Moody aside, this false dichotomy is subtly found in many of our churches and institutions. And while these places may not always claim to have chosen to believe only one side of this either/or, they unfortunately communicate otherwise.Yet, I have seen, again and again, that Christians who define their manhood primarily by power and control often work out that ideology through theological suppression (or exclusion) of women whose femininity can be seen as a threat to manhood itself.

It is my experience that Biblical manhood need not ultimately be exercised through control, power, and authority. Jesus’ journey to his crucifixion and his resurrection experience illustrates this perfectly. “Biblical Manhood” also need not be hierarchical, as if the only alternative to being subservient to one’s wife is to preemptively dominate her.

In the end, one can choose a high value of scripture, Christian orthodoxy, and Biblical womanhood and manhood while also choosing egalitarian hermeneutics, Evangelical feminism, and alternative understandings of manhood and womanhood. The “Egalitarianism vs. Complementarianism” debate need not be a battle of the antithetical opposites, but rather a recognition of the complexities behind a variety of biblically-based positions. In this specific case, a major representative of the wider Evangelical tradition has allowed an either/or posture to reinforce the binary thinking that plagues not only Evangelicalism in particular, but the Western world in general.

At first Moody’s response to Adam’s McLane’s Tweet (posted above) which read, “Praise God for other conferences #Heprovides” left me a bit frustrated. However, I am now left wondering if the author of that tweet was onto something. We should praise God for other Pastor Conferences that are welcoming of women and men who have dedicated their lives to sacrificial service in the church. And maybe that means—at least for the time being—we should also seek out those conferences for our further pastoral training and encouragement. In the meantime, maybe it would be more appropriate for Moody to call their gathering, “The Moody Pastoral Conference for Men.”

This false either/or dichotomy is prominent among many Evangelicals. Overreaction to this idea even drives many churches to adopt an ideological preference for an ethos of masculinity. Some even take this to the extreme and teach that any church that is not defined by masculinity is by necessity defined by a liberal femininity—and a feminine church is not only unbiblical and unorthodox—it is sinful. On the other hand, some folks remove themselves from Evangelicalism altogether as they fear that they are not welcomed at the table.

From my studies, however, I find that any substantial conflict between Evangelical feminism and traditionalist masculinity to be mostly avoidable. Evangelical feminism must be not totally dismissed as the liberal feminism that arose at the turn of the century; rather it should be seen as a movement of fully Evangelical men and women who appreciate gender distinctiveness, but see the complementary roles of the men and women to be exercised best when hierarchy is non-existent (or perhaps better stated, to be episodically available to both women and man). It seems that history also tells us that it is possible to have, in the words of Richard Mouw, “A thoroughly evangelical feminism that is grounded in a deep commitment to the truth of God’s Word.” This has been evidenced by the writings of Mouw, Rebecca Groothuis, Stanley Grenz, William Webb, and Douglas Fee. Even early Church fathers like Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine and John Calvin has some interesting things to say about the genderless and/or feminine nature of God (You can read more about this on Scott McKight’s blog). As discussed above, Moody’s own institutional history reflects a school that, while never identifying as “feminist”, still supported those who owned that label. 
For the final approach to binary thinking on this topic, come back tomorrow for part 3 of this series. We will follow up with a final problematic either/or dichotomy and hopefully offer a way forward. 

A few weeks ago, Moody Bible Institute’s Pastor’sConference took place and it drew in some 1,000 pastors in attendance. The conference featured exclusively male speakers, bands…and as usual, participants. Well almost anyway. The conference was not open for women to register—though “Women are allowed to attend General Sessions…with their husbands.” This conference, according to the school, is not a men’s conference per se but rather a place where Evangelical church leaders may go to equip, refocus, and refresh. Blogger and Moody graduate, Adam McLane’s twitter conversation with the school reveals as much:

Moody Conferences Twitter conversation with MBI graduate Adam McLane

For those of us who might participate in conferences such as Moody’s, this aspect of their operation might call for some careful consideration. Why would Moody not allow women to register for general sessions? And what about those female Moody graduates who go on to serve in pastoral roles and wish to continue benefiting from their alma mater? Is this decision part of a larger trend in Evangelicalism, or just adherence to a statement of belief?  

We will explore these questions and more in the next three posts. We begin with a brief  introduction, before to our first post – “The Either/Or Reading of Scripture.”

First, a quick history lesson about Moody Bible Institute (MBI) and its relationship to supporting women in pastoral ministry. The school was initiated under the leadership of a woman named Emma Dryer in 1883; she would act as essentially the first dean of the school. The institute would be one of the first schools in the state to admit women. According to Janette Hassey in Discovering BiblicalEquality (pgs.39-58), beginning in 1889, Moody soon led all early Bible institutes in training women for pastoral ministry as its graduates openly served as pastors, preachers, and teachers. This was evidenced in 1927 as Moody’s publication, Alumni News, proudly told the fascinating account of Mable Thomas, a 1913 graduate, who served as a pastor in Kansas. In 1929, the school’s official publication, Moody Monthly, listed Lottie Sheidler as the first person to ever graduate from the pastor’s course. Then there is the fact that just before the turn of the century, D.L Moody forged an alliance with Frances Willard—one of America’s foremost pioneers for gender equality in the public and in the pulpit. While MBI may have never explicitly enforced women in pastoral roles, Hassey rightly concludes that the “implicit endorsement of women in those authoritative roles for over forty years cannot be denied.” Though some of these facts may seem less than “radical” remember that most of these events took place before women were even allowed to vote.

So, why would Moody—an institute which once stood-out as radically in support of women in the pastorate—decided to continue excluding them from pastoral conferences? In this post the the 2 that will follow, I think are a few causal reasons to explore. Essentially, I see Moody’s decision to be, at least in part, due to the influence of either/or thinking in areas where a both/and posture could be more appropriate. While this tendency is much more widespread than MBI, using the example of Moody’s Pastors Conference as a reference may help the trend become more visible. When it comes to either/or thinking in gender discussions, binary thought tends to surface in three prominent ways – the first of which we will begin with:

Both sides of the gender debate fall prey to this line of thinking, yet in choosing to acknowledge only one reading often leads to poor hermeneutics which oversimplifies the complexity of gender within the scriptures. While I (Michael Wiltshire) myself may be an Egalitarian, I have studied the text enough to know that a complementarian reading is not absent from the text. Though I think this reading is less in tune to the entirety of Scripture, for me to say it is not derivable from the text is to be exegetically irresponsible. It is surprising then, that Moody would communicate through their tradition of male-only registries that their conference reflects on only one particular reading of scripture when it comes to the office of pastor.

For the next two approaches to binary thinking on this topic come back and visit for posts 2 & 3.  We will follow up with a few more of these problematic either/or dichotomies and hopefully offer a way forward.

This is part two of a post initiated by Josiah Daniels in response to Art Lindsley’s article for TheGospel Coalition. You may read Josiah’s initial post, here. Part 2 of Socialism vs. Redistribution will focus in on the logical complexities behind Lindsley’s article, and offer insights into how his project could more complete by addressing a few issues. 

Lindsley’s article concludes: “The fact that some Christians ‘shared all things’ does not constitute a command that all Christians should follow their example, because it is not clearly taught in passages of Scripture elsewhere.”

Again, this conclusion is dependent on the assumptions that 1) lack of perfect verbs equates partial communal sharing, and 2) voluntary giving disqualifies (pre)socialistic practices. Yet, there is more to this statement than it may initially seem. I wonder how this argument might interact with relevant thematic elements of Israel’s ongoing narrative where communal giving is customary (e.g. the year of Jubilee; Deut. 23:19; Lev. 25:35-37); not to mention the many NT passages where not only the “love of money” is warned against, but personal wealth is itself explicitly condemned (Matt. 5, 6:24; Lk. 12:15; 1 Tim. 6:6-10, James 5:1; 1 Jn. 3:17).

The reason is that it is a rejection of “modernity” – something that very few cultures outside of the western world had to endure following the Enlightenment. It is fair to critique movements like Radical Theology for being white, male and privileged, but always with a nuance that the modernity/postmodernity shift is primarily a Western issue.

If you haven’t been marred and de-humanized by modernity then you don’t need to return from it. This does not mean that non-western cultures have not been de-humanized or oppressed by the influence of modernity on the Western world, but that the ability to oppress and de-humanize the other is in direct correlation to the internally destructive forces of modernity that the Western culture then externalized into projection – self-hatred became hatred of the other, self-effacing dehumanization became subjugated de-humanizing of the other. We need the non-western world to heal from this derangement – i.e. Liberation Theology, but we also need internal conversations and reparative therapy – i.e. Radical Theology, Derrida, Rollins, Foucault, Zizek, etc.

In many ways, postmodernity is a return to a kind of situated tribal affiliation posture that allows for dynamics to re-enter the Western world that have never left the Majority world. This is a good thing, but it may require that the Western world work through postmodernity in collusion with non-western ideologies – yet at the same time understand it is distinct and needs its own spaces to do so at times.

