda by the young pastor. However, having been raised in the South I know that racism still runs deep in some corners … yes, even in church.
@ Max:
I am suspicious because I saw the same leveled against some SBC churches here that were in the process of being taken over. In Two of them I knew people who had been diligently working to minister to all groups in the area. In this day and time a charge of racism is automatically believed by the masses whether it is true or not. Such are the times and group think.
Lydia wrote:
I have one I would like to add to that list. Southern Baptist deacon boards across the nation are populated by men who are not Biblically qualified for that sacred position. I’m certainly not a fan of changing church polity to elder-rule, where elders are hand-picked by pastors rather than by congregational governance. However, in my 60+ year snapshot of SBC life, most deacons need to find something else to do in church – they don’t have the spiritual capacity to serve in that office. With the proliferation of New Calvinism, there’s been a lot of chatter in cyberspace about the abuses of authoritarian elder-rule governance; the case studies are numerous, the facts are there. However, I can tell you from a long tenure in SBC ranks, ungodly deacon boards in congregational churches wield just as much control, manipulation and intimidation. The only difference is which theological label you put on such men.
Lydia wrote:
Interesting!
There does seem to be a ‘diversity’ push, which is not bad in and of itself, however its not like different ethnicities would be brought to church itself this way – I think it’s more likely they would switch churches. Most black people I know go to church (granted, bible belt).
And stealing from other churches doesn’t impress me as a strategy. I love that churches are open to diversity and welcoming of everyone – that is as it should be. But sometimes it’s a little more like recruiting, and what are the motives there? I would say a substantial part of the motivation is looks – they want their church to look diverse because it makes them look good.
Max wrote:
I think a church has to be discerning, whatever kind of polity they have. Controlling and manipulative people will always be drawn to power. Deacons, elders, pastors…no matter.
But you can make it easier for people to acquire that sort of power, by making it harder to get rid of the bad apples. So systems matter.
Lydia wrote:
Well, from a glance at his Twitter page, it appears that the young pastor sits on the reformed side of things. His re-tweets include words of wisdom from Al Mohler, Russel Moore, R.C. Sproul, etc. Thus, there might be something “moore” here.
Max wrote:
Good work.
Lea wrote:
Amen! And if the system is rigged, the “elders” are tougher to move along.
@ Max:
Here is an interesting twist to that. My former church has always included women deacons. There were always some women on the ballot as a choice in voting. That was just the normal.
Over the course of two years after the YRR takeover, many things changed. No one can really pin point it that I have talked to. Many people quietly left the church after the takeover. Some were female deacons. However the YRR SBTS take over boys made it clear they would not change polity. Most believed it.
Now there are no women deacons and none on the last ballot. There were a few pew sitters who dared to ask why and were told that some women had been approached but had turned down running because they realized it is not a woman’s place. They refuse to cite names as a breech of confidentiality.
So that is another way it works. No one can prove anything. Those left are now very careful about questioning. So it goes in just a few short years. It is amazing what people will go a long with or not speak up about until it turns around and stabs them in the back . Then it is too late –without a faction war.
Good on Lydia and Max. It would be a shame if this young neo-Cal preacher mis-represented the reason why he was ‘let go’.
Blaming the victims is a hall-mark of neo-Cal shenanigans, yes. And this kind of mis-representation would certainly fit into that pattern.
Did he, or didn’t he do it?
At least now the question can be pursued.
@ Velour:
The story poses an interesting twist on things. SBC’s first reformers in the Civil War era were racist slave-holding pastors and deacons. The new reformers are opposed to racism, as all Christians should be. So, while we look for the negative in the reformed movement (and we find plenty of examples), there are some positive generational signs of a changing attitude in this regard. However, as Lydia notes, there are New Calvinist leaders who use such stories to paint a racial portrait of the “traditional” SBC that really only exists in pockets of America.
@ Max:
Thanks, Max, for explaining that about the SBC. I’m not a Baptist.
Max wrote:
This is Moores big issue now. (It used to be that we needed more patriarchy but that does not sell well for space in the NYT or WaPo)
Moore needs examples so he can be the public hero that saves the SBC with a bunch of media attention. If I had not watched these charlatans manufacture so many situations in the past, I would not say a word.
It is all about optics, imo. Just think of country church people going up against the likes of DC connected and media savvy Russ Moore for whom their 30 year old YRR former pastor adores and follows.
Max wrote:
If you follow the trajectory of the YRR take over, this issue was not at all on their radar. It got on their radar after there was a lot of pushback from their stealth tactics and most of what was seen from that movement was negative. I see it as their way of trying to rehab their image from authoritarian control freaks to compassionate and caring.
I guess the question I have for them concerns full equality and full spiritual inheritance for black women.
Lydia wrote:
Good point. It seems to me, although I have no checked into this thoroughly, that many black churches are more accepting of women in leadership than these new yRR types (although it would be hard to be LESS accepting so maybe that’s not a fair comparison).
@ Velour:
Velour, SBC founders were predominantly Calvinists. They used their reformed belief to justify their slave-holding practices. They believed that sovereign God was on their side in the Civil War, until early victories by the Confederacy turned to defeat. Southern Baptists after the War began to distance themselves from the theology of their founders and for well over a century were a soul-winning denomination of “whosoever will” folks … until the new reformation came along. SBC’s New Calvinists are out and about to take the SBC back to its theological roots, even though the SBC majority (millions of members) are non-Calvinist! But while the giant slept, reformed leaders took over leadership of most SBC seminaries, mission agencies, publishing house, and numerous churches. In a nutshell, that is the SBC dilemma.
Max wrote:
Oh that history explains a few things for me.
My ex-pastor (NeoCalvinist/9Marxist/John MacArthur-ite) and several families who planted the new church (it’s now about 10 years old) had come from a Baptist church in Silicon Valley.
Very authoritarian, legalistic, Comp-promoting, Young Earth Creation, and on and on.
Incredibly abusive.
I have never met more people who read their Bibles, study the Scriptures, and demonstrate a complete lack of Jesus in their lives and love for others, than the haters at my former church. Rude to guests (telling them not to come any more if they didn’t sign the Membership Covenant), smary and rude to members, screaming and yelling at members,
demands for obedience, and outright lying.
I’ve had a more reverent presentation of The Gospel from a cleaning lady, who lived it out in how she treated others, than from these pastors/elders and long-time *Christians*.
Lydia wrote:
Yes, a diversionary maneuver. Brilliant strategy! Reminds me of the “dummy tanks” used in World War II. Portable and inflatable dummies were used to confuse the intelligence gathering of enemy forces. But, you can’t pull it over on Lydia!!
Max wrote:
Living in close to proximity to SWBTS puts us closer to the sphere of influence of that handful. My daughter’s church recently conducted a gender roles series on Wednesday evenings that was led by a SWBTS prof. I assume since he works for Patterson that his perspective would be somewhat in line with CBWM. Fortunately, my daughter and her husband are not inclined to attend on Wednesday evenings. I was concerned that if they did there might need to be an intervention.
@ Lea:
Here they talk a big game on diversity then bring in a bunch of wasp seminary students to these churches in certain areas. It is a big ruse. They wanted the property. They want every single SBC church. I started to see it as a jobs program. Just like their church planting ruse that have had a lot of problems.
