Calling Out Sexual Harassment: The Implications Of Complementarianism
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Calling Out Sexual Harassment: The Implications Of Complementarianism

ByBeth Allison Barr

Meredith Stone, a Baptist female seminary professor, responded last week to John Piper. If you remember, John Piper recently posted the script of an interview on Desiring God. He argued that women should not teach at seminaries. Actually, that isn’t correct. John Piper argued that women are disqualified from teaching pastors because–according to his complementarian…

Jessica Hahn and Evangelical Silence on Sexual Abuse
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Jessica Hahn and Evangelical Silence on Sexual Abuse

ByBeth Allison Barr

We are so pleased to welcome back John Wigger to the Anxious Bench. John Wigger is Professor of History at the University of Missouri and author of PTL: The Rise and Fall of the Evangelical Empire of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. #MeToo #ChurchToo In 1980 Jessica Hahn was sexually assaulted by one of the…

An Ordinary Preaching Woman in a Texas Baptist Church, c. 1930
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An Ordinary Preaching Woman in a Texas Baptist Church, c. 1930

ByBeth Allison Barr

In a 2006 interview, Wayne Grudem argued that female leaders in the church (especially pastors) are disobeying God’s word and thus open to “the withdrawal of God’s hand of protection and blessing.” As Grudem explained: “A woman who serves as a pastor, preaching to both men and women, is disobeying the word of God. There…

The Medieval Counsel of Biblical Womanhood
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The Medieval Counsel of Biblical Womanhood

ByBeth Allison Barr

The Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood exploded my twitter feed last week. As a Texan with both friends and family in Houston, I really just wanted to see the update on Hurricane Harvey. But the Nashville Statement dominated my news feed. I confess after scrolling through headline after headline I mostly just felt tired….

Evangelical Silence and Trump: A Reformation Irony
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Evangelical Silence and Trump: A Reformation Irony

ByBeth Allison Barr

“Trump’s religious advisers have been mostly silent.” Tom Gjelten wrote these words for NPR just days ago, in his aptly titled article “Trump’s Evangelical Advisers Stand By their Man.” In the aftermath of Trump’s shocking response to Charlottesville, the silence emanating from his Evangelical Advisory Board screamed. It seemed even louder after prominent business leaders…

Should Women Rule? Netflix’s The Crown and Complementarian Theology
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Should Women Rule? Netflix’s The Crown and Complementarian Theology

ByBeth Allison Barr

Riding the London Eye is deceptively peaceful. The city that slowly unfolds below seems a different place from the noise and heat of the crowded South Bank. I always look first for Cleopatra’s Needle, the 3500 year-old Egyptian obelisk shipped to England in the nineteenth-century and hoisted along the Victorian Embankment Gardens. The startling incongruity…