…complementarity is not fundamentally about what opportunities women must forgo, but what responsibilities men must take up.
— Dr. Jason K. Allen, President of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
In Don’t tell women no I quoted Dr. Jason Allen at the CBMW explaining that our problem today is a lack of male leadership:
Rosin has a point, and it is an alarming one. While we recognize the challenges such statistics indicate for a society, as Christians our primary concern is not the country or the culture—it is the home and the church. If the latter are healthy, the former will be healthier.
Many churches are bereft of male leadership, and many congregations exist in a settled fog over what biblical manhood should look like.
Back in March I highlighted the Midwestern Seminary article by Lore Ferguson Wilbert complaining in The Problem With Our Complementarianism that church leaders are “maddeningly male”:
In the 35 years or so since then, liberal churches grew more liberal and the conservative—heaven help us. McQuinn uses the term androcentrism to describe the shift in neo-reformed environments in particular. It means being dominated by or emphasizing masculine interests or a masculine point of view. It wasn’t that the theology was all wrong, it was that the voices of church leaders were maddeningly male, through the male perspective, with male interests paramount, and evaluated by males.
Imagine with me for a moment a room of chimps all chimping about how to be a better room of chimps and pandas.
However, until today I didn’t realize the full connection between the two:
While Dr. Allen is making his name as a complementarian complaining that the church lacks male voices because men (for some mysterious reason) aren’t stepping up and leading, the seminary he is president of is publishing feminist articles on how to improve complementarian churches by replacing male leaders with female leaders.
This is the same fantasy land template complementarians use when it comes to women in the military. They pretend that women aren’t really coveting and forcing their way into men’s roles; instead, they claim that men are forcing women to usurp men’s roles by being unwilling to lead (or fight). The real lack of leadership of course is complementarian men like Dr. Allen being unwilling to say no to rebellious women. Leading by example (saying no to women) is difficult and feels bad, while telling other men the problem is their fault is easy and feels heroic.
The connections between the CBMW and Midwestern don’t end with Dr. Allen. CBMW President Owen Strachan is a professor at the seminary:
Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary President Jason Allen announced that Owen Strachan will join the institution’s faculty on July 1, as associate professor of Christian Theology and as director of a forthcoming center for theology and culture.
This also can’t be a case where the leadership simply isn’t aware of the feminists running amok lower down in their organization. President Strachan has clearly gotten the message Wilbert and her complementarian feminist allies are sending, and he is eager to assure them that he has heard them and the CBMW is working diligently to promote diversity and inclusion.
Strachan offers four reasons readers should attend the 2016 CBMW T4G pre-conference. Reason number one is that the conference features both men and women, and they will focus on the “absolute iron-clad” need for more women teaching in the church:
1. You will see a group of men and women who stand on truth. The speakers at the CBMW T4G pre-conference are not ashamed of God and his Word. They have staked their lives on it. It can be dispiriting to live in a day and age when the Word of God is reviled, but at our sessions, you’ll be encouraged, edified, and trained by gospel proclamation that touches on every aspect of our lives. You’ll hear about many things, including some that we’ve identified as areas that we need to develop further: singleness, the sexualization of human identity, the fatherhood of God, the absolute iron-clad necessity of training women teachers in the church (see Titus 2!), and much more. We’ll cover the majors, in sum, but we’ll also cover less-discussed matters that we’ve heard people asking us to address.
Note the implicit claim that Titus 2 means that women must have formal teaching and leadership roles, despite the fact that the Scripture referenced focuses on informal teaching while the women in the CBMW are not only preachers in all but name but they teach the opposite of what Titus 2 says women should teach. Once the CBMW founders convinced themselves that 1 Tim 2:11-15 doesn’t mean what Christians thought it meant for 2,000 years, the stage was set for women’s ministries to become mandatory; Strachan wants to assure the feminist complementarians that he heard them and is working to reduce the number of chimps chimping.
Reason #2 is standard boiler plate complementarianism, and reason #3 is SJW boiler plate:
2. You will hear a joyful celebration of God’s design…
3. You will see a diverse movement that stretches all over the world…
The fourth and final reason Strachan offers is (again) that the conference will feature women:
4. You will be blessed by the voices of numerous women…
However, the conference isn’t only about women. Dr. Allen will be giving a lecture about men titled:
Complementarity and the Disappearance of Men
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