The irony that sticks in my crawl is that a lot of the out reach and ministry to these diverse groups was done by older women who had been quietly ministering in these areas for years. They understood the challenges of certain populations, had built trust and worked to meet actual needs. The YRR just wanted bottoms in pews to indoctrinate and control.
These women had no titles and did not seek accolades. They were setting up and operating food and clothes pantry, ESL classes, tutoring programs and other organized educational and cultural activities for youth. They knew these people and were their friends. But, they did not have correct doctrine and were just women who should not be running that operation.
Law Prof wrote:
Great expression!
That’s how I feel whenever I attempt to read Mohler.
Velour wrote:
Evidence that they don’t have the spiritual capacity to understand what they read and apply the Scriptures as they ought. The Bible is not addressed to just anybody – only those who believe have eyes to see and ears to hear. For such folks, Jesus is always in the center of their ministry – you will know it by their love. Truth can be abused if it isn’t delivered by the Spirit.
Lydia wrote:
Russian/Soviet Bureaucratic Tradition.
Plausible Deniability, nothing ever written down.
“If it’s not written down, it never happened and you can’t prove it ever did!”
Make an Example of one and a hundred will fall right into line bleating your praises.
Nick Bulbeck wrote:
Now THAT’s a little more obscure…
Max wrote:
Some small towns still have segregated proms here in Georgia.
Bridget wrote:
The Party Can Do No Wrong, Comrades.
Our System is (by definition) Perfect In Every Way.
Law Prof wrote:
That would be impossible here. Too many mixed couples. And there would need to be a Latino Prom, too. I can’t figure out how people can do that legally as a school sponsored event. I would think there would be some lawsuits or complaints.
FW Rez wrote:
Just believe what he says….at the moment in time he says or writes it. Forget patterns of words/behaviors over time. It has worked for a lot of people! (Sad face)
Daisy wrote:
Does this song sound familiar, Daisy? 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-r2BARj6Oo
(P.S. I’m not so different from the guy in this song myself…)
Lydia wrote:
I don’t’ understand how a small town would have enough people to possibly even have a segregated prom. Or how that would be legal in a public school.
@ Serving Kids In Japan:
That’s a pretty song! I may have to check out that band…
Lea wrote:
Yes, many are more accepting of women operating in all spheres of the Body. Maybe that is one reason churches are not more integrated? Who would want to go from acceptance to strict “roles”?
Lydia wrote:
I frequently think that these people have adopted a pattern of being overly verbose in order to obfuscate the fact that they are not making sense.
FW Rez wrote:
Piper is the master of that!
Max wrote:
Interesting tension there Max. How did the ethos of Calvinism take such radically different trajectories? In the Yankee North as we recall, slavery was abolished early on in our Republic. And yet it became integral to society below the Mason-Dixon line.
Velour wrote:
A lot of the Calvinistas I knew well talked a big game when it came to talking about how much they studied the Bible, but when you asked them directly about passages, it was clear they didn’t really know them. However, they would quote people like Piper verbatim.
Since “biblical” means “Calvinist”, Calvinista theologians are equivalent to knowing the Bible.
ishy wrote:
All they know are Scriptures they twist out of context in Romans and Ephesians. Of course, that is not really “knowing” those passages.
@ okrapod:
Institute in Basic Life Principles / Bill Gothard’s stuff.
Nancy2 wrote:
Muff sure can. Minnows are best for takin’ perch on Lake Michigan (Southeastern Wisconsin). Tom an’ Huck woulda’ been proud!
ishy wrote:
At my ex-NeoCalvinist/9Marxist/John MacArthur-ite church located in Silicon Valley (California) there were plenty of people who studied the Scriptures carefully, commentaries, etc. I don’t think where I was that I can recall people quoting John Piper.
But my Bible study leader and his wife had some disagreement with their daughter in Southern California, who was a member of John MacArthur’s church, and her fiance.
My Bible study leader and his wife made it very clear that they hated their future son-in-law. They boycotted their daughter’s wedding. OK, they’re Christians and their daughter
(a professional) is a Christian and the fiance/now husband is a Christian. And you can’t sort it out? Boycott your own daughter’s wedding? Not figure things out?
Other church members boycotted their family’s holiday dinners because of a gay relative being present. I thought these church members were classless, tacky, immature and that their Jesus was very small. The right thing to do, in my opinion, would be to bring some food item to the family gathering, be pleasant, and socialize. After all, there are lots of relatives. But no. The *best witness* these church members could be for Jesus was
to *boycott* the party, which even their unbelieving relatives didn’t do.
Just lots of haters. Lots of judgers. Lots of immaturity in that church. Some people had class and good manners. Most didn’t. Many church members and leaders would happily lie about other Christians, verbally abuse them, and think nothing of it. In my opinion, they should take their Bibles and toss them in the trash. Their religion is worthless.
They don’t love. They aren’t humble.
FW Rez wrote:
For example:
“In contemporary feminist usage ‘gender’ refers to what we are by social conditioning and ‘sex’ refers to what we are by nature, and the shift in focus from sex to gender more and more assumes that maleness and femaleness, at the root level of personhood, are negligible realities.” (John Piper)
Muff Potter wrote:
When Pound Sand Ministries (TM) has its first conference next year in Kentucky,
during the week that Council on Biblical Manhood Womanhood will be having their
competing conference with opposing teaching to ours, we ladies will be in our
“Down with Patriarchy is my Cardio” t shirts and subversive yoga pants/leggings,
becoming sharp shooters under the guidance of our fearless teacher Nancy2.
We will be “dispatching” with the big patriarchy books as our target practice.
As an honorary member you could have a t-shirt, with a slogan suggest up the thread,
“I took direction from a woman, and I still have all my parts.” Too risque? How about, “I took direction from a woman, and I’m still a man.”
Velour, Vice President of
Online Retail & Marketing
Pound Sand Ministries (TM), founded right here on TWW
@ Max:
JP is talking about this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_continuum
Max wrote:
Funny, I don’t actually disagree with piper that some people are constantly conflating sex and gender…but the comp guys do this all the time, so they don’t have any room to talk.
Gender roles imposed outwardly are not the same as innate differences. Yet, they act as if they are.
Max wrote:
It just doesn’t get more clearer than that
ishy wrote:
And isn’t the Bible (and its Koran, Calvin’s Institutes) God?
Velour wrote:
But they have liveried Armorbearers going before them blowing long trumpets to announce how HUMBLE they are (chuckle chuckle)!
FW Rez wrote:
“If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, BAFFLE THEM WITH B***S**T!”
Lea wrote:
Agreed. And A century of industrial and technological revolutions including two world wars helped change the social conditioning factor on the continuum he is worried about. In most skills and tasks the differences are negligable these days. Few even agree on what the term “feminist” means yet throw it around as if they are arbiters of the definition. My great grandmother, in a long dress, was a feminist for wanting the vote. :o)
A feminist in Pipers world is a person who approaches and interprets scripture as a mutualist.
Nick Bulbeck wrote:
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. How I wish somebody had told me this long before I got sucked in. What a mess.
Dee, I’m so sorry to hear of your mother-in-law’s passing…I pray you’ll have comfort and peace in this difficult time.
WHAT?! I understand why they would take issue with “practicing gay Christians”, but CELIBATE?! They literally are resisting “temptation”, but they can’t covenant with them/welcome them as fellow-members of the new covenant?! That is unloving and oppressive–at best.
