Misogynists Urged to Up Their Game

According to misogynistic pastors like Russell Moore and John Piper, “complementarians” just aren’t pushing women down enough.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (ABP) – A movement in evangelical Christianity that promotes male headship and wifely submission in marriage faces competition today not from radical feminists but rather believers who are “complementarian” in name only, according to a panel at a recent pastor’s conference.

“What I fear is that we have many people in evangelicalism who can check off ‘complementarian’ on a box but who really aren’t living out complementarian lives,” Russell Moore, dean of the School of Theology and senior vice president for academic administration at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said during the April 10-12 Together for the Gospel Conference in Louisville, Ky.

Rest easy, those of you who think that women are equal, John Piper doesn’t think you’re going to Hell. Probably.

“I don’t think you have to be a complementarian to be saved,” said John Piper, pastor for preaching and vision at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis/St. Paul. “So it’s not essential at that level, but as soon as you move beneath that level and ask what are the implications of not following through with what Ephesians 5 seems to say or First Timothy 2 seems to say — those would be the classic marriage church texts — the implications hermeneutically for the gospel are significant.”

Piper said “the kind of gymnastics” required to escape such texts chart a direction of biblical interpretation so that “sooner or later you are going to get the gospel wrong.”

Piper said egalitarianism — the view that roles described for men and women in the Bible are not God’s design but reflect the culture of that era — makes senseless Paul’s use of the marriage relationship as a witness to that of Christ and the church. He also said that churches not led by “strong male proclaimers and leaders” sooner or later will “malfunction along the way.”

Here’s hoping the John and Russell and other of their tribe will show up to hear from the variety of WOMEN church planters that we’ve got speaking at next week’s conference.