In this four-part series we are looking at some of the reasons why some egalitarians are likely to reconsider their commitment to women exercising authority in the church. This time around, we are looking at the pressure placed upon egalitarians by the gay lobby. The times, they are a changing, and yesterday’s radical advocate of equality and liberty (for fighting for women’s ordination) is today’s muddle-headed conservative champion of prejudice (for not approving homosexuality). One of the biggest challenges evangelical pro-women’s ordination advocates are going to experience is the growing move to approve of active homosexual lifestyles. (more…)
Category Archives: Church history
Complementarianism and egalitarianism (part 6): The future of egalitarianism (i)
Pastoral Ministry
This is the second section in Mark Baddeley’s series on complementarianism and egalitarianism. (Read parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, and 9.)
I have argued in a previous series that the disagreement over the role of women in the church has now reached a point where some structural separation at the institutional level is likely to work itself out. The debate is, by and large, over; leaders of the two movements are now moving on to explore the ramifications of their position for doctrine, the Christian life, and how church and ministry are conducted. This will mean institutions will become more monochrome as they take steps that make it hard for people to stay if they disagree. It will also mean that both groups may well find themselves diverging on related doctrines, as the fundamental principles at play behind the concrete debate over women’s ordination increasingly work themselves out to other areas of doctrine and practice. (more…)
William Wilberforce and productivity
Life
A Theology of Workflow is a top little article on Christians and productivity. It’s in Christianity Today, a magazine which has good stuff and not so good stuff, so read with care. The article itself is an excellent brief interview with Matt Perman, producer of the extremely useful What’s Best Next blog.
Rowland Taylor, Protestant martyr
Life, Sola Panel
This month, on October 6, it was 500 years since the birth of the Protestant martyr, Rowland Taylor, in 1510. From Northumberland, Rowland Taylor earned his law degree and then a doctorate from Cambridge in the 1530s. He also married Margaret, niece of William Tyndale (who translated the Bible into English, and for it, was burnt by Henry VIII in 1536). But as evangelical thought developed under Henry and flourished under Protestant King Edward VI, Taylor served each of the three great Bishops of the English Reformation: Latimer, Cranmer (who ordained him) and Ridley. From 1544 he was the Rector of Hadleigh in Suffolk, a post he remained in till his arrest. He also served more broadly as Archdeacon.
John Newton and ‘Amazing Grace’
Life, Sola Panel
It’s well known that John Newton was the captain of a slave trading ship who converted to Christ and eventually became an Anglican minister. Some people condense the whole story romantically by implying the horrific storm at sea that spurred Newton to first turn to God immediately led to a mature and complete repentance from his evil ways—such that he wrote ‘Amazing Grace’ as an expression of his gratefulness for being saved. But for some time after Newton’s storm-driven adoption of Christianity, he continued to make his living from the slave trade.
However, I believe it is accurate to say that soon after his conversion, he did begin to treat his slaves better. Yet it was only 32 years after his conversion—long after he’d given up seafaring and become an Anglican minister, and some years after he wrote ‘Amazing Grace’—that in 1780, Newton began to express regrets about his part in the slave trade. In 1785, he began to fight against slavery by speaking out against it, and he continued to do so until his death in 1807 (the year of the trade’s abolition).
Where have all the miracles gone?
Thought
Who would you regard as the more significant influence upon your Christian life and thinking: John Stott or Mark Driscoll?
In Sydney, where I live, nearly everyone over the age of 40 has only one answer to that question: through his books and articles, and his occasional visits over three decades, John Stott shaped a generation of Sydney evangelicals. If we add other names like JI Packer and Dick Lucas, it is uncontroversial to say that English evangelicalism has had a profound influence on the thinking, practice and ‘culture’ of Sydney evangelicalism over the past four decades—much more influence than, say, North American evangelicalism, even including the contributions of men like Billy Graham and Bill Hybels. (more…)
Stark treatment of the Crusades
Life
Revisionist history is probably as common as it is unethical. There are lessons to learn from the past, but if the past is distorted for the sake of present-day lessons, then it is no longer serving honest inquiry, but has become propaganda.