Melissa wrote:
You and I look at that passage and agree … pretty clear. But a yeah-but Calvinist complementarianite reads it “Yeah but …”
To be clear, Nick Bulbeck didn't write the second quote…that's from the article itself. Sorry for any confusion, Nick!
@ JR:
It is ridiculous. And a lie.
Velour wrote:
My take is that not only do they not manifest the fruit of the spirit, but they take every opportunity to aggressively champion the works of the flesh. I detect nothing Christian there. Sorry to derail the thread :-/
@ JR:
Interesting interview with the director of the Proclamation Trust about his struggle with same sex attraction, which mirrors some of the comments here.
http://changingattitude.org.uk/archives/6436
Dr. Fundystan, Proctologist wrote:
Thanks for your answer. That was my experience as well.
You aren’t derailing the thread, in my opinion, since it’s still *on topic* with the issue of Comp, since the JMac crowd heavily promotes it, including the pastors/elders at my ex-church. I, like you, saw no fruit in them and yes they do “champion the works of the flesh”.
I took my JMac books and ripped them up, tossed them in the recycling cans. Felt liberating. Those men (and many of the women too) lack love and they have nothing to teach me or tell me.
NJ wrote:
Correct. He came up with the “not conservative enough” thing to save face, but the reality is that he was so obnoxious and judgmental that even the neo-cals couldn’t get along with him. How’s that for irony?
Dr. Fundystan, Proctologist wrote:
You’ve just painted the portrait of New Calvinism in my neck of the woods. I know MacArthur is an “old” Calvinist, but the identifiers are common in reformed ranks: law vs. life … flesh vs. Spirit. There is no doubt that MacArthur is a good teacher, but he speaks from his intellect not by revelation.
Lydia wrote:
I think he blundered badly by (1) supporting the clearing of Mahaney, and (2) participating as a speaker in T4G. It does kind of make anything he says now come across as self-serving.
Max wrote:
I used to think that about JMac. I no longer think he’s a good teacher. I think he
is really quite immature for his age and many of his practices as a Christian and toward Christians are hateful. Hyper-control of the students at the Master’s College and The Master’s Seminary. Excommunications and shunnings at his church. Lots of heavy handedness.
Lack of love.
Dr. Fundystan, Proctologist wrote:
People can harbor the poison of the Pharisee’s self-righteousness and hubris,
but they cannot control its venom. Some will react more strongly to the poison than others. So much so that the ‘others’ are almost embarrassed by the display, which is only the extreme form of what they themselves harbor within in a more ‘controlled’ fashion.
Such it was with Westboro Baptist Church, the cult that called itself ‘Baptist’ and spewed abject hatred for homosexual people. The rest of the Christian communities that fostered homophobia backed away and distanced themselves from Westboro, and rightly so, even though there was a shared contempt for people who were LGBT . . .
when the ‘fringe’ goes too deeply into the poison, it becomes too obvious that the hatred is what it is: a vile form of self-corrupting ‘righteousness’ that would consume all before it and then turn back on itself with a vengeance
Dr. Fundystan, Proctologist wrote:
I get the distinct feeling it is all a sort of Reformed internecine war. I am not in either tribe (nor would be welcome) so I tend to see the verbal sparring differently.
JR wrote:
Really. I’m confused. Why would the same attitude not apply to straight, single adults? Shouldn’t being straight and celibate have the same repercussions as being gay and celibate?
Christiane wrote:
I think that is a bit unfair. There is an attempt out there to paint anyone who does not think it is “Gods intention” as having” contempt” or hatred for them. There is a big contingency of thought police out there and that is just as unhealthy. Liberty for all. Individual rights for all. Even those who don’t agree with me.
Christiane wrote:
And ironically, Fred Phelps the founder of Westboro Baptist (an independent church and not permitted to be part of a larger Baptist organization) was excommunicated and shunned from his own church. He had softened toward the gays that moved in across the street from the church. He had softened after his wife died.
A Jewish rabbi in Los Angeles starting challenging the Phelps granddaughter Megan on Twitter. The Phelps family, including her mother, are lawyers. She was a paralegal in the family firm and defended their beliefs on Twitter. The rabbi started asking her questions, and it embarrassed her. They’d see each other at rallies, on opposing sides. Trade gifts.
Even chocolates.
The rabbi and his wife helped get Megan and her sister out of Westboro Baptist and took them in for awhile when they had no one!
Nancy2 wrote:
Bingo!
Dr. Fundystan, Proctologist wrote:
He should have waited a score of years for Russ Moore at SBTS as he was calling comps, wimps, and demanding more Patriarchy. :o)
Lydia wrote:
That may not be how you conduct yourself with contempt and hatred, Lydia, even if you disagree with them. And you’d be in the minority, in my opinion.
I agree with Dr. F. I think the vast majority of evangelical Christians are positively hateful to (non-Christian) adults who are voters and tax payers, who are entitled to make their own choices from their haircuts to their homes to their love lives.
I noticed that the biggest critics in the conservative churches, who harp incessantly, use hate speech, are proud…are some of the most messed up people, with the most messed up pasts, who refuse to work on themselves. I think they attack others to digress from the hard work of, well, looking at and changing themselves.
Many of these same conservative Christians will make an rousing defenses for child molesters but will be venomous in attacks on gays who wouldn’t harm a child(ren).
I work in a state where I am required to uphold anti-discrimination laws, I can get fired from my job for not doing that, we have a diverse work force that we are expected to get along with, and my boss is a wonderful professional who just so happens to be gay.
At the end of the day, I don’t care. People are adults.
@ Lydia:
A bit unfair. Well, that depends. My own Church has made apologies to the families of LGBT children, so I can speak for my own Church which acknowledges its sin in this area.
I think Westboro did one ‘good’ thing:
it showed all Christian people the end result of what self-righteous hatred and contempt looks like; and the shock treatment brought a lot of people into an awareness of where THEY were at with their own baggage.
It’s not pretty, Lydia. The Church has failed so many people. So many suicides. So many estranged families. So much pain.
I acknowledge Catholic guilt over not serving LBGT folks and their parents and siblings in the manner in which we knew better to be there with them. If you want me to ‘limit’ my statement to that, I can do so,
but I think the Body of Christ suffers on the whole when some in it close their hearts to people, many very young, who are in situations not of their own choosing and are struggling to live in a world that is already swamped with broken people judging and stoning them. Can’t be easy, no. I accept your criticism as just.
This is a slight tangent, but I think it will interest many of you – it concerns the whole Christians_And_Homosexuality Thing.
A couple of years ago, in the run-up to the formal legalisation of gay marriage by the UK government (it was already legal in Scotland) a Christian posted on his personal Facebook page to the effect that churches should not be compelled to conduct gay marriages. As he worked in the public sector – I forget exactly where – he was disciplined by his employer.
In the subsequent legal processes involving, among other things, his assertion of his right to a privately-expressed opinion, he was publicly supported by Peter Tatchell. Non-UK Wartburgers may not have heard of Mr Tatchell, but he has been a prominent gay rights campaigner in the UK for many years – including Back In The Day when supporting gay rights was uncool and often dangerous. The thing is that our Christian friend’s position was actually not homophobic: he did not oppose the legalisation of gay marriage, for instance. He simply supported the church’s right to live out its own views on what marriage is and is not.
