1st Feline Battalion

04/27/2007: Today, Southern Seminary President Al Mohler highlights exactly what The Church is facing. What is happening among mainline denominations awaits evangelicals unless they repudiate feminism and make a more concerted return to Biblical Christianity.

Where Mohler is absolutely correct, he doesn’t go far enough. He does a fine job of highlighting the absurdities in Episcopalian and Presbyterrorist ranks, but fails to address the tacit acceptance of feminist theology among evangelical conservatives. While many will point to women ministers as evidence of this–and much of that criticism has merit–there are other elements even more insidious that evangelicals have accepted.

You want examples?

• Gender-neutralizing the Scriptures (especially with references to God)

• Promotion of feminized worship. (Music is high on love–in the touchy-feely sense–but rarely addresses God’s creation, sovreignty, power, righteousness)

• Taking very soft lines with respect to the marital covenant and the gender roles within that covenant. Divorce and remarriage are as rampant among evangelicals as among non-believers. Under the guise of “empowering women”, many ministers are helping undermine the Biblical design for marriage by fomenting feminist rebellion in Christian homes.

Conservative denominations–such as the Southern Baptist Convention–are in grave danger of falling into these traps unless the false doctrine of feminist theology is nipped in the bud.

Toward that end, I suggest the following (note: this is a high-level list, and not an exhaustive one):

1. Emphasize the soveregnty of God the Father and Jesus Christ the Son. This can be done by emphasizing the continuity between the Old Testament (which emphasizes the Lord of Hosts, King of Kings, and Sovereign Lord) with the New. While the left will emphasize the genderless God–by pointing out that God is Spirit–they also forget that, from a relational standpoint, God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This does not mean, as some on the left ask rhetorically, that God has a penis. It means, however, that God relates to us as an ideal father ought to relate to his children. This also means that–as a the ideal father has authority in the home, God has all authority over our lives. It is impossible to call God father without calling Him Lord. The two go hand-in-hand.
2. That should serve as a springboard for a revisitation of the Church approach to marriage. That has become way too lax, as unequal yokes–with believers KNOWINGLY marrying non-believers–is an epidemic, as is the dynamic of equally-yoked Christians getting divorces. Worse yet, the number of such divorcees getting remarried–all with the blessing of the Church–is enough to make one sick. Any pastor who knowingly marries a believer with a non-believer should be defrocked. Similarly, pastors ought to take a harder line against divorce, strongly discouraging it 99% of the time, and providing sobering–blistering–counsel with respect to remarriage.
3. For those who are getting married, pastors should be very brutal in counseling, emphasizing the Biblical responsibilities for husband and wife, and pointing out that each one’s responsibility does not rest on the other fulfilling theirs. (In other words, it is the husband’s job to “love his wife as Christ loves the church” irrespective of whether she “submits to her husband as to the Lord.” Similarly, the wife must understand that her call to submission is not contingent on his providing perfect love. We are all fallen, and embracing the marriage covenant means for better or worse.

Some will call this misogynistic, but I’m too old to care what anyone says.

I do know this, however: the Bible is on my side on this matter.