Response to Renew’s Review (Part 9) of Women Serving God
Renew has recently published the ninth part of their series on Bible, gender, and the church. This is my response.
However, attention to my book is only minimal. Consequently, I will only respond to places that explicitly address my own particular thoughts.
I found this article problematic in many ways. I think there are too many assumptions and projections rather than helpful interactions with the claims of evangelical or biblically-based egalitarians. But I will not take the time to note this. I will only address what explicitly overlaps with my own book, Women Serving God.
Renew’s series, as a whole, responds to the publication of my book, Women Serving God. The following are links to the discussion between myself and Renew in the blogosphere.
- Renew’s Review (Part 1): Hermeneutics.
- My Response to Part 1.
- Renew’s Reply to my Response to Part 1. (I copied it into #4 below.)
- My Rejoinder to Renew’s Reply to my Response to Part 1.
- Renew’s Review (Part 2): 1 Corinthians 11.
- My Response to Part 2.
- Renew’s Review (Part 3): 1 Corinthians 14.
- My Response to Part 3.
- Renew’s Review (Part 4): 1 Timothy 2:8-15.
- My Response to Part 4.
- Renew’s Review (Part 5): Elders.
- My Response to Part 5.
- Renew’s Review (Part 6): Marriage.
- My Response to Part 6.
- Renew’s Review (Part 9): Where Does Egalitarianism Lead?
I will begin by quoting the first set of paragraphs from Renew’s article (Part 9) that address my book.
“For example, a careful reading of John Mark Hick’s Women Serving God shows an advocacy for men and women achieving egalitarian ideals: equal status, equal power, equal opportunities in all that is done in the gathered church—but in a way that rejects biblical hierarchies as something distasteful.
Servanthood seems somehow antithetical to clerical authority and hierarchy.[2]
In fact, Hicks infuses secular ideals, without acknowledging their source, with Jesus’ teachings on service, humility, and the importance of using one’s giftedness.
Infusing secular ideals with Jesus’ teachings seems like a smooth mix appropriate for this cultural moment. But is it scriptural? And where does an unchecked egalitarianism lead?
Bizarrely, the egalitarian and individualistic ideals in Western civilization are in the midst of working themselves out and are now being mixed into Critical Theory and the new cultural Marxism. These ideals continue to evolve and merge, being fueled by the new focus on human emancipation from all perceived forms of systemic oppression. Critical Theory derives its ideas of power, justice, and equality from postmodernism and soft forms of Carl [Karl, JMH] Marx’s ideas. Critical theorists place the blame for all that’s wrong in the world at the feet of unjust social structures and systems. According to Critical Theory, these systems maintain power by truth claims.”
My response.
I found this rather strange. I never use the term egalitarian in my book. I do make a biblical case for the full participation of women in the “gathered church” (assembly). This is based upon the giftedness of women and that God distributes these gifts to both male and female for the common good of the assembly.
With respect to the assembly, Renew actually agrees with me in this regard with the one exception of preaching or “authoritative teaching” (as is claimed in earlier blogs). So, because I affirm the privilege of women to preach in the assembly or teach authoritatively, I have now “infuse[d] secular ideals . . . with Jesus’ teaching.” Moreover, I am, in some way, indebted to or profoundly influenced by Critical Theory and the new cultural Marxism.
I wonder how many people actually see cultural Marxism in Women Serving God. I don’t think it is there at all. I think I would need a bit more evidence from Renew that I have been shaped by such thinking and utilized it “without,” Renew charges, “acknowledging” the source of those ideas. I affirm the source of my ideas in the book. I get them from the Bible.
It seems, as I read Renew, it is cloaked under this assertion: “Servanthood seems somehow antithetical to clerical authority and hierarchy.”
The footnote to that statement refers to a section entitled “At Table with Jesus” (pp. 145-146).
Renew actually quotes part of a paragraph later in the blog. Here is the paragraph they quote.
“The table of Jesus is not about power and control. It is not about clerical authority. It is not about prerogatives and status. It is not about hierarchy. It is about mutual service and ministry. The table is where we serve each other.…unfortunately, the table—like leadership in the worship assembly—has become the place for hierarchical positioning.”
Renew characterizes “hierarchy” as a “human structure in which some people have more authority or power than others who are in submission to them.”
Renew affirms the “hierarchies” of “male headship in marriage (Eph. 5:3), a dad’s leadership in families (Eph. 6:4), and elderships in churches (1 Tim. 3:1ff).”