In other words, he supported the idea of freedom of speech as opposed to freedom to hate, together with co-existence between groups who don’t agree. It was this that Tatchell considered important enough to risk (misguided) accusations of abandoning his beliefs. FWIW, I think he was right. And in demonstrating that, however passionate his support for his cause, it should never Trump his obligation to do to others as he would want them to do to him, Tatchell (an ex-Christian atheist) set an example that some Christian leaders might learn from.
Nancy2 wrote:
I think sometimes they treat single people like they are useless regardless, so maybe it kind of does except they think single people might eventually get married…
Lowlandseer wrote:
It looks like the actual interview is behind a paywall, and the article summarizing the interview is doing so from a different perspective than that of the interviewee. I say that because I’m familiar with both perspectives, and don’t agree with either per se. Nonetheless, there are many examples of people who believe that they must constantly self-flagellate over their unchangeable “same-sex attraction,” and there are others who believe that if you have a desire for something, you’re repressing yourself if you don’t attempt to fulfill it.
One reason that the complementarian movement pushes for ever more strictly defined roles based on gender is to bolster their case that two people of the same gender cannot marry. In point of fact, there are plenty of same-sex relationships that get along just fine, without the purportedly necessary different and “complementary” genders, but when you’re used to throwing out facts that conflict with your ideology, that doesn’t pose a problem. Of course, this argument only convinces people who are already complementarians, although there are many evangelical egalitarians who use a “lite” version of the argument to argue against same-sex couplings.
Barbara Kelley wrote:
I was relieved to hear about “thick” complementarians. I had assumed that the opposite of “thin” complementarians would be “fat” complementarians.
But I like your take on it, too. I think we’re both making about as much sense as they are.
Velour wrote:
As I noted in my upstream comment, MacArthur teaches from his intellect not by revelation. A “good” Christian teacher/preacher speaks from revelation as the Holy Spirit leads, not by human intellect. There’s a vast difference in the spiritual condition of those who follow Christian leaders who teach by the Spirit vs. those who teach what they think the Word says. It’s becoming increasingly clear that those who are truly called into ministry, and gifted to be there, are rare and endangered species in the American church.
Josh wrote:
Which makes no sense at all to me, but whatever.
They also push it because they are freaked out about the trans population. Which has nothing to do with the vast majority of women in general, or men for that matter.
Nancy2 wrote:
Celibate straight single people are just committing the sin of delaying marriage, while celibate gay single people are saying up front that they’ll never ever bow down and worship the idol of marriage, so greater condemnation is reserved for them. /s
Ok, taking myself seriously now, Burk et. al. (including, I assume, the Baylys) have dug themselves into a hole with the notion that a mere fleeting, biologically based, instinctual attraction is morally equivalent with a desire which is morally equivalent with a lust which is morally equivalent with actually having sex with someone. I’m not sure that “morally equivalent” is a description that they would use, but it is implied when they say that a person should repent of experiencing an unchosen, unbidden attraction. I would argue that their inability to think straight (ahem, pardon me) on this topic is more likely related to a “gag reflex” (as Thabiti Anwabile promoted) for guys who like guys, which is what has spurred the development of layers upon layers of bad theology.
After all, if attraction, desire, and action are ultimately all morally wrong, then the passage in Romans 1 about people who reject God turns into a claim that anyone who experiences same-sex attraction has rejected God and is therefore not a Christian. Hence, “celibate gay Christians” cannot exist, Q.E.D.
Max wrote:
Gotcha, Max. Thanks.
@ Lydia:
True, but keep in mind that most of the SBC leaders and Neocals are fundamentally about money, so they will always support an approach that allows them to get paid as much as they can for as much face time as they can. Bayly is a seperatist, who believes very strongly in not allowing one to be tainted by anything unpure (and of course, makes a tidy profit teaching so). Despite the fact that both positions are expressions of fundamentalism, they can never really get along.
Max wrote:
yes, the goal of Christian formation: becoming conformed to the Mind and Heart of Christ
“1 Corinthians 15:49
And just as we have born the likeness of the earthly man, so also shall we bear the likeness of the heavenly Man.”
Christiane wrote:
I appreciate your desire not to speak too broadly or too harshly, as you demonstrated in a later reply, but I will argue that your statement as it stands in this quote does not need to be retracted.
WBC does not fall within evangelicalism, as I think they themselves would agree, and no evangelical would want evangelicalism to be associated with the WBC. However, it has been a longstanding tradition in conservative evangelical pulpits to broadly and soundly condemn “homosexuals” with pejoratives that have a shaky relationship with the truth. Many evangelical leaders have claimed and continue to claim that we – I speak now in the first person as a person who is under the LGBT umbrella myself – are child molesters, that we all hate Christians, that we are enemies of the church, that we are universally promiscuous, that we all have AIDS, that we “recruit” children, that we have a nefarious and Satanic “agenda,” that we want to force them to perform marriages against their conscience, that we’re going to force them to “approve of us” (whatever that means), and so on and so forth, ad nauseam. These claims are either wholly or mostly untrue, which makes them slanderous, but that does not matter to the people who continue to repeat them, even after being shown evidence that the claims are false.
Thus, I maintain that an overwhelming desire to believe and broadcast the worst about one’s purported enemies, with blatant disregard for the truth, illustrates the existence of contempt for and hatred of LGBT people in the segment of evangelicalism that behaves in this way.
Lydia wrote:
Like Sunni vs Shia?
Josh wrote:
And we know that obsessed with sex as these men all seem to be, they have probably all sorts of lusts and desires they aren’t supposed to have, from p*rn to adultery, and that’s assuming they aren’t acting on them which many of them are. So.
NJ wrote:
Here’s a chilling author interview about eternal polygamy. In that scenario, a Mormon wife dies and her husband remarries. After they all die, the husband has two wives for all eternity, even though the women were not “sister wives” on earth: http://religionnews.com/2016/07/20/mormon-women-fear-eternal-polygamy-study-shows/
The book is The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy, by Carol Lynn Pearson.
Josh wrote:
Bravo, Josh.
I’ve never met more un-Biblical, hate-filled people as in the conservative Protestant church, and I say that as a straight woman. I took note of how many of those filled
with hate speech had seriously messed up pasts that they had never addressed and use hate to digress from the work at hand (themselves).
JR wrote:
No problem – actually I thought your comment was very good, on all three points.
@ Josh:
You wrote:
“Ok, taking myself seriously now, Burk et. al. (including, I assume, the Baylys) have dug themselves into a hole with the notion that a mere fleeting, biologically based, instinctual attraction is morally equivalent with a desire which is morally equivalent with a lust which is morally equivalent with actually having sex with someone”
I have a theory on where this thinking originated. I think we can trace it back to the concept of original sin which morphed into the concept of total depravity/inability so your existence is sin.
While we know sin “starts” with thinking, it can also end there and never come to actions. They conveniently ignore that part.
@ Dr. Fundystan, Proctologist:
So Bayly is more of an ideological purist in the way he interprets this issue vs. Moore who is about optics as an opportunist.
Bayly just can’t get on Face the Nation. :o)
@ Headless Unicorn Guy:
Yes. But they are limited to words, harassment and excommunication as weapons. :o)
Josh wrote:
In my reply to Lydia, I limited my criticism to Catholic sin in failing to be there for LBGT people and their families in times past.
