Timothy George has an article in the most recent issue of First Things that is a must-read for anyone interested in the goings-on of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). The article is aptly titled “Southern Baptists after the Revolution,†as it discusses new currents that have been flowing through SBC life since the conservatives secured control of the convention in the 1990’s.The big story coming out the SBC’s annual meeting this past summer was the election of dark-horse candidate Frank Page to the presidency of the denomination. Page’s election marked only the second time since 1979 that a person has won the presidency who was…
-
-
Evangelical Gender Wars and the Authority of the Bible
In years past, the gender debates among evangelicals have focused largely on the interpretation of key biblical texts. Complementarians have presented their interpretation of of the Bible’s teaching, and Egalitarians have presented theirs.In recent years, however, a new line of argument has been emerging among those of an egalitarian bent. According to a recent book review by S. M. Hutchens in Touchstone magazine, this new approach appears in John G. Stackhouse’s 2005 book Finally Feminist: A Pragmatic Christian Understanding of Gender. Hutchens writes:
-
Stained-Glass Ceiling for Women as Pastors?
A recent article in the New York Times claims that even in more mainline denominations that ordain women as pastors, very few women are being called to pastor larger churches. Women now make up 51 percent of the students in divinity school. But in the mainline Protestant churches that have been ordaining women for decades, women account for only a small percentage — about 3 percent, according to one survey by a professor at Duke University — of pastors who lead large congregations, those with average Sunday attendance over 350 (source). So why is it that so few egalitarian/feminist churches actually employ women as lead pastors? Here’s my theory. God…
-
Justin Taylor on the Emerging Church
I get asked all the time, “What is the emerging church?†Usually when this happens, what they want is just a quick definition of what it is and whether or not they should be for it or agin’ it. So I give them my thumb-nail definition and a brief evaluation and critique of the movement.But I have one more resource to give to them, now that Justin Taylor has written his own brief definition and evaluation of the emerging church. His short essay, “An Emerging Church Primer,†is a part of the most recent 9Marks Newsletter, and it is a helpful introduction to a very complicated and diverse movement. Justin…
-
Jada Bown Swanson: A “Plan C†Testimony
Introductory Note from Denny: If “Plan A†is the effective use of contraceptives and “Plan B†is the use of a drug that has the potential to cause the miscarriage of an unborn baby, then “Plan C†would be yet another way that one might deal with an unplanned pregnancy. An old friend of mine from college left an extended comment on my previous post “Propaganda and ‘Plan B.’†In that comment, Jada Bown Swanson shares her own “Plan C†testimony, which she has given me permission to share with all of you. What follows is Jada’s story in her own words. Thank you, Jada, for your story with us.…
-
Embryonic Stem-Cell Research: Okay after All?
Today’s New York Times reports that “Biologists have developed a technique for establishing colonies of human embryonic stem cells from an early human embryo without destroying it. This method, if confirmed in other laboratories, would seem to remove the principal objection to the research†(source).If this article is any indication, I think the proponents of this research have yet to grasp the moral implications of experimenting on embryonic humans. While we can be thankful that this new technigue doesn’t kill the embryo, there still remains the obvious ethical problem of using human beings for spare parts. Moreover, this new technique doesn’t even address the widespread practice of in vitro fertilization…
-
Stanley Hauerwas: Why So Asinine?
I know Stanley Hauerwas is a provocateur who is often given to hyperbole, but I am having real trouble with something that he said at the 2003 Emergent Convention. The recording of the lecture is the latest download from the Emergent Village podast. I won’t attempt to critique the entire talk, but there was one sentence that jumped out to me: To suggest that hope in afterlife is a way to deal with death is about as stupid as suggesting we ought to have children because they’re our hope in our future (Stanley Hauerwas, 2003 Emergent Convention).
-
Southern Baptist Mistake
Pastor Mark Dever writes that Southern Baptists made a huge mistake at their convention in Greensboro, South Carolina when they refused to consider a resolution calling for intergrity in church membership. He writes: When a question was raised about the propriety of allowing those who are able to attend church, but who never do to remain members of our churches, the answer was given that this was in order to keep the names as “prospectsâ€. Presumably, the intention is that our prior contact with them gives us an excuse for contacting them personally. . . For me to allow my local congregation to continue on, with people in membership regularly…
-
Review of Richard Bauckham’s The Theology of the Book of Revelation
Rudolf Bultmann famously derided the biblical book of Revelation as “weakly Christianized Judaism” (Theology of the New Testament, 2:175). But, as Richard Bauckham points out, this phrase “betrays the influence of the tendency of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Christianity to deny its Jewish roots. It makes the extraordinary suggestion that only what is not Jewish is really Christian and that Christianity somehow came into being by negating Judaism. We should now be able to recognize . . . the unconscious tendency to anti-Semitism in this approach” (pp. 147-48). The anti-Semitic approach is not the one that Bauckham himself follows in his helpful little book The Theology of the Book of…
-
Who Needs Apologetics When You Have Chick Tracts?
Who needs apologetics when you have Jack Chick’s Tracts at your disposal?Perhaps you have never heard of these little publications, but they are fascinating little pieces of literature. Chick Tracts are miniature “gospel†comic books. I first came across these tracts when I was in high school, and they immediately piqued my interest because they had a knack for the sensational–even depicting people burning in hell who had rejected Christ. I have since come to the conclusion that the best use of these little booklets is to set them forth as illustrations of how not to share the gospel. For this reason, I still use one of Chick’s tracts every…