The destruction of the World Trade Centre by Muslim terrorists has spawned in the West a new fear of Islam, as well as a new desire to understand Islam. At the same time (and rather strangely and illogically), it has spawned new attacks upon Christianity. For example, the event in New York motivated Christopher Hitchens, one of the ‘new atheists’, to speak against religion as a damaging force in the world. So what began with some Muslim extremists was generalized to all religion, and then (it seems) particularized by a renewed and increased attack upon Christianity. Go figure.
Did the Apostle Paul invent Christianity?
The Apostle Paul been called everything from “the genius of hatred” for misrepresenting Jesus to the “second founder of Christianity”. But are these accusations justified? Paul Barnett investigates. (more…)
Countercultural rebellion
Life, Thought
Busting the myths about the Crusades
Review
Across the 12th and 13th centuries, the noblemen of Europe conducted a series of ‘Crusades’ in the Holy Land. Over six or seven centuries, this period history was largely neglected, but then the 20th century saw a resurgence of (negative) interest in these Crusades, which generated a number of myths that took over popular opinion.
I don’t know how many times over the years I have found myself flummoxed in evangelistic conversations when the question is thrown at me, “What about the Crusades?”
2010: A big year for evangelicals?
Life, Sola Panel
What major anniversaries does the evangelical world celebrate in 2010?
In recent years, I have stumbled upon the idea of using major anniversaries of key events or characters as windows into church history and often also windows into important topics or doctrines for Christians. In 2007, we had the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade, which led to a special focus on William Wilberforce. In 2008, we had the 250th anniversary of the death of Jonathan Edwards, perhaps the most influential theologian in North America. In 2009, we had the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin. (more…)
History of the ‘Great Ones’, and the Lie
Life
History ‘from above’ is apparently appealing to those who want to be better than others. It is a pity it is based upon a lie. (more…)
Sticking it to the man
Up front
It is almost a given today that history is oppressive. That is why there has been so much hoo-ha about how it has been taught over the last 30 years. Everybody wants their say: if you’re a woman, you need a woman’s history; if you’re gay, you need a queer history; if you’re black, you need a black history, and so on and so forth. The making of many histories is itself a reflection of the priorities and, on occasion, the pathologies of modern society. How long, one wonders, before we get a history written from the perspective of Frank Sinatra impersonators, ginger haired people and compulsive hand-washers? (more…)
Learning from The Pretenders, or The case for church history, Part 3
Thought
As a middle-aged git, an aspiring baldy man, someone as uncool as you can get and a rock dinosaur, much of my wisdom is drawn from song lyrics from bands that most people under the age of 35 have never heard of. Thus, in this final blog post, I want to make the case for church history with reference to a line in a song by The Pretenders (called, I believe, ‘Hymn to Her’): “Some things change, some stay the same”. It’s not too profound, I guess, but it’s a critical element in the historical task, given that the very possibility of history requires some analogy between the present world in which the historian lives and the past that is being studied. Were they identical, history would be pointless, for the past would be the present; were they utterly different, history would be impossible, for there would be no way of analyzing, categorizing or describing the past. No, for history to be possible, there must be things about my world that are the same as those in the past.
Sticking it to the man, or The case for church history, Part 2
Thought
It is almost a given today that history is oppressive. That is why there has been so much hoo-ha about how it is taught over the last 30 years. Everybody wants their say: if you’re a woman, you need a woman’s history; if you’re gay, you need a queer history; if you’re black, you need a black history, and so on and so forth. The making of many histories is itself a reflection of the priorities and, on occasion, the pathologies of modern society. How long, one wonders, before we get a history written from the perspective of Frank Sinatra impersonators, ginger haired people and compulsive hand-washers?