The truth is it is MORE effective for those of each faith community to look at its own treatment of LGBT people and their families,
and evaluate for themselves if their response honors Christ the Lord, or if in failing Him, they have failed their LGBT brothers and sisters in Christ.
It’s not for me to evaluate that which I cannot understand because I come from a different tradition, no. But I do feel that the WHOLE Body of Christ suffers when some among it are neglected, or worse. And I do think Westboro’s antics:
1. Either called the Body into conviction over its failure to care for its LBGT brothers and sisters;
2. OR it sent members of the Body scrambling to distance themselves from Westboro either for their own peace of mind, or for their ‘image’ before the rest of the Church
(I rather hope the truth is more with number one on that observation for most Christian communities)
The journey towards ‘healing’ from prejudice and self-righteousness is slow, halting, and painful, but not impossible …. we sojourn together in the Body and encouragement and hope nourish that healing.
Ted wrote:
Lol!
Josh wrote:
You know what bothers me about this view is they cannot abide a civil realm. If people are not harming others or forcing their beliefs on others to stifle their freedom or choices, exactly how is it anyone’s business?
Lydia wrote:
Actually, the favorite clobber verse is the red-letter one in Matthew 5:28.
With hyperbole disallowed (per article 13 of the Chicago Statement) and only a plain sense reading permitted, what are we left with?
@ Christiane:
I have absolutely no idea what you just wrote actually means. But it had my name in it so I was trying…:o)
PaJo wrote:
I agree, and wonder if the self-called look to John the Baptist and Jesus as examples. It’s interesting to think about how those two humbled themselves–not something the self-called are noted for doing.
Patriciamc wrote:
How about a crop top that says “This garment defrauds men”? Or it could even be a high-necked, loose, long-sleeved tee, because there is literally nothing safe to wear when we defraud by nature.
@ Lydia:
not to worry . . . I was replying to Josh who was referring to my reply to your objection about being a bit unfair
blogging gets confusing sometimes
if there’s anything specific that confused you, let me know & I’ll respond hopefully to clarify
Lydia wrote:
Ahhh. I have seen his name on a discussion board I lurk at and didn’t know who he was. Those on that board adore him.
@ Lydia:
Pretty much. I mean, most of the SBC leadership is extremely plastic and opportunist. Mohler, for example, was an Arminian in seminary, and actually circulated a petition asking the faculty to promote more female presence and ordination on campus. He changed his tune in a hurry when he realized who held the purse strings.
@ PaJo:
If you like having nightmares and no sleep, read his “The Sovereignty of God”. How people can read it and not be troubled with his arbitrary wrathful God, is beyond me. I think he might have been manic or something when you add in the details of his life and death.
Pink was adamant that God does not love sinners and deliberately chose some people for damnation.
Lydia wrote:
someone needed to tell him the Good News
@ Dr. Fundystan, Proctologist:
I recall reading his “conversion to comp” story many moons ago. If I remember correctly Mohler claimed it involved a conversation he had with Carl Henry as he was walking across campus with him while a student at SBTS in the 80’s. The gist of the article by Mohler was that Carl Henry was asking him how he could affirm inerrancy if he believed woman could pastor. The article is gone from the Internet, it seems.
I find the story problematic for many reasons but one is that SBTS had quite a few women in ministry quarters then. How could Carl Henry stand it? ( much like me asking how Russell Moore could stand working at such a racist rooted institution with portraits of pro chattel slavers and naming colleges after them in the 1990’s!!!) And how convenient Mohlers conversion to comp coincided with the whole inerrancy war in the SBC. Linking comp to inerrancy.
Yep. He knew where the winds were blowing.
Muff Potter wrote:
The fact he was talking to oppressed Jews who had religious leaders who made up a lot of ridiculous ways around the law (like any cause divorce) which included some nefarious deeds? :o)
Lydia wrote:
Wow. That makes sense of the rest of what I read on that board. It horrifies me, and it makes me understand, as does this blog, how people become Nones and Dones.
That board is all about who is elect and who God loves…one thread was about whether we can tell our children that God loves them, because, you know, they might not be among th elect: !!!we just don’t know!!! and if we tell the children God loves them and they are not among the elect, then we have told LIES to our children. It is a little interesting that those discussing the issue are pretty sure THEY are among the elect…
It is revolting. No wonder people don’t believe in that god; I don’t either.
Christiane wrote:
That and possibly a prescription for anti-depressants.
Christiane wrote:
Christiane wrote:
Calvin’s gospel is not good tidings of great joy for ALL people. What love is this?! I am becoming increasingly concerned about the eternal destiny of folks who teach and follow reformed theology.
@ PaJo:
Please do not get me started. When they start in on the children meme it makes my blood boil. If you cannot tell your children their creator loves them even more than we do, we might as well all slash our wrists now.
There is a short bio of Pink on wiki. He just could not find a place to land that was pure enough for him. I honestly think he had depression or something for which they had no diagnosis back then. His poor wife! What a life!
Velour wrote:
that poor man
… but was he drawn to the dark theology because he had depression;
or was he depressed because of the dark theology?
people do seek out that which resonates with something within themselves;
but, if a sensitive child grows up already being exposed to such a dark theology from a very young age, I can imagine the effects could be somewhat damaging to the psyche, yes
@ Christiane:
I don’t know the answer to that. It just seems very “off” to me, whether personality
or something is wrong with a person to have such dark thoughts about life,
about other people.
@ Lydia:
Not that ‘wiki’ is credible entirely and we know it certainly isn’t comprehensive,
but the bio of Pink does suggest that he was a tormented soul
I can only feel pity for him from what I read there. Poor man, to be so stricken.
By some grace of God, Pink appears to have had a really caring wife who was devoted to him.
How strange it seems that afflicted people often are blessed with strong spouses. Or maybe, it’s one of God’s tender mercies? That is something to ponder.
@ Ted:
Barbara Kelley wrote: “Gah! All the talk of “thick complementarians” and “thin complementarians” is so…phallic! Did he use those words on purpose?”
Ted: “I was relieved to hear about “thick” complementarians. I had assumed that the opposite of “thin” complementarians would be “fat” complementarians.
But I like your take on it, too. I think we’re both making about as much sense as they are.”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
and “hard” complementarian, and “soft” complementarian…. good grief.
it’s, like, schwing liberation! free at last! a combination of giddy & terrified. but it’s all they can talk about, even when they try not to.
@ elastigirl:
Elect-ile dysfunction?
Ken F wrote:
Standing ovation! You have been H.U.G.-ified.
Lydia wrote:
The open secret at SBTS is that everyone knows this is an essentially made up story. But, like the tall tales that often flow from the pulpit, it is just handled with a good ol’ wink and shrug. Boys will be boys, after all.
@ Christiane:
Iain Murray wrote a biography of Pink. He was an admirer. Murry also wrote a book basically blaming Billy Graham and others for ruining Christianity since the 50’s. So there are different aporiaches.
I see wiki as more of source for a timeline. Read Pinks book, The Sovereignty of God, to get a clearer picture.
He was very involved in the occult before he became a Christian yet he came from a Christian family.
I think Wade wrote some stuff about him years ago that might be useful.
