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 […]
An Ordinary Preaching Woman in a Texas Baptist Church, c. 1930 Read More »
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.
“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
Evangelical Silence and Trump: A Reformation Irony Read More »
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
Should Women Rule? Netflix’s The Crown and Complementarian Theology Read More »
It probably doesn’t surprise you that I have always loved Wonder Woman. My mother will testify that it is one show my little sister and I refused to miss. It is also my first clear memory of watching TV. The story of Wonder Woman, however, didn’t begin in 1975 with Lynda Carter as Diana Prince.
Several months ago I heard a catchy phrase preached in a sermon. But it wasn’t until recently, when I began to compare popular medieval Bible verses with popular modern bible verses (thanks Bible Gateway!), that I began to think about the phrase more critically. So what is the phrase? “Information does not equal transformation.” Not
Lysa TerKeurst, Bible Gateway, and Fides ex Auditu: the Biblical Heart of Medieval Faith Read More »
Recently, Karen Swallow Prior spoke out against the “Billy Graham rule”–married men distancing themselves from women to avoid temptation and the appearance of evil. For those of you who missed Prior’s article, she eloquently argued that good moral character is better than rigid behavioral rules. As she writes, “Virtue ethics relies on moral character that
I bet that, for those of you attending church on Easter Sunday, at least half of you will sing “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.” Christ, the Lord, is risen today, Alleluia! Sons of men and angels say, Alleluia! Raise your joys and triumphs high, Alleluia! Sing, ye heavens, and earth, reply, Alleluia!Vain the stone,
Gone Girl: Disappearing Women from “The Easter Hymn” Read More »
Today we are pleased to welcome Elesha Coffman to the Anxious Bench. Elesha is an Assistant Professor of History at Baylor University. Her first book, The Christian Century and the Rise of the Protestant Mainline, was published by Oxford UP in 2013 and her current book project is a spiritual biography of Margaret Mead. “These
Recently I was made aware of an online church history curriculum. At first glance, it seemed promising (at least from my perspective as a medievalist). It dedicated two weeks to the Medieval Church (five if you include the three weeks of Reformation), and it began the lesson for the High Middle Ages with this disclaimer: