Women – don’t look around when you’re singing!

Reply from Shirley Taylor of “bWe Baptist Women for Equality’s Blog”

Shirley Taylor lives and blogs within the Southern Baptist tradition.  Her stories of how women are theologically minimised and abused are an eye-opener.

Isn’t it intriguing how the different “Bible-based” traditions are concerned about different things? How astounding that the Church of Christ (USA) tells women that they shouldn’t turn their heads when singing in church for fear of preaching to men nearby.  Such practice and theology has its own internal coherence but they have lost touch with their women and the broader world.  What’s the ever-present message to women when they have to avert their eyes when singing their faith?  The practice sounds like one of the building blocks of domestic violence – if women can’t sing to men, they certainly can’t have their own voice at home.

Meanwhile the LCA’s version of repressing women’s ordination includes that:

• women’s ordination will threaten our unity with the Catholic Church.  There is a certain irony in this.
• women’s ordination is inspired by the second century Gnostic sect (Pr Greg Lockwood)
• we ask what the angels think about women’s ordination.. (Pr Frazer Pearce)  (Current edition of Together)

It would be interesting to compare and contrast the issues that different fundamentalist denominations have with women’s ordination. So much for them being Bible-based.

Shirley’s blog is found here:  http://bwebaptistwomenforequality.wordpress.com/

 

“Christianity has a male feel about it” – John Piper

John Piper

Look at the structure of our churches and you will agree that Christianity has a male feel about it.

John Piper, seen by some as a “pioneer” of the New Calvinism, suggests that this is the way it was meant to be. Pastors Semmler, Kleinig and Pfeiffer would concur.  They may be right in noticing the male domination within Christianity, but they are wrong in telling us that it should always be.

Here’s the language that Piper uses (reported by Shirley Taylor in bWe Baptist Women for Equality’s Blog)

It’s the feel of a great, majestic God, who by his redeeming work in Jesus Christ, inclines men to take humble, Christ-exalting initiative, and inclines women to come alongside the men with joyful support, intelligent helpfulness, and fruitful partnership in the work.

Shirley Tayor responds in her post:

What nonsense.

What is the humble, Christ-exalting initiative that men take?  There is nothing humble about telling women that men are the big he-man leaders – like Christ, no less – while the women are their sideline helpers. That is humble? Admitting that women are equal would be humble leadership, but he is not willing to be that Christ-like.

Read more.

In referring to another exclusive ministry group, Shirley Taylor comments,

If they had been studying the Bible, and read what what on Jesus’ mind as we see in the New Testament, they would have seen that masculinity and femininity was not Jesus’ concerns.  His concern was how people mocked God by being overly pious when in their hearts they were doing something else, and how they treated their fellow man, and their fellow women.

Those who lead the resistance to women’s ministry, in their piety and devotion, have created a huge, castle-like graven image with theology that reflects nothing of Jesus’ embrace of the powerless, marginalised and oppressed, including women.  Wafting down from the castle we hear the new self-serving emphasis on ‘fatherhood’, ‘male God’, ‘Catholic unity’.

Such an approach does nothing to strengthen Lutheran unity. In fact, by Church leadership refusing a fair discussion towards women’s ordination, supporters are forced to consider other options.

Related articles

• John Piper: God Gave Christianity a ‘Masculine Feel’ vs “God Has Chosen to Liken Himself to a Female and We Are the Fruit of His Womb” (thereformedtraveler.wordpress.com)
• On John Piper’s “Masculine Christianity” (albw51.wordpress.com)
• Piper’s God is right to slaughter women and children (gentlewisdom.org)