I don’t have exhaustive knowledge, just what I pieced together after reading his depressing book.
My guess is he was brilliant. Just not in a way I can agree with. But what else is new? :o)
@ Dr. Fundystan, Proctologist:
That was my impression. It read like all the YRR testimonies I have heard that they discovered Calvin in the Bible. :o)
@ Lydia:
What I know about Pink is how the original Internet Monk used to describe him.
Apparently Pink achieved the theoretical end state of Protestantism — the One True Church of One. He ended up staying in his house every Sunday worshipping alone because he was the only one in history to have his Theology Perfectly Correct; all others were Heretics and/or Apostates. (And not REALLY The Elect — ye shall know them by their Theological Perfection…)
Lydia wrote:
And Pink would have considered Murray a HERETIC because his Theology wasn’t Correct In Every Way…
Christiane wrote:
Or both?
Muff Potter wrote:
The plagues of Revelation being Thermonuclear Weapons Effects and the demon locusts being helicopter gunships armed with chemical weapons and piloted by long-haired bearded hippies, of course.
Lydia wrote:
So far.
Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:
Lindsey’s a lightweight compared with Chuck Missler. Missler can spin the Bible like no other.
@ Headless Unicorn Guy:
Kevin “Womb Tomb” Swanson is totes cool with the death penalty for people whom he believes to be “abominations” (yours truly, among many others). For a good scare, look up who spoke at his “religious freedom” convention last year (not for specific discussion here at TWW due to it being about the p-word, but Swanson’s connections are enlightening, if not frightening).
Josh wrote:
I was chilled to the bone when my former NeoCalvinist/9Marxist/John MacArthur-ite
pastor in Silicon Valley (California) was teaching an Adult Sunday School class
before the church service and asked a death penalty question along these lines.
I said that people are forgiven, that any of us could be put to death. He
corrected me before about 50 or more people and said that God could kill gays.
He said it with a smile on his face. In a holier-than-thou kind of way.
I thought it was really bizarre. Many church members were undergraduate and graduate students at the nearby, elite Stanford University. Still others worked in high-tech
companies in Silicon Valley, with a huge group of them that were U.C.L.A. graduates and knew each other.
A retired nurse at the church hated gays and she constantly used hate speech against them. She demanded over and over of me, to my face, that I use hate speech against gays. I refused! The pastors/elders defended hate speech, because after all she’s their friend.
And they all felt that way, and weren’t ashamed of it. (Meanwhile they defended their friend a Megan’s List child pornographer because he said a “few words about Jesus.”)
I have never seen more hateful, self-centered, arrogant, trashy people than at that church. If there is any “abomination” it’s all of them and their ilk.
They should take their Bibles and toss them in the trash. The words are meaningless to them.
@ Headless Unicorn Guy:
Lol! Very true!
@ Headless Unicorn Guy:
Yes. He could not find a proper Reformed church in his corner of Scotland.
The Uber “Done”? :o)
@ Ken F:
now that’s clever!
waking up wrote:
You may well ask. As far as I can see, these folks have revived an ancient heresy, & are running around sayint that they’re right & the rest of us are wrong.
I read your comment yesterday and it kind of bothered me. As women, I think it’s important to recognize that women aren’t always the victim in cases of sexual misconduct. I also think it diminishes the suffering of those who have been truly assaulted. Also, one doesn’t have to be letting David off the hook to say that Bathsheba was a willing participant. What David did was dead wrong and he owned what he did eventually. However, I also believe that Bathsheba was intentionally trying to get the attention of the King. Why, because everyone used their roof tops for a variety of things like cooking and sleeping so she would have known that she could be seen by the palace which was on a hill. I also think Okrapod made some interesting points. The only time I heard the phrase about not being able to refuse the King was in regards to Esther. That was a different culture with an unbelieving King. As bold as David was in his sin, I don’t think he could have gotten away with killing her because she refused to sleep with him. Tamar and Esther were victims, Bathsheba in my opinion was not. @ Daisy:
zooey111 wrote:
While researching for another blog, I came across THIS gem: ” (Ayn Rand) believed that women were meant to be subservient to men — in fact, she says that “the most feminine of all aspects” is “the look of being chained” — and that a woman being the dominant partner in a relationship was “metaphysically inappropriate” and would warp and destroy her fragile lady-mind.” (Adam Lee/Alternet)
and I thought, ah yes, the Gospel of Rand is driving neo-Cals in more ways than one.
The truth is Rand would see NOTHING WRONG with lying in the pursuit of power or control. And the ESS thing is so outrageous a lie that it never occurs to its creators that they are morally corrupt for having renewed this old heresy.
It’s all there:
the contempt for the ‘place’ of women, chained without human dignity;
and the lies that benefit and bring ‘control’ to them what is strong enough to take it
Yeah, I’d say people like Grudem, Piper, et al
adhere to the Gospel of Ayn Rand
Dr. Fundystan, Proctologist wrote:
Well, that would explain a few things. I had wondered if he just played the angry prophet character on his blog while coming across as a nice guy in person, or if he was as much of a jerk in real life as he appears online.
I remember there being a niece of Tim’s (I forget her name) who once disagreed with him on their blog, but she is the only one of the Bayly clan who comes across as normal. Her granddad, Joseph Bayly Sr. was known as a normal Christian gentleman. A lot of folks have wondered what the heck happened to Tim and David to make them turn to the Dark Side.
Josh wrote:
More likely “abominations” = anyone who doesn’t agree 1000% with Womb Tomb.
That’s usually how Ideologues end up rolling.
And Womb Tomb has always struck me (in appearance and voice) as a High School Dork from Central Casting who found a way to become an Alpha Male by Divine Right and is throwing his weight around HARD.
NJ wrote:
The Dark Side had cookies?
BJ wrote:
While that is sometimes true, in many cases women are blamed for being crime victims, harassment victims, etc. What was she wearing? What did she do? It’s part of our culture of blame.
I don’t.
However, I also believe that Bathsheba was intentionally trying to get the attention of the King/blockquote>
There is nothing to suggest that. She wasn’t flirting with him, didn’t know him, he didn’t know her. Jewish scholars, and many Christian ones, believe that she was doing a 7-day special purification bath after her monthly period as Jewish law required. Those baths
aren’t what we call “baths”.
David had been asleep all day, while the men were at war which is where most people thought he was too. So it’s evening when she’s taking her bath. David was on his rooftop, the highest spot. Looking around. He saw her and she was beautiful. He didn’t know who she was and had to ask others, who told him her father’s name and her husband’s name.
David sent for her and had sex with her, making her ritually impure. He could have had sex
with other women, not a honorable man’s wife, not this married woman.
I don’t think he could have gotten away with killing her because she refused to sleep with him. Tamar and Esther were victims, Bathsheba in my opinion was not. @ Daisy:
I think he could have gotten away with doing whatever he wanted, including to her.
He was a king.
^Should have been in a block quote: “However, I also believe that Bathsheba was intentionally trying to get the attention of the King” – BJ
I was responding to that quote.
Lydia wrote:
I agree with this. There is the flip side of Westboro Baptist, perhaps not as vicious, but just as totalitarian and unthinking, which says if you take Romans One at its word and believe the practice of homosexuality is not according to the design of nature and God, that you must therefore hate homosexual people. I do not hate homosexuals, I do not advocate for the denial of any particular rights for anyone, but I do not consider the practice of homosexuality right and I refuse, based on the Bible as well as nature, to equate homosexual relationships with heterosexual, the former is not natural, the latter is. Will not be shouted down by the crowd that goes apoplectic at the notion.
