Cheryl

Hi Deb,
As Tiro3 said, Welcome Deb!!

I too feel very close to complementarians who are respectful and who refuse to call their egalitarian sisters in Christ as sinners merely for their view on the issue of women in ministry. I am starting to think that there are quite a few out there like you that we just don’t hear about. I have just had way more experience with militant hierarchists (I hate to even call them complementarians) who are abusive and rude and who shame the name of Christ by their attitude and their conduct. Jesus has made it very clear that we are to love the body of Christ and he hates those who cause division among the brethren. We certainly are to defend essential doctrine and we can passionately defend our view of women’s freedom to use their gifts for the benefit of their dear brothers in Christ, but we are to do so with an attitude of love and respect because we are all “brothers” in Christ.

I started to read the paper on mutual submission that your seminary President wrote and there is a sense of humility that is often missing in the complementarian camp. While I may disagree with some of his conclusions, I do respect his attitude. I have not finished reading it yet because I have been so busy. I will be writing a post very shortly about what is happening in my life and why I have been somewhat “absent” around here lately. I do appreciate that you have hung around and enjoyed what you have been reading. This is really what egalitarian women long for – to be heard and to have our gifts acknowledged that they are beneficial and needed for the common good of both men and women. Those of us who are deeply in love with Jesus long to serve him by treating each member of the body of Christ as special and worthy of our gifts. When we are forced to be prejudiced against our dear brothers in Christ merely because of their gender, it hurts us and ultimately this hurts the entire body of Christ too.

As far as the Bayly brothers, they are ones who seem to revel in dividing the body and pitting brothers against brothers. This should not be so in the church. The thing that really causes me to wonder the most is what strong women get out of following these kind of men. I certainly can see what naturally submissive women can get out of it. These kind of women have a need to have men take over their decisions and to hover over them as if they are childlike persons who are not capable of growing up and making their own mature decisions. But what do the strong women who repeat the abusive words of their male leaders get out of it? What do people like Kamilla get out of following the Bayly boys? I do not know her heart so I cannot judge her motives. However I do wonder if women like this have a need to be controllers but that they also have a need to work underneath the authority of these leaders so that it doesn’t appear that they are indeed strong controlling women? Thoughts?

I just don’t get how these strong hierarchical men allow a certain class of “special” women to speak out on their blogs. These women appear to get preferential treatment and are allowed to speak in a confrontational or even rude way to those who don’t agree with the hierarchal leader. I have been mulling this over in my head. Is it that these two kinds of people need each other and feed off each other? I am just throwing this one out for comments. Is it possible that strong aggressive women want to appear to be submissive and so they look for these hierarchical leaders and they emotionally fondle telling them how wonderful and right they are to be the “manly” men who take control over women. This meets the man’s need to be the one at the top of the heap and it meets the woman’s need to get special privileges so that she can appear to be submissive but be given full reign to heap abuse on those who disagree with the leader? Guys, I may be way off, but this is how it appears to me.