My “distaste toward hierarchy,” as Renew calls it, does not entail a distaste for spiritual authority and submission as Renew claims. I affirm that the Spirit’s gifts to the body carry authority with them and the response of others is to submit. At the same time, this does not institute a hierarchy that stratifies a community on the basis of race [Jew/Gentile], gender [male/female], economics [enslaved/free], ecclesiastical status [clerics] and cultural status [e.g., political or celebrity figures], but a community of mutual submission (Ephesians 5:21). Rather, the distributed gifts function within the community as expressions of spiritual authority and submission.
The question, then, is not whether there is authority and submission but rather the nature of that authority and submission. I contend it is not a matter of gender or clerical hierarchialism.
More specifically, my discussion of the table is directed at power, control, and clericalism that institute a status that ranks the participants at the Lord’s table in some way. I am describing what happens at Eucharist or at the Lord’s Supper. We are at the table together as mutual servants, not as ranked agents of power.
Is there gender hierarchy, much less clerical hierarchy, at the table of the Lord? May only men serve the table of the Lord? May only men officiate at the table of the Lord and speak the gospel at the table? May only clerics officiate at the table of the Lord?
I suggest that one of the great contributions of the Restoration Movement is the subversion of sacerdotal or clerical authority and the practice of the priesthood of believers (though only male in the assembly for much of the Restoration Movement). Alexander Campbell debated this point with N. L. Rice. Campbell (Campbell-Rice Debate, p.583). Of course, Campbell maintained the gender hierarchy (p. 584: “We never, by word or action, sanctioned either female or minors as baptists”). I assume–I would be happy to know for certain–Renew encourages women who disciple others to baptize them (which is a revision of the historic Christian position).
The gathered community comes together as a priesthood of believers without clerical distinctions. There is no hierarchy at the table of the Lord, either clerical or gendered. We sit at the table as fellow-servants, priests of God, members of the body of Christ, and without unique rank, status, or prerogatives.
When we turn the table of the Lord or the assembled gathering into a clerical and/or gendered expression of hierarchical stratification, then we undermine the meaning of the table and the quench the Spirit’s distribution of gifts within the body.
This is not Critical Theory or a new Marxism. It is a biblical theology of giftedness and the priesthood of all believers. As to specifics of male headship and elders as an expression of male hierarchy, I encourage readers to read the interactions in the previous blogs for a discussion of the texts and particulars.
To end, I am disturbed by the rhetoric present in the blog. “It requires scholars (like John Mark Hicks and Scot McKnight) and church leaders to re-interpret or explain away at least 8 male authority roles in Scripture…” Renew apparently thinks it is the “university elites, cultural influencers, and evangelical scholars like Hicks and McKnight” that come to conclusions that women may fully participate in the assemblies of God. This sets up the potential for a kind anti-intellectualism, which I know Renew does not want to cultivate. It does, it seems to me, play to a base with whom such rhetoric will resonate and create an automatic suspicion without hearing the evidence. In the same way, using the buzz words “Critical Theory” or “Marxism” functions as a kind of red flag (even red meat) that creates even more suspicion without hearing the evidence of the book.
More to the point, it is inaccurate. There are examples of such advocates who came to their own conclusion without university elites or scholars. For example, the early 19th century African American Jarena Lee (d. 1864) was the first female AME preacher. I could name more, such as Phoebe Palmer among others. In any event, such characterizations as “elites” is ad hominem; it is a rhetorical appeal to a base that mistrusts “university elites.” I think that unworthy of the history of our dialogue through these blogs. It participates more in the political partisan rhetoric of our time than it does in a biblical and theological discussion among people who both affirm the authority of Scripture.
Moreover, the charge that I have re-interpreted and explained away texts equally applies to Renew’s position. The soft complementarianism Renew affirms has to reinterpret 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 so as to permit women praying and prophesying in the public assembly, 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 as only applying to disorderly women or the function of weighing the speech of other prophets, and 1 Timothy 2:12 as only applying to the authority of elders (and perhaps preachers). Each of those is a re-interpretation of the historic position of the church which explains away the dimensions of the text that are inconsistent with a soft complementarianism–which is a new position in the history of the church, just as much as egalitarianism is.
Further, the charge that one needs a 1,000 page book to understand the Scriptures in order to be an egalitarian instead of reading the plain text of Scripture is equally true for the soft complementarian who has re-read Scripture through the explanation of books, articles, and blogs in order to maintain a soft complementarianism. One needs a 1,000 page book to defend such re-reading and explanations as well.
I trust readers who have ingested Renew’s blog will give a fair hearing to my book. If so, I have no ill will toward those who disagree with me.
Peace to my friends at Renew.