Law Prof wrote:
Thanks for explaining your Biblical perspective, again, since this topic has come up on various threads and we’ve discussed this before.
How do you (Lydia too) talk to gays? About them? Do you shun them?
I’ve used the example before and I will use it again, if we couldn’t order each other to get a certain haircut, than we certainly don’t have any rights to control peoples private lives (as long as what they were doing isn’t criminal) even if we don’t like it or approve of it.
The problem I have with so many Christians who say that they “love the sinner and hate the sin” is that they are the most arrogant, rude, self-centered, hypocritical people around.
At least the ones I’ve been around. They constantly harp about gays, to digress from doing any work on their own messed up lives. They want to take the speck out of someone else’s eye, while having a log in their own eye.
I also can’t comprehend the time and energy they waste on the topic, about something beyond their personal control (just like other peoples’ private lives are beyond their personal control). Shouldn’t Christians be knitting baby blankets for the pregnancy crisis centers, helping the poor, the elderly, and others in need?
At the end of the day, it is beyond my personal control. I work at a job where I can be fired for violating anti-discrimination laws, we have a diverse work force, and my wonderful, talented, kind boss — is gay.
@ Headless Unicorn Guy:
and kool-aid, too 🙂
My post to BJ is formatted incorrectly, don’t know what happened.
This should be in quotes as well:”I don’t think he could have gotten away with killing her because she refused to sleep with him. Tamar and Esther were victims, Bathsheba in my opinion was not. @ Daisy:” – BJ
Law Prof wrote:
Yes, according to the natural law, marriage is for the purposes of procreation by the willing consent of a husband and a wife, comes new life by the grace of God;
and yet, and yet, the Church WILL marry those who are past the ages of reproduction, people who love one another, and wish to be there ‘either for other’ in the way a married couple: companions for the rest of the journey however long or short it may be ….
the Church validates companionship also as something of value in a marriage, and it values service to one another, especially in times of sickness and of troubles …..
there is more to think about than ‘reproduction of the species’ in accordance with the natural law, yes
what ARE we asked to learn from the people who suffer with same-sex attraction? For some reason, these people have that burden which we do know ourselves and which, while we asked to share one another’s burdens and so fulfill the Royal Law of Christ, we have no roadmap for helping people who have same sex attractions in this world bear their burdens ….
how are we called to understand and to minister to that which we may not experience ourselves? Is it all about judgment? Or is there something else we need to realize about these brothers and sisters so that we CAN be there with them on the journey?
Ted wrote:
I was thinking of “fat” complementarians as well. So as not to get too distracted by certain complementarians’ physiques, I spiritualized it to refer to their fatness of mind and heart. Don’t know if I missed any comments about Bayly’s slam at bra-wearing men but… putting 2 and 2 together… Could be some fat complementarians are in need of bras to control their spiritual moobs.
Christiane wrote:
If you did into them you’ll find that Westboro is really an extortion ring using the umbrella of calling themselves a church and free speech rights to hide form the criminal statues. They go into an area where a high profile funeral will be taking place, typically for a recently fallen veteran. They announce their plans to create a spectacle (call it what you wish). A local government passes rules or refuses permits to try and stop them. Westboro takes them to court and then almost always settles for a nice sum of money once the local government realizes they crossed the line and will lose. There are less than 50 people in this church. Maybe less than 40. And almost all of the folks running it are from the same extended family and lawyers.
This has nothing to do with the message of Christ and should not even be a part of discussions about such.
Velour wrote:
This is absurd and totally offensive. I work with all types and have all my career. I did not do business in bubbles. I used to travel a lot with one who adopted a child around the same time I had mine so we compared notes all the time on child raising tactics. My daughter has friends who are trans from school. It is all the rage now in case you did not know. she visited one at work this past month and they walk dogs together for money. We vacation every other year or so with an extended family member who was married to his partner in Boston when it was legalized. They are a blast. And they are very embarassed by the shenanigans of the gay lobby which they think are extortion and will actually set back their advances.
I could give more but I am hoping that bit of CV passes your litmus test. I am just about done with “friendly fascists”. I don’t see how any of it is my business unless others are being harmed.
How do I talk to them? As human beings. We are done.
NC Now wrote:
More on Westboro Baptist *Church*/*cult* founded by Fred Phelps, who was later excommunicated by his own family for changing his mind about gays (instead of hating them), saying that the gay neighbors across the street from the church were “good people” http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2014/05/23/Reason-for-Fred-Phelps-excommunication-from-Westboro-revealed-by-grandson/3601400858142/
Phelps had a change of heart at the end of his life when he wife was dying.
A Jewish rabbi and his wife helped get out a Phelps’ granddaughter Megan and her sister Grace out of Westboro. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/conversion-via-twitter-westboro-baptist-church-megan-phelps-roper
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/westboro-baptist-church
Lydia wrote:
I am sorry to offend you, Lydia. That wasn’t my intent. It was an honest and sincere question.
I came out of a NeoCalvinist church where church members who were professionals hated gays, used hate speech, said horrible things, shunned people, didn’t attend their own family’s holiday gatherings because of one gay relative. And that’s in Silicon Valley
(California).
So there are conservative Christians who say they are taking a Biblical approach
on this issue and it means vile conduct.
My ex-senior pastor said God could kill them when he was leading Adult Sunday School
class one morning. He said it with a smile on this face. I thought it was chilling and
un-Christian. He wasn’t even embarrassed. He said it in front of church members who
were students from the nearby elite Stanford University. And others who were graduates of U.C.L.A. and worked as engineers.
Velour, You are only digging the hole deeper.
Velour’s ex-church is quite farther along the anti-gay crazy continuum than mine, to be sure. My church only gets regurgitated American Family Association / Family “Research” Council / Focus on the Family party line bovine matter from the pulpit, which as I have already discussed, is still slanderous and shows contempt toward LGBT people.
I gladly grant that there are some – even many – conservative evangelical (CE) churches that avoid this trap, but I have heard of few who actually go as far as to repudiate the slanderous rhetoric of their fellow CE churches. Based on the harrowing experiences of other LGBT Christians I know who have been in such churches, I am left to assume that if I hear nothing about this topic in a CE church, they functionally believe the aforementioned rhetoric unless they indicate that they don’t*. It’s simply not safe on a personal level to assume otherwise – hence why I don’t open up to CE Christians in real life, with one exception, and that’s because I saw that he was safe to confide in after he came out to me first. 😉
* One example would be – because everybody has to have a position paper on sexuality these days – to write said paper with modern, commonly accepted terminology instead of insisting on using outdated, sometimes offensive, and clinical terminology, and to state that celibate LGBT people are welcome to participate in all aspects of church life, including volunteer positions of all types.
Lydia wrote:
???
I respect you, Lydia, and I’ve always learned a lot from you here. Same with LawProf.
I’m glad that you are as classy to folks in life, including those you disagree with who
you think are living un-Biblical lives that you don’t agree with.
I apologize for offending you.
Thanks.
