Tag: egalitarian

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Popular ‘Conservative’ Egalitarian Argues the ESV is a Scummy Translation on Account of…’Line Breaks’?

We recently told you about Beth Allison Barr, a prominent “conservative” egalitarian that thus far refused to affirm that the scriptures are inerrant, claiming that the term has been weaponized and she just won’t say it.

Barr is Professor of European Women, Medieval & Early Modern England, and Church History at Baylor University and author of the best-selling book The Making of Biblical Womanhood, which seeks to refute the complementarian position and challenge the notion of “biblical womanhood” that is in fact biblical.

Berean Patriot, who has done a stellar book review of her work that completely dismantles it from top to bottom, notes that she writes on pages 50-52:

Likewise, Ephesians 5 can be read as a resistance narrative to Roman patriarchy. Many scholars argue that Paul subordinates his entire discussion of the household codes under verse 21, ‘Be subject to one another out of reverence to Christ.‘  When this verse is read at the beginning of the Ephesians household codes, it changes everything.

In a talk given to Baylor University students on December 8th, 2021 promoting her book, Barr reiterates this:

The ESV is not a bad translation, it’s 90 to 95 percent the RSV. Seriously, all they did was change the RSV. And where they changed the RSV is what matters. And they changed it mostly in places regarding church leadership and women. That’s mostly it.

…And so you can even think, like in Ephesians 5, what the ESV does, is it separates the verse between, you know, ‘submit to each other as to the Lord’ and ‘Wives submit to your husband,’ and that’s an artificial separation, and it changes the meaning of the text.

Does it though? @WokePreacherTV shared a few examples of what these line breaks would look like, in order to uncover the massive, earth-shattering changes to the text the understanding that this gnostic knowledge brings:

So basically it nothing changes at all.

Thankfully, we had two commentators on Twitter who understand the game that is playing here:


Editor’s note: H/T to @WokePreacherTV, primary source extraordinaire.


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Prominent ‘Conservative’ Egalitarian Refuses to Affirm Inerrancy

Denny Burk found himself in a bit of a verbal scrap with Beth Allison Barr over the use (and perhaps the concept) of Innerancy, with Burke pushing for her to affirm it, and Barr affirming everything but.

Barr is Professor of European Women, Medieval & Early Modern England, and Church History Baylor University and author of the best-selling book The Making of Biblical Womanhood, which seeks to refute the complementarian position and challenge the notion of ‘biblical womanhood’ is in fact biblical.

For her part, she argues that the term ‘inerrancy” has been ‘weaponized’ and therefore refuses to affirm it, which is a strange take, given that lots of things in scripture have been weaponized at one point or another, and yet are still held to.

Rather than trying to assuage his concerns and saying something like ‘I believe in the inerrancy, but I prefer to use other words that are equally strong’, Barr will not affirm it for the life of her, squirmingly wanting to affirm a host of good and similar/ peripheral points, but not the one that matters.

It’s reminiscent of a Oneness Pentecostal trying to argue that he believes affirms that Jesus is the savior and the son of God, while refusing to comment on Christ’s pre-existence and dodging questions about the Athanasian Creed.

As Burk doggedly holds her feet to the fire, he doesn’t let go until the skin sizzles and her toes burst like sausages.

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Aimee Byrd and the Egalitarians Explain Their Plan To Smuggle in Women Pastors

(Denny Burk) Mike Bird and Devi Abraham recently interviewed authors Kristin DuMez, Beth Allison Barr, and Aimee Byrd (see video below). All three of these authors have written books condemning complementarianism. Both DuMez and Barr are convinced egalitarians. While I have never heard Byrd own that label, she has said in her book that she is not a complementarian. In any case, it’s difficult to detect any daylight between Byrd’s position and that of the two egalitarians in this interview. They all three are very much opposed to complementarian theology, which is denigrated as abusive patriarchy in this interview.

One thing that they all three seem to agree on is the need for women to take on more teaching and leadership positions over men in churches. On this point, there was one revealing moment at the end of the interview that I think complementarians would do well to take note of. Devi Abraham asks the authors what one thing needs to change in evangelical churches, and Beth Allison Barr answers first with this:

You know, I would like for women to be able to teach Sunday School… In order for women to be accepted in leadership roles, we’ve got to put them in leadership roles… Lots of men have this story that their minds actually weren’t changed by what they read. Their minds were changed by hearing women. And hearing women teach and realizing they could be edified, that they could grow spiritually from hearing a woman.

So I would really like for more evangelical churches to put women in adult leadership roles… So I’m not expecting pastorate immediately. Everything takes time. But just put them in more spaces where they actually can use these gifts. Don’t confine them only to women’s ministry and to children’s ministry and to the dream team in the kitchen. Put them out in leadership roles… Let women teach the Bible. Let them teach actual theology and good stuff. And let’s see them do it… If I could change one thing, I would put more women in adult Sunday School and teaching places in churches.

Notice that the endgame for…

To continue reading and see the video, click here.

Editor’s Note. This article was written by Denny Burk and published at DennyBurk.com. Title changed by Protestia.

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Beth Moore Publicly Apologizes for Supporting Complementarianism, Calls it ‘Doctrine of Man’

It’s nice of her to finally come out and say it. Despite enduring abuse for years by critics for saying we were too hard on Beth Moore – that we were ascribing false beliefs to her when we kept on insisting she is an egalitarian who believes women ought to preach – and that we were slanderers for questioning her commitment to this biblical doctrine – the “VexUs from Texas” took to Twitter to announce that she does not consider different beliefs on women preaching to be an issue of biblical inerrancy and authority any longer, called complementarianism a “doctrine of man,” and apologized for elevating it to the position she had, begging for forgiveness.

This is not a surprise for us, as we have been calling our shots and documenting this since the beginning. For years she has been making comments on social media congratulating other women when she hears they are preaching, encouraging them to pursue the pulpit, and informing them that she’ll pray they deliver a holy-spirit empowered sermon. This is the most blatant and clearest comment yet on where her mind is with this, though even now she continues to pull her punches.

In a follow-up interview with RNS, Moore continued to hedge her bets for Russell Moore and men like him, giving them plausible deniability and a pathway to defend her by saying, to the question of whether she was egalitarian or complementarianism:

I’m not going to be pushed into either category right now because that’s not my point. My point is that it has taken on the importance of a first-tier doctrine.

Cue Russell Moore’s future retort: “Nowhere did Beth say she waaaaaaasn’t a complementarian, only that she doesn’t believe we should elevate it to the same importance as the doctrine of the Trinity. We can all agree on that, can’t we?”

She did likewise with a tweet this morning, admonishing people for reading into her tweet rather than reading it.

With this new revelation, Moore will continue her trend of telling us what she really believes, now that she is free of the restrictive shackles of the Southern Baptist Convention and the Baptist Faith and Message. What she’ll be saying publicly and unambiguously in the next two years is what she’s been saying coyly and piecemeal for the last ten.