Kristen

Craig, since we last wrote to one another, I learned some things that relate directly to our Sola Panel discussions and the issue of slavery.

I recently found on CBE (Christians for Biblical Equality), a link to this 34-page essay by egalitarian leader Kevin Giles. It was written in response to a complementarian conference he attended in Melbourne, Australia in October 2010. As I read this over, it became increasingly clear to me that the attitudes of the Sola Panel contributors (that egalitarians were all “liberals” who had abandoned a high view of Scripture because we just didn’t want to obey the plain sense of the Bible with regards to women’s roles) were a direct result of that conference.

Kevin Giles addresses directly the attitude that complementarians have some sort of moral high ground with regards to reading the Bible, which egalitarians have supposedly abandoned. I found his words very heartening.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=1NDHIo5sjTpBauEZ2P-J61YcjBjnMYsbbAhWaOtE9_OFiqz3FaCDhYEOWb1Wk&hl=en

If the above link doesn’t enable you to read the document, please click on this link to the CBE artile and then on the words “response to the conference” on the fourth line down.
http://blog.cbeinternational.org/2011/01/unity-in-difference/

Of particular interest are his conclusions on pages 32-34. He says that it is human nature to cling to power and to justify the use of power, and that the Bible is the greatest source of justification there is; therefore, the opposition and vilification we receive as egalitarians is a direct result of our challenge to established male power in the church and home for evangelical Christians. He also noted something that I was unaware of: apparently Australian evangelicals are largely unaware of the track record of evangelicals in other countries using the Bible to cling to racial power. Mark’s apparent simplicity with regards to how slavery and male-female relations tie together, may be directly related to this unawareness that complementarians themselves are continuing in a grand tradition of Christian people in power clinging to power and using the Bible for justification. I’m going to post a couple of links to old pro-slavery writings that use the same arguments complementarians now use, to justify slave-holding as being the white man’s divine right.