J.D. Greear Suggests Complementarianism Battles are Alienating Women: The Faithful Sisters Respond
Days ago, former Southern Baptist Convention president J.D. Greear wrote a widely panned article where he gave lip service to complementarianism while at the same time suggesting the SBC do nothing to address what amounts to be third-wave feminism throughout its churches. In a follow-up tweet, he expressed concern that the war being waged about lady pastrixes creeping into the SBC is “alienating firmly complementarian women” who may be less likely to serve in the church if they feel they are being turned into a battleground.
Thankfully, a host of faithful sisters quickly offered up a rebuttal to Greear, and we will let them speak for themselves:
Yea and Amen.
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These ladies are spot-on 100% correct. It is ultimately the failure of spineless, cowardly, faithless men, the likes of JD Greear, who fail to lead, fail to stand up and speak the truth, and fail to fulfill their duty and responsibilities to the Lord.
The commandments of God are not grievous!
Stand on that truth, you spineless cowards, and speak it. Quit apologizing for God’s word!
The Gospel is divisive. The truth is divisive. As Jesus said He came not to bring peace but the sword. (Matt. 10:34)
It is not our concern who may be offended or alienated by the truth. That’s God’s concern. It is not a question we should be asking. It shouldn’t even enter our minds. Our job is to speak it. The results are up to the Lord.
In the end, many will face the ultimate rejection, ultimate alienation, ultimate marginalization. That’s the truth. And failure to speak it is to contribute to and encourage that eternal fate.
A Pastor, of all people, should be more concerned about who’s going to be alienated for eternity.
Above all that is the fact that service to the Lord is not confined to service in the Baptist church. Dispense with the churchianity. The body of Christ is not confined to that building, or to any organization of mankind.
That’s the first mistake.
You don’t know how much one is serving the Lord, solely based on whether or not they participate in activities related to your organization and your buildings with steeples, how many are sitting in the pews, or anything else that you yourself have contrived. Your plans don’t matter. God’s plans are what matter. The greatest service of all is to live it every minute of every day. Talk is cheap. Those you think aren’t serving, may be serving more than you yourself ever did. You don’t know.
I’ve noticed that Complementarians tend to undermine their stated convictions by apologizing to women every time the roles of women are brought up. The way that men preach and teach is as important as what they preach. George Whitefield was often panned by his critics for being an “enthusiast” but in reality all he was doing was “speaking of things real as if they were real” instead “speaking of things real as if they were imaginary”. In the academic world, communication theorists observe that the way we send and receive information is as important as the information itself; in other words: “the medium is the message”. Aligning the medium and message can be an issue in all areas of Christianity but I believe that it is particularly difficult when it comes to women’s roles for the following reasons:
1) We live in a thoroughly feminized society that absolutely influences us. In the same way a fish does not know it’s wet, we don’t realize how our thoughts are shaped by feminism. Being conservative, evangelical, pro-life, or even Complementarian does not make one immune from feminist thinking. With all due respect to the staff writer, I would suggest not using the first-second-third “waves” to qualify feminism because it implies that that the first two waves were “good feminism” and feminism became “bad feminism” during the third wave. Although waves can indicate the chronology of modern feminism which started at the Seneca Falls convention in 1848, they mislead people into thinking that there is an essential difference in the DNA of feminism between then and now. Everything that we associate with “third-wave feminism” such as career women neglecting motherhood, favoring women in child custody disputes, and not making distinctions in the way male and female children are raised were all causes championed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the 1800’s.
2) The fear of women has replaced the fear of God in the sense that no decision or action can made until we first determine how it will affect the women. Who’s wrath do you think J.D. Greear is afraid of incurring? I can guarantee you it isn’t God’s.
3) It is human nature to “what if?” our way out of everything our flesh doesn’t like. God (not man) has given commands to women about what they should do and how they should behave. These stand on their own and do not have contingencies. In the same way Christians will come up with an endless list of hypotheticals to avoid the plain commands and principles of Romans 13, we come up with an endless list of hypotheticals to avoid plain commands and principles regarding women.
4) The way in which conservatives refuse to give any authority to men (because according to the Duluth model all male authority is abusive) then turn around and make men responsible for not only their own shortcomings but the shortcomings of women. Despite the fact this requires deft mental gymnastics there is no shortage of conservatives who say things along the lines of: “the only reason women do [insert thing here] is because of something men did(n’t) do.” If a woman becomes a pastor, conservatives will lament the fact she “had to do it” because men “aren’t stepping up”. If a woman is single in her 30’s it’s not because she frittered her youth away being a strong and independent career woman, it’s because men are “too weak” and “intimidated” by her intelligence and her masters degree. (This is off topic but if you listen to enough marriage/relationship sermons, you start to get the impression they’re trying to talk men out of getting married). If there’s a single mother, it’s not because she’s promiscuous, it’s because men “are afraid of commitment”.
This reminds me of the time John MacArthur told Beth Moore to “go home” and the amount of criticism he received, not from liberal Julie Roys type people, but from self-professed Complementarians who didn’t like his “tone” (which basically boils down to he didn’t make God’s word sound like a command rather than a suggestion). It’s everyone’s job to “encourage one another, and build up one another” and comments like JD’s are not encouraging to the men and women that are unambiguously taking a very unpopular stand on this issue.
Well said, The Peter.
I’d add that “complementarianism” itself is also part of the problem in that it wrongly restricts male headship to the home and the church. See scripture on the curse of being ruled by women, for example.
Okay.
I’ll be rude.
Matt was BTFO’ed. And deservedly so. He is a spineless weasel that has no fear of God
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Complementarianism is simply what the scriptures teach and that is all.