Josh wrote:
I was ordered to use hate speech by a retired nurse at church, which is something she does. I refused her repeated demands of me, in person. The pastors/elders then had more meetings with me that I wasn’t *close* to her, she’s their friend, and it wasn’t supposed to be a big deal. Ohhh, puhhlsssseee. We’re all grown-ups. To conduct yourself in such a deplorable fashion? To insist that others behave in such a tacky manner? Classless.
That’s ethical but it must be few and far between.
I think that’s wise of you to be careful. I’m glad you and another man can confide in each other.
The conservative churches would have a lot of maturing to do to get to that point.
It seems for many of them they are always on the ‘war path’, as churches and as individuals. Love is conditional for them.
Velour wrote:
While I’ve had a bad experience, and you’ve had a terrible one, I’m not comfortable generalizing to a specifically broad degree about Conservative Evangelical churches. My LGBT contacts provide sufficient evidence that there are many CE churches that embrace slanderous beliefs about LGBT people either publicly or functionally. Nonetheless, I won’t say whether this forms a majority or a minority; I simply don’t have the data.
What I do think is safe to say is that a growing number of people find this type of rhetoric off-putting. Millennials are well known for increasingly adopting this view, but it is growing in people of all generations. I suspect – or maybe project – that many who come to view the rhetoric as harmful realize the futility of raising the issue with the leadership of their church (this is my view, hence the “projection”), and some move on to become nones or dones.
I would like to think that church leaders will catch up eventually, but I fear that even if/when they do, they/we will not learn the lesson at the heart of this issue: will we be able to have empathy and compassion for the next “other” to cross our paths? Throughout history, as generational cohorts of the church have evolved to healthier places on matters of slavery, race, interracial relationships, etc., this lesson could have been learned and carried forward in any of those instances. But seeing that by and large, it was not – given that we have to keep learning it over and over again – I don’t hold out great hope for this time, either.
Josh wrote:
Exactly, Josh.
Velour wrote:
You keep digging deeper. You are not sorry for being offensive but that I am offended by your totally off base assumptions?
I suppose in your world it is the normal to be the thought, speech and freedom of conscious police? It will become a dark world that will eventually turn on you. It is partly there now. Perhaps it will all be fixed when people are convicted of not publicly agreeing with all the current PC differing views? Orwellian.
I have not once mentioned anything about an “unbiblical” life. Is that like an unGospel life? I don’t even know what that is. You sure do a lot of projecting. You assumed something very sinister about me simply because you think being the thought and speech police is normal.
You don’t seem to be able to understand that grown ups can function quite nicely with all sorts of people they differ with. It is called civility. Maturity. Manners.
It just does not work when the other person demands conformity to their views and then makes unfair assumptions and labels.
Lydia wrote:
Thanks, Lydia. I apologized to you because I was sorry.
In the world which I used to belong as a member for 8-years, 9Marxist, NeoCalvinist, John MacArthur-ite church, all of the above applied.
Josh explained that not all conservative churches, or conservative Christians, are extreme as my ex-church. That’s a relief to me because I’m honestly trying to gauge it with the spread of this rabid form of NeoCalvinism across the nation, taking over even mainline denominations.
I agree. I saw it with my tour-of-duty of NeoCalvinist church, the thought-control, the demands for obedience, the punishment for independent thought including before hundreds of people. Whether it was Mark Driscoll’s now shuttered Mars Hill Church in Seattle or my ex-church in Silicon Valley their authoritarian control of Christians’ lives. It was insufferable. And these groups actually use the techniques of Chinese Communist “thought reformers”.
You’re correct you didn’t.
I don’t know. I’m just deprogramming from NeoCalvinism.
Good.
I’m sorry, Lydia. I’ll have to work on my technique when I ask questions. Lesson learned
in this exchange. I have come out of a NeoCalvinist church.
I’m sorry Lydia that I blew it on how I asked you. I really just wanted to know, “Are there conservatives, conservative Christians, who are fair and decent to people they disagree with?” Because that wasn’t my experience of being in a NeoCalvinist church.
I didn’t even know what NeoCalvinism was. I wanted to go to a small church, hear the Word of God, know other folks, be known, grow as a Christian, serve. Instead we were decimiated
in there by NeoCalvinism. And it was a brutal, brutal experience and one that I’m still recovering from as are other former members. I pray for the people stuck there all of the time.
Bravo! I agree with you. You must not be a NeoCalvinist!
I am sorry for my gaffe. I really am exploring the world after NeoCalvinism.
Thanks for taking the time to correct me. It has been helpful to me. And I’ll take note
for further interactions with others.
Velour wrote:
Like a North Korean trying to adjust to the Outside.
@ Velour:
Has it occurred to you there are liberals who are not decent people? Enablers, those who look the other way or play down heinous evil and even abusers ….come in all shapes and sizes.
I think what bothered me the most is that you have been reading me here for a long time and that is what you asked me?
I don’t even know what conservative means anymore. I would guess there are what are seen by some as conservative churches that teach homosexuality was not God’s intention. But does it always follow that they want to harm people who are?
Even in this southern city there are plenty of churches that not only embraced homosexuality but encourage it.
And they have the same right to do so!
There are lots of things I do not believe were God’s intention that are the normal.
I would love to get away from all the political correctness, thought police and such and really try to see people as individuals first and foremost. All this collectivism and groupthink is killing us. We should try hard not to be influenced by either side.
As far as I am concerned your apology is accepted. The offense is now in the deepest sea. Thank you for listening to me. We move onward and upward. :o)
Just discovered:
Al Bundy, loser main character of the raunch sitcom Married With Children, is Complementarian! Here’s an excerpt from his Wikipedia writeup at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Bundy:
In season 8, Bundy and his friends found NO MA’AM, the “National Organization of Men Against Amazonian Masterhood”. Its “political goals” are to fight the increasing power of women all over society, but the organization tends to just be a social club for several neighborhood men to bond: consume beer, indulge in pornography, bowl, visit strip clubs, watch sports, complain about their wives, etc. However, there have been instances of actual “political activities” such as kidnapping Jerry Springer; countering a breast-feeding sit-in organized by Marcy with a Beer Belly dance-off; causing a riot over a proposed beer tax; going to Washington to appeal to Congress when Psycho Dad is canceled; and even forming a short lived misogynistic religion, whose chief theology is blaming all the world’s problems on Eve, making it mostly a sect, rather than a proper religion.
Now doesn’t that sound familiar? Except without the fluttering hands, Mickey Mouse T-shirts, and “The LORD Revealed unto Me…”
Lydia wrote:
I dated a guy like this years ago. He was only interested in smart, accomplished women, but once in a relationship he would push hard on the roles thing. I wondered at the time why he didn’t go for one of the women who just wanted to get married and didn’t have careers planned. Instead, he was after the ambitious ones, but he would talk about how great it would be if she just stayed home and made floral wreaths. I have since learned there is a certain type of controlling man like this: he wants to dominate not just any woman, but a strong one. He wants her to have opportunities to give up for a relationship with him.
Kathleen Schwab wrote:
Because if he can dominate someone strong, it means “I MUST BE STRONGER! RAWR!”
Christiane wrote:
I really didn’t want a peek into Ayn Rand’s sexual paraphiliae.
The more you learn about that “Only Truly Rational Mind Who Has Ever Existed” (her self-description), the more repulsive she becomes.