While complementarians sacralize the subjugation of women, perhaps the strongest obstacles to change are the priorities of egalitarians.
We’ve witnessed the muscle of complementarian men weaponizing the Bible and wielding the gospel to fortify their authority and power in the church and at home. And much ink has rightly been spilled dealing with their misogyny. But what if the bigger problem is that egalitarians are failing to take the dignity of women seriously enough?
Rick Pidcock
In his interview on “The Russell Moore Show,” Rick Warren has strong words for the complementarians who voted to remove Saddleback Church from the Southern Baptist Convention due to its hiring a woman as one of its teaching pastors.
Warren accuses the SBC of ignoring abuse against women while taking action against women having too much of a voice as a matter of convenience for men. He claims the SBC is “weaponizing” its confession and “starting an inquisition.” With “half the church sitting on the bench,” Warren says, “millions of godly Southern Baptist women” are having their “gifts and leadership skills … stymied.”
He even goes so far as to bring race into the conversation. “Black Baptist churches have been ordaining women as bishops, as pastors, as prophets, as apostles, as elders, as deaconesses. If this is true, the SBC is holding up a sign that says, ‘All Black churches look elsewhere.’”
Warren points to the Great Commission, the outpouring of the Spirit on men and women preaching at Pentecost and to Jesus’ choice of a woman to preach to the apostles after the resurrection as his Scriptural support for women being allowed to preach. Thus, he concludes that those who fail to utilize women have a problem with the Great Commission. And he accuses John MacArthur of skipping over verses he doesn’t like.
“Egalitarians and women everywhere should be thankful for these words from Warren.”
Egalitarians and women everywhere should be thankful for these words from Warren. He doesn’t have to confront the SBC, but he is standing up for women and for the pastors who have reached out to him in fear of getting kicked out of the SBC for affirming women.
A matter of disagreement
Warren says the conversation is about “the roles of women.” But if Jesus called all his followers to teach and baptize, and if complementarian men are telling women they can’t do either simply because they are women, then they are implying women are less than fully human followers of Jesus.
Thus, the conversation goes much deeper than “the roles of women.” It is ultimately about the dignity of women.
Despite the strength of Warren’s language affirming women as being commissioned to teach and baptize, he falls into the same trap as many egalitarians speaking to conservative contexts by softening his language as a matter of interpretation and as an issue of secondary importance that good, godly Christians can disagree on.
“You mean, wait a minute, we can disagree over the atonement? We can disagree over election? And we can disagree over dispensationalism? We can disagree over the second coming? We can disagree over the nature of sin? But we can’t disagree over what you name your staff?” Warren asked Moore.
Suddenly, his affirmation of the dignity of women is now a matter of disagreement. Instead of obeying Jesus in the Great Commission, the dignity of women is framed as “what you name your staff.”
Warren added: “This is my interpretation. I have to say with humility, it doesn’t bother me if you disagree with me.”
“Is the dignity of women something we should give space for disagreement on?”
To be fair, it is refreshing to hear a conservative evangelical man model humility by giving space for disagreement. But is the dignity of women something we should give space for disagreement on? Shouldn’t it bother us when women are dehumanized?
Perhaps Warren’s newfound ethic of affirming women in ministry is based on his interpretation of the Great Commission, Pentecost and the actions of Jesus after the resurrection. But if millions of godly Southern Baptist women are being stymied and Black churches are being told to look elsewhere, then what room is there for disagreement, and how could we not be deeply bothered?
Primary, secondary and tertiary issues
Like many conservative evangelicals, Warren divides issues into three main categories.
He says the primary issues are those necessary for salvation. “You gotta have this or you’re not saved,” he explains. “A hundred years ago, I would’ve called myself a fundamentalist, because in the 1920s, it meant you hold the historic doctrines of the church, the blood atonement of Christ, the authority of Scripture, all the basic cardinal doctrines of evangelical Protestantism.”
Warren goes on to identify secondary-level issues as doctrinal differences such as the nature and extent of the atonement. He quotes Al Mohler saying of Calvinism — which Mohler embraces and Warren does not — “That might split a church, but even that shouldn’t split a denomination.”
Warren says the third level of importance includes “matters of preference, which are … just so minor they’re like, ‘Well you believe this color or I believe that color or drinking or not drinking or whatever.’”
And where do women’s roles fall into this hierarchy? Warren explains: “This issue, women’s role, it’s not a primary issue because it doesn’t have to do with salvation. It is a secondary issue. And if Al is correct, according to his triage, it might split a church, but it shouldn’t split a denomination.”
Even though Warren’s church allows for women to preach, he says, “In our church, we’ve decided that the senior pastor is to be a man, a married man of one wife. But I wouldn’t kick somebody out over that. I think that’s again a secondary issue.”
“He’s valuing the dignity of women as just above the color of the carpet and on par with whether or not one is a Calvinist.”
Despite Warren’s strong language affirming women, by calling it a secondary issue he’s valuing the dignity of women as just above the color of the carpet and on par with whether or not one is a Calvinist.
By framing the conversation as “women’s roles,” and “what you name your staff,” and by lowering it to the realm of theological speculation worth disagreeing about, Warren undercuts the strength of his argument that a few minutes before was based on the most formative passages for the church in Scripture.
The primacy of the love-ethic of Jesus
Prioritizing theological concepts over ethical behaviors is something the church has struggled with for many years. And perhaps the Black churches that the SBC’s complementarian inquisition excludes may have something worth listening to here.
In 1928, Howard Thurman wrote in The Task of the Negro Ministry, “Christianity in America has tended in its more practical bearing to be more theological than ethical. … It may be a very strengthening exercise to be concerned about the Trinity and the Apostle’s Creed but a precise theological statement of what is involved in these may make no ethical demands upon the one who states it.”
A decade later, Thurman wrote in Mysticism and Social Change: “The tendency is to let the ethical insight of love remain transcendent in one’s relationships, but never eminent in them.”
What Thurman understands is that to Jesus, the primary issue of first importance isn’t whether you hold to correct theology, but whether or not you love your neighbor as yourself.
Conservative evangelicals, including Warren, have built a system where affirming the concept of the virgin birth is a primary issue of first importance, but valuing the dignity of women is a secondary issue of lesser importance. Yet however important evangelicals may believe the virgin birth to be, Jesus never said believing in a concept was more important than how we treat people. He said to love your neighbor as yourself.
“If they loved women as themselves, they would celebrate women being called and commissioned as men are.”
Complementarian men refuse to love women as themselves because they forbid women from stepping into their calling and commissioning as followers of Jesus — simply because they aren’t men. If they loved women as themselves, they would celebrate women being called and commissioned as men are.
What is the Great Commission about?
Part of the disconnection in Warren’s reasoning has to do with whether the Great Commission has a theological or an ethical goal. Warren says the devaluing of women in the SBC is so severe that he’s concerned, “we’ll never fulfill the Great Commission with half of the church sitting on the bench.”
Because Warren sees theological affirmation about salvation issues as primary, his lens for pursuing the Great Commission is about getting others to agree with evangelical beliefs about salvation issues.
But what if the Great Commission isn’t about concepts pertaining to another world? What if the Great Commission of Jesus is about living out the Great Commandment of Jesus in this world?
Wendell Griffen said in an interview: “If your theology is wrong, you read the Great Commission as a license to go proselytize, as opposed to a mandate to do love and justice, and to model love and justice, and to call on the society and the world to be instruments of love and justice.”
What is worth splitting a denomination?
Front and center in Warren’s defense against the complementarian inquisition is whether or not women in ministry is worth splitting a denomination over. His belief is that secondary issues are not worthy of such division.
Warren’s commitment to viewing the Great Commission through a lens of affirming theological concepts rather than through living out the love-ethic of Jesus leads him to categorize affirming women as a secondary issue that may be worth splitting a church over, but not a denomination over.
But he also admits that “millions of Southern Baptist women, their talent and their spiritual gifts are being wasted.”
Warren should be applauded for the stance he is taking against the complementarian inquisition of the SBC. But for women to be valued and loved as Jesus valued and loved them, we need to stop treating the dignity of women as a secondary issue good Christians can disagree on.
Instead, we need to interpret the Great Commission through the love-ethic of Jesus by considering the dignity of women to be primary. When we see Jesus’ love-ethic as primary, the future of the Southern Baptist Convention should become crystal clear.
Loving women is worth splitting a denomination over.
Rick Pidcock is a 2004 graduate of Bob Jones University, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Bible. He’s a freelance writer based in South Carolina and a former Clemons Fellow with BNG. He recently completed a Master of Arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five children and produces music under the artist name Provoke Wonder. Follow his blog at www.rickpidcock.com.
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