Hence the need for a conference like the one being critiqued – as long as we can accept that it is reparative therapy from the influence of modernity and not privileged bourgeois speak.

It took me awhile to move away from being a classical complementarian when it comes to a woman’s role in leadership. I used to argue for it because it made so much sense based on conventional/ a priori arguments. “A Priori” is a Latin term used in formal logic (and philosophy) to mean a fact that is assumed to be true prior to any empirical research – i.e. facts are assumed before any research is done. I began to realize that a lot of the convictions I had were a priori because of my religious folk tradition.

I then moved over a period of about 2-3 years to an egalitarian position in my approach to gender relations. One main reason – a priori reasoning. It seemed conventionally true that women were in leadership in all capacities from economics to politics and education to information technology. Why would they be not permitted to exercise their gifts and abilities in a religious sphere if they were expected to do so in every other sphere? My new conventional thinking took me in the opposite direction and I became an egalitarian, rather I held the position of egalitarianism when it came to issues of gender.

The problem is that I’m married and will have been for 4 years this month. I have discovered that the marriage partnership is unique and exists nowhere else and to top that, it is the most difficult relationship to keep on a partnership status I’ve ever been in. It seems that human nature dictates that we would rather see people below us or above us. To see a human being in direct contact with us as an equal is truly one the hardest disciplines I’ve ever engaged in. Our marriage has been an experiment in egalitarianism and we’ve failed.

Don’t get me wrong, we aren’t giving up, but the binary categories of complementarian and egalitarian just don’t work. There are days when my wife takes leadership in our home and there are days when I do. There are areas where I take the lead and she has to submit to me for our home to work well and there are areas where she takes leadership and I submit to her. Then there are the areas that we have to partner in and neither of us can take leadership – like parenting, like buying a home, etc. Those are the hardest to work on because we truly do have to be partners.

I wonder at times whether we need to be one or the other on the binary scale set up by gender partisanship battles. I’m not sure that I can stomach hyper-patriarchalism or hyper-feminism, but do some homes work better on different points of the spectrum formed between egalitarianism and complementarity? There are so many factors to consider when forming one’s convictions. Is it possible to be functionally complementation while convictionally egalitarian or functionally egalitarian while convictionally complementarian?

 

I complement my wife and vice versa and that’s what makes our home peaceful and provides an atmosphere of hospitality to our children and our guests. But the areas in our marriage where peace leaves and alienation begins is when we truly attempt to be partners, to be equal. Some may say that that’s an a priori indicator that we are not meant to be equal. I don’t know. Maybe it’s our attempt to truly be partners that will refine us more than anything else and allow our marriage to be amazing. We also know that we can’t always “work” on something and so our complementarity allows us some down time, some auto-pilot to get recharged for the difficult yet profitable work of partnership. Maybe in that way, partnership is an a priori conviction. Maybe

“Character is who you are when no one is watching” – that’s dumb. If that’s who I really am then I’m a monster.

“The 3 C’s of leadership – Character, Competency & Commitment” – The problem with these three C’s is that they mean entirely different things to different people – thereby saying nothing really substantive to anyone except for what we want to hear.

So here is my shot at 3 leadership lessons (alliterations included).

#1. Leaders are not supposed to hold a higher standard in order to be models for the rest of us. They are to cultivate a higher standard because human nature dictates that when power over other people is given to a human being, that human being will eventually abuse the power given them unless they have a higher standard stopping them. The moralism perceived in the modeling done by most of us can be done without having actual real character. Being a real role model is at best a by-product of practices designed to keep our dark passenger from administering the power entrusted to us.

#2. The M&M’s of Insecurities – We all have insecurities. They are the reason that we as good people do the worst things without any justification to other people, especially when we have power. When you are given the opportunity to lead, insecurities are:

Sometimes we as people want to be told off by our preachers only to reinforce the desire to avoid telling it to ourselves. It’s easier to return weekly to hear what we should do from an external source than to daily cultivate internal disciplines which provide us with who we should be. Failing to break out of this dynamic causes arrested development and we forfeit our contribution to the world’s need for wisdom with meandering obedience – a process that we actually desire in order to avoid growing up.

When it comes to transforming the world into what God had originally desired, it would seem he wants wisdom more than obedience.  Wisdom is not without obedience, but obedience cannot be a final telos for one to arrive at.  Rather it is the ritual practice of pre-embodied wisdom that plays its part in delivering us to wisdom.

