262 WHERE IS EVANGELICAL FEMINISM TAKING US?
At this point someone may object, “But aren’t there evangelical
feminists who don’t adopt any of these arguments you have listed? At
the beginning of every chapter you have said, ‘Some evangelical femi-
nists.. .’ Doesn’t this imply that there are other evangelical feminists
who don’t adopt any of these arguments?”
My response is that I do not know of any.
Of course nobody adopts all of the arguments I have listed, because
a number of them are mutually exclusive.^1 But every evangelical femi-
nist author I know of adopts at least some of the arguments I have listed
in this book, and most of them adopt a number of these arguments.
Moreover, these arguments are widely promoted by the egalitarian
advocacy group Christians for Biblical Equality,^2 and they are widely
represented in the most recent and most comprehensive statement of the
egalitarian position, the book Discovering Biblical Equality.^3
As explained at the beginning of this book, I am not saying that all
egalitarians are liberals, or are moving toward liberalism. But I am say-
ing that the arguments used by egalitarians actually undermine the
authority of Scripture again and again, and in so doing they are leading
the church step by step toward liberalism. Today some egalitarians have
only taken one step in that direction and have gone no further. But a
number of younger egalitarian leaders have gone further (as in calling
God our Mother), and the next generation will go further, for that is the
direction toward which evangelical feminism inevitably leads. Those
who adopt an evangelical feminist position “buy into” an interlocking
system of interpretation that will relentlessly erode the authority of
Scripture in our churches.
Which will we choose? Will we follow faithfully in the path of life-
(^1) For example, the “trajectory hermeneutics” advocates argue that Paul taught male headship
for his day, but that should not be our standard today. But those who argue that “head” in
Ephesians 5:23 means “source” or that “exercise authority” in 1 Timothy 2:12 means
“misuse authority” think that Paul did not even require male elders in his day. In general, if
egalitarians think the New Testament commands are binding on us today, they hold that
the New Testament did not require male headship even for that time. But if they think the
New Testament commands are not binding on us today, then they tend to admit that the New
Testament taught male headship in the home and the church for its time.
(^2) See http://www.cbeinternational.org.
(^3) Ronald W. Pierce and Rebecca Merrill Groothuis, eds., Discovering Biblical Equality
(Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2004), which I have cited frequently in this book.