Just because a “preacher” draws large crowds of people whom he/she gives direction to, doesn’t mean that they are a successful “pastor.” Don’t give your glory to another, rather let it be manifested for the betterment of the “other” in our pursuit of wisdom.

“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.

May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” John 17: 20-23

At the end of the day, I think we’ve all got God in a box…some of us are just learning to leave the lid open.  

Narnia poses a balance view of that trajectory of human actualization while not deposing the Christ figure of his rightful place while the others only see their goal only arriving in being a Christ figure (super human self rescues the self)

Article in Leadership Journal by Skye Jethani

What is the problem then? To truly encounter the living, embodied and relational Christ is to do so as one pursues full humanity.  As humans we are prone to seek out cultural heroes that will replace our responsibility in the world.  We project onto to them qualities, powers and superhuman strength that allows us to forfeit the strength that we as humans actually have for something that doesn’t exist in order to avoid the difficult encounters that we as humans are requires to have in our strength.  Our heroes exist as buffer zones between us and the Real.  The Real wants us to realize that which we already have, potential bound up in the human race and to become fully human in order to discover that strength.  The problem is – we don’t want that, so we look to super-humans to do if for us.  


In-between our incompetent humanity and super-humanity, there is a place that God calls us to called full humanity.  So why don’t we want to be there?


I think the problem is that we don’t really want to encounter the “other” more than we encounter ourselves. We truly don’t want to have a true encounter, we want the benefits of an encounter, but not all the comes with the encounter.

So the solution is and has been, to be fully human. To be fully human is to not depend on Christ so much that we cannot become like him, but also not be so much like him that we cannot depend upon him. Somehow there’s a balance in the midst of that tension that we should be seeking to experience, though the journey there will never allow us to “finally arrive.” I think the journey of holding the tension between the desire for transcendence and immanence is like a metronome and our wisdom grows as we cross the center of the metronome more frequently.


Christ’s mission wasn’t just to save us, but also to release us into what it means to be fully human as he became fully human after the resurrection. That longing to be fully human is the balance between transcendence and immanence. We forfeit that longing when we shortchange ourselves for only (or mostly) attaining the benefits of primarily transcendence or primarily immanence. Conservatives generally focus more on the benefits of transcendence (God’s glory is everything) and Progressives tend to focus more on the benefits of immanence (Human Flourishing is everything). Holding a tension between the two for our experience in the world seems to be the best solution rather than prizing one more than the other.


So, the impulse to focus mostly on “God” can actually shortchange our ability to really worship him with all of us (embodied human experience) as Scripture guides us to do. Love of God and love of Neighbor are one and the same in the Greatest commandment

That time closed at a point when the last New Testament book was what theologians call, “canonized” or “canonization.”  When you hear people speak about the Canon of Scripture – “Canon” basically means that a fulfilled library of texts are collected, ascertained as to their authoritative nature (by the historic church) and then given a status of being “canonized” thereby closing off other options for what can be authoritative.  When it comes to the Bible, the current belief is that that time of decision making for which books belong and which don’t, closed up shop long ago.  It’s a done deal.

So what about the Canon of the Church?

Many believe that church tradition is one of the authoritative voices that coincides with Scripture’s authority while others believe that the tradition of the church is at least authoritative on some level even if it isn’t on par with Scripture.

Whether that is true or not, if we are understanding the authority of the church in a similar paradigm that Scripture itself operates in, then we need to honor the fact that the Canon of the Church (tradition) is not closed.

Church tradition only offers us one side of the coin that Church as an interpretive community has to offer. If we are truly supposed to worship God in the New Creation as every tongue tribe and nation, then the “Church” universal has not completed its maturity into a full worshipping community.

The regnant voice of authority in Church tradition is lop-sided, incomplete, many times inconsiderate and ultimately juvenile.

Kenton Sparks in his new book, Sacred Word, Broken Word: Biblical Authority and the Dark Side of Scripture, appeals to Alasdair MacIntyres argument in Whose Justice? Which Rationality?  which states that healthy traditions are able to interrogate their own boundaries.  Sparks follows MacIntyre arguing that

“…the church needs to be vigilant not only in guarding its tradition (something it has often done well) but also in carefully considering where the tradition might be mistaken (something it has often failed to do).” pg 5.

We are not the “Church triumphant”, we are the “Church adolescent,” still wet behind the ears with the infant baptism of the Church’s birth.  For us to claim authority through our traditions, mere historicity, historical interpretive frameworks all the while ignoring the Church who are yet to arrive, to speak into reality and to interpret from their context, is naive.  

Jacob’s Story from Unearthed on Vimeo.